Growing Your Tree: The Bien Family Story

You can only continue to grow your family tree if you keep working on it. A genealogist's work is truly never done, especially in this day and age when more and more records are being digitized and more and more people are becoming interested in genealogy. Keep searching for your family online, you might be surprised what you find.

Today one of my cousins on my mother's side is celebrating her birthday. So I am publishing newly found information on yet another branch of my family tree, the Bien family, to share with her and everyone else who is interested. But first, here is the marriage photo of Casimir J. Bien and Anna Stankiewicz:

Anna Stankiewicz & Casimir J. Bien
Wedding Photo

When I first began this quest, over eighteen years ago, we didn't have much information to go on for the Bien side of the family. Even though I visited my Grandpa Casey and two of his sisters in Chicago, they only knew that their grandfather Bien's name was Andrew and that he was born in Bychawa, Poland, which is a town near Lublin. They didn't know his wife's name, even though one of my aunts had visited Bychawa in the 1970s. In the past six months, I have spent hours researching digitized records from Poland newly indexed and posted online. Thanks to that research, I was able to increase our Bien line of the family tree by three full generations. I found several birth, marriage, and death records and had them translated from handwritten cursive cyrillic. The following pedigree chart is the result of that work. Please note that you can click on the image, then right click and select "open image in new tab" so you will be able to zoom in and read the chart.

Also, today I'd like to share the family story about the Bien family that my Aunt Charlotte told me back when I started my genealogy research in the early 1990s.

THE BIEN FAMILY STORY
(As told to me by Charlotte Bien, daughter of Casimir J. Bien and Anna Stankiewicz. Once again, as in the Nawodylo family story, a few of the facts presented here are incorrect (such as the year Casimir came to the U.S.) according to my research.)

Casimir Bien's father was Andrew (she knew this from his death certificate but it didn't have his mother's name on it). Andrew had been married before, but his first wife died. He had a son from this marriage named Jan (which translates to John) Bien, who was Casimir's half-brother. Jan Bien and his wife had five kids named Joseph, Michaelina, Stasia, Olek and Mieczu.

Casimir came to the US in 1909 when he was 19 years old. He married Anna Stankiewicz at St. Ann's Church in Chicago in 1912. Constantine "Casey" Bien was born in 1913. He and Anna bought their own house in Chicago in 1940. The address was 5649 S. Richmond, Chicago, IL 60632. When Casey Bien got married, he had photos taken with his bride and wedding party in the back yard of that house.

According to my aunt, the Bien name was never shortened. When she went to Poland, she found Biens all over. Many were relatives, but some were NOT related. One story is that when Stella Bienkowski, wife of Vincent Stankiewicz (Anna's brother), went to get her citizenship papers  ... she had come to the US when she was 9 years old ... and Casimir Bien went with her to be a witness, they "threw him out" or didn't want to take his testimony because they thought that he was in her family because Bien and Bienkowski were such close names.

Casimir Bien had three sisters: Antonina Guziak (she had two kids, but the story is that her husband poisoned them), Marysia, and Karolka (translated Caroline) Janusz (she had seven kids, but we don't know their names).

My Aunt Charlotte and her husband went to Poland for the first time in 1971. It was during communist rule, so they couldn't get records, only names. Marysia and Karolka were both dead by then. But Antonina was still living. (It was hush-hush, that she had no kids but maybe had had two kids who were supposedly poisoned by her husband). My aunt went to some building in the area (Lublin), like an office building, and they were asking about Casimir Bien. A girl who was there took them to Bychawa ... this is where Aunt Charlotte thinks they were all from since Antonina was still there. The girl took them to a farm or something with a huge gate over her head (they had a horse and driver). There was a woman by a well and the girl went over and said something to her. The woman said, "So let her ask." The woman seemed gruff, but also scared. Turns out she had spent 4 years in a concentration camp. My aunt asked about Antonina's brothers and sisters but Antonina was scared and would not talk much. However, she did say that she was indeed Casimir's youngest sister. They all hugged.

Later, my aunt went back to Poland because she had promised that she would visit Antonina again. It was 1973 and one of my aunt's daughters and son went with her. Then her husband and another daughter came later to meet them there. This was June, July, August ... and they all came back together.

Casimir had attended church in Bychawa. My aunt and her husband visited this church. They presented (and donated) a pletan (what you hold under the host when distributing it to the people) at a Mass there.

This is all of the information that my Aunt Charlotte told me about the Bien family.

***
NOTE: The pedigree chart lists different villages/towns as birthplaces for the Biens, but most of these villages are near Bychawa, Poland, and are recorded in the Bychawa Roman Catholic parish or Targowisko Roman Catholic parish records. My research of these records in Poland has corroborated some of the information that my aunt had, but I also found out that some of it is incorrect. I will tell more about this in an upcoming post.

* Please comment and let me know what you think about all this! Also, if you're a cousin or relative, I would love it if you would add any stories that you know or have been told about the Bien family and ask any questions that you may have for me.

Family Stories: The Nawodylo Family

Family stories are an important part of your family history. But always take the stories for what they are -- memories that have been passed down from one generation to the next. The memories might be hazy and the stories might have been embellished over the years. The family story may be mostly true, but the details may be incorrect. Still, stories are what make genealogy interesting because they make your ancestors come alive. It's important to write them down to share with others. They also offer clues for genealogical research. It's great when you can back the stories up with hard evidence. 

Today I want to introduce another family in my family tree - the Nawodylo family. 

Agatha Frankowski and Gzregorz "Harry" Nawodylo

THE NAWODYLO FAMILY STORY

(This is the family story that was told to me by my mother who asked her uncle Jack Pine (aka Leon "Jack" Nawodylo) about his parents. Jack was the son of Gregorz and Agatha Nawodylo. He changed his last name to Pine because he "liked it better." Through my genealogy research, I found that some of the facts in this story are incorrect. I will address those inconsistencies in another post.)

Agatha was Polish.
Harry was Ukrainian.

They were both rent-out children. Their families were very poor and couldn't take care of their kids so they rented them out to people with more land (for gardens -- farms). Those people clothed the kids and fed them and the lived with them too.

They were working for 17 years in Germany (near Bremen) but Uncle Jack didn't know what they worked at. Buscia (the Polish word for grandma) and Dziadzia (grandpa) met in Germany.

They left Germany when they could get out (Uncle Jack thought it was 1909) and came to U.S. on a boat. It took a whole month and everyone was very sick on board. Uncle Jack thought it was a sailboat. He remembers them (Buscia and Dziadzia) talking about Philadelphia or Ohio when they came to the US but he doesn't know for sure.

They knew a family named Biela in Chicago. They stayed there for a few weeks -- were married and then went to Canada. They had a homestead -- 3 cows, 1 steer, 2 oxen, no tools except an axe. Raised cattle -- maybe had 27 head. You paid $10 for a homestead of 160 acres. After one year you had to have a cabin. By the second year you had to have a barn. Then a hay loft. They sold the cattle to a man (Buriko/Bureiko) but Dziadzia had no place to cash the check from the man. The storekeeper didn't have that much money, so Dziadzia kept the check 3 months. By the time he went to a bank, the man had withdrawn all his money and left for Chicago. Dziadzia got his gun and was going to go to Chicago to kill the man because the family lost almost everything because of the bad check.

The Nawodylo Family
(back row, from left) Anthony  (aka Tom Nash), Agatha, Gzregorz (aka Harry), Leon (aka Jack Pine)
(front) John, Mary, and William

Dziadzia came to the US (Chicago) finally in 1924 and left the "ranch" behind. Dziadzia offered it to Uncle Jack and Uncle Tom (aka Anthony "Tom" Nawodylo or Tom Nash) but they didn't want it. They would have had to pay 4 years back taxes (not much money really) but it was in the woods and Uncle Jack said, "What would he do there with no tools, no tractor, etcetera?" 

It was too hard to write Gzregorz all the time and someone called Dziadzia "Harry" once so he called himself Harry after that. Uncle Tom had to apply for citizenship papers too because he was born in Canada but Uncle Jack was born in the US.


Dziadzia worked for the Great Northern Chair Company -- not a railroad. He stoked boilers and was a watchman at night. He separated bales of cotton for 2 years too. The cotton was on fire on the outside for some reason, so it had to be separated from the good inside part. This took 2 years to do.

Dziadzia also worked at St. Constance (church in Chicago). He was a janitor and he rang the bells. This was sometime 1948--1951.


He worked at Stewart Warner Company as a security guard (not sure if he meant this was before or after he worked at St. Constance). Uncle Jack got him the job. He got to carry a gun and all. Jack asked how he liked it and he said, "What?"  He said that all he did was set the clocks and check the place, walk around, then go sit down again. He didn't think it was much of a job.

Uncle Jack said he never knew Dziadzia or Buscia's parents' names. Kids were to be SEEN and not heard and they never mentioned their families. 

Buscia's sister's daughter (her neice) was in Deep Dale Saskatchewan, Canada. Uncle Jack didn't even know she had a sister. He didn't know the sister's name nor does he remember the girl's name.