Czyzewski FamilyIt is not certain that one of the mine laborers in Glen Lyon, Pennsylvania, was born 3 March 1876 with the name of Czyzewski in the conquered section of Poland under Russian control. Cyzewski was written for him and he applied his mark on his application for citizenship in 1906. Cyzewski, however, was outnumbered by Czyzewski 10543 to 7 in current use in Poland, and most likely Czyzewski was the original name of John Cyzewski, who came to Glen Lyon on 2 July 1893.
By 1910 there were other Czyzewski families in Pennsylvania. B. Czyzewski, who was born about 1850 in the same partition of Poland as John Czyzewski, was first in Indiana, where two sons were born, B.J. in 1884 and F.¸ in 1886, and then moved with his family, including his wife, Albina, 12 years younger, to Braddock, in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where another child, Otilia, was born in 1904. Whether B. Czyzewski was one of the Polish immigrants that the wagon and farm implement companies brought to South Bend, Indiana, is not known, but Valentine Czyzewski, who was born on Feb. 15, 1846, in Talkuny, Suwalki province, Poland, came to South Bend in 1869, after studying in the monasteries of his native land, and entered Notre Dame University in 1872. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1876 and joined the Congregation Sancti Crucis, also known as the Order of the Holy Cross. At the time, the Polish population in South Bend was growing pretty fast because the Studebaker company, the leading wagon manufacturer in the country, sent agents to Poland to find workers. In some cases, recruiters would also lure immigrants in New York as they came off the ships and escort them to South Bend. The first Polish families in South Bend worshipped at St. Patrick's Church, but on January 1, 1877, four days after his ordination, the Rev. Czyzewski was assigned to their care. The Poles erected their own church in 1877, then called St. Joseph's, but two years later it was destroyed by a storm. The fate of the Polish parish was in Czyzewski's hands. He decided to build a new church, which he called St. Hedwig's, in a different location, and, owing to shortage of funds, he first built another school and used it for religious services until 1883, and then erected a new church at a cost of $32,000. It was dedicated April 15, 1884. He built a rectory the same year and a new school in 1886. The school, with eight classrooms, was destroyed by fire on February 4, 1896, and the pastor built another school, with twelve classrooms and a 1000-seat meeting hall.
Rev. Czyzewski was not finished. The first Polish parish grew from 125 to 1,200 families. It became necessary to erect two new churches. St. Casimir's in 1895 and St. Stanislaus, Bishop and Martyr, in 1898, two miles from St. Hedwig's. Father Czyzewski administered St. Stanislaus parish until the bishop appointed a newly ordained priest from South Bend, Rev. Roman Marciniak, as pastor instead of a new immigrant, Rev. T. Jarzynski, who was his assistant. In addition, Father Czyzewski set up Polish missions in Kosciusko (sic), Laporte, Marshall, and Noble counties and often visited other Polish settlements.
Rev. Czyzewski was forced to give up active work in his parish in the dying days of June, 1913, when a torrid heat wave reached the city. However, he wanted to perform a marriage ceremony on Monday, the last day of June, but suffered a heart attack induced by heat. He died June 30, 1913. The South Bend Tribune reported that "between 8,000 and 12,000 people waited in the broiling sun for more than three hours" in order to see and take part in the funeral procession for the Polish priest who had been among them for 40 years. Ret. Rev. Paul Rhode, bishop of Chicago, the first Polish Roman Catholic bishop in the United States, celebrated pontical mass and conducted services in Cedar Grove Cemetery. Thousands of mourners followed the procession to the cemetery, either walking or riding special street cars, which were decorated by the street car company in black and white streamers. On the day Rev. Czyzewski died, the South Bend Tribune wrote this about him: "In no relation does anyone enter so closely into the private lives of men, women and children as in the ministry. And no denominational leader enters so generally into his parishioners' lives, as does a Catholic priest. He is a father to his flock. When a man has stood in the relation of spiritual monitor to one congregation for 35 years, as had Rev. Valentine Czyzewski, his sudden taking away is to the congregation like the taking of one from their very firesides."
On account of labor troubles in South Bend, during which the union, comprised mostly of Polish workers, were unsuccessful in 1876 and 1885, B. Czyzewski moved his family to Braddock, where most of the immigrants worked in the steel mills, and Antonina Czyzewski, whose two sons, Leo and Joseph, were born in New York during the 1890s, moved to Pittsburgh. Teofil Czyzewski, eight years younger than Antonina, also lived in Pittsburgh. In 1910, his wife, Sofia, was 29, and they had five children; two sons, John, 8, and Alfonse, 3; three daughters, Josephine, 10, Victoria, 5, and Pearl. There was another Teofil Czyzewski in Philadelphia.
The first Czyzewski families in Toledo, Ohio, were John and Martin Czyzewski from the conquered part of Poland under German control. Their mother, Frances, 59 years old in 1910, lived with her daughter, Mary, 24, who was married to John Dombrowski, and her granddaughter, Wanda Dombrowski, 3. When he was 26 years old, Andrew Czyzewski had three sons with Antonine (maiden name unknown): Walter, John and Ludwik. Martin Czyzewski, two years older, had two daughters, Laddie and Wanda Stella, with Anna, and a younger brother, John, living with him.
As the Czyzewski families began to feel more at home in their new world, they or their children moved to other places, as did other families from Poland, and in the long look backward, there can be little doubt that they got around and did a lot of things. Up to now, the Social Security Death Index has 253 Czyzewski names.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2009); Ancestry.com: Jan Cyzewski Petition for Citizenship, No. 1719, Box 7. Federal court records, Scranton; Rev. Waclaw Kruszka, A History of the Poles In America to 1908; Rev. Francis Bolek, Who's Who In Polish America; The Polish Community In St. Joseph County; Hoffman, William F., Polish Surnames Origins and Meanings; Rymut, Kazimierz, Slownik nazwisk wspolczesnie w Polsce uzywanych (Directory of Surnames In Current Use In Poland); South Bend Tribune, July 1 and 3, 1913.