Pinkowski Files

GOVERNOR TIM PAWLENTY

No one knows how Joseph Pawlenty got to Little Falls, Minnesota, whether by rail, water, or ox-cart, or where he came from in Poland, but his grandson, Timothy James Pawlenty, who was taken out of there in a car when he was seven years old, was elected governor of Minnesota on November 5, 2002. Joseph Pawlenty came by himself to this country. He married Mary Kedrowski, a young Polish immigrant, in St. Paul, Minnesota, and moved four years later to Little Falls to work in a sawmill.
The lumber industry played a major role in the growth of Little Falls on the Mississippi River. The first sawmills were built in 1848. The building of a paper mill in Little Falls played an even greater role in its development. More Polish immigrants followed on the heels of the first Pawlentys in Minnesota and before Bishop James Trowec had time to visit the Catholic churches scattered over the 12,251 square miles of the St. Cloud diocese, Rev. John Kitowski, pastor of St. Stanislaus church in Sobieski, seven miles from Little Falls, who heard confessions and served communion in Little Falls in 1896, told him the Polish families wanted to break away from Sacred Heart parish in Little Falls and form a Polish church. Bishop Trowec granted their wish in 1897 and the Poles built a two steepled frame church, which they named St. Adalbert's, three blocks from the Sacred Heart church. It was veneered with brick in 1906. Rev. John Guzdek, who came from Chojnice, Poland, in 1893 shortly after he was ordained, became the first pastor of St. Adalbert's, or St. Albert's, as it was called erroneously in the articles of incorporation. As the parish grew, it opened a school, which the Pawlenty children attended, and, in addition, Father Guzdek, in his spare time, wrote poetry, fiction, and carved figures out of wood. He was followed by Father Theodore J. Rekosiak, who was in Little Falls from 1902 to 1916, and other priests who played a role in the education of the Pawlenty children. The church, damaged by a fire on November 20, 1953, was closed in 1957.
Most of the Polish pioneers of Little Falls worked either in the saw and paper mills or took care of the logs that were sent down the Mississippi River and tributaries from the lumber camps. After working a brief time in a sawmill, Joseph Pawlenty, a carpenter and blacksmith by trade, began to make wagons and farm implements. His wife blessed him with five boys and two girls. She was only eighteen years old when the first child, John, was born 28 October 1888. The next one, Frank, was born about 1894. Then Leo was born 25 October 1896; Ignatz (Ignatius), 15 November 1898; and Aloysius, 19 June 1903. Two girls, Agnes and Anna, came after them. Joseph Pawlenty died in 1918 and was buried in St. Adalbert's cemetery. By 1930, when Mary lived in her own home on 10th Street, in Little Falls' Fourth Ward, only Frank, Ignatz, and Aloysius were still single and lived at home. Frank was a drayman, Ignatz did odd jobs, and Alois was a farm laborer. Later, when Alois got married, Mary Pawlenty lived with him and his family and died by his side in 1953.
Practically all 87 Pawlenty names in the United States, seventy-two of which are scattered over Minnesota, stem from the nesters that grew up in Little Falls. Although some people think Pawlenty is a doctored Polish name, Poland had eighteen persons of the same name in 1990, eleven of them in Leszno province in the southwestern part of Poland. The origin of the family name is uncertain. The first part probably was taken from Pawel, as Paul is written in Polish, and the suffix makes Pawlenty different from other Polish surnames.
Timothy James Pawlenty, shortened to Tim for political purposes, who was born November 27, 1960, was one of three persons of Polish stock to win a governor's chair on November 5, 2002. The other two were Ted Kulongoski in Oregon and Frank Murkowski in Alaska. Consider this: Never before had a political phenomena like this occurred in the United States. All three were grandsons of Polish immigrants. Someday the historians of Morrison County, Minnesota, will put up a plaque on a public building, a roadside fence, or the house where he was born, to show that the thirty ninth governor of Minnesota came from Little Falls. When his father was unable to find a job in Little Falls, where a large percentage of the people were unemployed, he moved his family to South Saint Paul, nine miles from St. Paul, where he found a job as a truck driver. Tim Pawlenty was the youngest of five kids. He liked to play in the streets of the river town and the family talked more about sports than politics. His mother, Victoria, who died when he was sixteen years old, wanted him to go to college. He paid for his education at the University of Minnesota by stocking shelves in a grocery store, delivering newspapers, and working his "tail off" to get his law degree.
He met Mary Anderson, a charming lass of Swedish pioneers, when both were in law school. After graduation in 1986, she married Tim Pawlenty in Wooddale Church at Eden Prairie and settled down in Eagan, nine miles south of Saint Paul, where the population of 63,557 was one-fourth whiter than the 382,618 in Minneapolis. They had two daughters. No couple ever rose so fast in Minnesota politics as Tim and Mary Pawlenty. After serving three years on the Eagan City Council, Tim Pawlenty, who had no interest in politics until he ran errands for Senator Durenberger, who served in Washington from 1978 to 1985, was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 1992, and his wife was appointed by Governor Arne Carlson to a judgeship in Dakota County in 1994. Tim Pawlenty became the majority leader when Republicans took control of the Minnesota House in 1998.
With the advent of the 2002 election, Mary Pawlenty decided to continue as circuit judge at Hastings, about fifteen miles from St. Paul on the mighty Mississippi River, and Tim Pawlenty ran into a temporary roadblock. Vice President Dick Cheney talked him out of the race for U.S. Senator, but agreed to support him if he ran for governor. President George W. Bush and Vice President Cheney flew to Minnesota to campaign and raise money for the Republican candidates. Pawlenty polled higher than Jesse Ventura did in 1998.
In the turn of events, the new governor of Minnesota and the judge of Hastings faced a big problem in their married life. According to law, she could not live outside her jurisdiction and attend political functions. It meant that Tim Pawlenty had to sleep most of the time in Eagan and occupy the governor's mansion in St. Paul when he used it for official functions. It also meant that the first lady of Minnesota continued to teach Sunday School at Eden Prairie. Just what is in their future is difficult, perhaps impossible to know, for nothing is certain in politics, but previous governors who ran for two terms were successful most of the time.
Not surprising, the other Pawlenty breadwinners were involved in all kinds of work. For example, Leo Pawlenty, who had very little education, had a variety of jobs, first in a sawmill, then in the harvest fields in North Dakota, and was at work in Wausau, Wisconsin, when the First World War broke out. He enlisted in the 156th Wisconsin infantry regiment. After three months of training, the war ended and he returned to Wausau. After his marriage on June 11, 1919, to Helen Pestka, a farmer's daughter in Mosinee, Wisconsin, he returned to Little Falls and worked in a saw mill for a year. In 1930, he began to raise minks and in 1931 silver foxes. The following year he built a gas and oil station. By that time his two sons, Donald, who was born March 1, 1922, and Richard, June 1, 1924, were not exactly sure of their father's occupation. When Leo Pawlenty died Nov. 23, 1986, at his home, the St. Cloud Times said he was "self-employed as a mink rancher and fur buyer for 30 years."
In the next generation, Aloysius J. Pawlenty, who was born 3 October 1932 in Little Falls, enlisted in the Army in 1951 and went off to Korea. When he returned to Little Falls, he couldn't find a job. After Mary Pawlenty died, Alois Pawlenty moved his family to Minneapolis and Frank Pawlenty, with his wife and five children, to South Saint Paul. At one time or another Alois worked in a brewery and on the Alaskan pipeline. Leo Pawlenty remained in Little Falls, to which Alois later returned and where he died January 29, 1980, and Ignatz, who was not married, lived with Leo Pawlenty on the mink farm, where he died January 14, 1974. Young Aloysius Pawlenty went to a barber's school in California and then opened a barber shop in Crystal, in the suburbs of Minneapolis. The barber shop had no fringe benefits. After fifteen years of cutting hair, he got a job as a bus driver in Minneapolis and climbed through the ranks to the position of supervisor. He retired in the 1990s.
Sources: Ancestry.com; US Search.com; Interview with Leo and Helen Pawlenty, W. P. A. Project, Morrison County Historical
Society; St. Cloud Times, Nov. 25, 1986; Morrison County Record, Jan. 11, 14 and 15, 1974; Jan. 30, 1980; and Dec. 1, 1986; Aloysius J. Pawlenty, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Hoffman, William F., Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings; Rymut, Kazimierz, Slownik nazwisk wspolczesnie w Polsce uzywanych (Directory of Surnames in Current Use in Poland).

Author: Edward Pinkowski - e-mail: [email protected] - (2011)