The Milewskis, from Zarnowo to Manayunk and Harrison, 1894 to 1981

In the spring of 1894 a Polish family landed at Philadelphia with a boy not yet two years old. Three generations later his son was a Marine veteran and a thirty-year man at RCA in Harrison, New Jersey. This is their story, told from the records they left.

Antoni and Franciszka

Antoni Milewski came from Jaziewo, a village in the Catholic parish of Jaminy in north-eastern Poland. The parish register, as indexed by the Polish Genealogical Society, records his baptism in 1867, the son of Mateusz Milewski and Marianna Matyskiela, who had married there in 1858; his death certificate would later name the same parents. He married Franciszka (Frances) Jeleniewska, and their first son, John Frank, was born at Zarnowo on December 20, 1892. Years later John told the naturalization court that he had left from Hamburg and reached the port of Philadelphia on May 15, 1894, as a toddler.

The family settled in Manayunk, the mill town on the Schuylkill inside Philadelphia's 21st Ward. By April 1910 they were renting on Grape Street. Antoni and Frances had eight children at home, and the eldest were already at work: John, 19, was a washer in a worsted mill.

Ten years later the census taker came to the Carson Street house. Antoni and Frances had seven sons at home, most of the older ones working in the yarn mills, and a married son, William, lived with them with his wife.

Antoni died of pneumonia at 4526 Baker Street on December 28, 1925, aged 55, after four days' illness, and was buried in Westminster Cemetery. His sons kept his name in their own records. When Edward Milewski, 23, applied to marry in Lackawanna County in June 1926, he gave his father as Anthony, deceased, and his mother as Francis, born Jeleneski. Charles Milewski's 1962 death certificate names the same two parents.

John and Josephine

In February 1917 John, then a wool scourer, and Josephine Sobacz went before the clerk of the Orphans' Court for a marriage license. Both gave 153 Carson Street as home. She signed as Juzefa Subacewska, born in Russia, and said her father, Anthony, and her mother, Kostancia Popiłowna, were no longer living; John's later petition places her birth in Poland, and clerks wrote her surname as Subacewska, Sobacz and Subacz. He registered for the draft on June 5, 1917, from the same address. By January 1920 he was a repairman in a steel mill, living on Roxborough Avenue with Josephine and a baby son.

On May 27, 1926, John, then a laborer at 174 Gay Street, swore out his petition for naturalization in the federal court at Philadelphia. It names Josephine, born in Poland on May 25, 1898, and their three children. One of his two witnesses was his brother Charles, of the family house on Baker Street.

By 1935 the Milewskis had left Manayunk for Harrison, New Jersey, a factory town across the Passaic River from Newark. In 1940 John, 47, was a millwright; Josephine worked part of the week in a cotton mill; and their four children lived at home on William Street. John died that September, a few months after the census taker's visit, according to a Find a Grave index entry that places his grave in Holy Cross Cemetery, North Arlington. Josephine, widowed, moved to South Fifth Street in Harrison and lived until October 29, 1978.

Edward

Edward Joseph Milewski, John and Josephine's second son, was born in Manayunk on January 10, 1921, and grew up in Harrison. When he registered for the draft in February 1942 he was already working for the RCA Corporation, whose Harrison plant made radio tubes.

He enlisted in the Marine Corps on August 23, 1943, and that October he was on the rolls of the Seventh Recruit Battalion at Parris Island. That same year he married Annunziata "Nancy" DiSanto of Irvington. He came home through the Separation Battalion at Camp Lejeune with an honorable discharge in July 1946.

Edward and Nancy set up house in Irvington; the 1950 census found him there as a stock clerk at a radio tube factory. He stayed with RCA for 32 years, becoming a chemical store keeper and the financial secretary of the plant's union local, and he served as commander of American Legion Post 99 in Kearny. He retired about 1978 and died at home in Irvington on February 18, 1981, at sixty.

What we're still looking for

• John Frank Milewski's death certificate, to confirm the September 1940 date and the burial at Holy Cross.
• Franciszka (Frances) Milewski's death record; the family tree gives February 23, 1928.
• The ship that brought the family from Hamburg in May 1894.
• Edward and Nancy's 1943 wedding notice.

Sources

• Geneteka index (Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne), Jaminy parish: baptisms 1867, act 122 (Antoni Milewski, Jaziewo); marriages 1858, act 3 (Mateusz Milewski and Marianna Matyskiela). geneteka.genealodzy.pl/
• Pennsylvania death certificate, file no. 115299: Antoni Milcoski [Milewski], died 28 Dec 1925 (Ancestry, Pennsylvania, U.S., Death Certificates, 1906-1972).
• Petition for naturalization no. 7654, John Frank Milewski, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, 27 May 1926 (Ancestry). www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2717/records/190402
• 1910 U.S. census, Philadelphia Ward 21, ED 376, sheet 6B, Grape Street (Ancestry). www.ancestry.com/search/collections/7884/records/109268900
• 1920 U.S. census, Philadelphia Ward 21, ED 512, sheet 5A, Carson Street, household of Anthony Milewski (Ancestry).
• Lackawanna County, Pa., marriage license application no. 1188, Edward Milewski and Pearl V. Grzegorska, 28 Jun 1926 (Ancestry, Pennsylvania, U.S., Marriages, 1852-1968).
• Pennsylvania death certificate 051400-62: Charles Milewski, 8 May 1962 (Ancestry).
• Pennsylvania, U.S., Marriages, 1852-1968: John Milewski and Josephine Subacewska, 1917 (Ancestry). www.ancestry.com/search/collections/61381/records/794978
• Philadelphia marriage license application, John Milewski and Juzefa Subacewska, sworn 14 Feb 1917 (FamilySearch). www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q28P-VZ5D
• Find a Grave index: John F. Milewski, died September 1940, Holy Cross Cemetery, North Arlington (FamilySearch). www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVLV-SXBV
• U.S., World War I draft registration cards: John Milewski, Philadelphia, 5 Jun 1917 (Ancestry). www.ancestry.com/search/collections/6482/records/25282872
• 1920 U.S. census, Philadelphia Ward 21, ED 511, sheet 1B, Roxborough Avenue (Ancestry). www.ancestry.com/search/collections/6061/records/89060443
• 1940 U.S. census, Harrison, Hudson Co., N.J., ED 9-107, sheet 7A (Ancestry). www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2442/records/133400286
• 1950 U.S. census, Harrison, ED 9-26, and Irvington, ED 28-7 (Ancestry).
• Death notice of Josephine Milewski, The Star-Ledger (Newark), 1 Nov 1978, p. 34 (Newspapers.com). www.newspapers.com/image/1110964284/
• U.S., World War II draft cards Young Men: Edward Joseph Milewski, 16 Feb 1942 (Ancestry). www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2238/records/301316545
• U.S. Marine Corps muster rolls: Edward J. Milewski, 886391, October 1943 and July 1946 (Ancestry). www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1089/records/21693800
• U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File: Edward Milewski (Ancestry). www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2441/records/8133073
• New Jersey, U.S., Marriage Index: Edward J. Milewski and Nancy DeSanto, 1943 (Ancestry). www.ancestry.com/search/collections/61253/records/990994640
• "E. Milewski", The Star-Ledger (Newark), 19 Feb 1981, p. 34 (Newspapers.com). www.newspapers.com/image/1111273213/