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Note: [Okonged2.ged] NAME_COMMON Joseph Frank BIOGRAPHY And now for a little history. From the ship's manifest, it appears that Josef and Josefa (sic) arrived at the Port of New York on December 9, 1908 aboard the S.S. Finland (steerage class) which left Antwerp, Belgium on November 28. They may have originally embarked from a port closer to home (Gdansk, Hamburg, Bremen, ...) but I could not find a record of an Okon or Kozyra in the Index to the Hamburg Indirect Passenger Lists, 1895-1910. Josefa's birthplace is given as Krzeszow, Russia. It should be noted that this part of Poland was under Russian control from about 1795-1918. Josef's birthplace is also listed as Krzeszow, but Uncle Len believes he was born in Janow Lubelski. Could he have been born in one place and grown up in the other? They were on the way to the home of an acquaintance, Jos. Zby----- in Zanesville, Ohio. Josef said he had previously been in the U.S. in 1905-07, also in Zanesville. (I haven't been able to find the manifest.) Their last residence is shown as Krzeszow, so they were probably married there. Josef lists the name of his brother, Masiez (sp?) Okon, living in Krzeszow. The manifest also says they were not polygamists, anarchists, or ex-cons. It is thought that they spent some time in Gary, Indiana but it couldn't have been long because by the time of the 1910 census Joseph and Josephine were living at 2228 Seeley Ave., Chicago with their daughter Cecelia along with Constance Bisczinski and her son Victor. Cecelia had been born in Illinois 12 months earlier in April, 1909. (Joseph may have visited Gary during the 1905-07 period.) Joseph and Josephine did not speak English but could read and write Polish. Joseph was working as a laborer in a foundry. At the 1920 census, they had 4 kids and were renting at 2139 N. Winchester, Chicago. Charles Bystrzynski, Josephine's nephew, was living with them. (Ten-year-old Charlie Bye's parents had both died and he would later, about 1923, be adopted by Mr. & Mrs. Martin Kotwica.) Joseph and Josephine now showed their birth-place's to be Poland and did not yet speak English. Joseph was working as a molder at a brass foundry and was naturalized in 1919. He brought home a great brass crucifix that was made at the foundry. Joseph also worked as a milkman, delivering milk with a horse and wagon for Progress Dairy in Chicago. Some, maybe all, of his sons helped him at this at one time or another. He belonged to the Polish National Alliance and, coming from the province of Lublin, Poland, also belonged to a Chicago organization called the Sons off Lublin, serving as an officer or president for possibly 20 years. He spent so much time with the "Sons" that Josephine had a derogatory nickname for it which I've forgotten. Can anyone refresh my memory? The family had a player piano and piano rolls that brought music into the home. Only Irene took some piano lessons. Going backwards, Joseph's death certificate, filled out by hospital personnel, lists Micha Okon as his father and Marianna Unknown as his mother. Josephine's death certificate, filled out by Uncle Steve, shows Ignatz Kozyra as her father (mother unknown). Now that we have some names and places from "the old country", we can start researching Polish records to see who our ancestors were. OK, who wants to volunteer? In looking through ship manifest indexes, there seem to be a lot of Okons from Sweden, Germany, and Russia. The ones listed as German or Russian may actually be from Poland (remember 1795-1918). I also browsed the obituary indexes in Dziennik Chicagoski, a magazine published in the early 1900's and found at the Wheaton Public Library. There were a lot of Okon's listed, always with an accent over the n. Is this the way our name was spelled?
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