Eduardo Hernandez was born on November 7, 1922 in Mexico to Juan and Rosita Hernandez. Eduardo says that he was the youngest of seven children and that his mother died giving birth to him. His father worked as some type of laborer and, according to Eduardo, was a drunk who beat him and his siblings […]
Celeste Salvail was born on February 29, 1920 in Chicago to Vincenzo Salvail and Angela Potenza. Vincenzo and Angela were Italian immigrants who had met and married while still in Italy. In fact, they had already had two children, Apollonia and Christina, when they set sail for America, but Christina, who was just a baby, […]
Andrew Pokorny was born on October 20, 1912 in Chicago to Branislav Pokorny and Maria Tesar, both of whom were immigrants from Slovakia. Andrew is not sure whether his parents met and married in Slovakia or if they met here, but he remembers his father working as a coppersmith. His mother was a housewife and […]
Floyd Vesela was born on January 14, 1911 in Chicago. His parents were Anton Vesela and Helena Starek, both of Czechoslovakian descent. It was always assumed that both of his parents were born in Chicago, but Floyd thinks his mother may have actually been born in Czechoslovakia and came here as an infant with her […]
Franklin Wilson was born on August 24, 1931 to Lincoln Wilson and Ethyl Jackson, who worked a forty-acre farm near Chatham, Louisiana. The Wilsons had nine children: Calvin, Chester, Anita, Franklin, Roland, Ida Jean, Lily Mae, Hattie and Daisy Mae, all of whom lived into adulthood. Besides working their own farm, Lincoln also worked on […]
Louisa Berger was born on September 5, 1907 in Macedonia. Her parents, Martin Everhart and Liese Buhr were German farmers living in what was once called the Austro-Hungarian Empire in an area that later became Yugoslavia. There were originally nine children in the family, but three of them died of diphtheria. The rest of them […]
Britta Driessen was born on September 10, 1909 in Chicago. Her parents were Valdis Ozolinsh, an immigrant from Latvia, and Ebba Ahlstrom, an immigrant from Sweden. Valdis made his way to America alone, and Ebba came across the ocean to live with her sister, who had found work in Chicago. It is not certain how […]
Zita Fodor was born on May 12, 1913 in Budapest, Hungary to David Fodor and Terezia Kozorus. It is unknown what type of work David did while still in Hungary, but when he and Terezia immigrated to America, he found work in Chicago as a tool and die maker. Terezia cared for their two children, […]
Apolonia Ruzicka was born on March 30, 1914 in Chicago to Jonas Horacek and Marie Blaha, both immigrants from Czechoslovakia, though they apparently met and married in Indiana. Marie lived with her family in South Bend, where Jonas had also immigrated to and had found a job working for the Studebaker Car Company. The two […]
This week’s Novel Notes is a special edition! Author, John (Zbigniew) Guzlowski, was gracious enough to share with me the story of his parents’ fierce struggle to survive in war-torn Poland, their almost miraculous meeting, and their subsequent epic journey to these shores in hopes of building a better life.
John’s parents were Jan Guzlowski and […]
