DROPESKI, JOSEPH JAMES (March 14, 1876 -- Jan. 3, 1932)Justice of the peace. When he married a young Polish girl, Anna Wyrzykowski, at St Edward's Catholic Church in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, January 14, 1855, Joseph Drapiewski never envisioned who would follow him from Poland, where he was born in February 1828, to Trevorton, laid out in a mountain glen of Ralpho Township, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, by Judge William L. Helfenstein in 1849, to rob mother earth of its coal resources. Without much fanfare, two of Drapiewski's brothers walked from Castle Garden, New York, which preceded Ellis Island as the first stage in the life of an immigrant, to Trevorton, where they found work in Helfenstein's mine. The married couples who lived in the company houses provided the bachelors with room and board. Thus, the first Polish colony in the hard coal fields of Pennsylvania popped up like a mushroom in Helfenstein's patch.
It was impossible for another brother, Martin, and his second wife, Agnes Malicki, whom he married in 1857, to follow the same procedure. From his first wife he had three children -- too small to walk or be carried in a person's arms a long distance -- and again Martin had more children by his second wife. Nobody knows exactly how or when the family joined the Polish colony. It was before March 9, 1862, when a child was born in Trevorton, and when she died, the Mount Carmel Item (Sept. 13, 1939) reported that she was but seven years of age when the family located in Mount Carmel, then only a little village, and when she was 16 years old, Rose, as she was called, married Frank York (Jarka).
Most of the time newspaper obituaries are as solid as a rock. Writers, historians, genealogists, and descendants often rely on them for doing their work. Libraries are swamped with requests for obituaries, and hopefully they will continue to fill a very important role, without outrageous fees, in recording American history. Thank you, librarians, whevever you are, for your work. It would make a big difference to have more people interested in the histories of their own families.
In the case of Joseph and John Dropeski, who came from the same cradle as Rose York, I learned a lot about them from Mrs. Sally (Salamea) Gorczynski, whom I interviewed in Mount Carmel, March 29, 1962. Then, when she got a computer in recent years, Sally's relative, Eileen (Gaughan) Cizewski, who scoured the records of St. Joseph's Polish church before it was merged with other Catholic churches in Mount Carmel, Centralia, and Locust Gap, and visited the parish cemeter in Beaverdale to read the inscriptions on gravestones, often in Polish, continued to search for more records. Many recollections of the family vary from newspaper accounts and historical records. Weighing the variations isn't easy. There are not enough records of the family in existence.
For example, according to his obituary in the Mount Carmel Item, John J. Dropeski, as the last name is spelled, was born in Mount Carmel Township, January 20, 1864, compared to his sister, Rose, who was born in Ralpho Township. No registration of births in Pennsylvania were required until 1906. Hence it was impossible to prove that the family left Trevorton during the Civil War. The Polish names in the 1900 census, which was supposed to list the month and year of birth of each individual in the country, yielded no results.
The name on the graves of the first generation of the family in Mount Carmel is Drapiewski at St. Mary's Cemetery on the road from Mount Carmel to Mount Carmel Junction, also known as Alaska. John and Joseph changed the spelling of their last name to Dropeski. Beware, the roots of Drapiewski and Dropiewski are different. Dropiewski, less popular than Drapiewski in Poland, comes generally from the name of a bird, and in 2002 Drapiewski was outnumberd 124 to 579 in Poland. For the most part Drapiewski is taken from a Polish word that means to scamper away from danger.
The opening of Sayre Colliery, where he worked until it closed, energized John Dropeski to change the life of the Polish people in Mount Carmel. Never before has anyone flushed out a few of his achievements to a new generation of readers. Joseph Dropeski, who lost his right arm in an accident at Alaska Colliery, worked together with him. The story of each one is worth its own space. If Mount Carmel had a hall of fame, the two brothers would be in it.
First, like most boys in the days when the streets of Mount Carmel were not yet lit with electric lamps, John and Joseph Dropeski went to work in the coal industry very early in life. John married Frances Rose Koczynski, who was born April 4, 1866 at Naklo (Nakel in German) on the Notec River, 11 miles west of Bydgoszcz (Bromberg in Herman) When she was two or three years old, the family emigrated to Mount Carmel, where her father opened a grocery store. After her marriage to John Dropeski, Frances had four daughters -- Martha, Salomea, Adeline, and Agnes -- and was in poor health until she died April 23, 1912.
In 1894, ten years after Thomas Edison lit the streets of Mount Carmel with the first electric lamps in the country, John Dropeski was one of the organizers of Sobieski Building and Loan Association and served as one of its directors until he died July 30, 1954. One imagines that most of the homes the institution financed are still standing. He was also one of the founders of the Sons of Poland in 1903 and was president of the social organization 1903-05, 1909, 1912-14, 1916, and 1919. The first meeting of the group was in St. Joseph's parochial school with 32 young men in attendance. Under his leadership the Sons of Poland became the leading organization in Mount Carmel. During the First World War 33 of its members served their country in the armed forces. Altogether it had 300 members in 1923 when it purchased a three-story building on Oak Sreet, between 2nd and 3rd streets. It did much to erase the bigotry in the mining town.
On the fourth of July in 1918 John Dropeski organized the biggest parade that Mount Carmel has ever seen. It was a time when Polish immigrants were still coming to work in the coal mines and raise their families. More than 6,000 persons walked down Oak Street. After the parade the Polish people of Mount Carmel, whether they were the Dropeski boys, immigrants, or whatever, were held in high esteem. The Polish families of Mount Carmel sent 278 boys to war, 168 soldiers in the American army nd 45 in the Polish army.
In 1920, John and Joseph Dropeski worked with the pastors of the two Polish churches in Mount Carmel, leaders of Polish societies and Polish businessmen to form Liberty State Bank. Then John Dropeski found the first cashier of the bank in Nanticoke and suggested the location of the bank at Third and Maple streets. Long after he passed away the bank built a modern drive in bank across Third Street, where the Victoria Theater stood for years and showed the latest movies. The office of the Sobieski organization was in the buliding across an alley from the ticket office of Victoria Theater. No matter where one looked, John Dropeski left a piece of his work. The next stage was set aside for his daughters.
Joseph Dropeski, on the other hand, was one of best known public officials of Pennsylvania. Born in a mine patch of Mount Carmel Township, March 14, 1876, he dropped out of the Polish school to go to work in the coal breaker of Alaska Colliery, also in Mount Carmel Township, where the railroad station was named Mount Carmel Junction. When he was 13 years old, he was injured in an accident inside the breaker and lost his right arm. He returned to St. Joseph's school and finished his elementary education. After that he attended Shamokin Business College.
For awhile he was buried in a maze of jobs. He was a salesman in a clothing store, a left-handed newspaper reporter, and studied law in the office of a Mount Carmel lawyer. Despite his physical handicaps, he aways found something to do in order to support his wife, Eva Siuda, whom he married May 24, 1899, a stepdaughter, and his mother. Jacob H. Reid, who was a justice of the peace in Mount Carmel, changed the course of his life. Joseph Dropeski was his clerk until he moved to a more comfortable home on Fourth Street and became constable of the Fourth Ward.
Theodore Roosevelt, who became the 26th President of the United States in 1901, shortly after William McKinley was assassinated by Leon Czolgosz, aroused his interest in politics. If he wasn't entirely devoted to him, Roosevelt's settlement of the five-month strike in the hard coal mines pushed him over the top. He was a delegate to the next Republican convention, where he met the youngest president in the nation's history, and supported his re-election in 1904. After the death of William King, a justice of the peace, Joseph Dropeski was appointed to fill King's unexpired term. After that he was elected twice to the same office. He handled thousands of cases and was often called "the honest magistrate" or "Honest Joe." Agnes Dropeski's husband, Joe Zecoski, succeeded him and eventually became the tax collector of Mount Carmel.
Without delving too much into the younger generation, Eva, a year older than Joseph Dropeski and born in Michigan, was the daughter of Jacob and Annie Kotkowski. She was the widow of Joseph Siuda, who died before his first child, Magdalena, was born in December 1894. Eva and Joseph Dropeski had nine or ten children: Adolf, Peter, Edward, Esther, Joseph, Raymond, Leanore, Dorothy, Clement, and possibly Walter. On May 23, 1928, four years before her father died, Esther married Joseph O. Gaughan, a lifelong resident of Centralia, in Columbia County, who became a justice of the peace after their marriage. One of their children took over the office after Joseph Gaughan's death in 1953 and served to 1960. Thus, in addition to Gaughan, three in the same family at one time or other were justices of the peace.
The search for more bearers of the Drapiewski name is not finished. Eileen (Gaughan) Cizewski [email protected] and I wish to hear from you.
Author: Edward Pinkowski (2011) --- [email protected]