Kurczewski, Frank
(Jan. 17, 1877 - )The first Kurczewski in the United States is a contest between Stanislaus and John Kurczewski. Which one was the first to hang his hat in one of the oldest parts of New Jersey, now called Englewood, and add to its history? As Englewood's website brings to light, the Dutch owned the land on the west bank of the Hudson River, across from New York City, and for a long time the palisades along the river, rising hundreds of feet, discouraged settlers from crossing over them. In 1664, after the Dutch turned everything over to England, settlers trickled in because the English made it easy to buy the land. As the population of Bergen County, the settlers of Englewood broke away from Ridgefield Township in 1899 and created the city of Englewood.
On June 15, 1871, while Englewood was still part of Ridgefield. Stanislaus Kurczewski, then 16 years old, got off the steamship Bergen in the port of New York and made his way to Bergen County. The search for him in the 1880 census of Ridgefield Township yielded no match, but another one of the clan, written Kurschewski, popped up with his wife, Mary, four years younger than John, and five children - Josephine, 11, John, 7, Charles, 6, Annie, 3, and Theresa. The family arrived between 1869 and 1873. Stanislaus or John - who was first?
Without asking for proof, in 1925 Reed, an historian of Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1925, interviewed Frank Kurczewski, who was born at Englewood January 17, 1877, the oldest of eleven children, and filled in many holes left by lack of census reports. His father, Stanislaus, who was born in Poland in 1854, settled in New Jersey in 1861. "He was a successful merchant," Reed wrote. After Frank Kurczewski was born, the family moved to St. Joseph, Missouri, where more children were born, then to Erie, Pennsylvania, where the mother, who came from Poland, supposedly named Agnes Wendolowski, died in 1899 at the age of 51 and was buried in Trinity Cemetery. By the turn of the century the family was broken up and the names of the eleven children were lost.
Evidently three of them were married and the father lived with a daughter, Hedwig, his son-in-law, Joseph Wasiela, and two grandchildren. The 1900 census of Erie listed his occupation as a laborer in a boiler shop. The other two retrieved from the 1910 census were John Kurczewski, 29 years old, and the aforementioned Frank Kurczewski.
As he eventually became a steamship and insurance agent, Frank Kurczewski received most of the attention in the History of Erie County. It varies with census reports. For example, Reed wrote that Kurczewski learned the cigar making trade when a young boy and was engaged in it for 28 years. "In 1910," he continued. "He entered the employ of Lawrence Stachowski, at that time steamship agent of Erie" and in 1920 purchased the business. In 1920, however, he was listed in the census as the owner of a grocery store. His two older sons, Walter, born in 1901, drove a wagon for an express company, and Edmund, September 9, 1902, worked in a factory. Aloysius and Irene were too young to go to work. His wife, Emily, who came from Poland in 1892, was not happy with her ambitious spouse. By 1930 they were divorced and she took over the store. Aloysius worked in it. The daughter, Irene, who was born March 2, 1910, accompanied her father, whose residence was not listed in the 1930 census, on a tour of Poland in 1934. For the rest of his life he was engaged in the travel and insurance business.
From: Edward Pinkowski 2009; Ancestry.com; Reed, John Elmer, History of Erie County, Pennsylvania; Hoffman, William F., Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings; Rymut, Kazimierz, Slownik nazwisk wspolczesnie w Polsce uzywanych (Directory of Surnames in Current Use in Poland).