Mszanowski FamilyAlthough some of them changed their name to Marshall, the most successful members of the Mszanowski tribe would not think of it. First of all, had Thomas Mszanowski not taken a peek at life in America, the chances are that his last name would have been lost, altered, reworded, reconstructed, or as it happened, somewhere down the line. After visiting Corry, in the backwoods of Pennsylvania surrounded by lumber camps and tanneries, he returned to his homeland and brought his wife back to the United States in 1885. The reason, I think, for sticking to the Mszanowski name is that Thomas and Elizabeth Mszanowski raised eight of their ten children in a Polish enclave of Erie, Pennsylvania, where people just didn't care what their last name was. Being Polish they didn't find Polish names hard to pronounce. Spelling? Yes. Without the correct spelling of their names, it's hard to find more Mszanowski families in other parts of the country. The name is also hard to find in Poland, for in 1990 it had only 49 persons with the Mszanowski name in six provinces.
By 1920, 3,882 of the 93,374 inhabitants in Erie were from Poland, including 1,315 mothers with children born in both countries, and two thirds of all foreign-born Poles - 2,428, to be exact - were packed in the Second Ward of 21,107 persons. The number of Polish children who were born in Little Poland, as Erie called the Second Ward, is hard to ferret out. Every Polish family had at least half a dozen children. Elizabeth Mszanowski, as you know, had ten but lost two early in life. Most of them attended St. Stanislaus parochial school and then went to work, got married, or did whatever they wanted.
Born in Erie on November 21, 1887, Joseph Mszanowski was the first one in the family to break the mold. At the age of sixteen he began to study for the priesthood at St. Francis Seminary in Wisconsin and was ordained on June 1, 1914. Among his early assignments, he was a chaplain in the Sisters of Nazareth Convent at Desplaines, Illinois, and an assistant at SS Peter and Paul Church in the Mc Kinley Park neighborhood of Chicago. The Rev. Paul P. Rhode, who organized the parish in 1895, became the first Polish bishop in the United States.
Father Mszanowski was named pastor of St. Turibius parish on the southwest side of Chicago in September 1934. Owing to hard times in the 1930 s and war in the 1940s, he wasn't able to do much with a congregation one third the size of SS Peter and Paul in Mc Kinley Park. The circumstances were different when he was transferred to St. Blase Church in the village of Summit, about 10 miles southwest of Chicago, on April 24, 1948. The first Polish settlers in the village found work in one of the largest refineries of its kind in the world or an automobile plant that made Elgin cars. The Polish migration was slow. By 1930, 61 of the 1,738 people in the village were from Poland. Most of their names were misspelled by the census takers. For example, the name of the owner of a general store in Summit, who came from Poland in 1909, was spelled Dmmski After the war, Summit exploded with the exodus of Polish families in Chicago. Now 11.7 percent of the village is of Polish ancestry.
To serve the invasion of new people, Father Mszanowski had to do a lot of work, dividing the parish hall to make more classrooms, refurbishing the school, and enlarging the convent to accommodate more teachers. There were 716 students in 1955. Then, on February 4, 1962, the pastor broke ground for a beautiful $485,000 church, designed by Strelka, Tobolski & Strelka, and it was dedicated on June 30, 1963. He was named pastor emeritus in March 1966 and died on June 24, 1967.
Another brother, who was born in 1892 on the feast day of Melchior, one of the biblical Three Kings - hence his name Melchior Mieczyslaw Mszanowski - graduated in 1912 from St. Mary's College, the first stage of the Polish Seminary at Orchard Lake, Michigan, and received a Doctor of Medicine degree from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Following him at Orchard Lake, four years later, came Thomas Stanley Mszanowski to study for the priesthood. His story is still in the works.
Dr. Melchior M. Mszanowski, as he preferred to list his name, spent his internship at St. Margaret's Hospital, Pittsburgh, and then established a private practice in the heart of Erie's Polish community. Stephania Zywicka, whom he married September 28, 1921, blessed him with three children - Edwin, Irene and Evelyn - and each one has a different story. It can only be supposed that all the Mszanowskis carved a wonderful monument. Dr. Mszanowski died in January 1979, his wife in October 1981, and Edwin 14 August 1996. They were buried in Calvary Cemetery, Erie. The last one buried there at this writing was Helen E. Mszanowski, who emigrated from Mlodojewo, Poland, in 1923 and married Casimir A. Mszanowski. Unfortunately the ones with borrowed names will not be part of the story.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2009); Ancestry.com; Reed, John Elmer, History or Erie County, Pennsylvania; The Derrick (Oil City, Pa.), Oct. 16, 2007; Hoffman, William F., Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings; Rymut, Kazimierz, Slownik nazwisk wspolczesnie w Polsce uzywanych (Directory of Surnames in Current Use in Poland).