Zadrozny FamilyIn what may be called a group of lost coalcrackers or families with itchy feet, most of the Zadrozny families scrambled out of Dickson City, Scranton, or wherever they slept, went to school, attended church, and paid taxes, and their new nests were scattered over the map. The exodus was not equal to the population of Dickson City, in Lackawanna County, north of Scranton, which grew from 3,110 persons in 1890 to 11,049 in 1920. In 1921 every sixth or seventh person at work in the hard coal mines of Pennsylvania was Polish. It meant 24,926 out of 161,014 in the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania had Polish names. It did not include any of their sons who might have been lumped into the category of 70,625 Americans. Italians, who were the next largest group in the coal mines, numbered 12,063.
When I recently looked for Zadrozny names in the hard coal fields, they were gone. Where did they go? The problem was not with the progenitors of these families but with the children who were born mostly in the land of coal breakers and then joined the exodus. Frank Zadrozny, who was born 16 January 1884 in Lomza, Poland, was no problem. On 17 May 1911 he got off the steamship Hanover in Philadelphia and headed for Dickson City where he went to work as a laborer. Soon after, he brought his wife, Catherine Rozanski, and their first child, Sophie, who was born 20 September 1910 in Lomza, to the growing mining town in a mountainous region. Frank and Catherine Zadrozny had five more children in Dickson City. They included Ignacy, February 1, 1914; Edward, January 25, 1916; Theodore, December 13, 1917; Stanley, April 5, 1920; and Stella, August 25, 1923.
Frank Zadrozny worked hard in the coal mines and died June 1, 1923 in Dickson City. Stories of his children vary, but all of them had itchy feet. Ignacy, who changed his first name to Ernest James, married Helen Woroniecki, daughter of Vincent and Helen (nee Bogdanowicz) Woroniecki, and at some point joined the exodus. He died 8 August 1994 in Brooklyn, New York. His children remained on Long Island, but in Middle Village, Hicksville, and other suburban communities.
The exodus, small as it was when the first Zadrozny left Dickson City, grew by leaps and bounds when the United States entered the Second World War and war plants lured labor out of the coal fields. Almost without exception other Zadrozny families have individual stories to tell of leaving their nests in coalcracking country to look for work, join the military service, or whatever. Little is known of the places from which they came. Chester Zadrozny, who got off the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria in New York on August 10, 1910, came from Straczki, Poland, where he was born 28 November 1888. Up to now 1929 he was not married and boarded with Wladyslaw Stanczyk and his family on Smith Street in Scranton. Bronislaus Zadrozny, who also came from Straczki when he was fifteen years old, went back when the First World War began. After serving in the Polish Army, he settled down as a mine laborer and was married May 8, 1923, in Scranton. His wife, Stella, who was also born in Poland, was eight years younger than Bronislaw Zadrozny, who was born May 16, 1898. Whether Chester and Bernard Zadrozny were brothers is not certain. Bronislaw (Bernard) and Stella Zadrozny raised six children in Scranton. They were Helen, April 23, 1924, who moved to Hartford, Connecticut; John, May 12, 1927, who joined the Navy; Alexander, September 30, 1929; Eugene, February 12, 1931; Phyllis, April 6, 1933; and Audrey, March 5, 1938.
Although the Zadrozny names have disappeared in Lackawanna County, more families of the same name remain in Pennsylvania than in any other state. It has approximately 71 of the 466 Zadrozny names in the country. The distribution of names does not include variants: Zadrozna, Zadroniak, Zadrozny, Zadrozyn, Zadruszynski, Zadrozynski, Zadrozinski. Zadorozny, and others; persons who chopped "Rad" off the name or changed it to Wallace. Actually, Poland has almost as many Zadrozna names as Zadrozny and the Zadrozna families in the United States deserve as much attention, separate but equal, as Zadrozny names. The states with the most Zadrozny names include New York, 67; Illinois, 46; Massachusetts, 44; Connecticut, 42; Michigan, 39; California, 25; Florida, 23; New Jersey, 21; and Ohio, 18. All the Zadrozny and similar family names come from the Polish words, za, which means beyond, and droga, road.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2009); Ancestry.com; US Search.com; Zadrozny, Joseph, The Story of an American Family; Bronislaw Zadrozny Petition for Naturalization No. 31560, Vol. 117; Czeslaw Zadrozny Petition for Naturalization No. 23436, Vol. 91; Frank Zadrozny Petition for Naturalization No. 20887, Vol. 64; Katarzyna Zadrozny Petition for Naturalization No. 15826, Vol. 64; all in federal court records, Scranton, and National Archives, Philadelphia; Hoffman, William F., Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings; Rymut, Kazimierz, Slownik nazwisk wspolczesnie w Polsce uzywanych (Directory of Surnames in Current Use in Poland).