> I’m interested in finding photographs and more information on my ancestor’s family: his siblings, cousins, parents and grandparents. > > The ancestor is Ignace Josef Mąka (the Polish meaning of the name in English is “flour”: it is spelled in Polish with a hook on the first letter ‘a’---pronounced “Monka’). He was born July 25, 1891 in a hamlet (Lisewo) southeast of the city of Posen, and was baptized at their parish church in Zerkow. The family moved to what is now Germany after his mother died when he was 14. Later he was a tailor’s apprentice near Cologne (Köln) in Oberhausen. Family also lived in Hamborn, Bochum, and Bruckhausen, Germany. He immigrated to the US by himself from the port of Bremen in 1910 (he celebrated his 19th birthday on the ship) and eventually settled in Chicago, Illinois in 1919. The family story is that he lost contact with his relatives in Germany/Poland in the 1920s. > > His father was Michael (Michal) Mąka (b. 27 Sep 1850) and his mother was Constancia Melaczyk (b. Feb 1858, d. 1905). Her father was Franciszek, who married Catharina Podenska (or Poddemska---not really sure of the spelling). Constancia's sister, Elizabeth, immigrated to the US before 1910 with her husband Peter Abramczyk and settled in Michigan. (The Abramczyk family is no longer living.) > > Ignace also had two brothers, who remained in Germany, as far as we know. The brothers were Franciszek (b. 22 Jan 1879) and Jozef Jan (b. 13 Sep 1881). Franciszek’s children were Jan (b. May 14, 1903), Maryanna (b. 13 Sep 1904), Leokadya (b. 4 Dec 1906), and Cecylia (b. 20 Nov 1909) or either of the latter two could be a child of the second brother, Jozef Jan. Our best guess is that Franciszek stayed in the Hamborn area of Germany in 1910 with his family. Josef Jan may have gone back to the Zerkow area because his wedding in 1905 was there. > > Of course, 100 years and two world wars have passed, so we have no idea where the relatives eventually lived and died and if there are any surviving cousins. > > We are more or less in contact with all of Ignace's descendants in the US and I'm the only one doing genealogy. > > Ignace's wife's parents also immigrated to the US in 1892 from the same area of Poland/Germany. Their names are Edmundus Gronikowski (b. 1869, d. 1936) and Cecilia Gramlewicz (b. 1871, married in 1891 in Zerkow, d. 1903). We are not in touch with all of their US descendants, so a US cousin might have done research back to Poland. > > Most of the above information was gleaned from bits and pieces which came down to us from Ignace and from the microfilms of the church in Zerkow, Poland made by the Family History Center of the LDS church. Ships' manifests and US Censuses gave us a bit more. > > Any information on the Maka, Melaczyk, Gronikowski, Gramlewicz, or Podenski families in Poland would be greatly appreciated. If you are related, I will gladly share with you the few old photographs which we have. > > Sincerely, > Jean