{"id":533,"date":"2006-08-30T23:52:57","date_gmt":"2006-08-31T06:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/30\/great-aunt-stefania-in-the-convent\/"},"modified":"2016-05-22T19:21:52","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T02:21:52","slug":"great-aunt-stefania-in-the-convent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/533","title":{"rendered":"Great Aunt Stefania in the Convent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After learning about Great Aunt Stephania&#8217;s <a title=\"legal name change\" href=\"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/23\/the-surprise-a-change-of-name\/\">legal name change<\/a> in 1944 from Stefania Chmielewska to Stephania Meleski, I made another attempt to find her in the census .\u00a0 I found one entry for a Stefania Chmielewska living in Pennsylvania .\u00a0 When Stefania <a title=\"immigrated in 1901\" href=\"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/27\/stefania-chmielewska-arrives-at-ellis-island\/\">immigrated in 1901<\/a>, she traveled to Worcester, Massachusetts to stay with her brother .\u00a0 When she filed her <a title=\"Petition for Naturalization\" href=\"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/26\/stephania-meleskis-petition-for-naturalization\/\">Petition for Naturalization<\/a> in 1943, she stated that she had lived in Massachusetts continuously since February 1933, so she very well could have been living in Pennsylvania in 1910.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a class=\"imagelink\" title=\"1910 Census Record for Stefania Chmielewska\" href=\"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/08\/CUS-1910-Chmielewska-Stefan.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"image531\" style=\"width: 467px; height: 359px;\" src=\"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/08\/CUS-1910-Chmielewska-Stefan.jpg\" alt=\"1910 Census Record for Stefania Chmielewska\" width=\"467\" height=\"359\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><em>1910 U.S. Census Record for Stefania Chmielewska<\/em><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Click on the link for a PDF copy of the <a href=\"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/08\/CUS-Chmielewska-Stefania-1910.pdf\">US Federal\u00c2\u00a0Census Record for Stefania Chmielewska 1910<\/a> .\u00a0 The census shows that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\">Stefania was a border in a rented building at 818 East Race Street, Shamokin Borough, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\">She was a single, white female, age 23<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\">She and her parents were born in Russia (Poland) and spoke Polish<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\">She immigrated in 1902, but there was no indication of whether she was naturalized<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\">She could speak English, and could read and write<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\">She was a sister in a convent<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"left\">This information actually agrees with some family stories I had heard .\u00a0 I had been told that\u00c2\u00a0my great aunt\u00c2\u00a0was a nun, but all the information I could find stated that she worked in a rooming house in Worcester, Massachusetts .\u00a0 This census record seems to be evidence that she was a nun for a period of time .\u00a0 This could open up a whole line of research into religious records.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The data in this record agrees well with the other information I have about Stefania .\u00a0 Her legal name at the time was Stefania Chmielewska, she was born January 7, 1886 (making her 24 in 1910) in the Russian Partition of Poland, she could speak Polish, and she immigrated in 1901 .\u00a0 She was also very religious .\u00a0 While not all the information matches the data in the 1910 census exactly, everything is close enough to convince me that this is probably my Great Aunt Stephania Meleski.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Unfortunately, I still can&#8217;t find\u00c2\u00a0her in the 1920 and 1930 census indexes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"left\">Copyright \u00a9 2006 by Stephen J. Danko<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After learning about Great Aunt Stephania&#8217;s legal name change in 1944 from Stefania Chmielewska to Stephania Meleski, I made another attempt to find her in the census .\u00a0 I found one entry for a Stefania Chmielewska living in Pennsylvania .\u00a0 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/533\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[403],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chmielewskimeleski","tag-pennsylvania"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pyBfX-8B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19198,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions\/19198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}