Ancestors

Helen Baclawska

Helen Baclawska was born in Russian Poland, the part of partitioned Poland then ruled by the Russian Empire, about 1884. The censuses give her age as 26 in 1910, 35 in 1920 and 46 in 1930. Two of her children gave her maiden name when they applied for Social Security numbers. Her daughter Helen Theresa, in 1936, wrote it Baclawska, the feminine form of Bacławski. Her son Anthony, in 1943, wrote it Boslawski.

She came to America about 1906. She gave the year as 1907 in 1910, 1906 in 1920 and 1905 in 1930. Her husband, Joseph Waclawski, had come about ten years before her and had been married once already. In April 1910 the census taker wrote that Joseph was in his second marriage, that he and Helen had been married two years, and that Helen was the mother of two children, both living. So they married about 1908, when she was in her early twenties. The three eldest children in the house, Joseph, 10, and Alex, 7, born in Connecticut, and Casimira, 6, born in New Jersey, were Joseph's by his first wife, whose name is not known. Helen raised them with her own.

Her own two children in April 1910 were Czeslaw, a year old, and Frank, entered as Frances, aged eight months, both born in New Jersey. The family was living in the Seventeenth Ward of Cleveland, Ohio, where Joseph drew wire in a wire mill. A daughter, Alexandra, was born in Ohio later that year.

By 1920 the family was in the Second Ward of Jersey City. Helena, as the census taker wrote her name, was 35. She was an alien, could read and write, and gave Polish as her mother tongue. Nine children were at home that January, the youngest her daughter Helena, aged one year and two months. A son Henry, born in 1915, had died in October 1916. A Jersey City directory of 1922 lists her as Helen, wife of Jos. Waclawski.

Three more children followed in Jersey City: Stanley about 1922, Lucy about 1925 and Anthony on 6 August 1926. In April 1930 the family rented a flat at 472 Henderson Street in Jersey City for 30 dollars a month. Helen, 46, kept house. She spoke English, which her husband did not. Eleven of the family were at home, from her stepdaughter Kathrine, 25, a restaurant waitress, to Anthony, 2. Her son Frank, 20, was selling from a street cart.

In 1940 the census taker wrote the family as Laski, the name several of the children used, still in the Second Ward and in the same home as in 1935. Joseph was 64. Helen, Zegmund, Helen, Stanley, Lucy and Anthony were at home, with Alice, now married and named Fagan. Her son Sigmund died that August, at 26.

When Joseph registered for the draft in 1942, at 65, he named "Mrs. Helen Waclawski" at 472 Henderson Street as the person who would always know where to find him. In April 1950 the two of them were still together in Jersey City, written Waczlawski, with their daughter Helen, 30, and their sons Stanley, 28, and Anthony, 23, at home. Joseph was 73 and still working at a railroad power house. Her son Frank, who took the name Lasky, had married Eva Kukolax in 1932 and had seven children.

Helen died in 1950, some months after the April census. She was buried on 2 October 1950 in Holy Cross Cemetery at North Arlington, the large Catholic cemetery of the Archdiocese of Newark a few miles north of Jersey City, in block 64, grave 39. Her husband was not laid beside her. When Joseph died in February 1959 he was buried at Holy Name Cemetery in Jersey City, in the grave where their sons Henry and Sigmund already lay. Helen's grave was opened twice more for her children. Her son Stanley was buried with her on 22 June 1971, and her daughter Helen, who had lived at home into her thirties, on 24 October 1990.

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Cite: Heirology, "Helen Baclawska (1884-1950)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/helen-waclawski-1884-7529a7.