Jakob and Anna Bieda

Most of the information I have on these two came from a marriage certificate from Poland. Almost everything was handwritten in latin. Needless to say, my spellings may not be accurate. Another interesting thing... a weird name appeared on a ship manifest...I'll get to that a little later.

I'll start with Anna. I don't have as much information on her. She was the daughter of Thomas Klaus and Barbara Kucharzyk.

Jakob Bieda was the son of Paul Bieda and Marianna Jedryka. Paul's parents were B. Bieda (really hard to read on the record... plus latin) and Sophia Kaczmar. Marianna's parents were Martin Jedryka and Magdalena Duda.

I'm not sure about any siblings, but I would assume there were. Jakob was born around 1867 and Anna was born a few years earlier.

Ok now onto the detective work. The Ellis Island record I found has several catagories... who paid, country of origin, final destination etc. Theres also a space for the name and address of a friend or relative they would stay with once they arrived in America. Another record from the same ship had a list of relative in Poland. Anyway. The Ellis Island record listed Wojciech Niemiec as a brother in law in Shamokin. Now, brother in law can mean several things...either Jakob's sister's husband or Anna's sister's husband. Remember, I have no proof about siblings for Jakob or Anna.

So here is where the detective work comes into play. How do I find this Wojciech Niemiec person? How do I even figure out thats his name? Handwritten records remember. Ellis Island does have a typed version, but its very vague. You can get more information from the original manifest struggling with handwriting. Well after several tries I figured out the last name was Niemiec.
 I knew the cemetery where Jakob and Anna were buried. You figure, well, if they're buried there the church would have the same name. And if your going to a new country and only know your family, you're most likely going to attend the same church. They wouldn't have gone to another church. So I searched findagrave.com for the cemetary and the last name Niemiec. I found a Wojciech and Petronella Niemiec.

I later found a ship manifest with a Wojciech and Petronella Niemiec from Galicia. They had 3 children and came to America in 1909. Thats before the Bieda's (1913) so it's possible. Listed as the relative was Anna Niemiec.

Well, thats a bit of a problem. Anna's maiden name was Klaus not Niemiec. Obviously Wojciech is not Anna's sister because of the different last name, but what if she was Petronella's sister? The guy taking down the information could say "What is the name of your relative in your native country?" Wojciech or Petronella could have simply said "She is my sister". If they didn't specificly give a last name, the guy could have just assume Anna had the same last name.

Something to think about.