I was born in 1946 in Seattle, Washington, the child of a mixed marriage! My mother, Emelia Pierog (1908), was Polish-American. My father, Olaf Jangaard(1903), was Norwegian. They both came from large families.
My mother had eight siblings: Carl (1904), Josephine (?), Laura (1907), John (1910), Andrew (?), Julia (1914), and baby Anna (died 1912). On Sunday, July 29,2007 I went to Priest Point on Puget Sound near Lacey, Washington for a Pierog family reunion.
I couldn’t remember who was who amongst all the people there. The reunion organizer, cousin Mary Pierog Panesko (1942), Uncle John's eldest daughter looked just like Aunt Josephine. Her husband, Vince, had lots of family and southwest Washington history to share with all of us. My cousin, Bill Paulis (1924) son of Aunt Laura and Bill Paulis SR, was full of great stories about his visit to find his Paulis relatives in Poland.
My mother probably told me a lot about her Polish family--but I only took in a few things in my rush to get on with my life. She had grown up speaking Polish at home and taught herself to read and write it. So in her middle-age, after World War II, she and my Dad went off to find her Polish family. She succeeded in finding paternal cousins. The family she found lived in the area near Rzeszow. Over several visits, she grew close to some of them and regularly sent them care packages since they were struggling a bit economically. In her later years Mom got Alzheimer's and lost touch with all of us. This blog is for my mother. I'm sorry I didn't pay more attention.
The interest in my Polish roots developed as I met and grew fond of my father's family still in Norway. As I seek family, I learn history, study art and architecture, and stumble around in new languages.
On an earlier visit to southwest Washington, my cousin Martha,daughter of Uncle Carl, took me on a day-long, back roads tour of the area. As we drove along, she would point to a house and name the Polish families that had lived there. We went on routes my mother would have followed to school. Some of the families, like ours, dated back to the late 19th century. We went into an old grocery store where my grandfather may have used the old butcher block in the back room. (You can see we were in the mood for finding our roots.) But we also went to the Pe Ell cemetery to visit the graves of my great grandparents-- Katarzyna Konopka (1847-1926) and Karol Karnas (1850-1920) and of my grandparents Maryanna Karnas ((1875-1951) and Joseph Mathew Pierog (1878-1951). Who were these people and what made them leave Poland?
The day after the reunion, I started making plans for a trip to Poland. Where were those old addresses for our Polish relatives?
