Paul Bronk – Tessa M. Perko's Blog

The Sugar Cookie Grandma

Back in my grandmother’s day, women didn’t get much notoriety, so I decided to write a blog about my Grandma Lillian. She’s not famous, but she deserves some long-overdue attention.

Grandma Lillian was born in Winona, Minnesota on November 9, 1903. Both of her parents’ families were originally from Trhove Swiny, South Bohemia, which is now part of the Czech Republic. This town dates back to the 1200s as part of an ancient trade route. In the 1400s, King Vladislaus II, who was then King of Bohemia, authorized the town to build a market. The town’s name comes from the Czech word trh which means market. The two most popular sites in Trhove Swiny are The Most Holy Trinity Church, which replaced a Catholic pilgrimage chapel, and an iron mill called Buškův hamr.

My Grandma Lillian, however, never visited the Czech Republic. In fact, she never traveled outside the United States except for Canada. She was a short woman, less than five feet tall, and a little plump. When she first married my grandfather Leon Jr., she lived in his father’s house on an 800-acre piece of property that is now a Minnesota State Park. Later, she and her husband bought their own house in Goodview, a town next to Winona. The house was painted white and sat on a flat parcel of land covered in shamrock green grass with a large vegetable garden in the back. Her brother Leo lived next door.

Grandma Lillian had five children, including my father who was the oldest. Then came David, Mary, Gerald, and Daniel. My father moved to California with the United States Air Force which stationed him at Mather Air Force Base. Once my parents came to California, they settled down to stay.

Grandma Lillian took the train to California several times to help my parents when my mother was in the hospital having another child. During these times, I learned about who she was as a person. I watched her embroider cotton tea towels, one for every day of the week. For each day, she embroidered a kitten performing a different kitchen task with one exception. For example, on Thursday’s towel, the kitten was carrying a tea kettle to the stove. On Sunday, the kitten was not doing kitchen work since she was going to church. She taught me how to embroider, but I was too impatient to make the stitches neat.

Even though Grandma Lillian didn’t ever travel to Bohemia, she used many recipes that came from the old country. She was famous for her Refrigerator Pickles. To make these, she combined seven cups of sliced cucumbers and one sliced yellow onion with a tablespoon of salt. She let the salt leach some of the water out of the cucumbers for about an hour. For the dressing, she combined one cup of vinegar, two cups of sugar, and one teaspoon of celery seed. She poured this over the cucumbers and stored the dish in the refrigerator to use as needed. By the time her recipe reached my family, we were eating the pickles as a side salad, all in one day.

My favorite memory about Grandma Lillian was how she made sugar cookies. Maybe we didn’t have cookie cutters. Maybe we didn’t have the shapes of cookie cutters that Grandma wanted. I don’t recall, but I do remember how Grandma folded a piece of newspaper in half and used scissors to cut out a heart about the size of her hand. Then she placed the heart shape over the rolled-out cookie dough and cut the dough with a sharp knife to make heart-shaped cookies. She placed the hearts on a cookie sheet and decorated them with colorful sprinkles. When we ate them warm out of the oven, they were buttery sweet.

Grandma loved to garden both vegetables and flowers. Many days, she spent hours out in her garden weeding, pruning, harvesting and enjoying the ambiance. My father inherited her green thumb since he also cultivated a big garden every year to feed his family.

Grandma Lillian was in her garden when she died on July 16, 1991. The weather was over 100 degrees, and my cousin Karen found her late in the day. Now, she is buried next to her husband Leon and her youngest son Daniel in a country cemetery. She didn’t become a movie star, a Congress woman, a Supreme Court judge, or even a newscaster on television. Yet, she lives on in the lives of her thirty-one grandchildren and more than forty great-grandchildren. That’s an accomplishment of which I am proud.

Winona: The Daughter Whose Choice Inspired a City’s History

My father was born in Winona County, Minnesota, an area dominated by Winona—a tranquil, medium-sized city on the west banks of the Mississippi River.

What I love about Winona is its history. Before white settlers came to the area, Dakota Sioux natives called it Keoxa. They lived in the area for centuries and stayed for years, even after the the United States government purchased the land from them in the Traverse des Sioux and Mendota treaties in 1851.

The first known white man to see Winona was Lieutenant Zebulon Pike in 1805, who traveled from Fort Bellefontaine in Missouri to find the source of the Mississippi River. In his journal, he writes about the Dakota legend of Winona, a daughter of Chief Wabasha III who throws herself from Maiden Rock, a precipice on the Wisconsin side of Lake Pepin—a wide expanse of the Mississippi River just north of present-day Winona.

On October 15, 1851, Captain Orrin Smith, Mr. Erwin Johnson, and two other men—knowledgeable of the Traverse des Sioux and Mnedota treaties—claimed title to the riverfront and surrounding prairie land. When the town site was surveyed and plotted in 1852, Smith and Johnson named it “Montezuma.”

Why this Aztec name was chosen for the town is a mystery. Montezuma means “angry like a lord.” Perhaps the swift current of the Mississippi River was the motivation for this label, but, nevertheless, the name didn’t last long.

In 1853, Henry D. Huff bought an interest in the town site, and he was successful in changing the town’s name to Winona. Huff was in town to make money by building railroads. He also wanted to develop Winona into a classic city. When he changed the city’s name, he also created streets and street names: Huff Street after himself, Harriet Street after his wife, and Wilson Street after his son. The town was still a muddy expanse, but Huff built a family a mansion to signal to future residents that Winona was to be a town of sophisticated architecture and graceful culture.

What better way to achieve this than to name the city Winona, which means first-born daughter in Dakota. Her story is tragic but inspiring. She threw herself to her death so that she wouldn’t have to marry a man she did not love. She settled for nothing but the best, and that’s what Huff wanted for himself and his new home.

References:

History of Winona, Olmsted, and Dodge Counties Together with Biographical Matter Statistics, Etc. H.H. Hill. 1884. pp. 352.

Withington, Ross. “Henry D. Huff.” Writing in Winona: A student and community writing project. https://medium.com/wicwinona/henry-d-huff-b7ffb6102672. July 3, 2022.

The Kashubian Warriors of Winona

Even the sweetest human being contains a little bit of wickedness, and the most awful person possesses at least a little goodness. This is because each person is made from a complex collection of DNA that has been blended over and over again, generation after countless generation; furthermore, these durable genes have survived a variety of political systems, religions, geographic locations, war, peace, cruelty, and kindness—all of the experiences of their ancestors.

One day, when I visited the Polish Museum in Winona, Minnesota, I saw a photograph of one of my ancestors, Lawrence Bronk. I thought I was looking at a photograph of my father—a man of fine build, blonde hair, and handsome face; however, Lawrence was the brother of my Great-great-grandfather Ignatius, and he immigrated to Winona, not from Poland, but from Kashubia, a place that bordered the Baltic Sea. This man inspired me to find out just who these Kashubians were and what made them Kashubian instead of Polish.

Not only did I research the immigration of the Kashubians to North America, but I also investigated how the Kashubians settled in Kashubia. What I found out was that I was related to people who had lived complex lives of peace, aggression, oppression, and chaos throughout the centuries. This is their story.

After the Roman Empire dissolved in the 6^th Century, Slavic tribes from the East, mainly from the Ukraine area, migrated north into Russia, west into what is now known as Germany and Poland and the Czech Republic, and south into the Adriatic Region. These were distinct from the Germanic tribes that had migrated from Scandinavia into the Roman Empire starting in the 4^th Century.

The Kashubians were a Slavic tribe that settled in Eastern Europe on the coast of the Baltic Sea at that time. Specifically, they claimed a region of land that was south of Sweden, north of Poland, east of the German homeland, and west of Lithuania. Their ancient territory stretches from the Kashubian capital city of Gdansk to as far as the German Capital of Berlin. It lies between the Odra River to the west and the Vistula River to the east. The whole north side borders the Baltic Sea.

During the migration, the Slavs became a nuisance to the Byzantine Empire, which was really the eastern part of the Roman Empire that lasted for a thousand years after the fall of the western Roman Empire. Since Slavs were an adaptable species, they learned how to use the weapons of those they conquered and attacked cities instead of trade routes.

These pillaging Slavs believed in nature, and they had adopted a mythology consisting of a pantheon of gods. Their shamans were known for telling great tales about their gods, and the Slavs traditions and way of life were developed from these tales.

The Byzantine rulers wished to calm these robust terrorists, so they ordered two scholars and brothers, Cyril and Methodius, to educate the Slavs in the Glagolitic alphabet, which was closely connected to the teachings of Christianity. This is how Kashubians and other Slavs became Roman Catholics.

When the Byzantine Empire ended, the Slavs created Slavic kingdoms across Eastern Europe, effectively squelching the influence of the Mongol tribes who wished to spread their Muslim religion.

The Kashubs were also called Pomeranians, which translates to “the people by the sea”. When they settled by the Baltic Sea, they spent many years isolated from other Slavs and peoples. This allowed them to develop their unique Kashubian dialect and create their own traditions, folklore, music, dance and cuisine. Their access to land induced them to become an agricultural people, farmers who worked the land to provide for their families. They organized their smallest community structure into Catholic parishes, and their lives centered around their religion.

Eventually, the German Empire encroached upon the independence of the Kashubian people, and Kashubia became part of Prussia. Their German rulers forced priests to say Mass in German instead of the native Kashubian language, and the Kashubians strongly resented this. Farmers had large families so that children could help work the land, but when these broods of children grew into adulthood, there wasn’t enough farmland for them to farm; therefore, the German government offered Kashubians free or cheap travel to North America where homesteads and land were abundant.

On May 14, 1859, three sailing ships left Hamburg, Germany for Quebec, Canada, carrying a host of Kashubian families. The names of the ships were the Laura, Donau, and Elbe. The river that connects Hamburg to the Baltic Sea is the Elbe, so the ship named Elba was likely named after this river, a common German practice for naming ships.

On board the Elbe were families with the surnames of von Bronk, Galewski, Kistowski, Konkel, Libera, Piekarski, Platowna, Rzenszewicz (Runsavage), Walinski, who knew each other in their homeland. The records of the ship were posted in German using Prussia as the land of origin; however, Kashubians never did consider themselves German.

My ancestors on the Elbe consisted of the Joseph and Francisca von Bronk family, including their five sons—Johann, Ignatz, Vincent, Lorenz, and Jacob. Von is a German preposition meaning “from,” so this label indicates they came from a place called “Bronk.” In the Kashubian region, there is a forest known as “Bronki” so they may have originated from that specific place. All of the passengers listed on this ship were classified as “Landsmann,” indicating that they were farmers.

Joseph von Bronk is my Great-great-great grandfather. His son Ignatz, who changed the spelling of his name to Ignatius, is my Great-great grandfather mentioned above. The family left Quebec and traveled south, eventually arriving in the Winona area before the end of 1859. Many of the families who traveled across the Atlantic with them also settled in the Winona area. Others stayed in Canada and founded another Kashubian town known as Wilno.

The Winona area was a lot like their home in Kashubia where there were plentiful forests, abundant water and fishing, and land for farming. At first, the Kashubians settled on the east side of what is now known as Winona where they established a Kashubian village. In 1886 after his second wife died, Ignatius bought land in Pine Creek, Wisconsin. This property is owned by my Uncle David and Aunt Linda today.

Artifacts in the Polish Museum in Winona revealed that the Kashubians were a literary and creative people. Many of their descendants have continued the strong story-telling and writing traditions of the culture, including me, for instance. Their colorful embroidery and distinctive pottery are world-renowned, and their flag and national symbols are celebrated today, not only in Kashubia, but now in the Kashubian communities all over North America.

Today, in Winona and in the surrounding farms, the Kashubian descendants live in harmony with Polish, German, and Swedish peoples. They work in each other’s businesses, attend each other’s weddings and baptisms, and share the same merry-go-rounds.

This is the Kashubian story. Now this is my advice. If you have a Kashubian neighbor, laugh at their jokes, never insult them, keep the peace. A Kashubian is a warrior. Behind that friendly gleam in his eye, behind her engaging smile is a constitution of ferocity. Those DNA have migrated over mountains, through valleys, into war, across water, and have survived.

References:

Larry Reski. Poland to Pine Creek, Wisconsin. https://polandpinecreek.blogspot.com/2014/02/elbe-departing-from-hamburg-14-may-1859.html.
Haden Chakra. The Great Migration and Early Slavic History. https://about-history.com/the-great-migration-and-early-slavic-history/.
Welcome to Wilno. Wilno.com.

Cousins in Every Direction

Way back in the 1860’s, my great-great-grandfather Ignatius immigrated to Wisconsin with his four brothers. They all had families. My great-grandfather Leon had seven siblings. Most of them had families. My grandfather Leon had six siblings; all of them, except for his brother Phillip who became a priest, had families. His brother Ed had fourteen children. His brother George had nine offspring. Many farmers had large families so they could use their children to provide free labor on the family farm.

My father had four siblings, and they had children. My father had ten children. His brother David had ten children. And between his siblings Gerald, Mary and Daniel, there were eleven more descendants. Now those descendants have children and so do their offspring.

Then, there is the maternal side of my family. Two families dominate this line of my heritage: the Konkels and the Jereczeks, families who immigrated to the Pine Creek area of Wisconsin in the 1800’s as well. I’m still working out the threads of my great-great-grandparents, but I’m clear about the progeny of my Great-grandpa John Jereczek and his wife Pelagia Konkel. They had eight farm laborers—excuse me, eight children. One of them was my grandfather August. He married Florence Gibbons, a woman from a large Irish family that immigrated to the area during the Irish Potato Famine. Everyone in every generation had large families.

Truly a cousin conundrum. I have first cousins, second cousins, thirds, fourths, cousins-removed in a lot of different ways, over-the-hill-cousins, and near-and-far cousins. Between the farming community of Altura, Minnesota—throughout Winona—and into the farming communities of Dodge and Pine Creek, Wisconsin, I am in danger of running into one of my cousins at any time in any place—as the owner of a dairy farm, at church, in a restaurant, at a grocery store, or on a hike in the state park which used to belong to my great-grand-father Leon. If you count the relatives who live outside of this area—in Minneapolis, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and California, my cousin count is exponential.

What really is a cousin? I did a little research and found a definition. The website Who Are You Made Of? defines a cousin as “anyone who shares a common ancestor with you and is not a direct descendant of you or your siblings, a direct ancestor, or a sibling of a direct ancestor.” This definition certainly proves that I have hundreds of cousins, most of whom I probably will never know since I can’t even keep the names of my great aunts and uncles straight.

I recently visited the Wisconsin/Minnesota area where my ancestors first landed in America, and I had such a fabulous time with my relatives—mostly cousins—that I became inspired to better understand this voluminous family of mine. I do understand who my first cousins are. They are the children of my aunts and uncles. I have 44 first cousins—the children of my father’s and mother’s siblings. When I visited a few days ago, I was able to see about 25 of them. What a fun group they are—laughing, joking, telling stories, recalling memories, and thinking of the next fun social opportunity.

My children’s names are Alex and Rachael. Since I have nine brothers and sisters who have produced a total of eighteen children amongst them, my children have eighteen first cousins just from my side of the family, two from their dad’s side.

The thing is, my first cousins now have children, like I do. With a little more research, I found out that my cousins’ children are my first cousins-once removed. They are also the second cousins of my children. This means that all of the children of my 44 first cousins—I can’t even begin to tabulate this number—are Alex and Rachael’s second cousins.

One day on my visit, I went to the Bronk Nursery which is owned by the son of my Great-uncle Ed—one of Ed’s fourteen children–Donald. Later that night, Donald had a beer with me and some of my first cousins at Wellington’s Pub and Grill in Winona. We sat outside while the sun set, and when the darkness descended, the mosquitoes started to feed on us with a relentless enthusiasm. Since Donald is my father’s first cousin, I believe he is my first-cousin-once-removed.

My brother Ron and sister Margaret were on this visit with me. On Sunday, they went to church in Lewiston, Minnesota to meet Greg, the son of our Great-uncle George. Since Greg is my father’s first cousin, Greg is also our first-cousin-once-removed. Oh boy.

Another time when I visited Winona, I went to a restaurant with some of my first cousins, and the waitress turned out to be the daughter of my Great-aunt Agnes, who preferred to be called Florence. The waitress’s name was Paula Doerr. She was also my father’s first cousin, which also made her my first-cousin-once-removed.

This visit, I was looking for a restaurant for another dinner and I found a bar owned by the Gibbons family. This name shows up in my mother’s heritage line. I don’t know whether these bar owners are first-cousins-once-removed or even worse. After visiting several cemeteries where I was related to an incredible number of inhabitants, I was becoming overwhelmed by all the relationship possibilities.

Think about all the tombstones connected to me. In the Sacred Heart Cemetery in Pine Creek, there are 27 Jereczeks and at least 7 Bronk headstones. There are dozens of Konkels, Gibbons and Broms, too, and they are all related to me. My Great-grandfather Leon and more Bronks and Broms are buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery which turned out to be only half a mile from my hotel. My Grandfather Leon and Grandmother Lillian are buried in Fremont Cemetery–a pastoral place in the country with their son Daniel who died when he was only 29. I even have a great-great-great grandmother who is buried under Mankato Avenue in Winona, Minnesota. When they laid out the streets for the City of Winona, they never moved her body. Her husband is likely buried nearby since we don’t know where he is.

I didn’t meet any of my second, third, or fourth cousins that I know of, but I know they’re walking around the Minnesota and Wisconsin dells somewhere. My research revealed that I share DNA with all of these cousins, and that anyone beyond a third cousin is considered a distant cousin.

I’m married, but if I was single, I could marry my third cousin. Queen Elizabeth II married Price Phillip who was her third cousin, both descendants of Queen Victoria.

It’s comforting to know that I come from such an ample family. I am close to many of my first cousins, and even if I don’t see them on a day-to-day basis, when we do see each other, we take up just where we left off the last time we spoke. We support each other through both happy and sad family occasions: weddings, births, graduations, and deaths. My life would feel so much lonelier without them. Luckily, cousin love doesn’t have any DNA restrictions.

A Story about Straw Pile Hill

Between Stockton Valley and the west side of the Mississippi near Winona, Minnesota is a ridge covered with white pine trees. Once upon a time, my great grandfather, Leon Ambrose Bronk Sr., bought land on this ridge to grow alfalfa and corn. Throughout the years, he bought more adjoining farms until his land holdings reached 761 acres.

On June 16, 2022, when I was visiting, two of my cousins arranged for a group of family members to ride up into the park in 4-wheel drive trucks so that my 92-year-old uncle could see the land where he spent the first 14 years of his childhood.

Great-grandfather Leon bought this property in the 1920’s and lived in a white wooden house at the bottom of the ridge where he planted a family garden and built a barn for cattle and horses. Twenty years ago, I remember walking through the ruins of that house. When he bought some farms at the top of the ridge, Leon Sr. let his oldest son Leon Jr. and his family live in one of the farm houses up there. Leon Jr.’s first son, Paul—my father, was born in 1929 and his second son, David, was born in 1931. David is the father of ten of my closest cousins. Twenty years ago, we found a rusted sled that Paul and David used to travel down the snowy slopes of the ridge when they were little.

In 1969 when he was 81-years-old, Leon Sr. sold the land to the State of Minnesota, and it became part of the Richard J. Dorer Memorial Hardwood State Forest. Since much of the property rises 500 feet above the surrounding valleys, it provides hikers and bikers tremendous scenic views of the land and water below. The State of Minnesota planted thousands of white pine trees in rows, a forest that now covers up any evidence of houses, gardens, and alfalfa fields.

On this day, cousins Diane and Bill drove the trucks into the park and up the ridge under the supervision of a park volunteer named Mark. Mark is an avid off-road bicyclist, and he started to maintain the 6.5 miles of hiking trails in this park by using his electric weed-whacker to cut the weeds. One day when he was working, he met a state park ranger, and he explained how he biked up the ridge with his whacking machine to keep the trails open. He also wished that the gate was open so he could use his four-wheeler jeep to bring his mower up; because the weeks grew so fast, the mower would do a better job in a shorter amount of time. The ranger gave Mark a key to the gate and unlimited access to the park.

When my cousin Diane wanted to arrange a family drive, she called Mark to get the State’s permission to drive trucks through the gate and up to the top of the ridge. He helped her out because he wanted to meet the oldest living Bronk relative, my Uncle David, who had actually once lived on the property.

Mark was excited to hear stories about the property’s history. The park is named the Bronk Unit Plowline Trail referring to the line where the Bronks stopped plowing their fields. Uncle David revealed that one ridge is known as Cherry Hill, probably due to the cherry trees growing there. Another ridge is known as Straw Pile Hill. That’s where, when he was a mere boy, David dumped the hay that he harvested from the fields, and Paul would pick it up and haul it off to be sold. David had to plow the fields and collect the hay with a horse-drawn contraption. Paul got to drive the tractor since he was older.

My dad used to say that “You can take a man away from the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the man.” All his life, my father was an excellent farmer. When I was born, my family rented a two-acre farm in Fair Oaks, California. I was allergic to cow’s milk, so my parents bought a goat and gave me its milk. We had chickens, bunnies, and geese. My mother made butter and ice cream by hand.

Later, when we moved to a smaller property, my dad raised sheep. One sheep was our favorite, and we named him Jerimiah. One day when we got home from school, we couldn’t find him. At dinner, we asked my parents where he was. “He’s on your plate!” said my dad with a grin.

David, too, farmed his whole life. He bought a farm that had been owned by my Great-Great Grandpa Ignatius Bronk, who immigrated to the area from Gostomie, Poland and bought this farm in 1886. When Ignatius died in 1896, his son Theodore took over the farm; Theodore was the older brother of my Great-Grandfather Leon Sr. Today, David lives on the farm with his wife Linda and a herd of cows that his son, Bill, manages for him. While I was visiting, about twenty-five of us cousins, first-cousins-once-removed, second cousins, and Uncle David and Aunt Linda had a picnic on a hot and humid 100-degree day. To stay cool, we sat under the spreading branches of a white oak tree and slapped the gnats that buzzed around our faces.

While we walked around the top of the ridge on Great-Grandpa’s property, we found wild carrots and asparagus—souvenirs from the gardens that once fed the Bronk families. Hanging high above a hiking trail, we found a scarecrow with a Jack-o-lantern head, plaid shirt, and farmer pants. Mark told us that a solar light made the head light up at night, creating an unexpected scary encounter. We watched big, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies settle on wild flowers and examined tiny pine cones that fell from the white pine trees. The floor of the forest was covered in a thick matting of dead pine needles, hiding the remnants of our relatives’ lives.

What occurred to me that day was that all of the farmers who worked on my great-grandfather’s land had been removed from it: my great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father, and my uncle. Yet, there was evidence all around the area and in places far away, like California, that these people and their descendants were still farming. David’s son Bill will one day take over David’s historic farm. My brother, Donald, can grow any vegetable or flower in his patch of garden in California. I have a green thumb when it comes to growing flowers. Apparently, you can’t take the farm out of a farming family.