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In search of my grandmother


By Marianne Goss

The infant's baptismal gown hanging in my hallway in a silver frame is remarkably well preserved for its 77 years, the sheer cotton, unripped lace remains intact on hem, cuffs, neck, and bib.

It was made by my grandmother for my mother, who was in her womb at the time and whose birth the doctor expected to take her life. Indeed, not long after putting the final stitches in the tiny white dress, my 39-year-old grandmother was dead, and her newborn daughter, the youngest child of seven, barely clung to life.

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The author's grandmother, Maria Misanin and her husband, Josef Komar

The child survived, of course, or I wouldn't be here. She grew up in a different household from her father and siblings — thanks to another loving preparation made by her pregnant mother. Knowing that her husband, with six other children between 7 and 19, would not be able to care for an infant, my grandmother arranged for his childless cousin and wife to take the baby. It wasn't until my mother was in grade school that she learned that the man she called "Uncle" was her biological father, that the four girls and two boys she thought were her cousins were really her sisters and brothers. She came upon their mother's funeral card, remarked on the coincidence of the date of death's being her own date of birth, and at last was told her own story.

It's hard for me to understand such secrecy. Did people think my mother would be burdened with the guilt of knowing her mother died to give her life? Whatever the reason, for my mother, her own mother has been enshrouded in mystery. Her family had few answers to her questions.

Maria Misanin was one of thousands of Slovaks to come to industrial northeastern Illinois when young women could not immigrate without a companion or a sponsor, yet with whom or to whom she traveled is unclear. My relatives thought that someone they knew in Joliet, where they all lived within blocks of each other in the Slovak neighborhood on the east side, may have been Maria's cousin.

My mother, probably sensing a reluctance to talk, was content to leave the details sketchy. She didn't see a photo of her mother until she was about 50, when the sister who still lived in their late father's house found it.

Coincidentally, at about that time I was becoming interested in genealogy. I rather easily traced my surname back 13 generations to the Puritan immigrants who came with John Winthrop to Massachusetts in 1630. After writing a 24-page history of the English side of the family, I felt all the more deprived by how little I knew about my maternal ancestry only two generations back. I determined to find out what I could and fill in the blanks with histories of Slovakia and Slovak immigrants.

The records at my grandparents' church in Joliet, Saints Cyril and Methodius, a Slovak parish for much of the 20th century, supplied some basic facts, including Maria's birthdate and place. To my surprise, I found that my grandparents' marriage was the second for both of them. Maria Misanin was married twice within 10 months, and "widow" precedes her name in the record of her marriage to my grandfather, Josef Komar. Maria was 20 at the time. Josef, 12 years older, had been left with an infant daughter when his first wife died, supposedly in an attack of epilepsy.

My one aunt who has been open to questions describes the union of Josef and Maria as "a marriage of convenience." Josef needed a mother for his infant; Maria, a young woman alone in a foreign country, needed a husband. Whether or not there was love between them, they had a big family. Daughters were born in 1909, 1911, and 1915; sons in 1916 and 1920. One of the few stories my mother heard was that after the last birth,


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Maria's doctor said she would probably not survive another delivery. My grandparents went to their parish priest, who reminded them that as "good Catholics" they were supposed to leave such matters to God. Still, there were no more pregnancies for six years, and I doubt that they used what scant contraception was available then. Then, at age 38, Maria became pregnant.

What is it like to spend nine months of your life — when you're still young, when your only medical condition is pregnancy — preparing to die? What we can know for sure is that Maria wasn't in denial. She made arrangements for another couple to bring up her child. To face facts straight on like that must have taken remarkable courage and steadiness, as well as love for her unborn child. My aunt Mary, who was 12 then, still dreams of her mother in labor leaving for the hospital, standing in a doorway and unemotionally admonishing her to "be a good girl." Aunt Mary didn't expect those would be her mother's last words to her, but my grandmother did.

My other aunts and uncles were less open about talking about their mother than Aunt Mary is. Indeed, it seemed to pain them when I asked questions. "Why do you want to talk about that for? She's been dead so long," Aunt Peggy protested. She thought that my first draft of the family history was too negative. It embarrassed her that I speculated about whether her mother might have been illiterate — my oldest aunt wrote letters to Europe for Maria — even though no Slovaks of my grandmother's generation had the opportunity to go to school more than a few years. The story of the priest's advice about another pregnancy was met with a reminder that if my grandmother hadn't borne my mother, my siblings and I wouldn't be here.

Aunt Mary says she can't remember her mother smiling. I can imagine that Maria felt somewhat apart from her compatriots in Joliet's Slovak neighborhood. Unlike her husband, whose sister, brother, and cousin joined him in America, she was without a sibling here. She also was from a different part of Slovakia than the rest of them and spoke a different dialect of Slovak.

Eastern Slovakia, from which Maria came, 100 years ago was the poorest region of a miserably poor country that had been under oppressive Hungarian rule for 10 centuries. Reading histories about the Slovakia of only three and four generations ago, I feel not far removed from servitude. Slovaks farmed land they didn't own, were allowed to speak their language only among themselves, and had no schooling beyond a few years. Putting children to work as soon as possible, surviving largely on potatoes and cabbage, peasants made a living as best they could. The fields they farmed surrounded villages that were often a single street with closely spaced two-part cottages — one part for humans, one for livestock. The people's only comforts were the close ties within the villages and their religion. Staunchly Catholic, they tended to give unquestioning allegiance to priests. You followed "Father's" word, even if it meant, as in Maria's case, you risked your life.

Those were the conditions my grandmother left before she was 19. How much better did she consider those that replaced them? Slovak immigrants in the United States had a tough life, living in overcrowded dwellings, the men laboring in coal mines or, as my grandfather did, in steel mills, the women laboring at home. But at least they could keep up the tightly knit lifestyle they'd known in their villages and speak their native language in the churches and schools they established.

My grandmother had almost two decades to live when she married my grandfather and became an instant mother at 20. During those years she undoubtedly spent the bulk of her time as homemakers did — cleaning, cooking, laundering, darning, and caring for a growing number of children. Aunt Mary says she was a good seamstress, for which I have the baptismal gown as evidence.

What values did she teach that growing family? One thing that strikes me, considering their own lack of education and the rarity of college-educated women then, is that my grandparents produced daughters who valued education. My oldest aunt planned to become a lawyer, plans that were put aside to take over the care of her younger siblings when my grandmother died. After they were grown, she went into the convent. Aunt Mary is a nun, too, and, with a master's degree in social work, was once the head of her religious order. My mother's two brothers worked white-collar jobs. The next generation — my generation — leapt up the social ladder. Fifteen of the 18 of us went to college.

Hanging above my sofa is a row of photos of grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents. Sometimes I stare at the picture of a pretty woman with characteristically Slavic high cheekbones, dark eyes, and shiny hair in a bun, the only photograph we have of Maria, and wonder what she would think of us now. Would she think that we, with our professional jobs and comfortable homes, take money for granted? Having given her life in childbirth to remain "a good Catholic," what would she think of her grandchildren who have used contraception, who have divorced, who have left the church?

The answer I arrive at is this: She couldn't have had many blinders left by the end of her life, and so wouldn't have had expectations of us. She might not have understood our actions, they might have troubled her, but she would have been accepting. As little as I know about her, I feel I know her in that important way.

Marianne Goss of Joliet is a senior editor in the publications office at Northwestern University and lives in Chicago. She majored in American civilization at the University of Illinois and has traced every branch of her family history back to the immigrant.


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