Prussia, Germany
Catharina Paulina Kurowska was born around 1841 in the village of Kampangen, near the town of Marienwerder in West Prussia. She spoke German, and identified as German, although she probably had Polish and other Eastern European ancestry as well. At that time, the Kingdom of Prussia was part of the German Confederation.
I currently don’t have any information on her parents, siblings or other relatives and their origin and background. They probably remained in West Prussia when she immigrated to the United States with her husband, Josef Pawlowski, in 1887.
Catharina Kurowska married Josef Pawlowski on January 19, 1868, in Marienwerder, West Prussia when she was 27 years old. She was eight months pregnant. Her husband, Josef Pawlowski, was 28 years old. Her husband was listed as an “artist” on the marriage certificate. The witness was her husband’s father, Jacob Pawlowski.
Their first child, Veronica Francisca Pawlowski was born on February 14, 1868 in the village of Rospitz near Marienwerder. She died within a year. They had nine children together in twenty years; eight were born in Prussia and one in the United States after they had immigrated. Five of the children survived to adulthood—Juliane, Franz (Frank Pavlosk, my great grandfather), Emil, Theresa (married name Theresa Fuchs) and Powel (who changed his name to Paul Palmer.)
There are many variant spellings of Catharina’s first, maiden and married names. They include:
-Powel Powlowski’s 28 December 1888 birth record: Katherine Croski
-Frank Polowski’s 28 October 1893 marriage record: Catherine Korovoski
-Anna Theresa Pulaski’s 12 March 1904 marriage record: Catherine Kuropsky
-Marriage records from Marienwerder, West Prussia January 1868: Catharina Kurowska and Catharina Kurowski
-Arrival in US on the ship Gothia, 25 April 1887 – Katherine Pawlowski
-Arrival in US on the ship Dania, 23 January 1892 – Catharina Pawlowski
-Newspaper coverage of death September 1898, Bayonne, NJ: Katarina Pulaski, Katrina Polosk
-Death certificate, Bayonne, NJ 28 September 1898: Katarina Paulina Palosk
I have no idea why her names were always spelled differently. I’m sure she knew how her name was spelled, but various U.S. officials, bureaucrats, and newspaper reporters did not, and they wrote down what they heard or thought they heard.
According to a family story that my mother Helen Anderson passed down to me from her grandfather Frank Pavlosk, the family immigrated to the US at the urging of Joseph Pawlowski’s father. The family business, a jewelry store, went bankrupt, undersold by other unscrupulous jewelers in town, as the tale goes. Joseph had been its silversmith. His father told him to leave Germany to find a better life, since he was dismal about the direction Germany was heading, Joseph, aged 49, Catharina, aged 47, Juliane, 17; Franz, 15, Emil, 10, and Theresa, 3, left Germany. They boarded the Gothia for New York City. The departure ports were Hamburg and Stettin. They probably left from Stettin since it was closer to Marienwerder. They arrived in the United States on 25 April 1887. No one spoke any English. My grandfather, Frank Pavlosk, eventually learned to speak English, and read enough English to work, but German remained the language of the house. He read German newspapers. His granddaughter, Helen, would write letters in English for him to send his brother, Paul, who had settled in Memphis, Tennessee.
South Bound Brook, New Jersey
After they arrived in New York, they settled in Bloomington, Somerset County, New Jersey. In 1892, Bloomington became South Bound Brook. I don’t know why they went to South Bound Brook, but based on immigration patterns, the Pawlowski family must have followed a cousin or distant relation to a neighbor or friend from Marienwerder. Their ninth and last child, Powel Powloski, was born in Bloomington on December 28, 1888. At the time of his son’s birth, Josef’s occupation was listed as “mill hand.” 
A few years after she arrived, Catharina returned to Marienwerder for a visit. The three younger children went with her – Emil (15), Theresa (8) and Powel (3). There is no information on why she went back to Germany—perhaps to see her family, or her husband’s family, or had business to settle. Her husband, Josef, and her two oldest children stayed in New Jersey. They arrived back in New York on 23 January 1892 on the ship, Dania. Their residence in Prussia was noted as Klein Grabow, Westpreussen. Some of the birth and baptismal records for Josef and Catharina’s children in Germany have them born in “Kl. Grabau.”
They probably worshipped at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Bound Brook. The church had a large German-speaking community. The congregation built an impressive stone church in 1891. Another possibility is St. Bernard’s Church in Raritan, which also had a significant German immigrant population. The pastor of St. Bernard’s, Father Joseph Zimmer, married Catharina’s son, Francis Polowski, 22, to Ann Piscowski, 21, on 28 October 1893. His parents are listed as Joseph Polowski and Catherine Korovski.
On 13 August 1894, Catharina became a grandmother with the birth of Mary (Nellie) Pawtowski. She was the first daughter of Frank and Annie Pawtowski. Sadly, Nellie died on 13 October 1895, when she was a little over a year old. A second granddaughter, my grandmother, Anna Louise Polowski, was born on 19 July 1896. By then, Frank and Annie had moved from the Bound Brook area to Elizabeth, where Frank worked for the Singer Company.
Catharina’s oldest child, Juliana Pawlowski, probably married between 1887-1895 and moved into her own house. I believe she lived in the Bound Brook area. I don’t know her married name. She is supposed to be buried in the same cemetery as Frank and Ann Pavlosk – Mt. Olivet in Newark, NJ.
Josef Pawlowski died sometime between 1895-1897. The last census where Josef appears is in 1895. I cannot locate his death or burial records. Since his wife’s remains were returned to Bound Brook, NJ after her death, he was most likely buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery. Many burial and other records for St. Bernard’s Cemetery were lost in a fire in the 1930. No gravestones or markers were located.
Bayonne, New Jersey
In 1898, Catharina was living at 394 Avenue D at 18th Street in Bayonne, NJ with two of her sons, Emil, 23 and Paul, 9. I wondered why she didn’t move in with her two older married children? Perhaps because they didn’t have room for all three of them or for some other reason. She may also have gone to Bayonne if members of the Mitchell family were living there. Her late husband had been related by marriage to the Mitchells. The name “Mitchell” had been Americanized from the original German or Polish “Maciyewska” or “Matschol.”
The building where she lived was a frame structure, two stories high, with a store on the ground floor. Two families lived on the second floor: Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Sullivan, who owned the building, lived on one side of the hall; and Catharina and her sons lived on the other side of the hall facing the street.
A fire broke out in the building late in the evening of September 27, 1898. A patrolman spotted the smoke and flames and ran to the building to help. After climbing up a ladder to the second floor, he spotted Catharina in bed surrounded by flames and a dense smoke. Patrolman Hunter carried her out, and returned to rescue Emil, Paul and the Sullivans with the aid of other men named Cassidy and Clark.
Catharina died at midnight at Bayonne Hospital. “The woman was 56 years old,” one newspaper account stated, “and was asleep in the building when the fire started and rescued with difficulty. She inhaled the flames, however, and recovery was not hoped for.” Her body was taken to Dempsey Funeral Home in Bayonne and shipped to Bound Brook, New Jersey for burial. Her funeral Mass was held a few days later at St. Henry’s Church in Bayonne. The celebrant was Rev. George Meyer. No information exists about her grave site, but it was most likely in St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Bound Brook. The date of her death is September 28, 1898.
Loose Threads
At the time of Catharina’s death, her daughter, Anna Theresa, was 16. Where did she live? Who was she living with until she married in 1904?
What was the origin of the fire? The newspaper said the cause was unknown. Since electricity wasn’t widely available at that time, perhaps an oil lamp ignited the blaze.
Catharina was in her middle-late 50s when she died, and described as “frail,” “elderly” and an “invalid” in the papers. She was unable to get out of bed or flee the building when the fire started. Six years before the fire she was vigorous enough to take three of her children on a visit home to Germany. What happened? Did she have a stroke, illness, or a crippling accident that robbed her of movement and good health?
What happened to Emil and Paul after the fire? They disappeared from any records. Paul Polosk surfaced as Paul Palmer in Memphis, Tennessee in 1913 at age 25. He worked as a boiler maker for Central Railroad. A family story is that he changed his name to “Palmer” to avoid prejudice as a German or Slav. The only story I have about Emil is that one of the brothers, “Abel,” went to Chicago and became a gambler. He may have been a casualty of the Chicago mob. Emil was listed as “Abram” on the 1895 New Jersey census. Is that a link to the lost “Abel?” Did the older son take his younger brother along when he left Bayonne for a new life in the Midwest?
I have discovered that researching family history often unearths twice as many questions as it answers, and no family mystery is ever completely solved.
