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Dr. David Kroska is in the process of compiling the Kroska family tree. So far he has 5 generations completed. 2007-01-30 Research links added at bottom of page The history, as documented by Dr. David Kroska. Brief History of the Krzoska Emigration The Michael and Jozefine Kroska family emigration originated in Smielin, a village in the northern end of the then province of Posen, Prussia. This region had come under Prussian control in 1772 as the territory of Poland was progressively partitioned among her three neighbors Prussia, Russia and Austria between 1772-1795. As komorniki, or tenant farm peasants, they had lived in this vicinity all their lives, Michael from Smielin, Jozefine from nearby Samostrzel. Historically, the village was more than a place, it was a community with a life in common, linked by bonds of kinship and a way of life intimately tying men to the land since time immemorial. Two powerful forces of change were underway. First, Europe was experiencing an unprecedented and precipitous rise in population with a doubling in numbers between 1750-1860. This resulted in overcrowding and inability to perpetuate the practice of further subdividing the land within the village. The land could be only stretched so far. Secondly, as a result of changing agricultural practices (e.g. manorial consolidation of the small peasant plots into larger units of production) land reform laws, mechanization, and by declining farm commodity prices, their former quasi-communal way of life was inexorably changing. Although they were technically "emancipated" from serfdom and allowed ownership of land under Prussian rule, the peasants' tiny patchwork land holdings stood in the way of landlords betimes eager to evict them and a government seeking to achieve agricultural reform not to mention being bent on cultural homogenization. By 1870 Bismarck was able to consolidate a myriad of small principalities into a single empire to be known as Germany - a fledgling nation compared to ancient Poland. The cost of this consolidation was three wars in seven years culminating in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. Bismarck's wars would have a profound impact on particularly, but not exclusively, his ethnic German subjects and cast a pall of doubt over what the future might hold. At this time the ethnic Polish and yet illiterate Krzoska's were likely no longer communally tending the land for family and manor but, like innumerable other farm peasants, were thrust into a larger market at extreme disadvantage. They would be among the virtual exodus of indigents to leave their familiar land, to leave their roots, their home, and the resting place of their ancestors. Some thirty-five million like them would leave Europe in less than a century, departing a dying way of life and virtual starvation for the hope of the New World. The construction of railroads eastward into former Polish territory, between 1850-1870 provided the mobility to the seaports. At a time when transatlantic travel would at last be expedited by the new, safer, and faster steamships, the Krzoska's boarded the Bark Victoria, a sailing vessel in Bremen on the 4th of March 1870 bound for New York. After 31 days at sea, undoubtedly a harsh experience in the crowded quarters of the steerage, they arrived the 6th of April at New York city. The difficulties of passage in steerage are described by Herman Melville in Redburn: His First Voyage. "That irresistible wrestler, seasickness had overthrown the stoutest of their number, and the women and children were embracing and sobbing in all the agonies of the poor emigrant's first storm at sea. It was bad enough for the cabin passengers who had privacy and stewards. How then with the friendless emigrants, stowed away like bales of cotton and packed like slaves in a slave ship; confined in a place that during storm time must be closed against both light and air; who can do no cooking nor warm so much as a cup of water......we had not been at sea one week when to hold your dead down the fore hatchway was like holding it down a suddenly opened cesspool". Following processing at Castle Garden at the top of Manhattan Island (predecessor to Ellis Island which wouldn't open until 1892) they traveled by train to Canada. Their move to Canada was likely the result of extensive efforts of the Canadian government in Europe to entice new settlers, particularly from Prussia, who (being not unfamiliar with clearing forested land) could expand the Canadian agricultural frontier northward. Pursuant to the passage of Ontario's Free Grant and Homestead Act in 1868, the Krzoska's would homestead a 100 acre parcel adjacent to Michael's brother John and his family, who also left in 1870. The free land in Alice twp. near Pembroke, Ontario was completely covered by second-rate scrub forest and brush and after even five years they had only cleared but seven acres for agriculture. Although good farm land in successful cultivation existed only 100 miles to the south, this area was cursed with thin stone-laden soil and unpredictable cold weather conditions allowing only marginal, primarily subsistence farming. In the spring of 1875 Michael Krzoska and his growing family left Ontario and his brother John behind. They passed through Milwaukee, then a port of immigration on the Great Lakes, visiting his widowed mother Maryanna Krzoska, his brother Martin and sister Francisca who as of 1871 had emigrated from Prussian Poland as well. Their ultimate destination would be Hale twp. of McLeod County, Minnesota where the family purchased 80 acres of rich farmland and would remain until after the turn of the century. Michael died in 1895 and Jozefine in 1897 and are buried at St. Adalberts' church in nearby Silver Lake. As of 1992, 122 years after the Krzoskas' arrival in the New World, 523 descendants to the fifth generation are known. A substantial sixth and even a seventh generation exist. However one fits onto the family tree, we all are indebted to this common ancestral family whose courage and determination laid the foundation for our existence in this new land of America. Generations have known a prosperity and freedom, still the hope and light which the millions left behind in Poland are striving for.
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