Glen Lyon, Pennsylvania - a Trilogy

By Frank E. Urban

THIS TRILOGY WAS an attempt to trace my extended familys journey as part of a massive immigration consisting of twenty-five million people to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Following my familys journey also showed striking parallels between the beginnings of the twentieth and twenty-first century.

Following my ancestors through most of the twentieth century, I came to the realization that the events in Glen Lyon, Pennsylvania, during the twentieth century were a microcosm or mirror of America in the twenty-first century. The great-grandchildren and the great-great-grandchildren of the immigrants who came to America at the beginning of the twentieth century have their work cut out for themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462891030

Frank E. Urban

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Glen Lyon,

Pennsylvania

A Trilogy

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Frank E. Urban

Copyright © 2011 by Frank E. Urban.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011910348

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4628-9102-3

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4628-9101-6

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4628-9103-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Overview

Prologue

Part One:   A New Land, a New Beginning, a New Family

Part Two:   Life in Glen Lyon, 1915

Part Three

Epilogue

This trilogy is dedicated to my maternal grandparents, Ignatz and Katherine Kempinski, and their nine children, who provided us with the maps of life so we all could prosper in the territory of life.

Thanks to my aunts and uncles, my sisters, Stasia’s memoirs, historical accounts of Glen Lyon on the Internet, and especially to brother-in-law Charles Ciesla for his valuable historic input; thanks to my wife, Marlyn, for her patience and my son Joe for his computer expertise.

OVERVIEW

THE EFFORTS OF the immigrants arriving and settling in America at the beginning of the twentieth century unfolded a miracle in this new land: the miracle exhibited cultural and intellectual cooperation among different nationalities, the miracle promoted the importance of words and their relationship to reality, and the miracle culminated and continued with the immigrant descendants, whose desires and pursuits of education resulted in upward mobility in this great new country.

Best regards,

Frank E. Urban

PROLOGUE

IT WAS IN the year 1886 when the people of France presented the people of the United States with the Statue of Liberty in a somewhat delayed recognition of the friendship established between the two countries during the American Revolution. The people of France would build and deliver the statue to the American shoreline. The people of the United States would build the base on which the statue would be placed, and at the base of the statue would be placed the following inscription:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp besides the golden door.

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The statue stood majestically in New York Harbor, welcoming twenty-five million immigrants through Ellis Island and the Port of New York between the years 1892-1924, holding her torch high, lighting the way, at first for Irish and German immigrants in the first wave, then followed by Poles, Italians, Slovaks, Croats, Slovenes, and a host of others of different nationalities. All offering their labor and expertise to better their lives. All looking for opportunities not available in their homeland. Perhaps it was an employment difficulty in overpopulated European countries. Perhaps it was war clouds forming over Europe that may have encouraged many young men to opt for immigration to America before WWI (1914-1918) took place in Europe, while others may have had some legal differences with the local authorities and were looking for a fresh start in a place where they were unknown. Whatever motivated these twenty-five million people to immigrate to America in a span of thirty-two years, over time it had a profound positive effect on their new country.

Searching for my immigrant maternal grandparents did not take me to the Port of New York, though, but to the Port of Philadelphia, where my grandfather Ignatz Kempinski entered the United States in 1902, while my grandmother Katherine Sudol Kijanka entered the United States in 1904, then became widowed and was the mother of two children in 1906, and then married Ignatz Kempinski the same year.

Many Polish immigrants arrived through the Port of Philadelphia and gravitated to the coal-mining town of Plymouth, Pennsylvania, which had a large Polish population and bordered the Susquehanna River near the city of Wilkes-Barre, where family and friends helped them settle in and eventually helped them find work and relocate throughout Wyoming Valley in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Work was available in the many coal mines and collieries in the area, offering many settings or places to live. So when Ignatz Kempinski married newly widowed Katherine Sudol Kijanka in 1906, they relocated to the Pond Hill-Lee area for nine years and eventually settled down in the larger town of Glen Lyon.

Stories and aspirations of three family generations resonate in my mind as the grandson of the late Ignatz and Katherine Kempinski: stories of our immigrant grandparents arriving from Poland and settling around the anthracite coal fields near Wyoming Valley in Northeastern Pennsylvania; stories about our grandparents experiencing great hardships while raising a large family, with Ignatz working in the local coal mines; and stories about their children, who eventually became known as the greatest generation due to their efforts during WWII. Aspirations of the second American-born generation (my generation) benefited from education and changes in the workplace brought about by the efforts of the previous generations, which opened up opportunities for upward mobility and provided us with the maps of life to prepare for and succeed in the territory of life.

Most of the first and second American-born generations relocated to different parts of the country out of Wyoming Valley because of limited opportunities, but some have returned to Wyoming Valley later in life to become closer to their roots—in the meantime, the aging process had taken away