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Jednota!

March is Women's History Month! It's time for the spotlight to shine on the ladies in our family trees. I'll be writing all month on women I've researched. I encourage all family history lovers to take the month to seek out the stories of our foremothers! They are often under-documented, but they have a lot to teach us.   My great-grandmother, Anna Tatar Simonik.   On 14 March 1988, after my grandmother, Margaret Simonik Kozlina (1913-1988) died, my mother got a letter from the First Catholic Slovak Ladies Association. It contained the death claim benefit owed to my Grandma's heirs. 1 What Mom probably didn't know at the time was that this letter represented just one event in a chain that reached back 70 some years and was begun by her grandmother, Anna Tatar Simonik (1883-1 950). Anna joined the First Catholic Slovak Union—commonly known as Jednota, meaning "union"—in 1915, about a decade after she immigrated to the U.S. from then Austri...

FAMILY PHOTO FRIDAY


A smiling Grandpa Kozlina holds Tommy, with Grandma and Mom, about 1941. Photo colorized at MyHeritage.

 

By Nancy Gilbride Casey


It's time to share more of the great photos I received from Cousin Marlene (with annotations by Cousin Joe), from Pennsylvania.1


These photos feature our grandparents Thomas and Margaret Kozlina in the early days of their marriage, with my Mom, Anna Margaret Kozlina and her brother Tommy Kozlina, with one image with my Aunt Marian as a baby.

Uncle Tommy and Grandma, on the stairs of the Kozlina home in Lemont Furnace, Fayette, Pennsylvania. 



Uncle Tommy is probably about a year or so old, so likely taken about 1941.

Below, Grandma is celebrated on Mother's Day, May 14, 1944, with Grandpa Kozlina, my Mom, and Uncle Tommy.

 
Grandma, Grandpa in rear, Tommy and Mom in front.
Beautiful Grandma!

Grandma and Grandpa.


Grandma and Mom.

Lastly, here is one with Aunt Marian as a baby. Cousin Joe wrote, "Picture taken in Lemont. Home place. This is what yards looked like. Building on right is outside toilet. I tore those down in 1972." Lemont Furnace in Fayette, Pennsylvania, was the home of Grandpa Kozlina's parents, Frank and Louise Kozlina, who emigrated from Croatia in the early 1900s.

Baby Marian, on right, held by Grandpa, about 1946.

Hope you enjoyed these photos. More to come next Family Photo Friday! Special thanks to Cousins Marlene and Joe for sharing and for remembrances.

Until next time...


NOTES

1 Kozlina family photos, circa 1940-1946, various locations, unidentified photographer; private collection of N. Casey [address for private use], Tioga, TX, 2022.

 


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