The Prince of Fundy: Maine to Nova Scotia

A distinct childhood memory when I was ten years old was when my Dad, Jack Siulinski, invited me to tag along with him on a work assignment. Jack was a commercial photographer who provided film for mostly local commercials and advertisements. More on the experience of being on the job with my Dad below.

Portland Headlight in the foreground

The Prince of Fundy was a 387 foot car, truck and passenger “cruise ferry”. It made daily trips from Portland, Maine to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. The ship was operated by Lion Ferry AB of Halmstad, Sweden, and it’s crew and captains were mostly of Swedish origin. Lion Ferry operated similar cruise lines in Germany and Scandinavia. The tagline from a brochure from my Dad’s personal collection gives a compelling description: “The ocean ferry offering the excitement, luxury, and continental flare of an international cruise ship." The image to the left is from the personal collection of Jack Siulinski.

Photo advertisement

Life onboard included dining (including the staple Swedish Smorgasbord), dancing, shopping in the tax-free gift shop, and low stakes gambling (roulette, blackjack and slot machines). The round trip price was just $25 for an adult and $12.50 for a child. The charge for a vehicle was $32. One driver (passenger) was included in the vehicle charge. The saving of driving miles from Portland to Yarmouth was 858 miles. Passengers saved on time also; the one way voyage was ten hours. Today, the roundtrip cost of a car ferry from Bar Harbor, Maine to Yarmouth, NS is $210.

Back to my childhood experience on the job with my Dad: The assignment was for my Dad and I to board a small sport aircraft (a 4-seater similar to the image shown here) so that Dad could film the Prince of Fundy as it cruised out of Portland harbor into the Casco Bay Islands before heading out to the great Atlantic. This all sounded very exciting to a young child. Having never flown below, I was anxious what the experience would be like but I did not feel unsafe because I was with my Dad. 

Image Source: Pixabay

Once in flight the pilot putted along more or less in a straight-forward trajectory and soon were were several miles away from the coast. The view was spectacular but once we caught up with the Prince, the pilot started making these continuous swirling motions as the ship cruised along at full speed. I did not expect to experience a constant feeling of merry-go-round. With every turn, I began to feel dizzy. At first I kept the feeling to myself but when the dizziness turned to nausea, I told my Dad I was feeling sick. My suffering did not last too much longer as my Dad got the pictures he needed and we headed back to the landing strip. Was I happy to be on the ground! I remember telling my Dad that when I got off the plane, I felt like I was walking on the moon.

Fishing Boats in Yarmouth

Yarmouth, Nova Scotia is a port town located on the Bay of Fundy in south-western Nova Scotia, Canada. It lies at the Atlantic entrance to the Bay of Fundy, 210 miles by road west of Halifax. The site may well have been visited by Leif Eriksson the Lucky and his Norsemen around 1000 AD. The town of Yarmouth developed with the fishing industry and has a gorgeous heritage district filled with charming ex-sea captains' mansions with elaborately painted wood features, widow's walks and glass-walled turrets. 

During the heyday of the Prince of Fundy's operation, the service provided a boon to tourism in Maine and the Canadian Maritime Provinces. Today, there is no longer a ferry servicing Portland to Yarmouth but there is a high speed car ferry service from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth.

Referenced material and source citations: 

1. New York Times,  A New Car Ferry with a Difference, August 30, 1970: https://www.nytimes.com/1970/08/30/archives/a-new-car-ferry-with-a-difference.html
2. Source of Fishing Boats image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotia_Prince_Cruises
3. Press Release by Torben K. Anderson, Director of Marketing and Public Relations, Lion Ferry
4. Brochures and photographs from personal collection of Jack Siulinski
5. Source of paragraph about Yarmouth: https://tinyurl.com/y3zzvsaj

Yearbooks during War Time

Among the personal effects of my Dad is his 1943 yearbook from Deering High School in Portland, Maine.  He was a freshman that year. Of course, this was the time of World War II. Besides studying the yearbook for its usual features and looking for references to my Dad, I was intrigued to find that the book that year was dedicated to the “Fighting Men” and its stated theme was “Portland at War”.

It is ironic that the name of Deering's yearbook is Amethyst as the spiritual meaning of the word is grounded-ness and tranquility when the world in 1943 was anything but calm.

“Suddenly in spring, 1940, war came to Portland, unofficially. We called it “National Defense” and prepared for the coming conflict. With the collapse of French resistance, all America awoke, and Portland stirred from sleep. In a few short months Portland built shipyards, machine shops, and dockyards. Thousands migrated from the farms, and the city swelled to bursting with defense workers.”

As you turn the pages, the story is told is small chapters carefully arranged between the individual and group photos. There are the Pathfinder mothers who meet to hear topics such as “Nursing as a Profession” or “Wartime and Education in a Word at War”. Many mothers are involved in Red Cross volunteer work and Civilian Defense activities. Many teachers entered the various branches of the Armed Forces.

On the field of friendly strife are sown the seeds that are on other fields and on other days will bring forth victory. 

                                        - General Douglas MacArthur 

Something that I did not realize about the nearest city to my birth, American destroyers, based in Portland, had been “waging war on U boats for many months before Pearl Harbor". I am amazed to be learning this information from a high school yearbook.

"Portland is doing its part in winning the war. On our streets we brush shoulders with the soldiers and sailors of all the United Nations. War-workers, fatigued, dinner pails under the arms, crowd the buses. Grim naval ships anchor among our fog shrouded islands."

And more thoughts expressed on the dedication page illicit grim images: “the sharp sophomore with the jazzy suspenders and bow tie who wrote you notes in study period is now on submarine patrol in the Atlantic. The shy senior who escorted you to your first junior prom was killed in action in Tunisia last month. Last year’s star basketball player is learning to dismantle a machine gun and use a bayonet at Parris Island.”

The stark reality of Deering's youth in 1943 was: Everywhere we turn we find Portland at war.

Source of the definition of Amethyst: https://meanings.crystalsandjewelry.com/amethyst/

Source of the American poster: https://unsplash.com/photos/o_ez64ErEbQ

Source: Deering High School. Amethyst, 1943. William Dodge, Ed.

The Grandfather of All the Loyalist Dykemans

The ancestry of Ouida Dykeman Siulinski (1905-1985), my Dutch Canadian grandmother, has clear roots in the Dyckman Loyalists of New York. She descended from the "Grandfather of All the Loyalist Dykemans", Garret Dyckman, who changed the original Dyckman surname to Dykeman presumably to appear less foreign in the English-dominated society of early New York. He was born on 4 Mar 1741 in White Plains, Westchester, New York. 

During the Dutch colonial era, the original Dyckmans (the ancestors of Garett) were merchants and farmers in the area called Washington Heights today in Manhattan. The area was named Nieuw Haarlem (New Haarlem), after the Dutch city of Haarlem, and was formally incorporated in 1660. Hard to imagine Manhattan as a strictly agricultural society. 

After the war, in 1783 Garret emigrated with his wife and family to the British Colony of Nova Scotia. Soon thereafter, on August 16, 1784, the Colony of New Brunswick was created by partition. On January 20, 1787, the Dykemans were granted Lot no. 9 containing 150 acres on Jemseg Creek, Parish of Waterborough, Queen's County, New Brunswick, where they settled to farm.

Yielding now to a document found in the Digital Collection at the New York Public Library, here is a brief summary of the Loyalist story:

In the American revolutionary war there were many in the then new-born Republic who either refrained from participating or took the loyalist side in the conflict. These were called “United Empire Loyalists,” for they clung to the unity of the empire and refused to ally themselves with their fellow-colonists in revolt. When the war was over, those who took up arms on the loyal side found themselves in a hopeless minority, loaded with obloquy and subjected to indignity at the hands of the victorious republicans. Rather than live under these humiliating conditions, some of the loyalists returned to England; but most of them, preferring voluntary expatriation in Western wilds to living in a country that had become independent through rebellion, sought new homes for themselves in Acadia and Canada.

Another part of the Loyalist story and of my own ancestry is the suffering after the war in the form of persecution and loss of property. I could not begin to imagine the extent of personal agony that so many of my Loyalist's ancestors endured. From the same library report in the Digital Collection, "many persons were banished and prohibited from returning to their homes. More than 12,000 left New York."

Dykeman homestead in Jemseg

Joshua Reade Dykeman and Hattie Springer, 1935

After the hardship of relocation and resettlement, life surely improved for the future generations of those early Dykeman settlers. What I recall of my grandmother's descriptions of her family in Canada were happy stories and how close they all were. These strong bonds were experienced by my father as he often described the joy of spending his childhood summers on the family farm in Jemseg, New Brunswick. The photograph above shows the parents of my grandmother, Ouida Dykeman Siulinski, poising at the family homestead.

St. John Anglican Church, Gagetown, NB

Returning to our Loyalist grandfather, Garett Dykeman married Eunice Ann Hatfield at White Plains, New York. He died on 19 Jun 1813 and is buried in St. Johns Anglican Church Cemetery in Gagetown along with his wife.

Credits:

1. Kingsbridge image

2. Church image

3. Homestead image

4. Joshua Reade Dykeman and Hattie Springer image

5. Garett Dykeman United Empire Loyalist record 

6. Reasons for Migration of Loyalists Following American Revolution document

7. The area was named Nieuw Haarlem (New Haarlem), after the Dutch city of Haarlem, and was formally incorporated in 1660: Source

8. Following the Revolutionary War, in 1783 Garret emigrated with his wife and family to the British Colony of Nova Scotia. On April 20, 1784 they were granted Lot no. 66 in Parr Town (now Saint John, NB) etc: Source

Remembering the Artistic Talents of Jack

Jack at work as WGAN-TV cameraman

For the anniversary post of my Dad, Jack William Siulinski, who passed away six years ago today, I would like to honor the passion he had for his work and his love of photography.

Yesterday, I delivered a speech to a large audience of genealogists at the San Mateo County Genealogical Society in California. The speech was persuasive with a focus to promote blogging as an excellent platform to share and preserve the writing of one’s family history.

For this event, I opened my presentation in a different way. In preparing for this event, I came to recognize that my father and I shared similar passions; that of storytelling. He told stories with the images he created in his photography and film work. I tell stories through my writing with careful selection of images. Although, I don’t have the added talent that my Dad had for painting and drawing, I consider that when I am writing a blog post, I am working on a different kind of canvas. Here are three examples of the creative talents of my Dad's work:

Portland Headlight image taken from a small chartered plane

1963 Christmas Photo Card

A simple but beautiful drawing...

Jack's love of photography began before his formal training at the Rochester Institute of Technology where he received an Associate in Applied Science degree in 1953. That I know because I am in possession of his carefully created photo albums that document his military life from enlistment to discharge. He would learn the technical skills of the craft after his days in the Navy. Here are just a few of the photography tools that were used by my father back in the day:

The author posing for the artist

Part of the legacy Jack left to his family are numerous portraits that he took of us during our childhood.  He was precise in the framing of his subjects. I believe he really enjoyed the tangible aspect to the craft when he was able to physically create prints from the filmed images he took. His work for the studio involved countless assignments on the road to cover news stories and special events. He also filmed several TV commercials often using his children as subjects eager to see themselves on the big screen! My favorite event that he filmed was a whale watching excursion in Casco Bay in Portland which was made into a television program. 

More Findings on the Szulinski's from Schenectady

The family that drew me to genealogy is becoming more and more known. Our Polish family tree is expanding! With the diligent assistance of fellow genealogist and friend, Michelle LePaule, some key documents have been found to further loosen the brick wall of the Szulinski's of Schenectady.  I have long known that Albin Szulinski and Bronislawa (Podorska) Szulinski were processed through Ellis Island in May 1901 and made Schenectady their new home.  The names of their ancestral villages were found on church records from their parish and from there we were able to find Bronislawa's baptismal record on microfilm from Salt Lake City.

And now, Albin's and Bronislawa's marriage record has been found. They were married in the administrative district town of Raciaz, about an hour's drive from Warsaw in 1890.

  

Albin and Bronislawa marriage record, 1890

From another record found, we have gained the knowledge that the Szulinskis had already started their family in Poland before embarking on their transatlantic journey.  Michelle found a baptismal record from 1892 of Wincenty Szulinski, presumably the couple's first son.  Sadly, Wincenty lived for only one year. 

The other brick wall that has existed for many years is to discover more about their only daughter, Genevieve Szulinski (1910-1931).  Again with the assistance and expertise of Michelle LePaule, I have learned that Genevieve had a son named Edmund Theodore Simondiski who we believe is still living. We tried to contact him but got no response. From obit records, we learned that Edmund's father remarried in 1938, moved to Massachusetts, and had a daughter named Charlotte. With no response from Edmund, we reached out to Charlotte who would be Edmund's half-sister.

Letter from Charlotte Hunt 

Back in the day, Charlotte married and moved to Minnesota. Michelle found her current address on a people search website.  I subsequently sent a handwritten letter and on December 24th, I received a nice Christmas gift; a very nice response letter from Charlotte. The first page of the letter is here to the left. In the letter, Charlotte tells that after Genevieve died, Edmund was taken care of by her grandmother. She also tells the cause of Genevieve's death as tuberculosis. 

My father and his brother knew so little of their father's family of origin in Schenectady. It is amazing to me that an entire family is being recreated through the work of genealogy and family history.

Finding Bronislawa's Ancestral Homeland

Source: Liberty Ellis Foundation

The primary goal of a research trip I made to Schenectady, NY, in 2013 was to discover the ancestral villages of my Polish great grandparents. The searching involved lots of leg work, including visits to churches, cemeteries, former residences and city government offices. The death records of my great grandparents obtained from the city hall did not provide the names of their ancestral villages. This fact caused me to visit one more parish office that hot summer weekend before driving back to Massachusetts. Ultimately, this visit tipped the balance between a limited finding and an exciting discovery.  Before I share that discovery, a little background will show the full circle of a passionate genealogist.  

Genealogy searches often begin with either a census record or a ship’s manifest; true in this case as well. Several years ago, through diligent research done at the California Genealogical Society and Library in Oakland, CA, and with the help of my friend and genealogy colleague, Jerry McGovern, I learned of the fourteen day Atlantic crossing of my paternal great grandparents, Bronislawa and Albin Szulinski (later anglicized to Bessie and Albert).  In Hamburg, Germany, they embarked on the Pretoria (shown above) destined for a new life in New York on May 5, 1901.  A little research on Polish history pointed to the likely reason for their trip.  The country was involved in an extended period of poverty in the 1890s which caused a mass emigration.  Bronislawa and Albin may have simply wanted to emigrate for a better life in America. Notice the one letter variation of the surnames (Szulinski and Siulinski).  The name change appears to have been brought about by my grandfather, Adam T. Siulinski, before or at the time of his Maine marriage in 1928.

1901 Pretoria's manifest listing the names of Bronislawa and Albin Szulinski
Source: Ancestry.com

Obtaining the records of immigrant ancestors after emigration is a far less complicated endeavor than obtaining records generations later. When I am able to make the ancestral trip to my family’s Polish homeland, I will need to know exactly where to go.  Thus, I never gave up my quest to discover where Bronislawa and Albin came from in Poland.  Hearing my grandfather talk about his upbringing, I understood his family to have been devout Catholics, so I focused my research on the two Polish-connected Catholic churches in Schenectady: St. Adalbert’s and St. Mary’s.  The parish office at St. Adalbert’s provided the burial locations and causes of death for Albin and two of his sons, Walter and Joseph, but did not offer any information related to places of origin in Poland.

Thomas Adam Szulinski's baptismal record from St. Adalbert's parish records.
-name later changed to Adam T. Siulinski-

The other Catholic parish office I visited is where I struck gold in the form of a sacramental record.  St. Mary’s Church had since closed so it was a challenge to find the location of where the records were being stored.  After being rerouted a few times from one office to another, I found the right place and the right person to talk to.  Kudos to Debbie May at the Church of St. John the Evangelist who did the Szulinski lookups for me.  A few months after my Schenectady visit, an envelope arrived in my mailbox containing a copy of the sacramental record of my grandfather’s baptism (see image), and which happened to reveal the names of the ancestral villages of both Bronislawa and Albin (see image above).

Baptism record of Bronislawa (Podorski) Szulinski
Source: Salt Lake City Library microfilm.

Having discovered these Polish place names, I ordered birth and marriage microfilms from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City specific to the areas shown on the baptism.  A few weeks later, I was searching through rolls of microfilm trying to find the birth and marriage records of Bronislawa and Albin. So far, I have found Bronislawa’s birth record from 1870 (see above), and what a find that was. There is nothing more pleasing to a genealogist than finding original records.

Google map image of Kraszewo Czubaki, Polish ancestral homeland of Bronislawa (Podgorski) Szulinski showing the close proximity to Warsaw.  My grandfather had always said his family was from Warsaw.

All the time, travel, and effort were well worth acquiring the knowledge of my immigrant ancestors’ places of origin. I look forward to the day I will visit these towns in Poland.  When I do make the trip, I expect to be as fortunate as I was with Jacki and Stephanie, to meet more Szulinski family members.  Minimally though, I am certain to find more exciting discoveries!

The "Gully" Alongside Sargent Street

Our former residence on Sargent Street and the "Gully" behind as it looks today

Growing up along the site of a long-gone canal (part of the larger Cumberland and Oxford Canal) in Westbrook led to a lot of play and exploration for the neighborhood kids.  Back in the day, our name for the canal was the "Gully" which today looks a lot drier, more green and not as deep.

My sister, Paula Lowell, has many memories of the "Gully":

I spent my life in that gully! I played in it all the time including winter but the fondest memories are with the Tarzan swings. They were soooo much fun. We used to dig for those old medicine bottles. Every house on Sargent Street had a slew of them in their windows. Some of us kids used to collect frogs from the ponds. I used to put frog's eggs in buckets and bring them home. Mom must have loved that! Lastly, the gully was a great shortcut to walk to Canal School and I did that so many times.

So, how and when did the canal come to be and what were its uses?  It wasn't long after the state of Maine became a state in 1820, that the State Legislature created a lottery to raise funds for the construction of the Cumberland and Oxford Canal.  

The Warren House in Westbrook
with remnants of the canal in the foreground

Irish laborers began construction in 1827 to what would become a hand-dug waterway 20 miles long, 34 feet wide and 4 feet deep to accommodate flat-bottomed boats pulled by horses.  It officially opened in 1832, and provided a means of transporting lumber and farm goods from the lakes region to the coast.  For example, farmers in Harrison could have their farm products be sold in Portland.  On the return trips, furniture and other manufactured goods were transported inland.  

The canal began at Sebago Lake near White’s Bridge, and followed the general course of the Presumpscot River through four towns ending up in what today is called Thompson Point in Portland.  The Westbrook portion of the canal used to run alongside Sargent Street cutting over from Spring Street before it ran parallel with Glenwood Street near the present sight of Canal School.  

Source:  Image taken from a copy at the Maine Historical Society
Literacy rights are held by the Baker Library at Harvard University 

The value of canal transportation declined with the advent of the railroads.  The canal served its purpose for nearly 40 years, and was even used once to transport a man to the House of Correction (see above).  The handwritten receipt comes from an account book of Dexter Brewer.  He was a toll collector at one of the many locks along the route.

Other sources:
A Guide to the Cumberland and Oxford Canal, a booklet by Ernest H. Knight
Article by Dr. Joel Eastman in the Sun Journal, May 14, 2003
Maine Memory Image of the Warren House