JamesBianco wrote:You might want to post a query on the Polish Forum also..
Polish Genealogy Forum
On a positive note, many Polish church records have been filmed by the Mormon Church, if we are able to determine the town in Poland, those could be utilized. The record in Poland would definitely indicate a groom's (on a marriage) town of birth, and in this way we would have where he came from in Italy/Sicily.
Also, keep in mind quite often family myths don't pan out. It is somewhat unusual for a man from Sicily to migrate to Poland in the 19th Century (or before) but certainly not impossible.
Keep us posted!
Wow, I didn't know the Mormons had put any Polish records on microfilm; that actually might be advantageous for me, although from what I've heard, a lot of records were destroyed in both WW1 and WW2, but I will have to look into it.
As far as the myth thing goes, it is totally possible that what my great uncle heard was not true. I guess if I want to find out for sure I would have to have DNA work done on a sample of my blood; from what I've been told, I guess only men can have their blood tested to find out their paternal ethnicity, something about having an X chromosome.... However, I have at least a good hunch that the story may be true, simply from the fact that my grandfather, and all the pics I have of his brothers all look Italian and not Polish. My brother and dad also have a lot of those kinds of features like somewhat olive skin; my brother does not burn at all when he gets in the son. Plus all three of us have oily skin. Still, I would like to have DNA work done anyways, just to be sure. As far as the guy going from Sicily to Poland, the way my mom described what my great uncle said, the guy took his whole family and left Sicily for some strange reason; it almost sounded like they had to flee for some reason. He said when they got to Poland, they took on a knew name; he believed that the knew name they choose was similar sounding to their original name.
I believe it was my great grandfather and his brother that came over to the United States (the two guys shown in the picture I posted). His name was Peter Kapuscik and his brother's name was Stanley Kapuscik. I think that these two probably were the first ones here because I was browsing on this site:
http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/search/ ... esults.asp
and I found pretty much all my immediate relatives, including both my grandmother (my grandfather's wife), and my great grandmother (my great grandfather's wife) but I didn't find any info for my great great grandfather or his brother. My dad said that he thinks they both went to Pennsylvania first and worked in the coal mines there for a while, before they moved to Illinois.
BillieDeKid, the names you listed don't sound familiar at all. From what my dad knows and my great uncle told my mom, our line came from southern Poland, not Russia.
I guess I will have to hop on over and register on the Polish board as well. I know that my great grandfather's brother, Stanley, also had children. I'm sure they probably had families of their own that continued to today. Problem is I don't know who they are and haven't had much luck finding out who they are or where they live.