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A Polish Son in the Motherland An American s Journey
Home 1st Edition Leonard Kniffel Digital Instant
Download
Author(s): Leonard Kniffel
ISBN(s): 9781603446006, 1603446001
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 9.79 MB
Year: 2005
Language: english
A Polish Son in the Motherland
 l e ona r d k n i f f el

A Polish Son
in the
Motherland
S
An American’s Journey Home

t e xas a &m un i ve r s i ty p re s s
College Station
 Copyright ©  by Leonard Kniffel
Manufactured in the United States of America
All rights reserved
First edition

The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
z.–. Binding materials have been chosen for durability.
o

li brary of cong re ss catalogi ng-i n-publicati on data

Kniffel, Leonard.
A Polish son in the motherland : an American’s journey home /
Leonard Kniffel.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
isbn --- (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn --- (pbk. : alk. paper)
. Poland—Description and travel. . Kniffel, Leonard—Travel—Poland. I. Title.

. 
.''—dc



An earlier version of “Back in the Old Country” was first published in

New Horizon: Polish American Cultural Review , no.  (May ): ‒.
In memory of my mother and my grandmother
 Contents
S

acknowle dgme nts ix

chap t e r s
. Back in the Old Country 
. Her Father’s Child 
. After the First People in the World 
. The Four Corners of Sugajno 
. The Sign of the Cross 
. Mothers and Sons 
. Like Grandma in the Back Seat 
. Last Train 
. Chiseled in Stone 
. Castles in the Air 
. Pieces of Change 
. The Land They Love 
. To Market 
. Holy Days 

vii
 . Followed by Water 
. The Best Days Begin in Ordinary Ways 
. Property 
. The Priest and the Ledger 
. Temporary Blindness 
. All Those Good-Byes 
. The Body of Christ 
. At Night by the River 
. Dinner with Madame and Her Son 
. In the Dark without the Son 
. The Underside of a Mushroom 
. The Hunt for Hidden Treasure 
. Women Dancing in Their Slips 
. To Grandmother’s House We Go 
. What Used to Be Polish 
. Little Mysteries Unraveling 
. What Took You So Long? 
. A Young Man and His Needlepoint 
. Pilgrims 
. The Nowe Miasto Hillbillies 
. The Other Side of the Family 
. A Father and His Daughter 
. Waiting 
. The Vigil 
. Whether or Not It’s Time 
. The Last Act 

e p i log u e 

i ndex 

conte n ts

viii
 Acknowledgments
S

Immeasurable thanks to the Kopiczyński family for opening their homes and
their lives to a stranger; to Pani Urszula Wituchowska for her warmth and af-
fection; to Ryszard Ulatowski and Grażyna Jonowska, who never let me miss
a moment; to my relatives in Poland, who welcomed me with open arms and
open hearts; and to my cousins and aunts and uncles in America, who are al-
ways with me. Special thanks to Maria Śliwińska for her faith and persistence,
to Danuta Brodacka for not hanging up on me, to Carlon Walker for his loy-
alty and assistance, and to the American Library Association for the sabbatical
leave that made writing this book possible.

ix
A Polish Son in the Motherland
 chapte r 

Back in the Old Country

S

I brought my mother here to Poland

in  to see the motherland, the place where her parents were born. We
rented a taxi in Warsaw. In those days you could hire a cab for an entire day for
twenty American dollars. The grateful driver chauffeured us to Nowe Miasto
Lubawskie and then to Boleszyn, towns I remembered from the little cedar box
my grandmother kept in her dresser. The box held letters from family, letters
that stopped coming after her husband died in . It was a quick tour, and
we marveled at being on the same land where my grandmother was born,
where she had run as a little girl. That was before I learned that her village was
Sugajno, a couple kilometers down the road.
It had been three-quarters of a century since my grandmother’s feet had
touched this ground and sixteen years since she had died. My mother surprised
both of us with the Polish that came automatically from her lips, welling up
from some floppy disk in her brain, the file corrupted with English and bad
grammar. But for the most part we were strangers in a foreign land, connected
to it only by some idea of Polishness that relied largely on kiełbasa, vodka, and
the sound of accordion music.
We walked through the cemetery in Boleszyn, even found a Bryszkiewski
grave. Two old women tending flowers told us they believed there were still
some relatives with that name living “somewhere far off in that direction.”
And then we went back to Warsaw and the next day back to the United States.

3
Before we left, however, I vowed to come back. I want to know what I missed
by being born in America, to understand what it means to lose two thousand
years of history in the time it takes to buy a ticket on a ship leaving “the old
country” for the new.
So I have returned to Poland, this time not to pass through but to live here,
where my grandmother lived, to see if any threads of Polishness still dangle
from that severed connection. What happened to the people in the few old
pictures and letters I have packed in my suitcase? And why did they stop writ-
ing fifty years ago? Little mysteries. Every family has them.
To escape the chilly winter drizzle, I duck into the underground passages
near my hotel on Jerozolimskie Avenue and follow them to Warsaw’s central
train station. Below the streets, dozens of stalls bulge with merchandise—not
at all the way they looked the first time I came to Poland—in . The col-
ors of fruit and vegetables, compact disks, and videocassettes announce them-
selves against the gray concrete walls and floors: “This is the new Poland of
plenty, where American marketing is king.” The old women selling flowers
will give you a special rate on roses if you buy more than a dozen, and the
brassiere stand advertises its abundance with an ambiguous two-for-one sale.
At the ticket counter shuffles the characteristic Polish queue, a funnel of
bodies elbowing their way to a crabby cashier behind a window, through
which it is impossible to hear and with an opening too low for anyone but a
ten-year-old. This part of being in Poland has not changed since my first trip
here, when the shops were stagnant but the air was electric with change.
My destination isn’t posted, so before I get to the window I tear a little
piece of paper out of my notebook and write down in Polish that I want to buy
a ticket to Nowe Miasto Lubawskie for tomorrow at midday, and I ask the
woman behind the glass to write down what she is telling me and from what
platform the train will leave. But she is impatient. I am stuttering, trying to re-
member the right words, and a man in a dirty sweater is leaning his face into
my złoty. The cashier passes the paper back with my ticket and tells me I must
catch the train for Gdańsk and get off at Iława. “Next,” she barks, and the man
in the sweater has already lowered his face to the hole in the glass.
Oh well, I rationalize, this aggravation is part of what I came here for, and
it is merely a taste of what it must have been like for my grandmother when
she arrived in America in , a strange land with people babbling impa-
tiently in a different language.
Dusk arrives just past five o’clock, and I head back to the hotel to settle in
for the night. From somewhere comes the unmistakable smell of cooking
cabbage. I make up Polish sentences in my head, for practice. A young woman

chap t e r 1

4
lets rip with a laugh that could curdle milk, as if she can hear my mistakes.
Up and down Jerozolimskie Avenue wafts the inexplicable sound of Peruvian
pipe music from some source at the Metro stop near the Palace of Culture and
Science. This edifice, Stalin’s gift to Poland, stands like a grotesque reminder
of the big ideas, the big plans Russia had for the pigheaded Poles, who seem
able to wear down the biggest of them, complicating everything—even the
purchase of a train ticket—with persistent disorganization.
The next day I begin my journey to Nowe Miasto, regretting that I did not
listen more closely and ask more questions when I lived with my grandmother
and she talked about her life in Poland. On the train I share a compartment
with a man named Cezary, a former shipyard worker from Gdańsk, who is
traveling with his daughter, Katarzyna, and just happens to be reading Moll
Flanders in English. He hands me his card. They both speak my language flu-
ently. “You are going to be considered quite exotic in Nowe Miasto,” Katar-
zyna advises.
I am caught up in their predictions and questions and suddenly realize we
have stopped for Iława, and my three enormous bags are still on the shelves
above our seats. Cezary heaves the largest to the floor. Katarzyna rushes into
the corridor, yelling “Wait! Wait!” out the window to the conductor. She and
her father jump off the train as I hand luggage down to them and follow. But
the train won’t wait and starts to roll away without them. “Stop! Stop!” de-
mands Cezary, and the wheels screech and scrape to a halt while they hop
back on.
“Come and see us in Gdańsk,” Cezary yells. “We’ll go sailing!”
The hotel in Nowe Miasto has sent a man named Marek to meet me, and
he is waiting inside the train station. He looks like Tadeusz Kościuszko, Polish
hero of the American Revolution, in a jogging suit. He eyes me for a moment,
then welcomes me enthusiastically, grabs my heaviest bag—now handleless
from being dragged through the train station—and leads me to his little Pol-
ish pickup. Marek inquires politely about what I am doing here. I tell him my
grandmother was born in Sugajno. Helena Bryszkiewska. “Don’t know the
name,” he says.
The hills and lakes around Nowe Miasto are dusted with snow as if some-
one had sprinkled powdered sugar over them like chruściki, the delicate egg
confections you see in every Polish American bakery. The river is overflowing
with the early spring thaw, and water sits along the banks in half-frozen pock-
ets visible through the birch and linden trees.
Beyond the town, over the bridge, a cheery blue, modern building appears
down a long gravel driveway, now mud packed from the thaw. Behind an old

Back in the Old Country

5
brick building that clings to the road like a piece of burned pie crust is a sports
complex, complete with a stadium and a soccer field, where loud young men
are grunting in huddles. My “hotel” is a camp for high-school athletes.
Ewa at the front desk smiles and welcomes me and assures me every time I
open my mouth and begin to sputter that I speak wonderful Polish. Marek
shows me to my room. “Everything works,” he says, nodding at the crude holes
cut into the walls and floors for pipes and wires. There is no phone, no televi-
sion. A painting of some unidentifiable tourist destination hangs high on the
wall. The door between the tiny vestibule and the bedroom won’t close com-
pletely. In the halls, young men giggle and chatter about girls and games, their
speech casually peppered with variations on the word kurwa—whore.
Ewa directs me to the Ratuszowa restaurant on the Rynek, the town
square, for dinner. It’s cold outside. I put on two coats and wonder why I ex-
pected Poland to be warm in March. A short walk up the road, a bridge crosses
the river Drwe˛ca. Beyond stands the town, where it has stood for hundreds of
years, through one hundred fifty years of partitioned Poland, through two
world wars, and through the loss of so many people to America. To get to the
square I must walk past an old brick tower, five or six stories tall, part of a me-
dieval wall that once surrounded the town. This square must have once hosted
a market. It’s easy to imagine the stalls and horse-drawn carts that carried pro-
duce to town from Sugajno and the little farm where my grandmother was
born. Nearly a hundred years ago she walked the streets of Nowe Miasto. I re-
member her telling me about the wonders to be found in “such a big town.”
Each building makes me ask: Was it here then? Did she see this? Her national-
ity was officially German; it said so on the ship’s manifest when she came to
America. Poland was no longer a nation; it was an idea, a memory that lived
only in the minds of its people.
Twice around the square and I give up and stop at a store to ask where the
Ratuszowa restaurant is. “In the center,” I’m told by a friendly woman in a
delikatesy. The building in the center of the square is not a church, as it ap-
pears, nor the town hall, as its name says. It is a cinema through the front en-
trance and a restaurant through the side door.
Snow is falling now like tiny crystalline doilies that disappear into my dark
green coat, and early darkness has left the entrance in shadows. Three men in
suits pace outside, chatting and smoking. I excuse myself and pass them to
swing open the heavy wooden door. The bright lights blind me for a second,
but then I see that every head in the place—and there are at least fifty of
them—is turned toward me. I see flowers, more men in suits, women in
evening clothes, tables arranged in long communal seating. There are twelve

chap t e r 1

6
thousand people in Nowe Miasto, I have been told, and one restaurant. The
evening I arrive, it’s booked for a wesele, and I blunder into a Polish wedding
reception at an apparently crucial moment. Everyone is staring at me as if to
say, “And who are you?” before I realize my mistake and gently shut the door.
I trudge back to the delicatessen and the smell of sausages and dairy. I buy a
small package of pumpernikiel bread and another of morski cheese and a jar of
musztarda. At the counter I ask for a little ham, and she says something I don’t
understand except that it has to do with weight. I agree, and she starts to wrap
a huge stack of slices. I try to tell her that it’s too much, to give me half, and
she looks perplexed, as if thinking, “He looks Polish. Why can’t this man talk
right?”
In the morning, heavy footsteps and young voices in the hall remind me
of where I am. More snow has fallen in the night, and frost decorates the
window wall. Outside, a cluster of buildings sits stiff and gray across the lawn
and beyond a shabby concrete fence. Here an overturned wheelbarrow, there
a wire clothesline, clothespins stuck to it like tiny sleeping birds. There is no
early spring here, as I had hoped. I will have to buy a hat.
The sun tries to break through the clouds, and a determined crow waddles
across the tilled yard behind a cement house. I make my way out of my room,
and two blonde young women, smiling behind the glass reception area, seem
to know already that I am here. They show no surprise, but I see curiosity in
their faces. The strange American has emerged, they seem to be thinking, the
man of whom we were warned. He’ll need a lot of help.
“Prosze˛,” they sing out, which means everything:“What can I do for you?”
“Please take this.” “I need your answer.” I reply by asking if I can have coffee.
“And what about breakfast?” one says.
Minutes later I have a hot cup of coffee in my room and food on a white
plastic plate with matching white plastic fork and knife, a tiny, tissue-paper
square, three slices of rye bread, packets of Danish butter and plum jam, and a
tublet of kurczak w galarecie, cold chicken and vegetables congealed in gela-
tin. Also on the plate is a shot glass containing a bitter-smelling liquid. Vodka
at eight o’clock in the morning? Well, this is Poland, so I take a sip. If it’s vodka,
it’s the worst I have ever tasted.
I carry the little glass out to the reception desk and ask the young woman,
“Co to jest?” What is this? To drink? I make drinking motions. Both the
women laugh with alarm. “Nie, nie, ocet.” I find the word in my dictionary:
vinegar. “To pour on your galareta,” the blonde explains.
In my room I flip the plastic container upside down on the plate, and the
galareta slides out with a smack. It looks like chicken soup that has been in the

Back in the Old Country

7
refrigerator overnight. I pour the vinegar over it and poke it with a plastic fork.
Peas and pieces of corn and carrot tumble out. In the center a sliced egg sits
captured amid pieces of its mother. I try, but I am not hungry enough to eat
it. So as not to seem ungrateful, I throw the galareta into the toilet, where it
sits on the peculiar ledge that Polish toilets have where water should be. After
several flushes it remains, like a clump of rubber, impervious to the water
slushing around it. Finally I must force it down the drain with a stick.
A wave of homesickness passes over me as I contemplate my next move—
to mass, drawn by the clanging of bells that persists for twenty minutes.
Sunday morning finds what looks like the entire town walking to church
in a gentle snowfall—stylishly dressed women, self-conscious teens, obedient
children, trickling in from sidewalks and around corners in every direction.
Small groups feed into larger streams, past the Rynek, and around the corner,
now hundreds strong, all flowing into the enormous stack of bricks and stucco
bathed in sunlight made brighter by the new snow.
Inside the church, giant baroque and rococo constructions of wood and
metal hang on the columns that brace the arched ceiling, possibly sixty feet
high. The stained-glass windows let in only enough light to emphasize that the
chandeliers are not lit and to give hazy illumination to the dozens of altar stat-
ues. Elaborate frescoes on the walls and paintings on the altars depict the lives
of saints and the Blessed Mother.
From my seat at the back I watch as the church fills to capacity. It is like St.
Florian’s in Hamtramck, Michigan, where my mother was born, only much
older. The people look the same—modern, dressed in fur-trimmed coats and
woolly hats. But the differences soon show themselves. The kneeler in my pew
is worm eaten and half broken away. The church is freezing cold, yet no one
seems to mind. As they enter, the faithful do not merely genuflect, they kneel
firmly on the stone floor for many minutes, young and old, meditating. All the
while the priest at the front altar quizzes a row of children about how best to
serve God. They recite with sincerity:“I will help the poor and those who have
nothing,” one little girl’s voice resounds through the hall over a microphone.
The mass proceeds to the spot where a mandatory handshake and “Peace be
with you” make for awkward touching and smiling in American churches. But
here it is different. The congregation mutters something about “to all” into the
air. The man on my right and the woman on my left nod suspiciously at me,
their hands at their sides; then they turn their eyes heavenward.
For dinner I brave the Ratuszowa restaurant again. This time it is open for
business, with its fake flowers, aluminum foil wrapped around the old church
columns, flimsy salmon-colored paneling. It is all somehow familiar, like Pol-

chap t e r 1

8
ish restaurants on Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago. I order at the counter, where
a polite and pretty young woman with a child playing at her feet recommends
a schnitzel. I ask for a salad, and she assures me that something that sounds
like “white cabbage” is quite smaczna, delicious. I find a table and listen to the
grease sizzle as another, older woman scampers about behind a pass-through.
From loudspeakers above, the BeeGees sing “To Love Somebody.”
At the next table a quiet young couple wearing wedding rings gulp their
hamburgers, cheeks bulging, even as they open wide for another chomp.
When they get up to leave, the young man has turned his cap rim to the back,
like my cousin in New Jersey. Except this cap is tweed and of the old-fashioned
golf variety.
Three more young men stumble in from the cold. Every one reminds me
of a cousin in America.
The woman behind the counter cheerfully delivers a plate of steaming
schnitzel and boiled potatoes to my table, along with a big bowl of slaw, a
bottle of beer, and bread and butter. When I tell her yes, I do want a glass, she
looks perplexed, as if to say, “Where are you from?” But she never asks and then
smiles and seems glad to see me. “Smacznego,” she says, Polish for “bon ap-
pétit.” Every morsel is delicious, and it all costs about three dollars.
On the way back to my room, I stand on the bridge looking at the swollen
banks of the Drwe˛ca. For all its distance from Michigan, it looks exactly like
the Coon Creek of my childhood, where I heard my grandmother’s voice call
loud and sweet, “Lenuś! Lenuś!” And I knew it was time to put on my shoes
and come home for lunch. Our farm must have seemed to her a remote out-
post in a distant land without a past.

Back in the Old Country

9
 chapte r 2

Her Father’s Child

S

T he calico cat that screamed through

the night outside my hotel window sits licking its paw on one of the joining
posts of the buckling stucco wall around the next property. Beat up but proud,
the old tom seems to be saying, “It couldn’t have been me making all that noise
last night.”
Beyond the dozen or so tarpaper and tile roofs framed by my window, the
brick-and-mortar Brodnica Tower stands waiting, its sturdy, four-sided roof
poking up above the town, calling me to explore. Two of these medieval tow-
ers stand guard over Nowe Miasto, scarred but sturdy, like the old cat.
Eighteen years was all my grandmother had in Poland, but she never forgot
Nowe Miasto. It was the destination for which she put on her best clothes, a
place that made her smile just to think of it. She told me she was her father’s
sprytna child, the clever one, who was ready to go before he had finished ask-
ing her to put her coat on, and it was he who saw her off to America at the
train station in Nowe Miasto.
The Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm sailed from Bremen on July , , with my
grandmother on it, and arrived in New York on July . Nine nights at sea,
during which everyone was seasick except her. She once told me the part of
the trip she loved best was being able to eat all the śledź, herring, she wanted,
while her sister ran for the basin.
I pull a copy of the ship’s manifest out of my suitcase. The passenger log lists

10
her place of birth as Sugajno, Germany. I remember asking her if she could
speak German. “Eins, zwei, drei,” she counted, laughing, and then she waved
me off, saying, “I no German.” And I would tease her, “Well, if you ‘know
German,’ why don’t you speak it?”
Her Uncle Stanisław Jurkiewicz, her sister Wanda, and my grandmother
are the first three entries in the manifest, written in a careful, readable hand.
Uncle Jurkiewicz’s wife, Weronika, awaited them at  Ferry Street in Detroit,
the log says. Scrawled across his nationality in the ship’s record is “U.S. Citi-
zen.” Among the others who sailed with them were Arno Dunkler, a German
grocery clerk headed for Cleveland; the brothers Bohdan and Jaroslau Pele-
chowycz, students from Austria headed for Minersville, Pennsylvania; August
Pezulis, a Lithuanian farm laborer on his way to Hoboken;Albert Prill, another
farm laborer, off to Reading, Pennsylvania; and Mendel Reiser, a “Hebrew”
bartender headed for New York from Galicia.
Near the medieval towers, the cemetery in Nowe Miasto is on the main
thoroughfare, cars zooming past a sign that says, “May they rest in peace.” The
headstones—thousands—are too numerous to count. It seems they all died at
once in the s and s, taking their memories with them, just after my
first trip to Poland. I scan names: Many are the familiar surnames of friends and
people I have worked with, but there are no Bryszkiewskis. My grandmother’s
life here is nearly a hundred years—lifetimes—away.
The paths in the cemetery are muddy, the air freezing, so I find my way to
the post office, a hulk of an old, German-style brick building on Działyńskich
Street, then head for a wine store I spotted on the Rynek. “Wines from around
the world,” says a little sandwich board on the sidewalk.
Beyond the heavy, wooden double doors, through maroon velvet draped
from metal shower tubing to buffer the cold air, behind a dark wooden counter
sits an imperious old woman wearing a brown dress, a delicate floral, silk scarf
around her neck, and pearly button earrings on either side of her stern face.
Her hair is carefully colored brown, and her skin dusted with powder. She is
gazing out the window through lace curtains and past the small display of
wines to the Rynek. As if awakened by the sound of my accent, she smiles and
listens as I explain that I would like to buy a French wine. Her face lights up,
and she gestures toward a shelf of bottles, five to ten in a cluster, a single bot-
tle of each wine.
“This one is very dry, this one a little sweet,” she explains. “Will you be
drinking this wine with meat or fish?” she asks, moving on to the wines from
Italy and California.
I don’t have the heart—or the words—to tell her that I’ll be drinking it with

Her Father’s Child

11
potato chips and slices of ham, alone in my little stadium room, in front of
my laptop, from a plastic galareta container that I washed out with a dab of
shampoo.
Patiently she explains that there is no good Polish wine because Poland has
neither the soil nor the weather nor the history nor the expertise to grow the
necessary grapes. She shows me something from Australia.
I ask her to tell me about the town’s history. It’s like turning on a faucet. “So
many things were destroyed at the end of the last war by our good friends,
the Russians,” she accuses slyly. “And they were not rebuilt as carefully as they
should have been.” She darts to one end of the L-shaped counter, where she
keeps handy a grainy photograph of the town square as it looked in , shad-
owy figures in dark clothes floating down the sidewalks.
“I wanted to live where my grandmother was born,” I answer when she asks
what I am doing here.
“Your father’s mother?”
“No, my mother’s. She raised me, my babcia. Busia, I call her. She was born
in Sugajno.” She nods and waves vaguely to the south and then wants to know
all about me. Formal Polish requires that I address her as “Pani”—madam—
and never as “you.” Pani Urszula Wituchowska. I show her my old pictures,
but she recognizes no one.
“They were poor,” she says, gazing at the threadbare cloth coat and felt hat
of one of these unknown relatives. “Yes, that is what they wore after the war.”
Not many people in Nowe Miasto are buying wine today; we talk for fif-
teen minutes without interruption. Pani Wituchowska shows me more pho-
tographs. One is of this store, “B. Jaranowski,” her father’s store, in . The
second is of the shop today, looking the same at it did then. Even the sign has
been repainted in the same style, above the entrance and display window, as it
was three-quarters of a century ago. She pulls out a picture of her uncle, who
was once the parish priest, Father Alfons Mechlin. “He would have known
your family. He knew everyone,” she boasts, “but he died ten years ago.”
Pani Wituchowska takes me to the window and parts the lace curtains.
“Look at what the thieves did,” she says. Splattered with white, stick-on stars
that seem to be holding it together, the window has been cracked by several
heavy blows. “You can see where their fists landed. They wanted to steal
wine,” she explains, but they were caught in the act and confessed. “Now I
have a big price to pay for a new window, and they have all they can eat and
drink in jail,” she adds with disgust. “They even bragged about it.”
Her son, she tells me, lives in Toruń, and “Michał does everything for me.”

chap t e r 2

12
He makes the hour’s drive to Nowe Miasto a couple times every week. “You
must meet him,” she decides.
“There was another man here once,” Pani Wituchowska warns me, “look-
ing for his family from the s, but all the documents were burned in the war.
I don’t think he ever found much of anything. It’s all gone, even the church
records. All burned.” And of Sugajno, she advises, there will be nothing much
left from .
The Rynek was built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, says Pani
Wituchowska, and what I see now was poorly reconstructed after World War
II and then “neglected for fifty years” under Russian rule. “They were worse
than the Nazis,” she hisses. “We were well-to-do before the communists came,
you understand.”
I leave the wine store with my Baron de France, a bottle of red table wine
from Montreuil-Bellay, fifteen złoty—a little over four dollars.
“Come back again soon. I will tell you everything you need to know,” Pani
Wituchowska promises with a wave good-bye.
Outside, it’s drizzle instead of snow today, even bleaker than yesterday, but
people scurry about the Rynek, red and tough as beetroot. I spot the public li-
brary, situated next to a park in a gully near the western tower, in what might
once have been part of the town moat. The door is open, and I walk past dingy
stacks of books and tables of young people who seem to be doing homework.
The librarian sits behind a trench of file cards, elegant in a long gray skirt
and turtleneck sweater. Her shiny brown hair flips forward below her ears, and
with a wry smile she listens to my explanation of what I’m doing here. Re-
spectfully she brings me three books about the town, one to lend, one a gift,
and one for sale. Then she leads me downstairs to another librarian, this one
equally friendly, with her yellow hair and white frilly blouse. She seats me at a
table; they both chatter beyond my comprehension and offer me the use of the
copier. She piles before me scrapbooks of the library’s history since it was built
in , newspaper clippings, and a collection of publications ranging from a
commemorative brochure on the occasion of the one-hundredth anniversary
of the local volunteer fire brigade to a history of the Norwid lyceum—the
high school, which I passed this morning on my way to the post office.
I peruse a  history of the region, looking for names. Sugajno, it seems,
is known for nothing and does not even have an entry in the index. Boleszyn
is listed for its late-baroque church dating from ; I recognize it as the
wooden church my mother and I visited in . The book tells of Nowe
Miasto’s beginnings in . Its transition into Neumark reflects the German

Her Father’s Child

13
influence in this area. Then come chapters about the glorious social achieve-
ments of postwar Poland.
There is virtually nothing in the library about Nowe Miasto published be-
fore the library itself was built. For that, “you must ask Andrzej Korecki,” both
librarians agree. “You’ll find him at the Papirus Bookstore on Third of May
Street.”
At closing, five o’clock, the blonde librarian invites me to come back to-
morrow even though the library will be closed. “I will be here,” she says, laugh-
ing when I tell her it will take me an hour a page to read the three books I am
taking with me.
Drizzle envelopes the town like clammy hands, and I shuffle with the rest
down slick pavement. Errands take on new urgency in the rain. A car splashes
to a halt in front of a tiny women’s shop; a thin blonde in clingy black slacks
dashes in front of me. I can see her inside, breathlessly imploring a clerk for
special service.
Stalin, it is said, understood, even as he triumphed at Yalta, that “fitting
communism onto Poland is like putting a saddle on a cow.” It’s all around me
now, this thick-headed cow of a country—the first nation in Europe to break
free of communism, the first in the world to establish religious freedom con-
stitutionally (nearly five hundred years ago) for Eastern Orthodoxy, Islam, and
Judaism, as well as Roman Catholicism. Even Lutherans, Calvinists, and Uni-
tarians were tolerated! Is there anything of that history left in this town, in my
family, in the millions of Poles who live un-Polish lives all over the world?
The word “pole” means “field,” the dust from which we came, the land that
gave birth to my grandparents and sent living pieces of itself across the world
to settle in a language that turns even the name of the country into a redun-
dancy: Poland, Fieldland, Land of Land.
I backtrack to a pizza sign and duck into an entry down a driveway at the
side of a cement-block building on Kazimierza Wielkiego Street. Two clusters
of young men at tables barely look up as I cross the room to a small bar, where
two young women chatter vigorously, then flip their shoulders toward their
duties. One deposits napkin holders on tables; the other fetches a pizza for
a father-son duo. The barmaid points to a menu sign, the only thing in the
place that is brightly lit. I order beer and she hands it to me. We play dueling
“Prosze˛” to see who can sneak in the last thanks. I ask for vegetarian pizza, pay,
and find my place.
The men grumble about the weather in low voices. The father indulges
his son with questions and quiet answers. Beyond the plate-glass window, the
paving stones glisten as the rain pelts them. The scene is pure communist

chap t e r 2

14
Poland as I glimpsed it years ago. A dark and chilly room with American
music throbbing in the background, the indiscernible mutterings of groups of
men whose heads turn only slightly as two young girls enter.
The pizza comes with pickled red peppers and soggy asparagus, sprinkled
with peas and corn. But the crust is perfect, bubbly and crunchy, and under the
cheese fresh onion slices and every now and then a pungent olive—with pit.
Relentless rain and melting snow have swollen the Drwe˛ca to the top of its
banks and beyond, into the yards of houses near its edge, the garden plots now
mud, with dried remnants of last year’s corn jutting from pools of river. As I
make my way back to the hotel, a horse-drawn wagon hauling scrap metal and
broken boards makes its way down the main drag, holding up a dozen trucks
and cars. They wait patiently as the driver sits huddled against the drizzle, one
hand juggling the reins and an umbrella, the other cradling a cell phone.
The sun is setting. A street lamp sends down its grainy glow, and I spot a
woman wearing a babushka and a nappy cloth coat much like one I remember
my grandmother wearing, with boots above her ankles and that space between
the top of her boots and the bottom of her coat showing her legs in thick win-
ter stockings. As I pass, she stares straight into my face, and I see the face of my
grandmother, and in that face my uncles, my aunts, all of them in that con-
fused expression that seems to be asking, “Do I know you?”
I look into her eyes. “No, you don’t know me,” I think—and walk on.
Across the street I glance back, and she is looking back at me.

Her Father’s Child

15
 chapte r 3

After the First People in the World

S

S everal days have gone by when I re-

turn to a computer-appliance-telephone store on Grunwaldzka Street, where
a patient couple has explained telephone service in Poland, with advice on the
side about how to find a place to live in Nowe Miasto.
“The boss,” a man as thin as a string, with dark curly hair, appears, shakes
my hand, then invites me to follow him to his office. Adam Kopiczyński is his
name, and he explains that he has a very large house, his wife has left him and
taken their two children, and he wouldn’t mind if I came to live with him. Sur-
prised, I manage two questions in Polish:“Can I see it?” and “How much will
it cost?”
The Polish equivalents of “Sure you can” and “Gosh, I really don’t know”
are his answers, but he seems to expect me to grab my bags and move in.
Adam and I speed off in a Mercedes. “It’s not my car; it belongs to my
brother,” he says. Soon I’m getting a tour of Adam’s house, a twenty-year-old,
modern cement cube up the street from the Lubawa Tower. “My grandparents’
wedding furniture,” he says of a Victorian settee, chairs, and china cabinet in
the living room. Bounding upstairs to his children’s bedrooms, he says, “You
can have this room or this one. My two sons live with their mother,” he ex-
plains. “The house was renovated two years ago. She had to have everything
just so. Me, I don’t care.”
After the house tour, Adam says he must return to another one of his stores

16
on the Rynek. He owns four: the computer-appliance-telephone store, a
clothing shop, a shoe store, and a cosmetics emporium, plus a jam factory in
Lubawa. “Interesuja˛ca kombinacja,” I quip, getting the Polish almost exactly
right: interesting combination. Adam laughs quietly and gives me another
sideways glance. He drops me off at the Ratuszowa and offers to pick me up at
eight for more talk. “It’ll be better for my health if I walk,” I counter, begin-
ning to feel indebted.
At eight I return to Adam’s house. He serves tea, and later we head upstairs
to what is to be my room and fiddle with my laptop computer, trying to es-
tablish an Internet connection. His friend Mieczysław Łydziński stops by, and
we fiddle some more, but the connection won’t happen. Finally we give up and
go downstairs, and Adam pours tiny glasses of the sweet Polish wine I bought
in the delikatesy on the Rynek. It’s like muscatel. Pani Wituchowska was right.
Patiently they listen to my feeble attempts at conversation, looking at me
as if to say, “My God, how is it possible for anyone to make a mistake on every
single word?” Still, I manage to learn much about Nowe Miasto. Both had
grandmothers who once left for the United States, Adam’s in  and Miec-
zysław’s in . Both came back. “Mine just in time for World War II,” says
Mieczysław, because “she didn’t like Baltimore.” Adam remembers less about
his grandmother’s aborted immigration but says she went to stay with relatives
in Detroit. “Perhaps our grandmother’s were neighbors there,” I suggest.
“Wouldn’t that be a fine one,” he quips.
They are both full of information about the town and show me copies of a
newsletter that Mieczysław—a librarian-turned-bookseller because “in library
work there was not enough money to live on”—edits and for which Adam
now and then writes, Gazeta Drwe˛ca, named for the river. Perhaps Sunday, says
Adam, you will let us drive you to Sugajno.
It seems I have stumbled upon a nest of local history buffs. “We all know
each other,” Adam says encouragingly. “Maybe you will find family.” It seems
to me I already have. They seem to understand, to know that but for the grace
of God they would be me—an American, made so by a wandering grand-
mother. I return to my hotel room elated.
The next day I want to hear what Pani Wituchowska has to say about my
new friends. Perhaps some would see her as the town gossip; better to say that
she excels in oral history, and it is time for another visit to her wine shop.
She greets me with a big smile, asks me where I have been, as she does every
visit. “I hope you haven’t been looking for a woman,” she quips, smiling dev-
ilishly and pointing to my bare ring finger. “You’ll never find one suitable for
you here,” she flatters.

After the First People in the World

17
 I assure her that I am not wife hunting and divert the conversation to my
question of the day: “Do you know Adam Kopiczyński?”
“Of course, of course,” she says. “A good man, but he doesn’t have a wife
anymore.”
“Yes, I know, and he has a big house and lives there alone and says he will
rent me a room. Would that be a good idea?”
“Oh yes, yes, a very good idea. You would be doing well to have such a
fine place to live. He doesn’t have a wife anymore—but of course he has a girl-
friend,” she asserts.
“And two children,” I offer, to assure her I’ve gathered some oral history of
my own.
“Yes, yes, and two children,” she confirms. “And stores in the town center.”
She leans forward over the counter and clasps my bare hands gently. “He comes
from a very good family, you understand, a very good family.”
I ask her for a bottle of wine to take to Adam’s house. She reaches for an-
other bottle of the red wine I bought yesterday and wants to know if I liked it.
I pull out a fifty-złoty bill this time. Yesterday it was a hundred, and I had to
go to the bank for change. “Always the big bills,” she says, digging through her
small stash and making negative little grunts.
“I’ll just buy an extra bottle of wine,” I offer.
“Oh, but then you won’t have the occasion to come by and practice your
Polish with me,” she protests.
“I’ll pay for the wine now and pick it up on Monday,” I offer.
She bows and laughs. “Prepaid. Now there’s a smart idea.”
Snow has begun to fall, and I decide to take another route to the hotel, over
the bridge behind the church. From there, the view of St. Thomas’s is splen-
did through the soft blur of white. The swollen Drwe˛ca swirls by and grows
ever larger. Trees and bushes around it soak in its excess, and their dark bark
balances new wet snow and offers it to the wind.
“They said it wasn’t supposed to snow today,” says Ewa, the receptionist at
the hotel, as I run past her to get my camera.
“But it’s beautiful. I’m going to take a picture,” I explain. She shrugs her
shoulders.
On the town square a little girl breaks from her family and runs up to me.
“Mister, why are you taking pictures in the snow?” she inquires.
“Never mind, little one,” her father calls her back. “He does what he does
because he likes to do it.”
“I like snow,” I tell her, and smiling she runs away.
Can it be that only a week has gone by? With no car, no phone, no Inter-

chap t e r 3

18
net, already I sense that America is a million miles away; even Warsaw seems
like another world. How good it feels.
In the evening I settle into my reading and learn that in August, , czar-
ist troops entered many towns in the Lubawa district, including Boleszyn.
People were chased from their homes in surrounding towns and came to Nowe
Miasto. Furniture was strewn everywhere, bedclothes, food. Terrified cattle
roamed in the fields, and German soldiers were also concentrated here. This,
just as my grandmother told me, was what lay in store for the family she had
left behind.
I close my eyes and wish for their stories to come to me in a vision, a reve-
lation like the ecstasy of Saint Theresa on the holy cards the nuns gave us in
catechism class. I imagine climbing to the top of one of those computer-
generated DNA ladders to a time before the wars and reaching my family that
lived here a hundred years ago. But that is not the way things happen.

After the First People in the World

19
 chapte r 4

The Four Corners of Sugajno

S

I t wasn’t supposed to be so easy. I’ve

been in Nowe Miasto for just eight days when Adam Kopiczyński and Miec-
zysław Łydziński arrive in Mieczysław’s little Fiat at eleven in the morning to
take me to Sugajno. Even though this village is just a few miles down the road,
they carry a map, which Adam reads. We take the first left off the main drag,
drive a couple miles, keeping left until the asphalt disappears, and we seem to
be entering a dirt lane drifted over with snow.
“Step on the gas,” Adam urges, and we barrel through the drifts for another
mile or so. The sun is so bright I have to squint to see the rolling fields before
me, a placid lake to my right and straight ahead a sign that says “Sugajno.”
The village is really just a crossroads, with one store that is shut tight for
Sunday. Several houses nearby are quite old, others obviously built after World
War II, only about a dozen of them clustered together, and then you can see
farmhouses in the distance. Straight ahead is a building that both of my new
friends assure me was a school and has stood here for at least a hundred years,
the school my grandmother no doubt attended. “Built by the Germans,” says
Adam. We walk around it, then knock at the first door. It seems that it has been
divided into three apartments. A man comes to the door and within a minute
has explained that, yes, indeed, the Bryszkiewskis live up the road—Jan Brysz-
kiewski, the same name as my great grandfather. He points to the house.
Eighty-seven years it’s been since Helena Bryszkiewska and her sister
Wanda took off for America with their uncle Stanisław. Now I am walking

chap t e r 4

20
back up the same road, one sunny day, to see what remains of those who stayed
behind. Two wars later, the fields covered with snow, my breath hangs in the
air, and we are about to intrude on somebody’s Sunday dinner.
“I am looking for my family” is the only way I know how to put it. The
young man at the door seems perplexed and moves aside to reveal Jan, a portly,
gray-haired man with two hairy moles on the left side of his chin. (My grand-
mother had an identical one on her upper lip.) His ragged shirt and striped
pants look like they’ve been worn for fifty years.
“Yes, I am Jan Bryszkiewski,” he says, eyeing me expectantly as if I were
from Publishers Clearinghouse. He seems stunned, but he and a woman he
introduces as his wife—they appear to be in their mid-sixties—and the young
man and woman with him are very gracious. But Jan seems to need time to
think, and then he apologizes. “We were about to eat.”
It’s noon, the table is set with four plates heaped with boiled potatoes and
roasted chicken. We are ushered into the living room, where Tom Jones shouts
“It’s Not Unusual” from a television. It all seems very unusual to me, but their
home is immediately familiar in odd ways; the dining table in the kitchen,
where we entered, is one of those chrome and vinyl numbers from the fifties.
The living room furniture reminds me of the last matching, overstuffed sofa
and chair my mother bought for her house in Hamtramck. The television
blares in a corner below a wooden crucifix. At the same time it’s as if this can-
not really be happening; I’ve lost every word of Polish I ever knew. My new
friends rescue me with explanations, which are, of course, the same explana-
tions I somehow managed to convey to them in Polish the day before.
The family finish their meal in seconds and then rush tea and coffee and a
yellow pound cake to the coffee table before us. It’s good coffee, but too late I
realize it’s the kind that needs time for the grounds to settle to the bottom of
the cup.
Gagging on coffee grounds, I try to explain who my grandmother was. It’s
clear that Jan’s family history is not one of his priorities. I show him my old
photographs. He is sure that one of them is Franciszek, my grandmother’s
brother, whose letter to his sister in America I carry with me. Jan’s father was
named Izydor, and Franciszek was his first cousin, which means that Wincenty,
his grandfather, and my great-grandfather were brothers.
Jan’s wife, smiling and calm in her floral dress and apron, offers to bring
out photographs. Jan is working hard now to remember. His wife brings an
Adidas box, and he begins to shuffle through the photos inside. “Jak groch z
kapusta˛,” he chuckles, the same words my grandmother used to describe a
mess. “Mixed up like peas with cabbage.”

The Four Corners of Sugajno

21
 The school is way over a hundred years old, Jan assures us. “It’s for sure
where your grandmother went to school. I went there myself. They just closed
it a few years ago.” Abruptly he announces, “I’ll call the teacher, Pani Os-
trowska.” Into the kitchen he shuffles and moments later announces, “It was
built in  by the Germans.”
I was so self-conscious about my intrusion that I didn’t immediately see
how nervous Jan is as well. He has forgotten to introduce me to his son and
daughter-in-law. “This is Piotr and Grażyna.” He apologizes for his manners,
his tongue whirling like a propeller around missing teeth, which also reminds
me of my grandmother. I swear there is even something familiar about the
homey smell of him.
His father’s house is no longer standing, Jan says. Soon we are looking
through a pile of old photographs. I mention again my grandmother’s name,
Helena. I know he has been taken aback by my arrival, for he looks astonished,
really hearing it for the first time. “That’s my wife’s name, Helena Bryszkiew-
ska. Here she is,” he laughs. His wife smiles demurely. “My father always said
we had an aunt—or was it a cousin?—who went to America,” Jan marvels.
But he remembers nothing about any other great aunts or uncles. He, like me,
is an only child, so there is no one else to ask.
Next we are looking at their wedding picture, a beautiful, blonde young
couple in . And there is a picture of his grandmother’s funeral, during the
war, he says, a somber group of men in overcoats and women in dark hats be-
hind an ornate coffin being carried to a wagon filled with straw. Behind them
is a timber house of wide, rough-hewn boards, children peering through the
one visible window. They would be almost seventy years old now, those chil-
dren; Jan is among them. And there is a picture of the old woman in death.
He finds a duplicate of the funeral picture and casually, sixty years after it
was taken, gives it to this relative from America, this distant cousin. “Perhaps
one day I’ll go to America,” he chuckles.
“That was the Bryszkiewski family home,” he says. “It could very well be
where your grandmother lived. Take the picture, go ahead.”
By now my head is spinning, and we’ve been here for over an hour, so I ask
if I can come back another day. “Of course,” Jan and Helena say, smiling, still
bewildered. They offer their phone number.
In the car on the way back to Nowe Miasto, I stare out at the snow-covered
fields. Adam and Mieczysław seem proud that they, the best local historians,
have been able to make short work of finding my family.
But my grandmother left many brothers and sisters in Poland; she told me
so. Can they really all have disappeared without a trace, without children?

chap t e r 4

22
 My new friends sweep me off on a tour of the town’s oldest sites. We park
on the Rynek and walk to the church. Emboldened by their success in Suga-
jno, they urge me to follow them as they sneak up the dark side steps that seem
to lead to the choir. Dumbly I follow, but the stairs lead instead into a wind-
ing brick tower and to another set of stairs and then another until we are walk-
ing on planks that bisect the length of the church over the buttresses on its side.
Giddy, Adam runs to the tiny window at the end and urges me to have a
view of the town. I step cautiously past three dust-caked angels frozen on their
sides in the rafters. On either side of me are the plaster domes of the chapels
below.
There is no stopping Adam now, and Mieczysław and I follow as if we’ve
come too far to turn back. We ascend yet another narrow set of steps and an-
other—without banisters—until I look up and see that we are in the belfry,
and around me are dozens of hand-hewn beams at every angle reaching to the
very top of the church. I lift my head, and above me hangs the tongue of an
enormous bell. Adam is checking the rope and pulley.
“It’s not going to ring,” I plead.
“No, this one doesn’t work, I think,” Adam assures me.
But above this bell is another, and when we reach the top of the tower,
Adam throws open the shutters to reveal a splendid view over the town, the
river, the hills beyond.
“We’ve never been up here before either,” he says, and just then a rope be-
side the bell seems to have been pulled and begins to descend. The bell is less
than three feet away and more than five feet high, and there is nothing to do
now but hear it. I put my hands over my ears, but the clang of the ringer against
a ton of metal starts my head vibrating. It rings and rings, fifty clangs and more,
until I’m convinced it will not stop until we are driven out. Adam darts around
the bell, smiling, looking out the window, like Quasimodo. The bell goes on
until I feel foolish holding my hands over my ears, so I drop them and let the
noise reverberate through me.
This same bell that rang out on Sunday mornings when my grandmother
was a little girl and for generations of little girls before her now dazzles her
grandson with its uncompromising clang. Don’t hold back, it proclaims, for
you are here for a reason.
Back on the street dusk is in the air. We head up Działyńskich Street, and
Adam tells me to look left at Kazimierza Wielkiego Street. “That was the Jew-
ish section. There was the synagogue.” To my right is a severe, geometrically
correct building. “Gestapo headquarters,” he says, right at the end, “like a
tombstone.”

The Four Corners of Sugajno

23
 “There is not a single Jew left in Nowe Miasto,” Adam tells me, although,
as I study the faces of the townspeople, they all look Jewish to me, including
Adam, with his bony face and dark curly hair, his tentative half-smile.
I ask Adam if he has given any more thought to my moving in. “Of course,”
he replies. “When will you be ready to do so?” To money, he has given no
more thought, he says.
“I don’t use the kitchen,” he announces. “You can use it all you want. Just
tell me what you need. There is more stuff in the attic.”
The next morning one of the men who gather in the hotel vestibule to
drink beer and socialize tells me there are no apartments available on the
Rynek or anywhere else in town, for that matter. It seems the fates are con-
spiring to make me live with Adam.
A procession, involving a priest and altar boys elevating purple banners, and
a long line of people, a hundred or more, head through the Rynek and up
Third of May Street. Then I notice a white hearse that looks like a sport-utility
vehicle, but in the windowed cab is a casket, looking very much like the one
in the old photo of Jan Bryszkiewski’s grandmother. People are carrying bou-
quets wrapped in shiny cellophane. A delivery truck follows. Too impatient to
park and wait, the driver creeps on the heels of the last mourners as they stub-
bornly make their way to the cemetery beyond the Lubawa Tower and Grun-
waldzka street.
As the funeral passes, I think of the heavy wooden crucifix my grandmother
kept in the top drawer of her dresser. She never seemed to mind when I poked
through her things. It was almost as though she wanted someone to know her
secrets. I must have been six or seven when I found it. I remember that the top
of the crucifix rotated to reveal a hollow chamber in which she kept a half-
burned candle and a flat, round bottle of holy water capped with a crownlike
cork top, saved from my grandfather’s extreme unction.
Extreme unction, as I had learned for my First Holy Communion, was the
last sacrament I would receive as a good Catholic. And timing was of the es-
sence. God forbid that extreme unction be administered too soon and the sick
person recover—or too late and the deceased be deprived of swift entry into
heaven.
My grandfather’s extreme unction was timed right, and his funeral was the
last held in our farmhouse, where he was laid out in the parlor. I can still see
myself standing eagerly on the davenport, for I was merely three, peering into
the parlor and asking, “When is grandpa going to get up?” After a moment of
silence someone said he wouldn’t be getting up, and then my mother cried, and
her sister Mary put her arms around her.

chap t e r 4

24
 There was a large picture of Jesus with a flaming heart pierced by a dagger
above the davenport and another of the Blessed Virgin with her heart aglow.
There was a ceramic Last Supper that hung in our kitchen. Near the arch be-
tween the kitchen and dining room was a porcelain holy water font, Christ on
the cross, with a small basin at his feet, as if to remind us of the drink he had
been denied as he hung dying. Pani Wituchowska has one like it in her store.
By the time my grandmother died, our rituals of candle and holy water
had been abandoned, and the idea of taking them to the hospital where she lay
comatose seemed somehow superstitious. Dying had already become more
the unacceptable consequence of unhealthy living than the logical outcome of
life. She was, after all, only seventy-seven. Twenty-four years later my mother,
at seventy-seven, lay waiting for death to take her, with no holy water, no
cross, not even a rosary.

The Four Corners of Sugajno

25
 chapte r 5

The Sign of the Cross

S

O utside my room, the hotel staff

slams doors and prepares for another day. Boys are yelling and running. Marek’s
wife tries to convince me not to move out of the hotel. “You can cook right
here,” she pleads, directing me to the tiny closet from which she has magically
pulled my breakfast every day. There is a small stove and refrigerator inside,
a sink, and cupboards. “Yes, I suppose I could,” I tell her. But I have big Pol-
ish meals in mind, with somebody’s babcia showing me how to cook them.
This morning, the church in Nowe Miasto is freezing, colder than out-
doors; the gold leaf looks tarnished and dusty. The weekday faithful—about a
dozen, mostly women—are scattered about the church on their knees in the
wooden pews. In the section of pews parallel to the aisle near the front altar,
about twenty ten-year-olds are being led in silent meditation by a middle-aged
teacherly woman in glasses. She kneels on the stone floor, and the children in
the front row follow. Then they all break into memorized prayers, delivered in
the soft, sibilant whispers of Polish aimed at God’s ear. When the prayer is fin-
ished, the children stare at nothing in particular, waiting. It’s Lent now, and it
seems there is never a time when the church is empty. I wonder if these chil-
dren are learning to say “prayers for a happy death,” as the nuns taught me.
When I was a child, nuns seemed to me to be holy women, usually hidden
away but brought out to deliver the truth direct from God to us Catholic chil-
dren unfortunately enrolled in the public school. I remember only one nun—

26
although she was no doubt really several—with a scrubbed, pious face, infi-
nitely patient, and equally determined to make good Catholic children of us.
I remember a pale holy face asking, “Where is God?” and instructing that the
proper reply was “God is everywhere.”
I leave the church and walk to Adam’s house, but he’s not there, so I sit on
a bench in his yard and write a note with occasional help from my dictionary:
“I was here, but you weren’t home. Do you have time to see me later? I’ve
had enough of living in a hotel. If you’re not busy this weekend, perhaps it’s
time to make the move. What am I waiting for?”
I met Adam’s father earlier today, a man with the same reserve and quiet se-
riousness as Adam. I showed him my old photos, but he recognized no one.
The day before, Adam and I spied on him through the front window when he
was busy with customers in his film-processing store. “He looks just like you,
only older,” I said. “But I have hair,” Adam smirked.
I leave the note in Adam’s mailbox and head back to the hotel. Soon the re-
ceptionist knocks on my door to tell me I have a call. Adam is hollering from
his cell phone that he will meet me at the Ratuszowa at three.
So I wait for him at the restaurant and formulate questions to ask over beer.
When he hurries in and sits down at the table, I am ready. “How many Jewish
people lived here before the war?” I ask.
“There were perhaps three hundred here before World War II,” Adam re-
sponds. “Before World War I perhaps six or seven hundred. Before the first war
the street where the synagogue stood was named Synagogen Strasse.”
“And Gypsies? I saw men outside the church this morning on their knees
in the dirt, begging, with children at their sides. Were they Gypsies?”
“Yes, from Romania,” Adam says. “There are perhaps a hundred living here,
but they don’t live the traditional Gypsy lifestyle.”
“What do ambitious people in Nowe Miasto want?”
“Ambitious people want to leave,” he smiles.
“But you are ambitious,” I argue, and he counters that he was ambitious ten
years ago, when he went through Romania and Bulgaria to Greece and bought
contraband goods and brought them back to Nowe Miasto to sell. “We made
a lot of money, and when communism fell, we invested, and now I have four
stores and a factory. It has not been so for everyone. Thousands of people in
this small town alone are unemployed. That’s the biggest change in the last ten
years, this unemployment.”
Later we go to Mieczysław’s for tea. His wife, Urszula, loosens up and be-
gins to grouse about how little money she makes, how inadequate their apart-
ment is, how if she had it to do over again she would learn English and move

The Sign of the Cross

27
to Canada. She works as a nursing assistant and earns about two hundred dol-
lars a month. She has an endearing, at times cloying, way of demanding sym-
pathy with a pout and a half cross-eyed glare.
Except for the language, I could be sitting in any living room in America,
talking with any family worried about why young people are so rude, why
in school they even put their feet up on the desk. What’s to be done about un-
employment? How do you make more money when the skills you have don’t
pay off?
Mieczysław wants to show off his computer and scanner and digital cam-
era. I wonder how he has the money for all of this, but it is none of my busi-
ness. Tonight the Internet connection is swift, and soon we are all reading
a facetious e-mail message from a friend, in which she attempts to identify
the major Polish food groups: pa˛czki, jabłka, kiełbasa—doughnuts, apples, and
sausage.
“Tomorrow I’ll have a new address,” I tell them as we say good night, “and
Adam will have a new maid.” They laugh and promise me I will learn more
than three Polish food groups.
More than religion or politics, it is language that separates people, and after
two weeks of struggling as a semiliterate I am beginning to speak English to
myself now and then just to hear the sound of it.
Today I learned the right way to say “camera.” You can say “kamera” here
and be understood, but in this place it means video camera. The correct way
to say “camera” is “aparat fotograficzny,” a “photographic apparatus.”
Polish is a coy language; its objective, to say things in as indirect a way as
possible. Polish writers had a field day with obtuse communist ideologues
around whom they wrote rings in the years between Yalta and Solidarity.
My grandmother never truly left Poland. The tree-lined roads to Sugajno,
the tilled fields, the lake, the chickens pecking in the yard—these are scenes
straight from her life in Michigan. She brought Poland with her to America,
as if a farm in Michigan were merely a farm in a distant province, a place so far
away that there was no possibility of leaving.
In the morning Adam comes for me in his white Honda. We heave all my
belongings into the trunk. I pay my bill and say good-bye. Equally quickly
we heave my things into my bedroom. Adam tosses aside his sons’ books and
games to make room on the shelves for my books.
“Make yourself at home. I have to go back to work,” he says and is gone,
and I am in my new home. Now I will have a Polish kitchen of my own,
but not like my grandmother’s, rather a modern kitchen in a Soviet-style block
house. I’ll be living in a real Polish home, a broken one no less.

chap t e r 5

28
 Each store in Nowe Miasto has its own flavor. The next day I go to my fa-
vorite for a chicken to roast in my new home. A self-confident blonde in her
thirties inquires about my language, then assures me that I speak just fine. She
grabs one of the headless plucked birds off the meat counter and unceremo-
niously wraps it in paper. She begins to sense the vacancy in my eyes when she
launches into a complicated assessment of its size and quality. “Will there be
anything else?” she says abruptly.
In another shop a gaggle of young women near the front cash register ask if
they can help me. I need egg noodles for my chicken soup, so I tell them I’m
looking for the makaron section. Then out comes the boss Pani, and she wants
to be the one to lead me to just the right package. She is charming and curi-
ous, and before long I have told her why I’m here and where I live and my
relatives names, all the while she is recommending noodles but apologizing
because she does not sell colanders, although I will need one to drain the
noodles. Instead she offers bathroom cleaner and napkins.
I have brought with me my faithful string bag, the kind that stretches like a
hammock with every addition to its net. I bought it in the United States when
overcome one day with a sentimental longing to stroll through European mar-
kets. I am the only person in Nowe Miasto with such a bag. The rest carry plas-
tic, or so it seemed for days, until today I noticed two women coming home
from market carrying sturdy willow baskets that reminded me of the ones my
grandfather wove from willows he had planted down the lane on our farm in
Michigan.
The women employees close in as I talk to the Pani. At times they smile, at
times stare blankly as if in wonder that someone has come from so far away. At
times they giggle at my attempts at Polish. I realize I must sound like the man
my mother laughed about for years, who came into the New Palace Bakery in
Hamtramck and demanded every time, “Give me bread!” She said at first she
thought him rude and mean, but she broke through his shell, only to find a
frightened man who had learned three words in English, and not one of them
was “please.” It’s a mistake I don’t plan to make. “Prosze˛,” I repeat all the way
out the door.

The Sign of the Cross

29
 chapte r 

Mothers and Sons

S

A dam has gone to work, and I

sit in the bathtub, fairly sure that before long I will hear his mother clomping
around downstairs. The bathroom walls and floors are made of ceramic tiles,
and the house has enough hot water to supply a steam bath—further proof
of Adam’s success as an entrepreneur in the new Poland. This is a palace com-
pared to the tiny closet of a bathroom in the stadium hotel, compared to the
bathrooms I knew as a child in Michigan. We didn’t have a bathroom until I
was seven years old.
Adam’s wife moved out less than a year ago, but her presence lingers—her
perfume on the bathroom counter, her sponge in a corner of the bathtub. The
curtains she picked out hang on every window; jars of sour pickles she canned
ferment in the cellar. And the kitchen wall is full of holes where she ripped out
cupboards and took them to her new apartment in town.
Adam’s mother, Pani Jadwiga Kopiczyńska, is everything a son could love.
She comes into the house carrying stuffed cabbages and shredded beets. The
best of both I’ve ever tasted. “Polish cooking does not have to be unhealthy,”
she announces, singing the virtues of fresh ingredients. “Meat a couple times
a week won’t hurt you, although it’s not really necessary to eat meat at all.”
Within an hour of meeting me she says she wishes her son were more like me,
that he cared about the curtains and the dishes. She invites me to hike in the
woods with her and her big homely bulldog named Puma, and, yes, she’d be

30
happy to show me which mushrooms are edible and to teach me how to stuff
a cabbage. She moves through the house efficiently, with one hand scooping
up everything that’s out of place and with the other depositing it where it be-
longs. “It’s really such a pretty house, isn’t it,” she sighs, sad to see that it no
longer holds her son’s family. She talks to me as if my inadequacy in Polish were
a minor inconvenience. She tells me she’ll bring me a kettle and serving dishes
and anything else I need if I want to cook in her son’s kitchen.
Today Adam waits with me in the bank as my traveler’s checks are changed
into cash so I can buy a car. While tellers stamp ferociously and scurry into the
backrooms, he concludes that “everything here is still far too complicated.”
Later, in a city office, we ask what I must do to buy a car. Then we walk
down the hall to the next office and present a form that we were given at the
first. There we are told that I can expect a two-day wait just to get an answer
from someone who knows whether what we have been given in the first office
will suffice.
We drive to a used-car lot at the edge of town near the monastery ruins,
where a red-faced salesman in his early thirties assures me that cash is all I need
to buy a car in Poland. The phrase “Would you buy a used car from this man?”
occurs to me as he strains to hold a fake smile.
We’ll make it simple, Adam proposes to me, as we pull away from the lot in
his Honda. “You’ll give me the money, I’ll buy the car, register it in my name,
add it to my insurance, and you’ll have a car.”
A simple plan it is, but a lot to expect from someone you barely know. It
can all wait until I buy a bottle of wine from Pani Wituchowska.
When I enter her shop, she’s chatting with someone else but makes an effi-
cient switch to me, with a smile and cheerful scolding. “So why have you taken
so long to return?” The other woman says “Good day” and sheepishly makes
her way out the door.
Pani Wituchowska is dressed, as always, to the nines, this time in a wool suit
with a silk scarf around her neck. She has prepared for my return and pulls an
envelope full of pictures from a shelf under the counter.
Two years ago she and her son had a private audience with Pope John Paul
II. She presents two color, eight-by-ten glossies to prove it. In one she is sit-
ting with John Paul II in a small chapel in Rome. In the other she and her son
are in his private library. She is shaking his hand. I cannot make out (and don’t
know how to ask) why the pope has granted them this moment, but if I were
the pope I’m sure I’d do the same for this lady.
“My son is very religious,” she says. “He wants me to go to Jerusalem this
year, but I don’t know. . . .” I tell her that I intend to go to Jerusalem in August.

Mothers and Sons

31
“August is when he wants to go,” she says, surprised. “My son says it’s the best
time of year to be in the Holy City.”
Then she shows me a picture of herself as a baby in a lace dress, others of
her as a young woman, looking like Princess Elizabeth just before she became
the Queen of England. In a series of studio portraits, she is wearing a floor-
length gown and holding a bouquet of lilies, a small pearl tiara nestled in her
brown hair. It is her cywilny śslub, civil marriage ceremony, she tells me.
“A girl one could love, isn’t she?” Pani Wituchowska observes, like a proud
artist commenting on her creation. “I learned to play the piano; my brother,
the violin. That’s how it was then. No discos,” she wiggles playfully and laughs.
“Sometimes in the evening my father would sit down with his cigar, and I
would play for him. That was what we did. There was no television.”
More pictures. In one she looks like Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon. Now
and then Pani Wituchowska reaches over the counter and places her hand
gently on my arm. “The pearls were real, the flowers flown in from Italy,” she
remembers. “We were wealthy then.” All of this she tells me not with regret
but with pride that such a life was possible—before the war, before the com-
munists. She shows me elegant pictures of her mother and father, startlingly
sharp studio photographs, the kind that seem to have stopped being taken
some time not long after the war.
“My husband was thirty years older than I,” she confides, “but he was such
an elegant man, always so beautifully dressed, and how he carried himself.” She
makes it clear that she was a virgin when she married him in  at the age
of twenty-three. “It wasn’t like this new business of going around with this one
and then that one before you are married.” Her husband is a distinguished,
gray-haired gentleman who gazes at her adoringly in each photograph.
She brings out later pictures: her son in short pants at his First Holy Com-
munion; her brother, the kawaler, bachelor, who died young of kidney failure.
And there are pictures of her life without her husband and father, her dimin-
ished family gathered around a dining table.
“I have a big home upstairs filled with old furniture,” she announces
proudly. “I like to keep it to myself,” she says. “My home is big, lots of room,
and after the shop closes, I go upstairs and have a little bit to eat, and this is all
mine. Even when I go to Toruń to concerts with my son, I want to get home
to sleep in my own bed with my own pillow in my own room. Do you know
what I mean?” She says that, after her husband died, many men pursued her,
but she didn’t want them, not even the ardent doctor who never gave up un-
til he died just a few years ago.

chap t e r 6

32
 What Pani Wituchowska misses most in this town is high style and ro-
mance, neither of which seems to exist in Nowe Miasto or in little villages like
Sugajno. For that, her son takes her to Toruń, to Warsaw, or to Rome.
“I’ve been walking everywhere,” I tell her.
“Yes,” she says, “you were in the cemetery Sunday. Then you went walking
in the woods. This is a small town. Everybody watches and talks.” She pauses.
“You must have dinner with us the next time my son comes to Nowe Miasto,
in my home above the store.”
“Our home,” Pani Wituchowska remembers. “The Germans came in Sep-
tember of . They took everything they wanted. They emptied our store
and trashed it. They broke the piano to pieces.”
“Did you flee?” I ask.
“No, we stayed and lived above the store,” she replies. “But my father
couldn’t bear to look at it all. Two years into the war he had a heart attack and
died.”
“My son doesn’t have many people in his life. His wife and child, of course,
but no aunts, uncles, or cousins, as you do. Maybe it would have been better
if I’d had more than one child. You are an only child, too,” she remembers.
“I don’t miss what I never had,” I tell her.
Then Pani Wituchowska gives me the lowdown on Adam. His wife will
never come back to him. He has girlfriends somewhere, she is sure. He lacks
namie˛tnośsć, she says. It’s a difficult word, but I am pretty sure I know what she
means. I check my dictionary under the English word “passion.” Exactly, she
confirms. “You knew what I meant, didn’t you?”
It’s nine in the morning the next day. I brush my teeth and go downstairs
to the kitchen for my cup of instant cappuccino. Adam is at the kitchen table,
talking on his cell phone. I can already tell by the obedient tone that it is his
mother. She has found a car for me to buy, a better deal than the used-car lot.
Into the yard a half hour later barrels a yellow Polski Fiat holding two young
men and a middle-aged blonde, a blondynka of the excessively yellow-haired
sort. She works for Adam’s father. They race through their sales pitch, and I
get the general idea. The car is eleven years old, has a radio, is badly rusted, and
the engine shakes under the hood so violently that it looks as if it will fly loose.
But it is one-third the price of the one at the used-car lot with no radio. I must
decide.
When faced with a similar decision I generally conclude that neither is the
right choice, and Adam happily agrees, so we decline the rattletrap and begin
looking through the newspaper. A phone call and an afternoon later I am the

Mothers and Sons

33
proud owner of a green,  Polski Fiat, a “Maluch,” as Poles have dubbed
these glorified lawn mowers, for , złoty—$—sold by a young man
about to enter obligatory military service.
As we close the deal a couple miles away at the young man’s house in Kur-
ze˛tnik, Adam is still in contraband mode, a holdover from his days of duping
the communists with merchandise smuggled in from Greece and Turkey. He
fusses over the sales receipt for several minutes, and then the young man, who
looks like my cousin in New Jersey, offers us coffee and signs where Adam tells
him to sign. Then Adam speeds off to work, and the young man hands me the
car keys. He chuckles and shakes his head as I pull away, the car lunging for-
ward, then jerking to a halt repeatedly as I get used to the clutch.
After work Adam returns home to watch the news. We learn that today in
Łódź, Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising
of , found a swastika painted on his house. He was among the outnum-
bered and virtually unarmed Jews who had been prisoners of the city’s ghetto
and fought bravely for nearly a month against Nazi forces. We shake our heads
in dismay. Outside, a train rumbles over the nearby trestle.
Pani Kopiczyńska arrives to prepare lunch, her hair freshly hennaed. She
brings food in little plastic containers or tightly sealed plastic bags. One con-
tainer is “very expensive, but worth it,” she says. To close it so the food stays
fresh, you have to use an apparatus that sucks out all the air. Today she has
brought a raw chicken breast, vegetables, and seasonings to show me how to
prepare a nutritious, tasty meal from fresh ingredients in a matter of minutes.
She moves in firm, efficient steps, back and forth from stove to table. First
she shreds carrots and celery root into a bowl, then chops garlic and a leek and
adds them. She shows me how to slice the chicken into the proper-sized pieces,
then heats up a little olive oil (which she has noticed I bought and of which
she approves). She browns the chicken with a few quick stirs and pats. Into
another pan she pours a little water, adds vegeta (the magic convenience spice I
ignore in Chicago because it seems to be largely salt), soy sauce, curry powder,
and water. The vegetables boil for a few minutes, in goes the chicken, and
smacznego—Polish stir fry. Bon appétit!
Pani Kopiczyńska has also brought little bags of snacks—soy products and
seeds—which she stashes away in the cupboard for Adam. She compliments
me on the new dish drainer I bought yesterday and on my sense of color, then
takes my big bowl of chicken soup out of the refrigerator, spoons out a few
pieces of meat for the cat, and shows me where such garbage is to be dumped
behind the garage. “Too old,” she says and marches out as swiftly as she came.
It’s snowing again, my third Sunday in Nowe Miasto Lubawskie. Spring

chap t e r 6

34
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
Pilgrim, John, solicitor, Chapel Field
Pilgrim, Mrs. Mary Ann, dressmaker, Pottergate street
Pinching, William, baker and confectioner, Bethel street
Pinnick, Robert, brick maker and lime burner, Silver road
Pinson, George, governor of castle, Castle hill
Pinson, Henry, ironmonger, Bank plain, (see Advertisement, p. 39)
Piper, Austin, commercial traveller, All Saints’ green
Piper, John Daniel, ironmonger (see Piper and Pigg); h West
parade, Earlham road
Piper and Pigg, furnishing and general ironmongers, oil and
colourmen, 5, London street
Piper, William, draper and family linen warehouse, London street
Pitcher, Henry, pawnbroker, St. John’s Maddermarket
Pitcher, Thomas, green grocer, and register office for servants,
Rose lane
Pitman, Mrs., Newmarket road
Pitt, John Ballard, surgeon, St. Stephen’s street
Pitts, Robert Christopher, pharmaceutical and family chemist, St.
Giles’ street; h Thorpe villa
Plane, Richard, Excise Coffee-house, Lower Goat lane
Plant, James, farmer, Trowse Newton
Platford, William, baker, Heigham street
Platten, Mrs. Mary, Eva Cottages, Magdalen road
Platten, Mrs. Mary, livery stables, Upper Surrey street
Playford, Arminger, bricklayer, and beer retailer, St. George’s
Bridge street
Playford, William, Rising Sun, Buff Coat lane
Pleasents, Benjamin, Calvert street
Plummer and Bloom, builders, &c., Bethel street (see
Advertisement, p. 21)
Plummer, Mr. Charles Taylor, 12, Nelson terrace, Grove road,
Lakenham
Plummer, Miss Elizabeth, teacher of music, St. Andrew’s Broad
street
Plummer, Neville, turner, Lower Westwick street
Plummer, Susan (preparatory school) Plummer’s yard, St. Martin’s
Plumsted, Frederick, hairdresser, Magdalen street
Plumsted, Robert, hairdresser and perfumer, Wensum street
Plumstead, Samuel James, cooper, and furniture broker, Coslany
street
Plumstead, Samuel, Three Tuns, Coslany street
Plumptre, Mrs. Elizabeth, Lower close
Plunkett, David, marine store dealer, St. Martin’s walls
Plunkett, John, beer retailer, St. Augustine’s
Pointer, Thomas, shopkeeper, Magpie road
Pointer, William, artificial manure manufacturer, Mousehold,
Thorpe hamlet
Poll, David, beer retailer, Bridge street, St. George’s
Poll, John, carpenter, &c., Oxford street, Unthank’s road
Poll, Robert, lime burner, Dereham road
Poll, Samuel, house agent, Magdalen street
Pollard, William, tobacconist, Bridge street, St. Miles’
Pond, James, shoe manufacturer, Barrack yard, St. Miles’
Pond, James, shoemaker, Adelaide street
Pond, Margaret, green grocer, Ber street
Pontifex, Sidney, surveyor, &c., 5, Dereham Road terrace
Poole, Mrs. M., Theatre street
Poole, Mr. Thomas, 5, The Crescent
Pooley, Samuel, cabinet maker, St. John’s street
Pooley, William, cabinetmaker, Charing cross
Pope, Rev. George, St. Martin’s at Palace plain
Pope, John, beer retailer, Barrack street
Pope, Robert Waller, merchant, &c., St. Benedict’s street
Pope, Mrs. William, milliner and dressmaker, 23, Bethel street
Pope, William, draper, 23, Bethel street
Porritt, Mr. David, 12, Newmarket road
Porter, James, Bowling Green hotel, Chapel field
Porter, The Misses, Thorpe hamlet
Porter, Robert, pork butcher, Lower King street
Porter, Robert, coal merchant, 2, West End terrace, Grapes’ hill
Porter, Samuel, commercial traveller, 7, Dereham road terrace
Porter, Thomas, Key and Castle, St. Martin’s at Oak
Postle, William, Esq., Chapel field
Potter, Mrs. Ann, Newmarket road
Potter, George, White Horse, Old Haymarket
Potter, Mrs. Harriet, dressmaker, 4, Little London street
Potter, James, manufacturer, 2, Grove Place terrace, Grove road,
Lakenham
Potter, Robert, shopkeeper, St. Peter’s Southgate
Potter, Thomas and Co., hatters and furriers, 5, The Walk
Poulter, Mrs. Maria, clothier, Lower Westwick street
Powell, Edward, greengrocer, Chapel Field road
Powell, Mrs. Edward, Bricklayers’ Arms, Union place
Powell, Mrs. Hannah, Theatre street
Powell, John, hairdresser, St. Benedict’s street
Powell, Robert, family linen warehouse, 36, London street
Powell, Sarah, Bricklayers’ Arms, Union place
Powell, Mr., 5, Portland place, Holl’s lane
Powell, William, superphosphate works, Oak street
Powley, Mrs. Catherine, 12, Richmond place, Lakenham
Powley, Mrs. Mary, down boa maker, Golden Dog lane
Powley, Robert, Jolly Farmers, Castle hill
Powley, William, lodging-house keeper, Theatre street
Pratt, Hornor, and Morgan, land agents and surveyors, and agents
to the Norwich Union Fire Office, Queen street
Pratt, James, Cross Keys, Magdalen street
Pratt, John, shoemaker, Coslany street
Pratt, John, Jolly Skinners, Oak street
Pratt, Richard Jeremiah, farrier and horse breaker,
Northumberland street, Heigham
Pratt, Robert, land agent and surveyor, Queen street; h 23,
Newmarket road
Pratt, Thomas, shoemaker, Union place
Pratt, William, farmer, St. Clement’s hill, New Catton
Pratt, William, watch and clock maker, St. Benedict’s street
Pratt, William, fishmonger, Market place
Pratt, William, wholesale grocer, cheese factor, and tallow
chandler, Wensum street; h Sprowston lodge
Prentice, John Smith, turner, St. Augustine’s street
Prentice, Samuel, saddler and harness maker, Magdalen street
Presents, Philip, bricklayer, Magpie road
Press, Edward, solicitor, commissioner for taking oaths in chancery
in England, commissioner for taking acknowledgments of deeds
by married women, coroner for the county, (Norwich district)
clerk to the Trustees of the Norwich and Watton turnpike roads,
and agent to the Norwich Union Fire office, Tombland
Press, Frederick George, shopkeeper, Philadelphia
Press, Miss Sarah, dressmaker, Rupert street, Union place
Preston, Mr. Arthur, solicitor, Bank plain
Price, John, Palace tavern, Palace street
Price, Joseph, shopkeeper, Coslany street
Price, Samuel Walter, shawl and dress printer, Chatham place,
Sussex street
Priest, George, upholsterer, Coach and Horses road, Union place
Priest, Mr. George, Priest’s buildings, St. Stephen’s road
Priest, George, watch and clock maker, silversmith and jeweller, 3,
Briggs’ street
Priest, Henry Raven, wine merchant, Pottergate street
Priest, Henry, wine and spirit merchant, (see Priest, Pilgrim, and
Co.) 1, St. Giles’ street
Priest, Mrs. Henry, boarding school for young gentlemen,
Pottergate street
Priest, Mr. Richard, 78, St. Giles’ street
Priest, Pilgrim, and Co., wine, spirit, and porter merchants, 1, St.
Giles’ street
Priest, Mrs. S., York place, Chapel Field road
Priest, Mr. Thomas, Rampant Horse st.
Priestly, James, manager at Mr. Sparks’ foundry, Scoles’ green
Prior, Robert, shopkeeper, St. Martin’s at Oak
Pritty, William, Half Moon, Dereham road
Proudfoot, Elizabeth and Ann, bakers and grocers, Trowse
Provart, William, agent to Steward, Patteson, Finch, and Co.,
brewers, &c., Green hills
Provart, Edgar, sheriffs’ officer, West Pottergate street
Prowne, Mr. James J., William street
Pryse, Miss Sarah, Upper Surrey street
Puxley, Mrs., All Saints’ green
Pulgrave, Mrs. Ann, Hall road, Lakenham
Pulham, William, grocer, tea dealer, and tallow chandler, St. Mary’s
plain
Pulham, William, grocer, Oak street
Pull, Elizabeth Mary, provision dealer, Bull close
Pullen, Mase, and Furse, writers, grainers, and decorative painters,
St. Lawrence lane (see Advertisement, p. 26)
Pulley, Henry, solicitor, Surrey street
Pulley, Mrs., Surrey street
Pummell, James, baker, Ten Bell lane
Punched, William, bookseller, Bank street
Puncher, William, second-hand bookseller, White Lion street
Purdy, Mrs. Hannah, Hall road, Lakenham
Puxley, James, Marquis of Gransby, Bishopgate street
Pycroft, Mrs. Ann, butcher, 53, St. Stephen’s street
Pycroft, Nathaniel, butcher, Red Lion st.
Pye, Mrs. Ann Rebecca, day school, Alma terrace, St. Augustine’s
gates
Pye, Jabez, beer retailer, Queen’s Arms, Pump street
Pye, Robert, Shakespeare, 63, Pottergate street
Pye, William Martin, grocer and tea dealer, St. Augustine’s street
Pye, William, bricklayer, St. Andrew’s hill
Pyle, Miss Harriet, 1, Nelson street, Heigham
Pymar, John, wool and silk merchant, and cotton and yarn agent,
Castle meadow; h Mile End
Quadling, Henry, plumber, glazier, and painter, Lower King street
Quantrill, Robert, shopkeeper, Mousehold
Quantrell, Sarah, general shopkeeper, Chapel street, Union place
Quantrell, William, bricklayer, Leonard’s buildings, Unthank’s road
Quin, James, supervisor of inland revenue, Hall road, New
Lakenham
Quintin, Charles St., Somerleyton street, Unthank’s road
Quintin, Jane St., beer retailer, Barrack street
Quinton, Benjamin, hairdresser, Thorn lane, Ber street
Quinton, Mrs. Elizabeth (preparatory school) Charles street,
Heigham
Quinton, Mrs. Hannah, dress maker, Grout’s Thoroughfare, St.
John’s Timberhill
Quinton, John, bookbinder, 36, Pottergate street
Quinton, John, librarian to the Literary Institution, h 18, Victoria
street, St. Stephen’s road
Quinton, Joseph, merchant’s clerk, Newmarket road
Quinton, William Benjamin, commercial traveller, Somerleyton
street, Unthank’s road
Raby, William, green grocer, Fishgate street
Rackham, Mrs. Hannah, lodging-house keeper, Mount Pleasant
Rackham, Mr. James, Calvert street
Rackham, John, Bee Hive, St. Benedict’s street
Rackham, Mr. Matthew, Thorpe hamlet
Rackham, Matthew Robert, solicitor and agent for the Imperial
Fire and Life Office, Surrey street
Rackham, Rev. Matthew John, rector of St. Augustine’s, Sussex
street
Rackham and Cook, solicitors, Tuck’s court, St. Giles’ street
Rackham, Thomas, relieving officer, Elm hill
Rackham, William, chemist and druggist, Upper Market
Rackham, Mr. William Simon, Unthank’s road
Radford, Mrs. Charlotte, The Chequers, Cowgate street
Radford, William, Black Chequers, Cowgate street
Rainger, George Henry, solicitor’s clerk, St. Giles’ road
Rainger, Mrs., 1, Vauxhall terrace
Ralph, John, boot and shoemaker, King street, Crook’s place
Rainbird, Jonathan, hairdresser, Market place
Rainbird, Samuel, carpenter, Elm hill
Ramm, Robert, Rose tavern, Palace street
Ramm, William, tailor, 6, John street, Rose lane
Ramsey, James, beer retailer and shoemaker, Ber street
Randall, Mr. Henry, St. Benedict’s road
Randall, James, boot and shoe maker, Magdalen street
Randall, Thomas, hairdresser, Union place
Randall, William, Union terrace, Union place
Rand, William Fell, surgeon, Sampson court, Tombland
Randle, William, corn miller, malt, flour, rice, and biscuit dealer, 10,
Upper Market (see Advertisement, p. 23)
Ranking, William Harcourt, physician, St. Giles’ street
Ransom, Mrs. Susan, Bracondale
Ransome, George, shopkeeper, Bridewell alley
Ransome, Harriet, Berlin wool and fancy repository, 18, The Walk
Ransome, James, watchmaker, Bridge street, St. Andrew’s
Ransome, Mrs., Hampden place, Dereham road
Rant, Jonathan, Ribs of Beef, Wensum street
Ratcliffe, William, tailor, 18, Distillery street
Rattee, Charles, shopkeeper, Grapes’ hill
Raven, Edward, Queen Anne, St. Miles’ Church street
Raven, Robert, green grocer, Tinkler’s lane
Rawling, Henry, shopkeeper, West Pottergate street
Ray, Mr. John, West End cottages, Chapel Field road
Ray, John Anthony, hairdresser, Bridge street, St. Lawrence
Ray, Orlando Dennis, auctioneer, Upper King street (see
Advertisement, p. 31)
Ray, Robert, Front row, New Lakenham
Raymes, Robert, basket maker, Rupert street, Union place
Rayner, James, butcher, Bartholomew street
Rayner, James, butcher, Nelson terrace, Dereham road
Rayner, John, solicitor’s clerk, St. Catherine’s plain
Raynes, Mr. Michael James, St. Giles’ road
Rayson, Mrs. Ann, St. Catherine’s plain
Read, Charles, bricklayer, Globe street, Union place; h
Somerleyton street
Read, Charles Thomas, bookbinder, Graham’s court, Upper market
Read, Charles Thomas, grocer, Eaton Cottage, Unthank’s road
Read, Mrs. Charlotte, dressmaker, 23, Alma square, Julian place
Read, George, plumber, glazier, and painter, Bartholomew street
Read, Gurney, coal merchant, Badding lane, Quay side
Read, James, joiner and builder, Prince’s street
Read, Joseph John, painter, Union cottages, Julian street
Read, Randall, miller, Magdalen street
Read, Robert, coal agent for E. C. Compy., Lower close
Read, Thomas William and Co., corn millers, maltsters, and coal
merchants, Trowse mills, and Cannon wharf, King street
Read, Mr. Trivett, Newmarket road
Read, William Dring, grocer and wine merchant, Orford hill
Read, William, coal merchant, Elm hill
Redgrave, Joseph, corn merchant and maltster, St. Miles’ Church
street; h The Close
Redgrave, The Misses, ladies’ school, The Priory, St. Stephen’s
Redgment, Kirby, butcher, Rupert street, Union place
Reeder, William, toll collector, Carrow gate
Reeve, Alfred, merchant’s clerk, 6, John street
Reeve, Charles, confectioner, Upper Westwick street
Reeve, Edward, whitesmith, Gildengate street
Reeve, Edward, whitesmith, Duke street
Reeve, Miss Eliza Susanna, day school, Kimberley street, Unthank’s
road
Reeve, Frederick, carpenter, &c., Lower Westwick street
Reeve, James, dyer, Duke street
Reeve, Horace, pianoforte tunist, Calvert street
Reeve, Louisa, milliner, Lower Westwick street
Reeve, Mr. Richard, Unthank’s road
Reeve, Simms, barrister, 18, St. Giles’ street
Reid, John Cowan, draper and tea dealer, Douro terrace, Heigham
grove, St. Giles’ road
Reid, Samuel, linen and woollen draper, and silk mercer, St.
Andrew’s Hall plain
Restieaux, Joseph, registrar of marriages, and agent for the Law
Union Life and Fire office, Lady’s lane
Reynolds, Mr. Edward, Tamworth terrace, Unthank’s road
Reynolds, Edward, manure manufacturer, Pockthorpe hamlet; h
Unthank’s road
Reynolds, Edward and Compy., St. Ann’s oil mills, King street
Reynolds, Mrs. Jemima, day school, Saw Mill yard, Coslany street
Reynolds, Joseph James, general shopkeeper, Rupert street, Union
place
Reynolds, Mr. Josiah, miller and farmer, Philadelphia
Reynolds, Laban, shoemaker, Chapel street, Crook’s place
Reynolds, Lorenzo, shoe manufacturer, Alder’s buildings, St.
Catherine’s plain
Reynolds, William, butcher, Ber street
Reynolds, William, nurseryman and seedsman, Hall road,
Lakenham
Reynoldson, Mrs. Mary Lavender, lodging-house keeper, St.
Lawrence lane
Rice, James, Free Trade tavern, William street
Rice, Joseph, telegraph clerk, John street, Rose lane
Rice, William Herbert, teacher of music, Somerleyton street
Richards, Rev. John, Magdalen road, New Catton
Richardson, James, wheelwright, Timberhill street
Richardson, Samuel, schoolmaster at City gaol; h Fox and Hounds’
court, Ber street
Richardson, Thomas Joseph, banker’s clerk, 1, Oxford street,
Unthank’s rd.
Richardson, William, tailor, 21, Bartholomew street
Riches, Mrs. Ann, lodging-house keeper, Brunswick road
Riches, Edward, hairdresser, Bedford street, St. Andrew’s
Riches, Eliza, grocer, Church street, St. Julian’s
Riches, Miss Frances, Infirmary road
Riches, Mrs. Hannah, St. Saviour’s lane
Riches, Henry, Golden Lion, St. John’s Maddermarket
Riches, Henry, hairdresser, Chapel street, Crook’s place
Riches, Henry C., tailor, Castle meadow
Riches, John, Three Kings tavern, St. Benedict’s street
Riches, Lucy, milliner and dressmaker, Queen street
Riches, Robert, hairdresser and tobacconist, Timberhill street
Riches, Simon, Ship inn, St. Peter’s Southgate
Riches and Skoyles, tailors and outfitters, Davey place
Riches, Miss Susannah, straw hat maker, Queen street
Riches, Thomas, Earl of Leicester arms, Dereham road
Riches, Thomas, beer retailer, Pump street
Riches, Thomas, tailor, 32, Victoria street
Riches, Mr. Thomas, 7, Richmond place, Lakenham
Riches, Thomas, tailor, Grapes’ hill
Riches, William, wheelwright and blacksmith, Barn road
Riches, William, wheelwright, Charles street, Heigham
Rider, Samuel, tailor, &c., St. Margaret’s Church alley
Rigg, Rev. Richard, M.A., rector of St. Clement’s and St. Michael’s
Coslany, Bethel street
Riley, Francis, Waggon and Horses, Tombland
Ringer, Mrs. Elizabeth, Paragon street
Ringer, Mrs. Susanna, St. Catherine’s plain
Ringer, William, Berlin wool and fancy repository, 7, The Walk; h
Tharston
Riseborough, Elizabeth Francis, Point House cottage, Ipswich road
Rivett, Francis, warehouseman, &c., Old Post Office court; h
Richmond Hill house, Ber street gates
Rivett, John, Two Quarts, Bridge street, St. George’s
Rivett and Harmer, wholesale clothiers, and Manchester
warehousemen, Old Post Office court
Rix, Charles Edward, grocer, Dereham road
Rix, George, temperance house, Golden Ball street
Rix, Henry, wholesale brush manufacturer, 53, Duke street
Rix, Mrs. Mary, Thorpe hamlet
Rix, Robert, King’s Head, Upper St. Giles’ street
Rix, William, White Horse, Bridge street, St. Lawrence
Rix, William, draper, Pump street
Rix, William, Black Horse, Finket st.
Roach, Edward, rent collector and accountant, Southwell road
Robberds, Charles Leicester, paper manufacturer, (see Robberds
and Money) Lyng
Robberds, John Mann, solicitor, Ber Street gates
Robberds and Money, paper manufacturers and millers, Lyng mills;
office, Chapel Field road
Roberts, Henry, medical botanist, Rising Sun road
Roberts, James, shoemaker, Timberhill street
Roberts, Mr. Joseph, Holl’s lane
Roberts, Mrs. Susan, Thorpe hamlet
Roberts, William Peter, tailor, Chapel loke, Surrey road
Robertson, Henry, upholsterer and cabinet maker, Grove road,
Lakenham
Robbins, Mrs. Ann, 3, York place, Chapel Field road
Robbins, Mrs., straw bonnet maker, West Pottergate street
Robins, George, clerk, 2, Trafalgar place, Dereham road
Robinson, Christopher, carver and gilder, Pottergate street
Robinson, Mr. George, Chapel field
Robinson, James, horse dealer, 5, Victoria street
Robinson, John, cork manufacturers, Cork Cutters’ Arms, Bridge
street, St. George’s
Robinson, Mrs. Mary, Chapel Field road
Robinson, Thomas, green grocer, St. Benedict’s street
Robinson, Mr. William Henry, St. Faith’s lane
Robison, Mr. Charles Morley, Pitt street
Robison, John (of the firm of Grout and Co.) Unthank’s road
Roe, Mr. Bartholomew, St. Paul’s Back lane
Roe, Charlotte, Queen Victoria, Pottergate street
Roe, Isaac, chimney sweeper, Magdalen street
Roe, John, cabinet maker, Ber street
Roe, John C., merchant, St. George’s plain
Roe, Samuel, tailor and shopkeeper, Distillery street
Roe, Sarah, Bank street
Rogers, Charles, tailor, 47, Bethel street
Rogers, Edmund Dawson, reporter for the Norfolk News, West
parade, Earlham road
Rogers and Havers, photographic artists and dealers in
photographic materials, Davey place
Rogers, Mr. Henry, Thorpe hamlet
Rogers, John, blacksmith, Muspole street
Rogers, Joseph, clerk, 27, Victoria street
Rogers and Page, wholesale brush and clog manufacturers,
Wensum street
Rogers, Samuel, shoe manufacturer, Gun lane
Rolfe, Mrs. Harriet, Lower close
Roll, Robert, Globe inn, Globe street, Union place
Roll, Robert, Dove tavern, Muspole street
Rolling, Edmund, carpenter, Grove hill, St. Giles’ road
Rolls, Edward, bricklayer, Holl’s lane
Roofe, Ann, baker, Thorpe hamlet
Root, Christiana, Boy and Cup, Bedford street, St. Andrew’s
Root, Robert, carver and gilder, Golden Dog lane
Rope, Charles, whitesmith, Surrey street
Rope, Robert William, wharfinger, St. Benedict’s street
Rope, William, green grocer, Rising Sun lane
Roper, Agnes, dressmaker, Ten Bell lane
Rose, George, cork manufacturer, 68, St. Stephen’s street
Rose, James, beer retailer, King street
Rose, John, general dealer, 5, Golden Ball street
Rose, Philip, baker, Coslany street
Rose, Mr. Philip William, St. Giles’ road
Rose, Robert, Hotpressers’ Arms, Coslany street
Rose, Mrs. Sarah, fancy repository, Castle street
Rose, Thomas, baker and confectioner, St. Benedict’s street
Rose, William, Red Lion, Magdalen street
Rose, William, brazier and tin-plate worker, Gildengate street
Ross, Rev. John, M.A., Thorpe hamlet
Ross, Mrs. Priscilla Sarah, 4, Vauxhall terrace, Julian place
Rossi, George, watch and clock maker, silversmith, and jeweller,
Market place; h Eaton
Roulston, Mr. Thomas, 10, Richmond Place, Lakenham
Roundtree, Charles, fishmonger, Crow’s yard, Westwick street
Roundtree, Charles, fishmonger, Barrack street
Rouse, Harriet, grocer and tea dealer, St. Stephen’s street
Rouse, James, horse clipper, &c., Currier’s Arms, St. Giles’ street
Rouse, Richard, hawker, Globe lane
Rout, George, grocer, Cowgate street
Row and Bridges’ chemists, &c., St. Stephen’s street
Row and Co., manufacturing chemists, Surrey grove
Rowland, Daniel, The Raven, King st.
Royall, Daniel, tailor, Upper King street
Royall, Mr. Daniel, Palace street
Royall, James, shopkeeper, Elm hill
Ruburt, Justus, secondhand boot and shoe seller, Lower Westwick
street
Rudd, Edward F. G., accountant, 10, St. Stephen’s square
Rudd, Elizabeth, The Little Buck, Oak street
Rudd, Francis Robert, tailor, 4, St. Julian street’s
Rudd, George John, tailor, Surrey street
Rudd, Mrs. Hannah, box maker, St. Stephen’s Back street
Rudd, Henry, professor of music, Duke street
Rudd, James, grocer, St. Catherine’s plain
Rudd, John, turner, Thorn lane, Ber street
Rudd, John, chemist, St. George’s plain
Rudd, Joseph, currier, &c., (see Rudd and Paston) Grapes’ hill
Rudd, Mary Ann, dressmaker, Calvert street
Rudd, Noah, butcher, Duke street
Rudd and Paston, curriers, Grapes’ hill
Rudd, Robert, grocer, Coslany street, St. Miles’
Rudd, Thomas, furniture broker, cabinet and chair maker, Ber
street
Rudd, William, turner, Ber street
Rudling, James, coach builder, Palace street
Rudling, William, butcher, Ber street
Ruddock, Thomas, post office clerk, 48, Pottergate street
Rudrum, Christopher, butcher, Lower King street
Rudrum, Isaac Samuel, beer retailer, Pottergate street
Rudrum, Spencer Drake, inspector of weights, St. Faith’s terrace
Rumball, John George, news agent, Vauxhall street, Julian place
Rumbold, John, grocer, Grapes’ inn, Howard street, Lakenham
Rump, Mr. James, 33, Victoria street
Rump, John, hosier, haberdasher, and fancy repository, 8, Old
Haymarket
Rump, Robert and James, builders and contractors, Colegate
street
Rump, Thomas, grocer, Golden Ball street
Runacres, William, solicitor’s clerk, Oxford street, Unthank’s road
Rushbrook, Robert, shopkeeper, St. Julian’s street
Russell, Benjamin, watchmaker, Magdalen street
Russell, George Robert, bricklayer and plasterer, Southwell street
Russell, Henry, piano-forte manufacturer, Magdalen street
Russell, William, baker, 16, Row, Old Church street, Lakenham
Rust, James Barrow, tailor and draper, Bethel street
Rust, Mrs. Hannah, hosier, Bridge street, St. Miles’
Rust, Rev. Cyprian Thomas, L.L.B., 12, The Crescent, Chapel Field
road
Rust, Joseph, wood turner, Charing cross
Rust, Robert, Elm tavern, Prince’s street
Rust, Samuel, wood turner, Bee Hive yard, St. Benedict’s
Rutherford, Walter, schoolmaster, Nelson street, Heigham fields
Sacret, Thomas, boot and shoe maker, Magdalen street
Sadd, Mr. William, Coslany street
Sadd, David, grocer and draper, Gloucester place, St. Catherine’s
plain
Sadd, William, solicitor, Theatre street; h 1, Heigham road
Sadler, James, sen., horse-hair manufacturer, Oak street
Sadler, James, jun., horse hair manufacturer, Oak street
Sadler, John, Roebuck, Church Walk, New Lakenham
Saint, Samuel, mathematician, John street, Heigham
Sainty, Mary, lodging-house keeper, Bethel street
Salkind, Simon, travelling jeweller, Gildengate street
Salmons, John, green grocer, Lower King street
Salmon, John, Nelson tavern, and tailor, West Pottergate street
Salmon, Thomas, tailor, Rupert street, Union place
Salter, William, Mitre tavern, Briggs’ street and Rampant Horse
street
Sampson, H., boot and shoe maker, Charles street, Heigham
Sampson, William, boot and shoe maker, 24, Bethel street
Samuel, Mrs. Emma, pawnbroker (see Joseph and Samuel)
Sandell, Edward Harrison, The Cinder Ovens, King street gates
Sanderson, Ann, tobacconist, Magdalen street
Sands, Anthony, artist, Grapes’ hill
Sands, John, Free Masons’ Arms, Southwell street, Lakenham
Sapey, John, lodging-house keeper, St. Stephen’s Church lane
Sapey, Thomas, London Coffee House, Rampant Horse street
Saul, Miss Elizabeth, Grapes’ hill
Saul and Frazer, city saw mills, St. Martin’s at Palace plain
Saul, John, Windmill, Ber street
Saul, Joseph, box manufacturer, West Pottergate street
Saul, Sarah Ann, lodging-house keeper, Surrey road, St. Michael at
Thorn
Saul, William Staff, timber merchant, 61, and 62, Pottergate street
Saunders, Mr. James, 4, York place, Chapel Field road
Saunders, Mrs. Julia, tailoress, Grout’s thoroughfare
Savage, Mrs. Mary, butcher, Cowgate street
Savage, Robert, butcher, Bridge street, St. Andrew’s
Savary, David, green grocer, Rupert street, Wellington street,
Union place
Sawford, Ann Maria, milliner and dress maker, Cow hill, St. Giles’
Sawyer and Co., cutlers, opticians, and dealers in photographic
goods, 42, London street
Sawyer, John (see Sawyer and Co.) Chapel field
Say, Mrs. Sarah, plumber, painter, and glazier, 14, St. Giles’ street
Sayer, Benjamin, Heart’s Ease, Thorpe hamlet
Sayer, Daniel, brick and tile maker, Oak street
Sayer, Daniel, veterinary surgeon, Pottergate street
Sayer, John, bird and animal preserver, Upper St. Giles’ street
Sayer, The Misses (boarding school) New road, Town close
Sayer, The Misses Ann and Charlotte, West Pottergate street
Sayer, Richard Henry, draper, Unthank’s road
Sayer, William, currier and leather seller, Upper Westwick street
Scales, Jeremiah, timber dealer, Chapel Field road, and Oxford
street, Unthank’s road (see Advertisement, p. 30)
Scales, Mary Ann, Trafalgar tavern, Trafalgar street
Scarles, Charles, solicitor’s clerk, 9, Heigham terrace, Dereham
road
Scarlett, Robert, Surrey tavern, Surrey road
Scofield, Susan, straw bonnet and dress maker, 52, Upper St.
Giles’ street
Scott, Benjamin, cooper, Chapel Field road
Scott, Mr., commercial traveller, Heigham road
Scott, Charles Turner, sofa, couch, chair, and mattress
manufacturer, Gildengate street
Scott, Miss Eliza, dressmaker, 6, Crescent place, Chapel Field road
Scott, Mrs. Elizabeth, St. Giles’ terrace
Scott, Mrs. Emily, furniture broker, Charing cross
Scott, Francis, tailor and clothes’ cleaner, Magdalen street
Scott, George James, furniture broker, 9, Timberhill street
Scott, James, cutler, &c., register office, St. Andrew’s hill, corner of
London street
Scott, John, professor of languages, Bank street
Scott, John Turtle, boot and shoe maker, Magdalen street
Scott, John, grocer and boot maker, Ber street gates
Scott, Levi, wheelwright, Brunswick road
Scott, Peter Thomas, brush and patten maker, White Lion street
Scott, Mr. Robert, St. Andrew’s Broad street
Scott, Robert Bagg, cabinet maker and upholsterer, 18, Charing
cross and St. John’s street; h St. Andrew’s Broad street
Scott, Rev. Thomas, Baptist minister, Grove house, Thorpe hamlet
Scott, William, draper, &c., St. Stephen’s street
Scott, William, grocer, &c., Magdalen gates
Scott, William, wholesale and retail lead and window glass dealer,
plumber, glazier, and painter, Bedford street; h Pottergate street
(see Advertisement, p. 40)
Scott, Mr. William, Hall road, Lakenham
Scott, William John, furniture and mangle warehouse, Bridge
street, St. George’s
Scotter, Henry, 5, Charles street, Heigham
Scotton, Mary, confectioner, 2, Red Lion street
Scowen, John, Saracen’s Head, St. Giles’ street
Scrutton, Henry, grocer, Bethel street
Seager, Elizabeth and Son, glovers and hair dressers, St. John’s
street
Seager, Robert, hairdresser, Castle meadow
Seaman, Coriolanus, furniture broker, St. James’ street
Seaman, David, horse dealer, Chapel Field road
Seaman, Elizabeth, shopkeeper, St. Martin’s at Palace street
Seaman, Mr. George, Caledonia terrace, Dereham road
Seaman, Grimmer and Co., importers of foreign wines and spirits,
and sole agents for Truman, Hanbury and Co.’s London stout
porter, St. John’s Maddermarket
Seaman, Henry, grocer and draper, Old Church path, New
Lakenham
Seaman, Mrs. Martha, beer retailer, St. James’ street
Seaman, Martha (day school) West End street, Holl’s lane,
Heigham
Seaman, Richard, grocer and tea dealer, Gildengate street
Seaman, Robert, Esq., Bracondale
Seaman, Samuel, fishmonger, Bull close
Seaman, Walter, woodman, Waterloo place, New Catton
Searby, Wright, and William Martin, dispensing and family
chemists, White Lion street
Searles, George, engraver, Trory street, Unthank’s road (see
Advertisement, p. 30)
Secker, Mr. John, Sussex street
Sedgwick, Rev. Professor, Lower close
Sedgwick, Rev. Richard, Lower close
Seed, Henry, woolstapler, Muspole street; h Eaton Hill House
Seeley, Elizabeth and Hannah (commercial boarding house) St.
Stephen’s plain
Seeley, William, station master at Victoria station, St. Stephen’s
Seeley, John, beer retailer, and musician, St. Augustine’s street
Seeley, William, pork butcher, Pottergate street
Seeley, William, Priest’s buildings, St. Stephen’s road
Seer, William George, shoemaker, Botolph street
Selby, Charles James, grocer, Pitt street
Self, James, The Duke of Wellington, St. Stephen’s street
Self, Mrs. Mary, butcher, Tombland
Self, Thomas, gas fitter, painter, &c., Tombland
Self, Thomas, beer retailer, Red Lion street
Self, Thomas, grocer, &c., Oak street
Self, Thomas, gas fitter and bell hanger, Pottergate street (see
Advertisement, p. 20)
Seppings, William, grocer, West End street, Heigham
Severn and Blackwell, dressmakers, Botolph street
Severn, James, shoemaker, Calvert street
Severn, Samuel, St. Paul’s tavern, Cowgate street, St. Paul’s
Sexton, Edward, Whalebone inn, and maltster and brewer, New
Catton
Sexton, Horace, bricklayer and plasterer, Lower Westwick street
Sexton, John, pig dealer, St. Catherine’s plain, Lakenham
Sexton, John, grocer, &c., Scoles’ green
Sexton, Joseph, dyer and dresser, Calvert street
Sexton, Robert William, plasterer, Calvert street
Shalders, Albert, Cadogan place, Cross street, Unthank’s road
Shalders, Mrs. Charlotte, milliner, Bethel street
Shalders, Edward, grocer, St. Benedict’s street, St. Lawrence
Shalders, John, hydraulic engineer, and gutta percha depôt, Bank
plain (see Advertisement, p. 17)
Shalders, Mr. John, Bethel street
Shalders, Noah, pawnbroker, silversmith, and jeweller, Westlegate
street
Shalders, Thomas, blacksmith, Hay hill, Market place
Sharman, Mr. Henry, Green hills, Aylsham road
Sharman, Miss Rachel, dressmaker, Eldon row, Chapel Field road
Sharon, Anthony, engineer and machinist, Pottergate street
Sharon, Mrs. Rebecca, dressmaker, 37, Pottergate street
Sharp, Daniel, solicitor, Surrey street; h 7, Lakenham terrace, City
road
Sharp, Frederick, solicitor’s clerk, Surrey place, Lakenham
Sharp, Mrs. Leonora, lodging-house keeper, Chapel Field road
Sharpe, Benjamin Thomas, solicitor, manager of the Norwich and
East of England Permanent Mutual Benefit Building Society, and
agent to the Star and British Empire Life, Manchester and
General Fire, and County Hailstorm Insurance Compys., York
house, Chapel Field road
Sharpe, Henry, tailor, Somerleyton street, Unthank’s road
Sharpe, Rev. William Robert, M.A., 8, Chapel field
Shaw, Miss Elizabeth, dressmaker, Douro terrace, Heigham grove,
St. Giles’ road
Shaw, William, banker’s clerk, Grapes’ hill
Shearing, Miss Sophia, baby linen establishment, Rampant Horse
street
Sheedy, Mrs., Rachel, Rosary, Thorpe hamlet
Shenfield, Mrs., Upper St. Giles’
Shephard, Isaac, cooper and measure maker, Magdalen street
Shephard, William, shoemaker, Mill lane, New Catton
Sheppard, Mrs. Ann, ladies’ boarding school, St. Benedict’s plain
Sheppard, Elizabeth, baker, Upper market
Sheppard, Robert, hop and seed merchant, Weston’s court, Upper
market; h St. Benedict’s plain, Pottergate street
Sheward, William, pawnbroker, Lower King street
Shibley, William, house and land agent, York terrace, Chapel Field
road
Shickle, Mrs. Ann, 15, The Crescent
Shickle, Robert, Greyhound Gardens, Ber street
Shields, Daniel, hoop and rim manufacturer, Prospect square,
Scoles’ green
Shields, Joseph William, accountant, Trafalgar street, Lakenham
Shields, William, tallow chandler, St. Stephen’s Church alley
Shildrake, Thomas, banker’s clerk, Bracondale
Shildrake, William, watch and clock maker, silversmith and
jeweller, 34, London street
Shires, James, gun-flint cutter, Alma terrace, St. Augustine’s road
Shirley, Mr. Thomas, 6, Surrey terrace, Lakenham
Short, Edmund Barker, (at Grout and Co.’s) 3, Dereham Road
terrace
Short, Henry, wine and dry cooper, Middle street, St. George’s
Short, John Edmund, cashier at Grout and Co.’s, 8, Dereham road
terrace
Short, Mrs., milliner and dressmaker, Trory street, Unthank’s road
Short, Mrs., 2, Dereham Road terrace
Short, Miss Mary, milliner and dressmaker, 4, Gildengate street
Shorten, James, fly proprietor, Bull inn, Magdalen street
Shorting, Mrs. Mary, Chapel field
Shreeve, George, baker and grocer, Tinkler’s lane, Heigham
Shreeve, John, shoeing smith, Magdalen street
Sibel, Mrs. Averill, Pottergate street
Sibley, Mrs. Rudd, milliner, &c., Fisher’s lane
Sidney and Armes, curriers and leather cutters, 5, Dove street
Sidney and Ladyman, wholesale tea dealers, 6, Gentleman’s walk,
and 8, Ludgate hill, London
Sidney, Thomas, (see Sidney and Ladyman); h Bow’s manor,
London
Sillett, Mr. James B., All Saints’ green
Silvey, William, confectioner, White Lion street
Simpson, Charles, wood turner, St. Lawrence lane; h Charing cross
Simpson, Mr. Frederic, York villa, Chapel Field road
Simpson, Mrs. Frederick, Mount Pleasant, Newmarket road
Simpson, George, master of the Great Hospital, St. Helen’s square
Simpson, George Elward, solicitor, clerk to the Visiting Justices of
the Castle, at Norwich, and agent to the London Fire and
European Life offices, &c., Tombland
Simpson, Matthias, wood turner, Bear and Staff yard, Fisher’s lane
Simpson, Robert, grocer and tea dealer, Magdalen street
Simpson, Thomas, butcher, Charles street, Heigham
Singleton, Mrs. J., 13, Victoria street, St. Stephen’s road
Sinkler, John, builder, Magdalen street
Sissen, Miss Louisa, dressmaker, Rose lane
Sizeland, Adam, Bethel street
Skelton, John Smith, tailor and woollen draper, 16, St. Giles’ street
Skelton, Joseph, dyer, Gildengate street
Skelton, John, manufacturer, Fishgate street; h Palace plain
Skerritt, George, baker, Upper Regent street, Union place
Skillings, William, shoemaker, St. George’s plain
Skipper, Henry, confectioner, and register office for servants,
Magdalen street
Skipper, John, solicitor, and secretary to the Equitable Fire Office,
Bank street; h Thorpe hamlet (see Skipper and Son)
Skipper, Mrs. Rachel, dressmaker, Surrey road
Skipper and Son, solicitors, Bank street
Skipper, Mr. William, (see Skipper and Son); h Thorpe hamlet
Skippon, James, jun., clerk to Commissioners of Income Tax,
schedule E; agent for the Lancashire Insurance Compy.;
 secretary to Norwich and Norfolk Angler’s Society; 3, St. Faith’s
terrace, St. Faith’s lane
Skippon, William, the Locomotive tavern, Rupert street, Union
place
Skoyles, C. (see Riches and Skoyles); h Castle meadow
Skoyles, William, furniture broker, St. Benedict’s street
Skoyles, Samuel, shopkeeper, Barrack street
Slack, Mrs. Elizabeth (day school) Grove place, New Lakenham
Slack, Jacob Henry, engineer, &c., Grapes’ hill
Slack, Robert Hugh, machinist, Cow hill, St. Giles’
Slade and Rapier, homœopathic chemists, 7, London street
Slater, John, bookseller, Castle hill
Slater, Joseph, tailor and woollen draper, Tombland
Slaughter, Christopher, shopkeeper, St. Augustine’s street
Slipper, Charles, carpenter, and toy maker, Pig lane
Slipper, Elizabeth, green grocer, Grove place, New Lakenham
Slonitz, Leopold, professor of languages, 26, Bethel street
Sloper, John, Lame Dog tavern, Lame Dog road
Sloper, John, fruiterer, Queen street
Smith, Alfred, shopkeeper, Fishgate street
Smith, Benjamin, Cattle Market inn, and horse and gig letter,
Cattle Market
Smith, Benjamin, furniture broker, Upper Westwick street
Smith, Mr. Charles, City road, Lakenham
Smith, Mr. David, Catton road
Smith, Edward, chemist and druggist, Calvert street
Smith, Edward, Waterloo tavern, and wine and spirit merchant,
Market place
Smith, Edward, market gardener, Dereham road
Smith, Mrs. Elizabeth, The Coach and Horses, Union place
Smith, George, coach maker, 3, St. Stephen’s square
Smith, George, Greyhound, Rampant Horse street
Smith, Mrs. George William, St. Giles’ street
Smith, George, linen draper, hosier, &c., 10, Ber street
Smith, George, clerk, 22, Paragon street
Smith, George Lincoln, merchant’s clerk, Trory street, Unthank’s
road
Smith, Miss Helena, Nelson terrace, Grove road
Smith, Henry, shoemaker, and shopkeeper, Ber street
Smith, Henry George, Victoria tavern, Adelaide street, Heigham
fields
Smith, Henry, grocer, King street, Crook’s place
Smith, James, dealer, Prospect place, Aylsham road
Smith, Mr. James, 24, Newmarket road
Smith, James, shopkeeper, Botolph st.
Smith, James Wilkin, baker, Stump cross, Magdalen street
Smith, John, yeast manufacturer, St. Augustine’s street
Smith, Mr. John, West End terrace, Earlham road
Smith, John, Bear and Staff, Fisher’s lane
Smith, John, tea dealer, and Birmingham and Staffordshire
warehouse, Timberhill street
Smith, John, cheese factor, Stamp Office yard, St. Andrew’s Broad
street
Smith, John Joseph, baker and confectioner, Ber street
Smith, John and Samuel, cigar, snuff, and tobacco warehouse, 7,
Gentleman’s Walk
Smith, John Watson, Rose tavern, Upper King street, and Rose
lane
Smith, John William, baker and confectioner, Dove street
Smith, Jonas, pork butcher, Rising Sun lane
Smith, Mrs. Joseph, Paragon street
Smith, Joseph, King’s Arms, and boat builder and bath house, Oak
street, St. Martin’s gates
Smith, Joseph De Carle, Magdalen street (see Smith and Sons)
Smith, Miss Lydia, shopkeeper, Botolph street
Smith, Mrs., 9, Surrey terrace, Lakenham
Smith, Miss Mary, 4, Langham place, Dereham road
Smith, Mary Ann, milliner and dress maker, Rigby’s court, St. Giles’
Smith, Mrs. Neave, Priest’s buildings, St. Stephen’s road
Smith, Richard Buck (see Smith and Sons); h Market place
Smith and Sons, dispensing and family chemists, Market place,
and Magdalen street
Smith, Samuel E., carpenter, &c., City road, Lakenham
Smith, Samuel James, draper, Magdalen street
Smith, Samuel Howard, working jeweller, Royal Hotel street, Back
of the Inns; h St. Benedict’s road
Smith, Samuel, jobbing smith, St. Martin’s gates
Smith, Samuel, fowl dealer, Scoles’ green
Smith, Mrs. Sarah, glover, Magdalen street
Smith, Mrs. Susan, 11, St. Stephen’s square
Smith, Mr. Thomas, Hall road, Lakenham
Smith, Thomas, umbrella and parasol maker, St. Benedict’s street
Smith, William, cattle dealer, Newman’s yard, Ber street
Smith, William, haberdasher and general warehouseman, 11,
Lower Goat lane
Smith, William, shoemaker, Chapel loke
Smith, William, fowl dealer, Coburgh street
Smith, William, veterinary surgeon, Pottergate street
Smith, Mr. William L., Mount Pleasant
Smith, William, nursery and seedsman, Nelson Cottage, Nelson st.,
Heigham
Smith, William, tin plate worker, St. Benedict’s street
Smith, William, boat builder, Oak street
Smith, William Richard, baker, &c., St. Benedict’s street
Smith, William Richard, confectioner, Palace street
Smith, William Wilson, shoemaker, Trory street, Lakenham
Smithdale, Thomas, millwright, engineer, iron, and brass founder,
St. Ann’s foundry, King street (see Advertisement, p. 9)
Smyth, William, repairer of musical instruments, Union place
Snape, Mrs. Jane, 68, St. Giles’ street
Snelling, James Gage, confectioner and fruiterer, Rampant Horse
street
Snelling, John, Yarmouth Arms, Pudding lane, Market place
Snelling, Robert, paper pill box manufacturer, Hawthorn row,
Heigham
Snelling, Thomas, grocer and tea dealer, 42, and 43, Magdalen
street
Snelling, Thomas, beer retailer, King street
Snelling, William, boot and shoemaker, and gutta percha
warehouse, Orford hill
Snowdon, Henry, linen and woollen drapers, silk mercer, &c.,
Bridge street, St. George’s
Snowdon, John Christopher and Co., linen and woollen drapers,
and silk mercers, Market House, 9, The Walk
Snowling, John, Duke’s Palace Inn; postmaster, Duke’s Palace
street
Soman, David, wholesale boot and shoe manufacturer, Muspole
street
Soman and Howes, printers, 4, St. Andrew’s hill
Soman, Philip (see Soman and Howes) 4, St. Andrew’s hill
Sommerville, Joseph, John, and Robert, drapers and hatters,
Magdalen street
Soons, John, seedsman and florist, St. Augustine’s
Sothern, Mr. Samuel, St. Martin’s at Palace plain
South, Mr. George, Unthank’s road
Southgate, Benjamin, saw sharper, St. Martin’s lane
Southgate, John G., baker, Upper Heigham
Southon, Edmund, cap maker, St. James’ street
Sowells, Mrs. Charlotte, 5, Chapel Field road
Sowels, John, Paragon street, St. Giles’ road
Sowels, Mrs. Mary, William street, Heigham
Sowels, William, West Pottergate street
Sowter, Abraham, clerk, Chapel street, Crook’s place
Spalding, James, French polisher, St. Andrew’s hill
Spanton, Francis Humphrey, dealer in hay and corn, King’s Arms,
Ber street
Sparham, Mrs. Julia, 5, Newmarket terrace, Newmarket road
Sparke, Alfred, engineer, (see Sparke and Co.); h Trowse
Sparke and Co., general engineers, iron and brass founders, and
agricultural implement manufacturers, Thorn lane foundry and
Castle hill (see advertisement, pp. 36, 37, 38)
Sparke, Miss Elizabeth, milliner, Chapel Field road
Sparkhall, Emily, lodging-house keeper, 2, Jay’s terrace, Rose lane
Sparkhall, John, market gardener, Nelson street, Heigham
Sparks, Edward, wine and spirit merchant, (see Clabburn and
Sparks) St. Giles’ street; h Aylsham road
Sparks, Francis William, wine and spirit merchant, auctioneer and
valuer, 5, St. Giles’ street
Sparks, William, cabinet maker and upholsterer, Fye Bridge,
Magdalen st.
Sparrow, Charles, Anchor of Hope, Bracondale
Spatchett, James, chemist, St. John’s Maddermarket
Spaul, Fidelis Joseph, carver, Prince’s street
Spaul, William B., builder, and wood and stone carver, Lower close
Spelman, George, accountant, Pottergate street
Spelman, Mr. Henry, Unthank’s road
Spelman, Mrs. William, Unthank’s road
Spelman, William and Sons, auctioneers, valuers, and land agents,
and agents to the Argus Life office, St. Giles’ street, and Great
Yarmouth
Spence, George, circulating library and tobacconist, Bridge street,
St. George’s
Spence, George William, banker’s clerk, Somerleyton street,
Unthank’s road
Spencer, Daniel, solicitor’s clerk, The Chantry
Spencer, Christopher J. M., surgeon, Lower King street
Spencer, Miss Harriet, Duke street
Spencer, Rev. Henry, Grove terrace, Unthank’s road
Spencer, Isaac, grocer, St. Mary’s Church alley
Spencer, Isaac, Duke of Wellington, Bedford street, St. Andrew’s
Spencer, Jonathan, carpenter and joiner, Trowse Newton
Spencer, Mrs., Lady’s lane
Spencer, Robert, Elm tavern, Catton road
Spice, Thomas, flour dealer, Duke street; h Sussex street
Spink, James, bricklayer and builder, Jubilee place, Heigham road
Spinks, James, grocer and draper, St. Augustine’s gates
Spinks, James, livery stables, and horses and carriages for hire,
Surrey street
Spinks, John, manager of the District Visiting society, Pottergate
street
Spinks, Samuel, bricklayer and plasterer, King Street gates
Spinks, Samuel, Calvert street
Spooner, Edward, beer retailer, Barrack street, Pockthorpe
Spooner, Edward Frederick, upholsterer and paper hanger, St.
Margaret’s plain
Spooner, Maria, green grocer, Ber street
Spratt, Mrs. Emma, Albert terrace, Unthank’s road
Spratt, Miss Sarah, academy, Bethel street
Spratt, William, hay and corn dealer, Market place
Spratt, William, coach and harness manufacturer, Chapel field
Springall, Benjamin, grocer, St. Clement’s hill, New Catton
Springall, James, wholesale and retail grocer, and agent to the
British Equitable Life and Imperial Fire offices, Tombland
Springfield, Mrs., St. Mary’s Church alley
Springfield, Osborn, silk merchant, St. Martin’s lane; h Catton
Springfield, Son and Nephew, silk merchants, St. Martin’s lane
Springfield, Thomas, drill master, Kimberley street, Unthank’s road
Spurgeon, Emily, dressmaker, Suffolk street, Union place
Spurling, William, The Trowel and Hammer, St. Stephen’s road
Squires, James, butcher, Chapel street, Crook’s place
Stacey, Anthony, cooper, Thorpe hamlet
Stacey, Edward, house and land agent, 1, Point house, Newmarket
road
Stacey, Mrs. William, Theatre street
Stacy, Henry Walter, bookseller, printer, publisher, stationer, and
bookbinder, 2, Old Haymarket
Staff, Charles, green grocer, Ber street
Staff, Frederick, Nelson tavern, Bedford street
Staff, John, congreve maker, St. Martin’s at Oak
Staff, Matthias, pig dealer, Trafalgar street, Lakenham
Stafford, Robert, Mariners’ Arms, Mariners’ lane
Stafford, Thomas, grocer and tea dealer, Chapel street, Crook’s
place
Stafford, William, baker, Vauxhall street
Stafford, William, baker, Brazen Doors road
Stageman, Miss Susanna, day school, Brazen Doors road
Staines, Mrs. Angelina, grocer, St. Stephen’s gates
Stallard, Joseph William, tailor and outfitter, Orford hill
Stalweather, Frederick, green grocer, Chapel street, Crook’s place
Stammers, Robert, whitesmith, Castle hill
Stamp, William, coffee-house keeper, and tailor, Colegate street
Stamp, W., rent and debt collector, Luckett’s court, St. Andrew’s
Stangroom, Caroline, straw bonnet maker, Ber street
Stangroom, Henry, furniture broker, Gildengate street
Stangroom, John, Duke of Sussex, St. Augustine’s street
Stangroom, Robert, grocer, Fishgate street
Stanley, George, scale, beam, weight, weighing machine, and
steelyard maker, Elm hill
Stanley, Joseph, statuary and mason, St. Stephen’s street
Stanley, Thomas, Essex street, Union place
Stanley, William, stone and marble mason, St. Catherine’s plain
Stannard, Alfred, artist, King street, Crook’s place
Stannard, Cubitt, manufacturer, St. George’s plain
Stannard, Miss Emily, boarding school, Rose lane
Stannard, Mrs., Willow lane, St. Giles’
Stannard, Harriet, milliner and straw bonnet maker, Infirmary road
Stannard, John, shopkeeper, Magdalen street
Stannard, Robert John, baker, Little London street
Stannard, Mrs. Sarah, matron of Jenny Lind Infirmary for Sick
Children, Pottergate street
Stanshaw, Mr. George, 20, St. Giles’ street
Stanton, Robert, beer retailer, King street
Stapleton, Robert, boot and shoe manufacturer, corner of
Pottergate street, and St. John’s street
Stark, Mr. William, St. George’s plain
Stark, William and Co., agricultural chemists and merchants,
dyers, dressers, and hot pressers, Duke’s Palace bridge
Stark, Mr. John Michael, 10, Chapel field
Starkey, Mrs. Mary, mistress of St. Lawrence’s District National
School, St. Benedict’s street
Starland, George and Edward, plumbers, glaziers, and painters,
Surrey street
Starling, Charles Grey, linen draper, hosier, &c., White Lion street
Starling, Edmund A., fancy warehouseman, West Pottergate street
Starling, Mrs. Sophia, dressmaker, Chapel street, Union place
Starling, Miss Rebecca, milliner and dressmaker, West Pottergate
street
Starling, Thomas, accountant, 12, Victoria street, St. Stephen’s
road
Starr, Frank, merchant’s clerk, Portland place, Holl’s lane
Steadman, Mr. Charles, Heigham road
Stearman, Eliza, dressmaker and milliner, Whitefriars’ street
Stearne, Thomas, city missionary, Sussex street, St. Augustine’s
Stebbings, Mrs. Sarah, lodging-house keeper, Rose lane
Steel, Henry, commercial traveller, West End Cottages, Chapel
Field road