The Museum of Family History
HONORING AND PRESERVING THE MEMORY OF OUR ANCESTORS
FOR THE PRESENT AND FUTURE GENERATIONS
 

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  THE BURAK-GNIAZDOWICZ WING   

Second Floor

 

The Harry and Sarah Ness Room

The Harry and Sarah Ness Family

parents Harry and Sarah, with children

Gussie, standing on left, and Pearl

cir 1922

New York
 

In 1913, a ticket on a steamship that was headed for the United States could be bought for thirty-four dollars. Between 1905 and 1914, over 700,000 Eastern Europeans left from German ports on their way to their destination. Chona Jankiel Gniazdowicz, aka Harry Ness, boarded a ship docked in Bremen, Germany and came to the United States through Ellis Island in December of 1913. He had been born and lived his early life in the shtetl of Gniazdowo, very near to the larger town of Sniadowo. He married a woman from Ostrow Mazowiecka named Sarah (Sura Ryfka nee Wegrowicz) and had their first child Gitel. Sura Ryfka and Gitel stayed in Ostrow Mazowiecka with Sura Ryfka's family after Chona Jankiel emigrated, eventually following him to the States nearly seven years later, in July of 1920. Harry and Sarah had two more children while living in the United States, and named them Pearl and Miriam.

 

I remember that my grandparents spoke of Chona Jankiel with a great fondness, and I do remember his occasional visits to their apartment in Brooklyn during the years of my youth. Since Chona Jankiel did not own a car, he would take whatever opportunity he had to leave his house in Bensonhurst with someone who could give him a ride to the nearby East New York section of Brooklyn, where he would visit my grandfather and a number of his other relatives, many of whom lived in the same area.

 

Both he and my grandfather were born with the surname Gniazdowicz, in the same area in NE Poland, and both changed their names to Harry Ness while living in the United States.