Thursday, January 11, 2018

The Girl of My Vagabond Dreams

Anthony Butzek - 1930
 Week 2 of #52ancestors challenged me to write about a favorite photo. And this is one of my favorites. This is a photo of my grandfather, Anton Butzek. 

Anton was born Anton Marcinek or Anton Martinek - it is listed both ways in his September 1943 naturalization papers where he also changed his name officially to Anthony Butzek.  Anton was born in 1907 in Austria and he came to this country in 1909 as a 2-year old. 

Anthony's father was somewhat of a mystery. It was rumored that he fled the old country, one step ahead of the law. My great-grandmother Marie divorced him and remarried to Albert Butzek, the man I knew as my great-grandfather. Anthony's father seems to have disappeared after the divorce and if people know what became of him, they have kept it secret. It is obvious that Anthony and all his siblings held Albert Butzek in great esteem since they all chose to use Butzek as their last name. I did not discover that Butzek was not the "real" family name until after I had been researching for several years. No one had bothered to mention this fact to me. 

My grandmother, Stella Mae Edwards, born 1912 in southern Illinois, made the decision to move to Chicago to work at the young age of about 17 or 18. She got a job at the American Can Company and there she met Anthony. They were married in Chicago on May 9, 1931.

The picture above (with a matching photo of my grandmother as a beautiful young woman) was taken in November 1930 just a short time before they were married. It shows a handsome young man who I never had the pleasure of meeting since my grandfather was killed in a coal mining accident in November 1943.

I have heard stories that my grandfather was an incredibly smart person - self-educated. He read vociferously and apparently learned to farm by reading books. Sometime after my mother was born in 1932, the decision was made to move back to southern Illinois to farm. Neighbors made fun of Anthony because he learned to farm by reading a book. But apparently, he was a successful farmer, working the farm during the day and working in the mines at night and during the off-season. In November 1943, one month after he was naturalized, a large piece of coal slate fell on my grandfather, breaking his neck and killing him instantly.

Back of Photo
Although I love the photo of my handsome grandfather, the inscription on the back melts my heart. It reads 

            "To the only girl I've ever loved. 
            The girl of my Vagabond Dreams"

This paints such a picture of my grandfather - and an unexpected picture of my grandmother who I only knew as a single, hard-working, church-going woman. She was a wonderful grandmother but she was my grandma - not the love of someone's life. And it leaves me wishing I had known the romantic grandfather who wrote those wonderful words.

I received a copy of this picture many years after my grandmother had died. I had never seen it or her matching picture while she was alive. I wish I had as I would have loved to ask her about the young man who was so much in love with her.

5 comments:

  1. Melts my heart too. Makes your grandparents seem so alive with love!

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  2. Love this story! I think sometimes we get so caught up in trying to find the records that we forget the hundreds of little subplots in each of our ancestors' lives.

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  3. It's wonderful to read the inscriptions on the back of photos, even though at times they provide such a mystery. He sure was a handsome man!

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  4. Awww... I love when we find inscriptions like this. Thanks for sharing.

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  5. How precious to have the inscription on the back of the photo. Great story!

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