The Butzek Steps

The topic of "Step" for #52 Ancestors could mean a lot of things. But it made me think about the Butzek step-siblings.

My grandfather, Anthony Butzek, died in a 1943 coal mining accident. Because of that, we weren't very close to his side of the family. We lived in the southern suburbs of Chicago, and they mostly ended up on the north side. It seemed like another world. We'd see them a couple of times a year so I knew most of my great uncles and aunts.

It wasn't until I started working on my family history that I learned a surprising fact--my great-grandmother had been married previously and I realized that some of this family were step-siblings. There was never any differentiation that I could tell. They all used their step-father's last name, and the fact that they had two different fathers seems to have made no difference.

Here's the list of siblings:

Children of Anton Martinek and Marie Miencial

• Gustav (Gus), born 1905
• Anton, born 1907
• Meloda (Lila), born 1908
• Rudolph (Rudy), born 1910
• Albert, born 1911

Children of Albert Butzek and Marie Miencial

• Camille, born 1913  [Camille is the only one I don't remember ever meeting. He moved to Wisconsin.]
• Vilma, born 1915
• Nellie, born 1916
• Stephanie, born 1919
• Olga, born 1923
• Unnamed female, born 1926
• Otilia (Tillie) Still living

It wasn't until I typed the above names and birth dates that the number of children my great-grandmother had given birth to really hit me. She was almost constantly pregnant during the twenty-plus years she had children. I was thinking, "Well, she lived to be quite an old lady," because that's exactly how I remember her. But she was 76 years old when she died—just four years older than I am now. 

While I only know pieces of her life, she seems to have built a comfortable blended family.