MARIANNA RUBIS
My decision to write a 12-post series on my four grandparents and eight great-grandparents was an exciting challenge. To date, the ten posts I have written were enjoyable to write and not very difficult due to the materials and photos, information and identifiable data that I had on these ancestors. I derived pleasure in doing these posts and feel that I did these ancestors justice as I personally remembered them or as others have spoken about them to me.
Today's post, though, is going to be the most challenging of all. While all of the previous ten ancestors lived lives that were not perfection, had financial and personal challenges, I am confident that they all had happy lives that overshadowed the down times. In all that I have learned about my great-grandmother Marianna Rubis, though, I don't know if I can safely say that her life was at all happy and pleasant. I hope that I can do her justice in my tribute to her.
Marianna Rubis at her marriage on October 26, 1891:
The Polish birth certificate that I received on my great-grandmother states:"No. 29
Komorowo on December 29th, 1874 before the undersigned Civil Registrar appeared today the laborer Lorenz Rubisch, who is known to us in person residing in Jeziorzany of the catholic religion and announced that a female child was born to Anna Rubisch nee Nowak, his wife of the catholic religion residing with him in Jezierzany on December 24 - twenty fourth of the year one thousand eight hundred seventy four at one AM at his apartment in Jeziorzany who received the given name Marianna. Read, approved, and since the declarant doesn't know how to write, undersigned with his hand-sign XXX The Registrar Sellentin."
Lorenz and Anna Rubis had two older children, Andrej Rubis (Andrew), born in 1861 and Jozefa Rubis (Josephine), born in 1867. In April of 1878 they had another son named Stanislaus (Stanley). Father, Lorenz Rubis, passed away on March 16, 1887 in Rzegnowo, Poland from tuberculosis.Over the years in my research I have seen the surname spelled in a variety of ways but the spelling used in the US was Rubis and that is the spelling I have used in my records.
In 1888, following the death of her husband, Lorenz, Anna Rubis immigrated to the US to Bay City, Michigan with her two youngest children, Marianna and Stanley. Despite extensive research I have still been unable to find a passenger list showing their immigration though the 1900 Bay City, Michigan US census shows the date of 1888.
Anna's son, Andreas Rubis, and his wife, Marianna Wierzbicki, were married in Gnesen, Germany on February 17, 1884 and also immigrated to Bay City, Michigan.
In addition, Anna's daughter, Josefa Rubis, and her husband, Thomas Krzwoszynski, also married in Gnesen, Germany on June 21, 1885 and also immigrated to Bay City, Michigan.
While I have received the Polish birth and marriage records for Andreas and Josefa I am still unable to also locate passenger list information showing their immigration to the US. However, by 1900 the Rubis family were all living in Bay City, Michigan. I do not know what prompted their choice of Bay City but there was a large Polish community there and perhaps they had other friends from their home village already living in this town in Michigan.
I have no further information on my great-grandmother, Marianna, from the time she arrived in the US until her marriage on October 26, 1891 at St. Stanislaus Catholic Church in Bay City to John Albert Kijak.
They would have four children in the next nine years - Joseph born in 1892, Anna born in 1894, Martha born in 1896 and Rozalie (Rosa) born in 1898. All four children were born in Bay City.
On Marianna and John Kijak's marriage record that I received from St. Stanislaus Catholic Church in Bay City it indicated that Marianna had been born in Zczierzany, Gniemenski, Poland. A vigorous search for any village in Poland resembling this spelling was never found. When I did finally receive her birth record I saw that the village was called Jeziorzany, Poland which phonetically resembled the spelling on the marriage record. It is likely that Marianna's pronunciation of her birth place to the recorder of her marriage was spelled the way the clerk understood it. In any event, her birth record is definitive proof of her birth place of Jeziorzany, Poland.
Once I had received birth records from Poland on both Marianna Rubis and her husband, John Albert Kijak, I could see that Marianna was only 16 when she married John Kijak and he was 30 1/2 years old. Even though this was a common practice at this time with younger women marrying older men I had to feel sorry for Marianna, a young girl who could not read, write or speak English, coming to a strange country and being married to a man near 15 years older than herself.
Was Marianna's family life a happy one? Was it moderately happy? Were the four Kijak children growing up in a loving family atmosphere? From all indications that I have found and after numerous discussions with cousins it would appear that they were not a happy family. John Kijak was obviously not destined to be a family man. Each time Marianna was expecting a new baby John would take a hiatus and leave the family home, go off and stay with other family members and be gone for months at a time. He would return eventually, stay for a while and when Marianna was again expecting another child, he would be off and running again. This has been shared with me by more than one older cousin who were old enough to remember "Uncle John" staying at their home for months at a time. After the fourth such incident, Marianna had had enough.
BUT...divorce was unheard of for a Roman Catholic young woman of only 24 with four young children. John Kijak again left the family home and went to live with other cousins; it would appear there were no lack of relatives willing to take him into their home. And what about Marianna and her four children who were just 2, 4, 6 and 8 years of age?
Records indicate that in 1900 Marianna, her brother, Stanley Rubisz, and her four Kijak children, Joseph, Anna, Martha and Rosa moved to South Bend, Indiana. They moved with a man named Frank Banner, Sr. who had been living also in Bay City. In South Bend, Marianna entered into a common law relationship with Frank Banner. I doubt that was acceptable in the Catholic church either but Marianna was determined not to get a divorce from John Kijak.
In short order, Marianna and Frank had at least five children - Emma, Frank, Jr., Anthony, George and James Banner. The 1910 US census for South Bend, Indiana indicated that Marianna was the mother of 11 children of which 9 were living in 1910. I later learned that Marianna and Frank had another two children who died in infancy.
This photo shows Marianna with her children Emma, Frank, Jr and Anthony Banner taken in approximately 1906:
Am I able to assume that life in Indiana was better than in Michigan for Marianna? Was her relationship with Frank Banner happier than her marriage to John Kijak? It would appear that the answer to both of these questions would be "No".Marianna's daughter, Anna Kijak, told my mother that Marianna had a very sad and unhappy life without any kind of caring or sharing in her two relationships. Both men were unkind, cold and mentally abusive. I can only hope that neither was physically abusive to her but Anna never mentioned that.
In late 1917 Marianna became ill in South Bend. Rather than caring for her himself, Frank Banner called her daughter, Anna, in Detroit where Anna and her husband were living. He told her that her mother was ill and made the command "come and get her". Anna and her husband did make the trip to South Bend from Detroit and Anna brought her mother back to Detroit to care for her.
Marianna Kijak passed away at the home of her daughter at 500 Piper in Detroit on April 25, 1918. She was buried in Mt. Olivet Catholic Cemetery on East McNichols and Van Dyke on the east side of Detroit.
Following her death, her children with Frank Banner, who were 4, 6, 8 10 and 12 at the time, were placed in a children's home. In short order Marianna's daughters with John Kijak, Anna and Rosa, rescued the children from the children's home and each took a few to raise themselves.
When I began my research on my great-grandmother, Marianna Rubis, I struggled to find her death certificate. I had assumed she would be listed as Mary Banner and would have passed away in South Bend, Indiana. It was only after receiving information from Marianna's daughter, Anna Kijak, who in later years lived in Florida (she lived to be 101 years old), I was able to learn the true facts:
Marianna had not been married to Frank Banner so her name at death was Marianna Kijak.
She had passed away in Detroit and was buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Detroit.
The family had never put down a gravestone for Marianna.
This bothered me and I could not get past the fact that my great-grandmother was lying in a single grave, far removed from her family members and that nobody still living even knew she was there. I made a trip to the cemetery and learned the exact location of Marianna's burial site, then went to a local monument shop and selected a gravestone to be placed on her grave though at the time I did not have the accurate birth date to use; that date would be found many years later when I received the birth record from Poland:
I can only hope that my great-grandmother is truly resting in peace in heaven and that she somehow knows that her great-granddaughter thinks often of her on this the 147th anniversary of her birth.
Copyright 2021, Cheryl J. Schulte
