Anna K was my grandmother and my father’s mother. The following are her own words (slightly edited) from an interview conducted by my father, Edward Sr..
When I was born I was named Anna because my dad liked my mother. My family teased me that my father named me Anna because he wanted me to die.
My mother was my father’s second wife. He had four children with his first wife: Leshko, Petro (stayed on the farm), Mary, and Pearl (youngest.)
My mother had ten children. Only five children lived. Nellie (oldest, later married and lived in Elizabeth, N.J.) Fetyou, Teckla, myself and Steve from Montreal.
Fetyou was a son who died when he was 21 years old. He had gone to a dance and got all heated up and died from pneumonia. Andy who visited us from New Jersey was Leshko’s son, and my nephew.
I was born in the village of Daliowa, near Jasliska, Poland. It had a one room school and church. I went to school just long enough to learn to read and write. When the weather was bad we would not go to school and in the spring when the plowing started, we had to work on the farm. Oats were cut with a scythe, but wheat and rye were cut by the women with sickle and tied in sheaves. My father’s name was John. He was tall and good to me. He died when I was about nine years old. I got named Anna because my mother was named Anna. A baby sister was named Anna and died when only about a month old.
When Leshko came to America he lived in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania and worked in the coal mines. Leshko sent a ticket for me to come to America. I went to Jasliska to the post office every day because my sister-in-law Mary said she would tear up the ticket because she did not want me to leave.
We raised everything: potatoes, sauerkraut, cheese, dry beans and peas, mushrooms and fruit. We had cows, bulls, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, and geese. One day a dog killed one of the geese and I was afraid to go home so I went to a neighbor’s place. The family was worried about me.
You go to church before Easter for confession I didn’t do anything bad so I had to make up stories. I would say I didn’t listen to my parents.
My mother was living when I left the old country. She was happy when she learned I was married. I got a letter when my mother died (Larry was about a month old.)
My father was good to his wife and children especially me. I went to a Jew store to get tobacco and took two eggs to pay for the tobacco. I broke the eggs and when I came home my dad told my mother to give me two more eggs and not to touch me for breaking the eggs.
We lived in a one room house attached to the barn. It had table, chairs and oven in the room. The bed room was below the hay loft in the unheated barn. Two cows were tied on a rope in the barn. House is now empty. On one is farming the ground.
Made a wreath of flowers and put on the cow’s horns so that Mike Krupey’s mother wouldn’t cast a spell and take away the cow’s milk. Mike’s mother they said could tell the future.
When my father died, I went to the stable and hugged my cow and Teckla hugged her cow. My father was only sick one week. My father went to the woods to cut wood to sell for sugar, salt, etc. He got soak and wet and when he came home he went to bed and never got up (pneumonia).
My mother would get headaches so I would try to help her wash closthes in the creak by beating them with a stick. My sister-in-law Anna would hit my stick.
Leshko treated me real well. Always brought me a present when he would come back from selling onions. He would bring me things and not the others or his wife.
Editors notes:
Onufry Lytwak and Anna Kurdyla were married on August 31, 1918 at the courthouse in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. After two years in Jeannette they moved to Akron, Ohio. After less than a year Philip got laid off and they moved to Albion, Pennsylvania. After a year in Erie Philip went to Jeannette and got a job at the Rubber Works. Philip wrote to his wife to pack up and come to Jeannette.
They moved often as Philip searched for a better job more money because the job ended. Anna’s job was to make a home and raise the children under difficult conditions. The younger son was born on a farm where water had to be carried from another hill.
In the fall of 1922 they bought three houses on Fort Pitt Street. The houses did not have indoor toilets and required considerable repair. This became their home for the next 25 years.
Anna Kurdyla was born April 15, 1897 in the village of Daliowa, Sanok District of present Poland. She left home when she was 18 years old. She arrived in New York city on May 7, 1913 from Antwerp on the Kroonland.
Before her marriage, Anna Kurdyla worked as a domestic for various business families in Jeannette. This included the preparation of meals. She received room and board as part of her compensation. She was working for the William O. Linhart family at 209 North Second Street in Jeannette the year she was married.
Anna K Lytwak, of 26 Lincoln Ave., Lincoln Heights, Jeannette died Wednesday in Monsour Medical Center, Jeannette.
In addition to her parents John and Anna Kurdyla, she was preceded in death by her husband, Philip S. Lytwak, in 1981.
She is survived by two sons, Edward P. Lytwak, Sr. of Jeannette, PA and Lawrence P. Lytwak of Phoenix, AZ; six grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and several nieces and nephews.