2008/7/3, Erin Hutton 
Dear Mr. Szczerba,
 
Recently, I came across your family tree website online while completing my own genealogy search. 

I could not help notice some important similarities between your family history and my own. 

For instance, based on the records my family has located, we believe that my great-grandfather Franciszek Jewula

lived in the very same area (Ostrusza, Ciezkowice, Poland) as your ancestor. 
 
I must also admit that many of my family members bear a striking resemblance to those individuals in your picture

entitled "The Szczerba house in Ostrusza." I saw that you identified some of the individuals in the picture, but was 

curious if you knew who all of the people were? 
 
According to the information we have uncovered, my great-grandfather came to the United States in 1907 and was going to meet 

someone named Jan Kloc, who we believe was also originally from the Ostrusza area. We believe that Franciszek had 

a brother named Jan (John), but we do not know if he ever came to the USA. Their father, who may have been named Michael, 

was supposedly a cobbler (shoemaker) in the Ostrusza area. 
 
By 1910, Franciszek had settled in Middleport, Pennsylvania, which is the same place that your ancestor Stanislaw Szczerba 

claimed he was going in 1913 on the S.S. Imperator manifest that you have posted on your. 

Since it was common for individuals to meet with people they knew from the old country when they went to America, I was wondering 

if this common location was not just a coincidence, especially since my great-grandfather boarded people at his house in those early years? 
 
I should also mention that overtime my family name Jewula was altered by census takers and became Yavulla by 1920. 
 
I am sorry to bother you with such a long email, but there were so many similarities that I had to ask if you or your relatives had ever 

heard of my family before. I will also try to see if any of my family members remember your family. I would appreciate any assistance/ 

information that you have regarding Ostrusza or any family connection. Thank you in advance for your assistance and for posting such great

pictures of Ostrusza!
 
Sincerely,
 
Erin Hutton

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Erin Hutton 
To: szczerba.andre
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 12:18 AM
Subject: Re: Thank you so much !!!!

Dear Andre,
 
I am sorry to have kept you in suspense waiting to hear the whole story. 

I wanted to wait until I had time to sit and write down every detail fully. 

This is what happened. My mother and I were making a trip to Orwigsburg, PA, which is a few miles away from Middleport, 

to visit my Great-Aunt Mame (Mary Verbilla). Mame is 93 years old and she lived her whole life in Middleport. 

She remembers and knows everybody and everything about that town so we knew that she would be our best chance at remembering your Stan. 

Little did we know that there would be a whole story to go along with him. 
 
We told her that I had met you online, my penpal in France, and that your great grandfather was from the same town in Poland as her Pop 

and that he came to America and lived in Middleport. We started to say Stan's last name and before we even finished the sentence she said

 "Oh that guy, he was waked in our house. I think his name was Stanley." 

She said that Frank used to tell her that he had made Stan's wedding shoes back in Poland.  

As a young girl, this is how she identified the man. Everyone in the room was completely stunned.  
 
She remembered that her whole family was spending the day cleaning and doing construction. 

They had just bought the house adjacent to the one they lived in (at the time Frank and his wife already had 6 children and needed more room) 

and everyone was working to take down walls, move the kitchen, and convert staircases. While Mame was scrubbing the floor, 

your Stan came to the door asking for Frank. He told Frank that he did not feel right and he thought that he was going to die. 

Probably a little bit frightened, he asked Frank to let him stay with them in the house to be with people he knew instead of as a boarder alone 

in the house up the street. Frank was more than happy to let him stay, but the next day or soon after Stan went to work in the mine and died, 

presumably of a heart attack.
 
Mame went on to explain that her mother, Mary (Frank's wife), was a little bit frantic when Stan was returned to our family to make 

the funeral arrangements because Stan did not have a large enough insurance policy to cover all of the costs. 

(I'm sure that he was sending any extra money he had to Catherine in Poland and most people in the Middleport area lived paycheck to paycheck 

with not much left over.) In order to raise the money, Mary went to the bar where all the miners would go after work to ask all of Stan's acquaintances

 to donate some money on their bills to help out and make sure he had a proper Catholic burial. 

In those days, instead of having a viewing of the body in a funeral home, the family would have the wake in their house. 

Stan was waked, probably for the two days before the funeral, in the formal living room in Frank's house and all his acquaintances would have come

through the house during this time to pay their respects.
 
Also, Mame remembers that Stan was Catholic and that he often went to church, but he was not a registered member of the parish. 

In those days, when a member of the parish died, it was tradition to ring the big bell at the church to let everyone in town know. 

This was very important to my family and my great grandmother Mary tried very hard to get the priest to make an exception in this case and ring the bell. 

Unfortunately she could not get the priest to agree, but he took responsibility so that people would get upset at him not at our family. 

Stan was buried a few miles down the road from Middleport in the village of Cumbola. 

Originally we were surprised that Stan would not be buried at the same cemetery as my family, but we discovered that Sacred Heart cemetery 

only sold burial plots in groups of 3 so he was buried in Cumbola instead. This was not unusual, however, because it is an all Polish Catholic cemetery 

and my family has other distant relatives buried there also.   
 
Right before we spoke with you, my mother and I telephoned the parish in Cumbola, St. Anthony of Padua. 

The priest we spoke to when through the hand written ledger book of death records and found your great grandfather, 

just as Mame told us. It said that Stanislaw Szczerba had died on March 3, 1933, was buried on March 6, 1933, and that his wife was named Catherine. 

That Frank was able to give the church the proper Polish spelling of Stan's name and his wife's name, especially when his name was Americanized 

on all the census reports, makes it clear that they knew each other very well. 

I am quite certain that Frank would have written to Catherine to inform her of Stan's death too.
 
My mom and I did some of the math and it turns out that Mame remembers all of this because she was about 16 years old at the time. 

My grandmother, who is 84, was not even 9 years old when Stan died. She remembers renovating the house but cannot remember the wake. 

She is thinking about it some more to see if she can remember anything else. 

Their brother Joseph, who is 89 years old and would have been about 14 or 15 at the time, could not remember Stan's name 

when we asked him I hope to ask him again soon, maybe with the help of the story he will remember more. 
 
I think, like you do, it is so incredible that there is such a strong link between our families and I am so glad that we found each other 

so many years later, but before the story was completely lost. God bless Mame's amazing memory. 

When she told us the story, her daughter was there and said that she had heard her mother tell the story many times throughout her life 

and could never have imagined that we would connect with the same family so many years later.
 
It was wonderful to be able to reach out to you the other day on the telephone and hear your excitement over our findings. 

Thank you also for such a touching email. It would be wonderful to speak on the phone again sometime and I will include our phone numbers below. 

I felt so sure, because of all the coincidences that our great grandfathers were friends even though they were a few years different in age. 

I am so glad to find out that this is true, that Stan thought enough of my family to trust them in a time of need, and that my family wanted to help 

him as much as they could and respect his memory. 

I can't even describe to you how happy my mother and I were to find this information for you because your family history is part of our family 

history too! How incredible! 
  
Lots of love,
Erin and Kathy