Week 37: Prosperity #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

Jozef Ernst Ciupka, my husband Martin's great grandfather, was born in Gliwice, Poland, in 1855 and married his wife Joanna Kozlowska sometime in the early 1880s. Although we have names and dates for both sets of their parents, we do not know their parents' stories, so this blog will only deal with what we know about Jozef and Joanna.

The young couple settled in Joanna's birthplace, Nieszawa, north of Warsaw, and brought up nine children there, the youngest, Janina, being Martin's grandmother.

Ciupka family around 1904-1905

They were very successful in business and became one of Nieszawa's most prominent families. We do not know how and when they acquired their wealth, but we do know that earlier generations must have been important in their communities too, as there is a street named after the family in Gliwice. The Ciupka family and Martin's direct line go back at least eight generations in Gliwice, back into the 1600s.

Jozef and Joanna's businesses included grain mills, importing and exporting grain to Russia, the manufacture of agricultural carts, a brick factory, ownership of land and property, and breeding elite horses for wealthy Europeans, including the Russian Czars.

Ruins of the brick factory outside Haczow

Around 1908-1910, they moved from Nieszawa to just outside the village of Haczow in south-east Poland, where they reestablished several of the businesses. We do not have evidence, but there is a family story that they made this move to get away from the harsh German oppression in northern Poland. The businesses survived WW1 and seemed to have remained successful up to and after the deaths of both Jozef and Joanna in the early 1930s. However, all of their businesses and all their prosperity was destroyed by WW2 and the subsequent Communist rule which nationalized almost all private industry.

Although many were displaced from Poland, all their descendants seem to have had successful lives, although perhaps not as prosperous as Jozef and Joanna.

Jozef Ciupka and his wife Joanna Kozlowska, Martin's great grandparents.

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