The ancestors of the Kępiński family

Ignacy Kępiński, born in 1796, is the earliest ancestor the author was able to place with certainty in the family tree. His wife was Anna née Rogucka. It is from him that an unbroken line runs down to the grandchildren for whom this book was written.

Little is known of this generation — the details come from parish registers and gravestone inscriptions.

Piotr Kępiński, son of Ignacy and Anna, was born in 1842 and died on 17 November 1890. His wife was Katarzyna née Prylewska. From this marriage came numerous siblings — among them Apolonia, Antoni and Józef, the father of Franciszek, founder of the farm in Huta Głodowska.

Józef Kępiński, son of Piotr and Katarzyna, was born in 1862 and died in 1918. In 1888 he married Franciszka née Marcinkowska. It was their son Franciszek who set out across the ocean in 1911 and, ten years later, returned to buy the farm around which this whole story unfolds.

Franciszek Kępiński, son of Józef and Franciszka née Marcinkowska, was born on 15 November 1890 in Mysłakowo. In 1911, shortly after marrying Waleria, he sailed to the United States, leaving his pregnant wife at home. After ten years across the ocean the couple returned with savings in dollars and, on 16 January 1922, by notarial deed no. 277, bought the farm in Huta Głodowska.

When the Germans seized the farm in 1939, it was a shock for Franciszek, who suffered from asthma. Accused by one of the neighbours of keeping weapons, in December he was dragged sick from his bed and beaten so badly that his whole body was black and blue. He died on Christmas Day 1939. A ring survived him — one of the oldest keepsakes of the family.

Waleria Kępińska, née Dombrowska, daughter of Walenty, was born in 1889. She married Franciszek on 10 October 1911 in Skępe. When her husband left for America, she followed him with a small child — the voyage took a month, and her sisters' letters unsettled her about his faithfulness. In the States she gave birth to four children: Stasiek, Stasia, Helena and Henio; the youngest died on the way home in 1921 and was buried in the cemetery at Skępe.

After Franciszek's death it was Waleria who held the farm and the family together through the occupation and the post-war poverty. She later divided the land among her children by notarial deed. She died in 1965; her memory of the family stories passed on — to her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The eldest of the children born in the United States. She married Czesław Kłobukowski (1905–1952); from this line descend further generations of the family, some remaining abroad.

A son born in the United States in 1916. After the family returned to Poland he was the only one of the siblings to go back across the ocean, making a life there with his wife Aniela; they had sons Stanisław and Ryszard. For decades it was he who kept the American branch of the family in touch with Huta — the letters, photographs and visits are described in a separate chapter of the book. He lived to be 99.

A daughter born in the United States in 1918 — one of the four children of the family's American years, before the Kępińskis returned to Poland in 1921.

Jan, known as Janek, was born already in Poland in 1923 — the first of the children after the family's return from America. As a sixteen-year-old he witnessed the beating and death of his father in 1939; he wanted to reach for the rifle hidden in the old willow, but was stopped by the knowledge that it could mean the deportation of the whole family to a camp.

After the war he returned from the army, married Tekla in 1948 and took over the running of the farm. It is around the home of Tekla and Jan that most of the book unfolds: three sons, horses and the carriage, the electrification of the village in 1963, bread baked once a week. He died in 2005.

Tekla married Jan in 1948 — they rode to the wedding in the same carriage that still stands in the barn today. For decades it was she who ran the household: she carried butter and eggs seven kilometres on foot to the market in Lipno, baked bread in their own oven, boiled the laundry in a great cauldron over wood. Mother of three sons, among them the author of this book. She died in 2010 and rests beside her husband in the cemetery at Czarne.