Tag Archives: Leon Bronk Sr.

Cousins in Every Direction

Way back in the 1860’s, my great-great-grandfather Ignatius immigrated to Wisconsin with his four brothers.  They all had families.  My great-grandfather Leon had seven siblings.  Most of them had families.  My grandfather Leon had six siblings; all of them, except for his brother Phillip who became a priest, had families.  His brother Ed had fourteen children.  His brother George had nine offspring.  Many farmers had large families so they could use their children to provide free labor on the family farm. 

My father had four siblings, and they had children.  My father had ten children.  His brother David had ten children.  And between his siblings Gerald, Mary and Daniel, there were eleven more descendants.  Now those descendants have children and so do their offspring. 

Then, there is the maternal side of my family.  Two families dominate this line of my heritage: the Konkels and the Jereczeks, families who immigrated to the Pine Creek area of Wisconsin in the 1800’s as well.  I’m still working out the threads of my great-great-grandparents, but I’m clear about the progeny of my Great-grandpa John Jereczek and his wife Pelagia Konkel.  They had eight farm laborers—excuse me, eight children.  One of them was my grandfather August.  He married Florence Gibbons, a woman from a large Irish family that immigrated to the area during the Irish Potato Famine.  Everyone in every generation had large families. 

Truly a cousin conundrum.  I have first cousins, second cousins, thirds, fourths, cousins-removed in a lot of different ways, over-the-hill-cousins, and near-and-far cousins. Between the farming community of Altura, Minnesota—throughout Winona—and into the farming communities of Dodge and Pine Creek, Wisconsin, I am in danger of running into one of my cousins at any time in any place—as the owner of a dairy farm, at church, in a restaurant, at a grocery store, or on a hike in the state park which used to belong to my great-grand-father Leon. If you count the relatives who live outside of this area—in Minneapolis, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and California, my cousin count is exponential.

What really is a cousin? I did a little research and found a definition.  The website Who Are You Made Of? defines a cousin as “anyone who shares a common ancestor with you and is not a direct descendant of you or your siblings, a direct ancestor, or a sibling of a direct ancestor.”  This definition certainly proves that I have hundreds of cousins, most of whom I probably will never know since I can’t even keep the names of my great aunts and uncles straight. 

I recently visited the Wisconsin/Minnesota area where my ancestors first landed in America, and I had such a fabulous time with my relatives—mostly cousins—that I became inspired to better understand this voluminous family of mine.  I do understand who my first cousins are.  They are the children of my aunts and uncles.  I have 44 first cousins—the children of my father’s and mother’s siblings.  When I visited a few days ago, I was able to see about 25 of them.  What a fun group they are—laughing, joking, telling stories, recalling memories, and thinking of the next fun social opportunity. 

My children’s names are Alex and Rachael.  Since I have nine brothers and sisters who have produced a total of eighteen children amongst them, my children have eighteen first cousins just from my side of the family, two from their dad’s side. 

The thing is, my first cousins now have children, like I do.  With a little more research, I found out that my cousins’ children are my first cousins-once removed.  They are also the second cousins of my children.  This means that all of the children of my 44 first cousins—I can’t even begin to tabulate this number—are Alex and Rachael’s second cousins. 

One day on my visit, I went to the Bronk Nursery which is owned by the son of my Great-uncle Ed—one of Ed’s fourteen children–Donald.  Later that night, Donald had a beer with me and some of my first cousins at Wellington’s Pub and Grill in Winona.  We sat outside while the sun set, and when the darkness descended, the mosquitoes started to feed on us with a relentless enthusiasm.  Since Donald is my father’s first cousin, I believe he is my first-cousin-once-removed. 

My brother Ron and sister Margaret were on this visit with me.  On Sunday, they went to church in Lewiston, Minnesota to meet Greg, the son of our Great-uncle George.  Since Greg is my father’s first cousin, Greg is also our first-cousin-once-removed.  Oh boy.

Another time when I visited Winona, I went to a restaurant with some of my first cousins, and the waitress turned out to be the daughter of my Great-aunt Agnes, who preferred to be called Florence.  The waitress’s name was Paula Doerr.  She was also my father’s first cousin, which also made her my first-cousin-once-removed. 

This visit, I was looking for a restaurant for another dinner and I found a bar owned by the Gibbons family.  This name shows up in my mother’s heritage line. I don’t know whether these bar owners are first-cousins-once-removed or even worse.  After visiting several cemeteries where I was related to an incredible number of inhabitants, I was becoming overwhelmed by all the relationship possibilities. 

Think about all the tombstones connected to me.  In the Sacred Heart Cemetery in Pine Creek, there are 27 Jereczeks and at least 7 Bronk headstones.  There are dozens of Konkels, Gibbons and Broms, too, and they are all related to me.  My Great-grandfather Leon and more Bronks and Broms are buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery which turned out to be only half a mile from my hotel.  My Grandfather Leon and Grandmother Lillian are buried in Fremont Cemetery–a pastoral place in the country with their son Daniel who died when he was only 29.  I even have a great-great-great grandmother who is buried under Mankato Avenue in Winona, Minnesota.  When they laid out the streets for the City of Winona, they never moved her body. Her husband is likely buried nearby since we don’t know where he is.

I didn’t meet any of my second, third, or fourth cousins that I know of, but I know they’re walking around the Minnesota and Wisconsin dells somewhere.  My research revealed that I share DNA with all of these cousins, and that anyone beyond a third cousin is considered a distant cousin. 

I’m married, but if I was single, I could marry my third cousin.  Queen Elizabeth II married Price Phillip who was her third cousin, both descendants of Queen Victoria. 

It’s comforting to know that I come from such an ample family.  I am close to many of my first cousins, and even if I don’t see them on a day-to-day basis, when we do see each other, we take up just where we left off the last time we spoke.  We support each other through both happy and sad family occasions: weddings, births, graduations, and deaths.  My life would feel so much lonelier without them.  Luckily, cousin love doesn’t have any DNA restrictions. 

A Story about Straw Pile Hill

Between Stockton Valley and the west side of the Mississippi near Winona, Minnesota is a ridge covered with white pine trees.  Once upon a time, my great grandfather, Leon Ambrose Bronk Sr., bought land on this ridge to grow alfalfa and corn.  Throughout the years, he bought more adjoining farms until his land holdings reached 761 acres. 

On June 16, 2022, when I was visiting, two of my cousins arranged for a group of family members to ride up into the park in 4-wheel drive trucks so that my 92-year-old uncle could see the land where he spent the first 14 years of his childhood. 

Great-grandfather Leon bought this property in the 1920’s and lived in a white wooden house at the bottom of the ridge where he planted a family garden and built a barn for cattle and horses.  Twenty years ago, I remember walking through the ruins of that house.  When he bought some farms at the top of the ridge, Leon Sr. let his oldest son Leon Jr. and his family live in one of the farm houses up there.  Leon Jr.’s first son, Paul—my father, was born in 1929 and his second son, David, was born in 1931.  David is the father of ten of my closest cousins.  Twenty years ago, we found a rusted sled that Paul and David used to travel down the snowy slopes of the ridge when they were little. 

In 1969 when he was 81-years-old, Leon Sr. sold the land to the State of Minnesota, and it became part of the Richard J. Dorer Memorial Hardwood State Forest.  Since much of the property rises 500 feet above the surrounding valleys, it provides hikers and bikers tremendous scenic views of the land and water below.  The State of Minnesota planted thousands of white pine trees in rows, a forest that now covers up any evidence of houses, gardens, and alfalfa fields.

On this day, cousins Diane and Bill drove the trucks into the park and up the ridge under the supervision of a park volunteer named Mark.  Mark is an avid off-road bicyclist, and he started to maintain the 6.5 miles of hiking trails in this park by using his electric weed-whacker to cut the weeds. One day when he was working, he met a state park ranger, and he explained how he biked up the ridge with his whacking machine to keep the trails open.  He also wished that the gate was open so he could use his four-wheeler jeep to bring his mower up; because the weeks grew so fast, the mower would do a better job in a shorter amount of time.  The ranger gave Mark a key to the gate and unlimited access to the park.

When my cousin Diane wanted to arrange a family drive, she called Mark to get the State’s permission to drive trucks through the gate and up to the top of the ridge.  He helped her out because he wanted to meet the oldest living Bronk relative, my Uncle David, who had actually once lived on the property.

Mark was excited to hear stories about the property’s history.  The park is named the Bronk Unit Plowline Trail referring to the line where the Bronks stopped plowing their fields.  Uncle David revealed that one ridge is known as Cherry Hill, probably due to the cherry trees growing there.  Another ridge is known as Straw Pile Hill.  That’s where, when he was a mere boy, David dumped the hay that he harvested from the fields, and Paul would pick it up and haul it off to be sold.  David had to plow the fields and collect the hay with a horse-drawn contraption.  Paul got to drive the tractor since he was older. 

My dad used to say that “You can take a man away from the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the man.”  All his life, my father was an excellent farmer.  When I was born, my family rented a two-acre farm in Fair Oaks, California.  I was allergic to cow’s milk, so my parents bought a goat and gave me its milk.  We had chickens, bunnies, and geese.  My mother made butter and ice cream by hand. 

Later, when we moved to a smaller property, my dad raised sheep.  One sheep was our favorite, and we named him Jerimiah.  One day when we got home from school, we couldn’t find him.  At dinner, we asked my parents where he was.  “He’s on your plate!” said my dad with a grin. 

David, too, farmed his whole life.  He bought a farm that had been owned by my Great-Great Grandpa Ignatius Bronk, who immigrated to the area from Gostomie, Poland and bought this farm in 1886.  When Ignatius died in 1896, his son Theodore took over the farm; Theodore was the older brother of my Great-Grandfather Leon Sr.  Today, David lives on the farm with his wife Linda and a herd of cows that his son, Bill, manages for him.  While I was visiting, about twenty-five of us cousins, first-cousins-once-removed, second cousins, and Uncle David and Aunt Linda had a picnic on a hot and humid 100-degree day. To stay cool, we sat under the spreading branches of a white oak tree and slapped the gnats that buzzed around our faces.

While we walked around the top of the ridge on Great-Grandpa’s property, we found wild carrots and asparagus—souvenirs from the gardens that once fed the Bronk families.  Hanging high above a hiking trail, we found a scarecrow with a Jack-o-lantern head, plaid shirt, and farmer pants.  Mark told us that a solar light made the head light up at night, creating an unexpected scary encounter.  We watched big, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies settle on wild flowers and examined tiny pine cones that fell from the white pine trees.  The floor of the forest was covered in a thick matting of dead pine needles, hiding the remnants of our relatives’ lives. 

What occurred to me that day was that all of the farmers who worked on my great-grandfather’s land had been removed from it: my great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father, and my uncle.  Yet, there was evidence all around the area and in places far away, like California, that these people and their descendants were still farming.  David’s son Bill will one day take over David’s historic farm.  My brother, Donald, can grow any vegetable or flower in his patch of garden in California.  I have a green thumb when it comes to growing flowers. Apparently, you can’t take the farm out of a farming family.