Kulinska family reunion Part 1

6 May 2026

For years, all we really knew was that my grandfather was Polish. He was said to be from Warsaw, though even that was uncertain. We knew my great-grandmother as “Grandma Larson,” which, as it turned out, was not especially helpful. My grandfather’s surname was Nadwodny. There were Nadwodny families in Jersey City in the early 1900s, and a few in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. But how, or if, we were connected to any of them remained a mystery.

A few years ago, my mother and I turned to DNA testing through Ancestry. I later uploaded the results to MyHeritage, where she had several matches in the 120 cM range—close enough to matter, but not enough on their own to tell a clear story. For a while, the pieces remained a jumbled puzzle. Then, about four years ago, I connected with Daniel Dawid Banasiak on Ancestry. We became, almost immediately, friends, collaborators, and family. Daniel had far more success tracing the lines than I had, and his work proved invaluable. Diane Dalecki of Rochester, New York, also helped move things forward. But in many ways, this became Daniel’s story and mine.

Over the next four years, we searched, compared notes, reconsidered assumptions, and searched again. And then, on Monday, May 4, something shifted. Our families—separated some 122 years ago, when my great-grandmother Brygida left her home in Gostynin (northwest of Warsaw, then under Russian partition) and sailed for the United States—were reunited. Daniel is a descendant of Adam, Brygida’s brother.

As Daniel later wrote, “It was more than a meeting. It was the conclusion of a certain story and, at the same time, the beginning of a new one.”

We met in New York’s Financial District, not far from where Brygida—then known as Helen—once worked cleaning floors in the Bennett Building. We rode the subway, part of a system my great-grandfather, Jan Nadwodny, helped to build. And we stepped off in Sunnyside, where my grandparents first lived after their marriage, before eventually moving to New Jersey.

After more than a century, the distances—geographic, historical, and personal—became nonexistent.

We visited Calvary Cemetery in Queens, where Marianna Palczewska (née Kulińska) is buried alongside her husband, Józef, their son Edward, and his wife Antonette. Marianna was Brygida’s older sister—known to my mother as “Ciotka Maruska.”

Standing there, we found ourselves reflecting on the life she had lived. In 1912, she arrived at Ellis Island, entering a country whose language she did not speak, in a city she did not know. She left behind two children in Poland with her mother, Józefa, likely believing the separation would be temporary, that they would be reunited once she was settled. That reunion, tragically, never came.

It is difficult to fully grasp the weight of that decision—the uncertainty, the hope, the cost. And yet, she built a life here. She raised two sons, Edward and Walter, both of whom would go on to serve with the Allied forces in World War II.

We stood at her grave and tried, in some small way, to take measure of her courage and resilience.

Daniel brought the Polish flag with him from Poland. I picked up the red and white flowers on my way into NYC.

From there, we took an Uber to New Jersey, where we spent the afternoon with my mom—sharing family stories, looking through old photographs, and, of course, enjoying her Easter babka.

We began to notice the resemblances that had only existed in records and DNA matches until then—seeing my grandfather in Adam, and my mother in Isabela, Adam’s daughter. The connections, once abstract, became unmistakably real.

My mom told stories of her grandmother, Helen—Brygida—bringing her voice back into the room, as if the generations between us had momentarily collapsed.

Susan and Antonina: descendants of Brygida with Daniel, descendant of Brygida's brother, Adam.

After sharing stories, Daniel and I made our way to Brookside Cemetery in Englewood, New Jersey, where Brygida—by then known as Helen—was laid to rest.

We stood there and reflected on her life, trying to imagine her as she was when she first arrived at Ellis Island at just nineteen years of age—alone, in a country where she knew no one and did not speak the language. And yet, she thrived.

She married Jan Nadwodny in 1906 and built a life in a new world. She raised my grandfather, Jonas (Jan), and his sister, Wanda Jeanne. Her life was marked by hardship—poverty, the upheaval of World War I, the loss of her first husband, and the deaths of at least two children.

Standing at her grave, it was impossible not to be struck by the sheer weight of what she carried—and by the strength it must have taken to carry it.

The final resting place of Helen (z. Brygida Kulinska Nadwodna) and William "Bill" Larson.

We then visited the home Helen (Brygida) and William kept in Demarest, and the house in Cresskill where my grandparents lived. These were no longer just places on a map, but part of a lived landscape we could finally see for ourselves.

As we stood before the house in Demarest, I relayed stories my mom had told me of her grandmother —the beautiful gardens her Grandma Larson tended in the front yard, and the goose that was sometimes hanging in the back. Being there seemed to bring it all closer.

As I talked with Daniel, more memories surfaced. I remembered the stories my mom told — the mile-and-a-half walks between the two homes, and trips by bus into Greenpoint, Brooklyn, to visit Ciotka Maruska. There, on Holy Saturday, they would have their Easter baskets blessed—a tradition carried across an ocean and rooted again in a new place.

When we stood before my grandparents’ home, I found myself recalling the layout of the house—the room where my grandparents slept, where my mother’s room had been as a child, and where my sister and I stayed when we visited. I could picture my grandfather’s garden, and the fig tree my mom had mentioned earlier that day.

For a moment, it felt as though time had folded in on itself, and I could almost see my grandparents there, present again in their home.

 

Brygida (Helen) and William at their home in Demarest, NJ

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Home of Helen (Brygida) and William in Demarest

It was truly a special day—a blessed day, one I will never forget. A day that felt like both an ending and a beginning, as we continue this journey to find our roots and, along the way, discover ourselves.

 

 

 This post was edited using GenAI.