Some background into the Bunk name....
History may be Bunk but here is some bunk history. With the last name of Bunk I've been asked many times of the name got shortened on the boat over to the US. Well it turns out is did. My Great Grandparents Josef and Agnieszka Bak came over to America and at some point their name got changed to Bunk. Ellis Island has a great website where you can look up the records of passengers coming over. Below if the one for my great grandma.
Interesting to note on the manifest that she had not previously been in the US, so she was coming to join Josef at that time. His last name is also given in the list as Bak. I can find no record of his arrival, probably came before Ellis was constructed. She came from Komorow, which I believe is located west of Krakow in what was then Silesia (a part of Germany, since Poland didn't exist at that time). My 2nd cousin Jeff remembers that Mom (My great Grandma) said she remembered her father hating the Prussians (e.g. Germans?) which would make sense if they both came from somewhere in Silesia.
Comments
really you should be saying "no, my name didn't get shortened after arriving on the boat, it was actually lengthened".
bak
Posted by: grammar king | October 11, 2006 09:41 PM
Chris,
This is nice. Can you still design me a web page. Actually one about the book I am writing would also be interesting. Communes in the 70's."In Serach For Brotherhood"
My research has brought me to look into the Polish archives and I found that their WAS a Josef Bak in Warsaw Poland (Jewish Archives) and some other family names of children etc. Warsaw Poland is where later on the concentration camps of Hitler destroyed so many Jewish people and their communities that supported the Jewish people. It is strange that if this were true and the correct information that Josef probably pronounced Yosef actually was Jewish and possibly converted to being Catholic to avoid being tortured by the church...
Love
Aunt Patty
Posted by: aunty | October 14, 2006 09:48 AM