A letter to a Carpenter Union in Chicago

I thought this was an interesting idea Paul and Catherine Sanetra had! Paul was a carpenter, and he was in a carpenter's union, which was a great protection for immigrants. Paul knew and remembered that his father Adam Sanetra was a carpenter. He assumed it was highly likely that his brothers became carpenters too (like Ervin and Paul). Note: Paul does not list his brother Ervin in this letter, because he knew where Ervin was, they kept in touch.

This is what Paul knew at the time, in March 1957. He did not know whether his father had died in the epedemic or not. He also didn't know they had left the country. Adam, and the youngest two sons, our family called Bennie and Joe, (Bronislaw and Jozef) went back to Poland. But to this day, our family still does not know what became of Stanislaus Sanetra.

The answer to this letter was that there was no record of any of these people. This is a mimeograph copy, on thin paper like rice paper. I adjusted the contrast to try to make it a bit more visible. Click on image to view full screen.

blog update

My apologies I have gotten way behind on my blog, replying to your emails, and replying on the guest book. I hope to catch up with answering everyone over the next week. I usually do much of that on weekends, and the last few weekends came and went too fast!

I just renewed my PGSA membership and ordered a few records from them. I am working on some future posts. The next few posts, I will post some things my grandmother got from writing letters to various places in Chicago.