Antone Trykowski

Anthony Trykowski and Helen Wardzinski, traveled by boat to the United States from Krakow, Poland. As immigrants, they settled in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and later married. Helen Wardzinski’s parents stayed behind in Krakow. It was later learned that Helen’s mother (a Polish Jew) died in a concentration camp during World War II.

However, efforts to determine names or personal information about them has been unsuccessful. Anthony and Helen’s marriage subsequently failed. On Christmas Eve 1913, Anthony Trykowski took their five-year old daughter, Helen Trykowski, to his two sisters in St. Paul, Minnesota to live, and left her there to be raised by them, along with a Polish Catholic nun who was a friend of the family. Helen never heard from her father again. In later years, her husband, William Bellesbach, had hired a private investigator to trace the whereabouts of her father, Anthony Trykowski. This investigator had traced him as far as the docks of the State of Washington, where it is believed he may have returned to Poland or worked on the docks in that state. Helen later met her mother, Helen Wardzinski, who remarried and had three children; a half-sister, Dorothy Trykowski, and two half brothers, Ed Duede and Clarence Emerson.

Helen Trykowski later went on to a business school in St. Paul, Minnesota. On a visit to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, she met William Bellesbach, a young railroad worker, who lived next door to the friend she was visiting. When William Bellesbach’s work took him to St. Paul, he called on Helen at her place of work, and they married after a lengthy courtship. They were married at St. Casimir’s Catholic Church in St. Paul Minnesota. Their first child, Dorothy, died at the age of six months old, and they then had four more children, Mary Ann, Richard, John, and Shirley Bellesbach. They lived in Altoona, Wisconsin where William became a conductor/brakeman for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad. He passed away in September of 1965.

After William’s death, Helen then moved to Lake Holcombe, Wisconsin, and later to East Troy, Wisconsin where she passed away on July 4th, 2000. She was buried alongside of her husband in Strom, Wisconsin.