Józef "Joseph" Skiba

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=70674349

Joseph Skiba was born in Germany and there grew to manhood and entered the German army, with which he served during that country's war with Austria and participated in a number of important battles. At the close of the war he was married for the first time and soon thereafter came to America, buying land in Canada, where his wife died. He then married Dorothy Retz, who had been born in Ontario of Polish ancestry and they came to St Paul in 1869, spending one year in this city. Coming to Mounds View township Joseph Skiba purchased ten acres of wild land at five dollars an acre, built a little home and started to cultivate a farm. Later he added forty acres more and from that time on his holdings grew rapidly, until he was finally the owner of several hundred acres of land, almost all of which was situated in Mounds View township and some of which was worth fifty dollars an acre. Mr Skiba was a self made man in every sense of the word, having obtained the money to make his start as an agriculturist by fishing and marketing his catch in St Paul. He was married three times and was the father of twenty two children, eighteen still being alive at this time. Of these all live in Ramsey, Anoka and Hennepin counties. A Republican in politics, Mr Skiba was superintendent of the township for about eight years and served as a delegate to numerous county conventions. He was reared in the faith of the Catholic church and was a charter member of the church at New Brighton. He died at the age of sixty seven years in June 1905. [from "History of St. Paul and Vicinity" - vol. 3]

THE JOSEPH SKIBA FAMILY - (by Gene Skiba)...Because of long-suffering abuse and persecution, mostly at the hands of Teutons (other Germans), they had as their ultimate goal settlement in America, land of opportunity and true freedom. Most of these Poles were known as Kaszubs (pronounced "Kashubs" or "Kashubas,") a very proud Polish-German ethnic group of Slavic origins that spoke their own language...a Polish Kashuban group broke away and came to America. On the ship Emil they left the port of Bremen on April 18, 1868, and arrived in Quebec, Canada, on June 17, 1868. But tragedy followed, with Joseph's wife, Maryanna, contracting typhoid aboard ship and dying; their child Francesca, one year old, survived, and Skiba family kids would know her by the quaint and over-formal name of "Auntie Olchefski" (her husband was John Olchefski, another Kashuban). Whereas one Polish Kashuban group settled in the Ottawa, Canada, area, another came to Winona, Minnesota, U.S.A. About a year after coming to Canada, Joseph Skiba with Paul Waldoch and other Kashubans relocated in Minnesota. Joseph's younger brother Paul remained in Canada.

His first year in Minnesota Joseph Skiba worked at the Calvary Cemetery in St. Paul, after which he moved to Mounds View Township (1870). Over the years he increased his property holdings his sons in time came to own, and he encouraged fellow Poles to settle in the community. Timothy O'Connell, a Mounds View Township founder and justice of the peace, was a near neighbor.While in Canada Joseph had wed a second time, a young woman named Dorothy Retz who also died of illness. Four children blessed that marriage: sons, John, Anthony and Thomas, and a daughter: Susan (later Lasker). In time Joseph wed a third time, 16-year-old Maryanna Kukla who had been raised by the neighboring Cmiel family. This marriage proved most bountiful with 13 children--six daughters: Agnes, Anna, Sophia, Josephine, Pauline and Lucy, and seven sons: Frank, Alec, Clement, Albert, Martin, Raymond and Leo...(http://www.newbrightonhistory.com/downloadable-files/gene-skibas-me...)