Zines Family Generation II

Jan and Kunegunda Zajac

Jan Zajac was born on December 9, 1879 in the town of Janovicie, Poland. His parents were George and Marya Zajac, of whom we do not currently have any information. Jan had four brothers and a sister, all of whom remained in Poland. Jan married Kunegunda Ciepiela, who was born in 1879 in the town of Michalkovice north of Krakow.

In the fall of 1913, Jan emigrated to the United States. He sailed from Bremen, Germany to New York City on the Kaiser Wilhelm II, and arrived on October 15. As happened to many immigrants from Eastern Europe, Jan's name was "Americanized" to John Joseph Zines, Sr. Kunegunda and two children, Jozef (Joseph) and Mayra followed on February 11, 1914. At some point after their arrival in the United States, the family relocated to Crabtree, Pennsylvania.

In Crabtree, Jan took a job working in the coal mines. These mines produced coal used to feed the burgeoning steel mills which were a major part of America's Industrial Revolution. Working in these mines was hard and dangerous. Mine workers were generally poor, uneducated immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe and to the companies they were considered to be easily exploitable. If you didn't dig coal, you didn't get paid; if you didn't get paid, you didn't eat. What were you going to do? Go back to Poland, Ukraine, or Germany? Unions, fair wages, and worker protections were a fantasy at this time. The "company store" controlled much of the workers' lifestyle, from the homes they rented/owned to the groceries and dry goods they purchased. Accidents with the equipment used in mining and cave-ins were constant dangers. Jan narrowly escaped losing his life in one of these cave-ins and swore that he would never return to the mines.

During their time in Crabtree, Jan and Kunegunda added five more children to their family: John Jr., Theodore "Ted," Josephine, Victoria, and Stella. They decided to take their growing family to greener pastures in the small town of Salem, Ohio. Kunegunda died in 1926 and Jan died in 1941