I finally found the ship's manifest listing Bruno Novak and his wife and children, and with extensive FAN Club (friends, associates and neighbors) research was able to confirm that it is, in fact, the correct family. On that ship's manifest it says the town of most recent residence prior to immigration was . . . wait for it . . . sort of illegible. 😂 But, with some help from the Meyers Gazetteer and creative asterisk wild card searching, plus analyzing the other examples of handwriting by the same recorder on that page, I am fairly confident that the town name was: Siedlec, in Posen, Prussian Poland.
Ship's Manifest for the Noordam (sp?), sailing from Rotterdam to New York City in April 1905.
You may remember that the only other document with a town name I had found was the World War I draft registration card of Henry Novak, Bruno's son. On that record the town is written something like "Cliedlitz." Previous research had me thinking that the town was actually Ćwiklice (Polish spelling), but I paged through all of the church records in that town and never found Bruno or Mary Novak. Ćwiklice is about 250 miles by modern roads from Siedlec.
Here's the fun part of this update: I asked Google and Microsoft how to pronounce Siedlec in Polish and voila! It sounds exactly like Chiedlitz, which is a plausible transcription of the handwritten town on the WWI draft card. Those cards were typically filled out by the registrar, based on what the person being registered said verbally, so if Henry said "Siedlec," it is reasonable that the registrar would have recorded "Chiedlitz."
Have a listen:
Microsoft Translator - Translate from Polish to English
So, now I'm off to find the parish records for Siedlec in Posen, Prussia in the late 1800s and see if I can find Bruno Novak, his sister Mary Novak (my 2nd great-grandmother), or Bruno's wife Elsbieta/Rose Sztelmaszewska (obviously a million spelling variations on that surname).
Thanks for reading, everyone!
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