Sobon and Gaudrault family history from 1860 to 1960
Andrzej Wincenty Soboń had five children that immigrated to the Holyoke – Chicopee area in the 1890s. They left behind their homeland due to political and religious repression and a poor economy. Andrzej and his children were born in the Galicia area of Poland that was occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They were among the first of Polish ethnicity to come to the region and thus they started churches and schools to suit their needs. There were a limited number of other Polish families so two of the Sobon clan married two of the Mikolajczyk clan that settled in Granby and two others of the Sobon clan married two of the Frodyma clan that settled in Chicopee.
Jan Soboń the youngest of the family operated a grocery store on Lyman Street in Holyoke for many decades. His son Leo worked many industrial jobs within the city. He married Mary Adams a second-generation woman with Slovak parents. Her parents Mihály Ádám and Mária Bednár both came from the tiny village of Nižný Hrušov of the mountainous Michalovce region of Slovakia. They were the last of many generations from that town where mining was the biggest industry. Michael as he would be called in America shuttled back and forth from Slovakia to Lisbon Falls in Maine for many years. He eventually settled there and then moved onto Holyoke. At one point his parents Juraj Ádám and Anna Karkos visited him for a summer. They returned but his grandmother Terézia Zlatnicky did settle with the family in Lisbon Falls. Amazing that enclaves of ethnic groups form in such ways around this country.
The Gaudrault family had lived for about a century in L’Islet County of the upper Saint Lawrence River area. This is where the Appalachian Mountains finally end and as may be guessed is farm country. Lucien Gaudrault was born in Saint Aubert of this county but due to crop failures he moved with his family to Concord New Hampshire by 1911. All eight of his children were born in Saint Aubert but moved to Concord with him. They settled quickly into the American culture taking industrial jobs more than mill work. His son Joseph Arthur Gaudrault did as almost all first generation Quebec immigrants did and married another first generation Quebec immigrant. His new wife Bernadette Lamontagne was from Bellechasse County of Quebec and her family had settled into the mill city of Concord also. The Great Depression of the 1930s changed the lives of all Americans profoundly. It surely changed the lives of the Gaudrault couple. Like all families, they had to search around for jobs in a poor economy. By 1935, with their son Raymond Gaudrault in tow, they moved to Holyoke.
John Reynolds of County King Ireland and Johannah Donoghue of County Kerry Ireland had immigrated to America in 1912 and 1910 respectively. They would meet and married by 1916 in Holyoke. Their daughter Rose Reynolds would marry Raymond Gaudrault by the early 1940s. In turn their daughter Joan would marry into the Sobon family in the 1960s. Four distinct ethnic groups into one household – surely the American way.