Places are central to the family story. This section records the communities where the family lived, worshiped, worked, married, raised children, and began again after immigration.
Sayreville, New Jersey
Sayreville is the principal American home of the Samuel, Wistuba, Rudy, and Okulewicz branches documented in this project. Family records repeatedly connect these families to Sayreville addresses, schools, churches, workplaces, and cemeteries.
Places We Remember
Everyday stops and familiar landmarks help bring the family story into view. These entries bring together family recollections, published records, and photographs at their original sources. The modern views show the places in later years; they do not date the childhood visits remembered here.
Sun-Glo Bakery
Family memory. Family recollections describe weekend visits with Pop to the Main Street bakery during the 1970s. Favorites included sandwich buns topped with black seeds. Carol liked the dense, twisted crullers dipped in coffee. On Sundays, they were baking and the family had to go in the back. On other days, the family went in the front, where the cases were full of baked goods.
Published record. The South Amboy–Sayreville Times published a photograph by Tom Burkard on October 23, 2010, on page 23. The following month, the newspaper identified the building as the old Sun-Glo Bakery on lower Main Street.
View photographs at source: Bakery photograph by Tom Burkard, published October 23, 2010; side view of the former bakery building on Google Street View, captured June 2024. The Street View image shows a later storefront. Read the November 20, 2010 identification and local recollections.
Sunny Side Up
Family memory. Pop would take the family to Sunny Side Up for breakfast. The years of those visits have not yet been established.
Published record. A March 22, 2003 advertisement in the South Amboy–Sayreville Times lists Sunny Side Up Restaurant and Pancake House at 111 Main Street, Sayreville.
View photographs at source: Sunny Side Up photo gallery on Restaurantji. The gallery photographs have not been verified as dating from the family visits.
Our Lady of Victories
Our Lady of Victories Roman Catholic Church is at 42 Main Street, Sayreville. Its parish website provides views of the church exterior and a circular stained-glass window.
View photographs at source: Church exterior on the parish website; stained glass on the parish website. Dates for these linked photographs have not been verified.
South River and Parlin
South River and the Parlin section of Sayreville appear throughout the family record through churches, funeral homes, employment, schools, and family residences.
New Brunswick
New Brunswick appears in civil records, newspapers, court records, and births, including Robert “Bob” Frank Samuel’s 1941 birth.
European Places Under Investigation
Several ancestral locations remain research targets rather than proved family places. These include the unidentified “Calvar, Russia” from Frank Samuel’s naturalization file, possible Upper Silesian localities connected with the Wistuba surname, and still-unidentified Polish and former-Yugoslavian localities connected with the Okulewicz and Rudy families.