Albert Mirzwienski

Albert Mirzwienski (his name is spelled in a multitude of ways- this is the family spelling on Ancestry.com) was found via the Hartford Courant in an article entitled, “Elmwood Man Held Without Bail for Killing Workman”.  

On July 7, 1915, Albert Mirzwienski went to work at the Whitlock Coil Pipe Company just as he had each workday for twelve years.  Unfortunately, an ongoing quarrel with a former friend, John Maruszak, would come to a head that afternoon and Albert would be dead within hours.

The article dated July 9, 1915 tells of Maruszak’s confession “which is in Polish” and the details of which were “not given out”. Apparently, the men were good friends until about 1912, even sharing a two-family home on New Britain Avenue. A witness to an event years before said that, “there had been quarreling over chickens”.  Maruszak and his family had moved to South Street several months before Albert's death. The details that are given state that on the 7th of July, Mirzwienski told  a coworker that Maruszak was “a devil”. An altercation took place, which witnesses could not make out completely, and Maruszak ended by hitting Mirzwienski with a club.

Maruszak went back to work, and paid no notice to Mirzwienski , who was barely conscious on the floor. Other workers brought the injured man to a floor office, then to a local hospital.  Mirzwienski died after an operation to stop the bleeding and swelling in his brain.  Maruszak was arrested that evening. He was first charged with assault, but the charge was changed to manslaughter after Mirzwienski died.

These are the basic facts laid out by the Courant. An article in the Hartford Times offers similar information.   There is no mention of Mirzwienski wife’s name, just that he was married and left her with four children. No subsequent articles could be found about Maruszak’s trial, or what happened to their families after the attack.  The court records from the trial, found in the State Library, stated very little. Maruszak was found “not guilty” of manslaughter and was given a fine of $100.  This could have been up to two months worth of wages.

It seems that both men were immigrants, and very little is known about either of them other than what was found in the Courant.  I was unable to find records of them or their families arriving at Ellis Island, no census records, and no death records and/or obituaries for either of them.