Back in Europe, Adam served as a reserve soldier under Bismarck in the French-German War of 1870.  Adam was described by relatives as a ”good fellow, a family man who loved his children and played with them on the floor.”  On payday he used to bring home a pocketful of candy for the children.  He used to go to church to ”vespers” at Holy Angels Cathedral.  He played cards at Tony Ewald’s (a close friend, also from the old country, father of George Ewald), but when the first church bells rang, he would put on his coat and go to church.  After vespers, he would come back and resume the card game!

Yes, Adam was known as a good, religious man.  He was educated in a German school back in Polish Silesia.  Adam worked in the coal mining trade back in Europe when he met Julia Kuczera.  Here in the United States, he tried his hand at operating a saloon in Duelm, Minnesota.  Two of his seven children, John and Martha, were born in Duelm.  Supposedly, one day he became involved in a saloon brawl, trying to break up a fight.  Someone hit him in the head, and that was when he decided he had had enough of this kind of work.  So, he sold the saloon and moved his family back to St. Cloud.  Adam and Julia bought (or leased) a little house on Breckenridge Avenue and Adam took a job at the Great Northern roundhouse.  Within a year he was dead, stricken by typhoid fever.  Had Adam lived the family probably would have moved to the coal regions of Pennsylvania, since he was not satisfied with the conditions here, he had a trade in coal mining, and he had talked of possibly making a move to the east.  Who knows what that move might have meant for the children of Adam and Julia?  Perhaps many of Adam Sakry’s descendent, myself included, wouldn’t be here today to write this history.  Life for all of us does indeed take many strange turns. 

Julia Kuczera Sakry was born in Poland in 1856.  She died in St. Cloud in 1913, at age 56, of Stomach Cancer.  Adam Sakry was born in Komprachcice, Poland in 1853 to Thomas Sakry and Maria (Kubis) Sakry.  Although Adam’s tombstone in St. Cloud’s Calvary Catholic Cemetery shows Adam’s year of birth as 1855, the year 1853 has been confirmed by church records from Poland.  It is interesting that many immigrants ”shaved” a couple of years off their date of birth when arriving in the United States, presumably because appearing a bit younger would make them more employable.  (Note: Adam’s small gravestone, in the shape of a Bible, can be found on the south side of Calvary Cemetery, close to one of the driveways which traverses the middle of the cemetery.)  As mentioned above, tragedy befell Adam and his family at a young age.  Adam was working in the Great Northern roundhouse, shoveling coal at the time he contracted typhoid fever and died.  The year was 1890.  Adam and Julie had been in America less than ten years.  Adam drank water from an open well near the roundhouse.  It was discovered later that the well was polluted.  Adam became ill at work.  He came home sweating with the chills and the family laid him down in their little house, where he died shortly thereafter.  Dr. Quinn Wallory was the attending physician.  Adam Sakry, dead at age 37, left his widow Julia with six children to raise. 

Much of the family history to follow is really their story, their struggle.  This is a story of self reliance at a time in American history when everyone was called on to be strong and self reliant.  Julia was a small, straight, skinny little women.  She was a strict, pious Catholic, devoted to her family, and did the best she could to support her family.  After working all day in the community as a scrubwoman for 50 cents a day, she would come home and cook for the family.  She tolerated no ”shenanigans” and, as Julia’s daughter Kate once told her daughter Gracie, ”When Julia said something, she meant it!”