Song About a Soldier: A Pennsylvania Immigrant Coal Miner's Only Record, March 1929, by Marko Źeliznyj of Maksymowky

Song About a Soldier: A Pennsylvania Immigrant Coal Miner's Only Record, March 1929

by Marko Źeliznyj of Maksymowky

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	1.	Pisnia pro źowniara, part 1 02:55		buy track
	2.	Pisnia pro źowniara, part 2 02:49		buy track

about

Mark Zelazny was born on March 25, 1884, in the village of Mikaszowka in present-day northeastern Poland. He arrived in the U.S. on July 20, 1906, via Ellis Island to work in the anthracite coal mines of northeastern Pennsylvania, settling in the town of Taylor three miles south of Scranton. He was part of a wave of Slavs who were recruited from the hinterlands of Eastern Europe to work the mines in the wake of a series of labor conflicts, particularly the 1902 strike by the United Mine Workers of America representing Welsh, Irish, German, Italian, and other immigrant workers in Lackawanna County fed up by their exploitation.

On January 6, 1908, he married a Polish immigrant woman named Julia Koloseviejchak (b. June 19, 1886) from Ivanec in present-day northern Croatia, and their first child Frederick was born in Taylor on April 16, 1909. They made a journey to visit Mark's family in Misksazowka in 1912. Mark came back to Taylor by himself to go back to work in the mines in December of that year, missing the birth of their second child Stella. Julia rejoined him in March 1913 with the newborn and the toddler, and they had three more children - Leona, Victor, and Joanne - between 1914 and 1920 in Taylor.

In April 1925, Mark filed his papers to become a U.S. citizen with two other miners from Taylor as his witnesses. In March 1929, around his 45th birthday, he traveled to New York City and recorded these two performances accompanying himself on violin. Columbia Records released it that year for the Ukrainian immigrant market. They are his only credited appearance on record. (In the couple years before he made his recording, a series of discs were made by Lithuanian miner's bands from around Mahanoy City, PA, which is about 55 miles south of Taylor.)

In February 1935, after an investigation by the liquor control board, Mark Zelazny was one of 13 men arrested for illegal manufacturing and unlawful possession of untaxed liquor. It was a full year after the repeal of Prohibition. By 1942 at the age of 58, he was unemployed, and on New Year's Day 1943 after several weeks of ill health in the Scranton State Hospital, he died at the age of 59.
Julia died in February 1971.

credits

released September 28, 2024

Transfer, restoration, and notes by Ian Nagoski.
From the collection of Martin Koenig courtesy of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance.

Thanks to Walter Maksimovich for title translation help

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