New York Folklore Society's Voices

After being told that her husband was in America, the Tartars asked her how many children she had. "Just what you see," . . . but no sooner had she spoken than a baby’s cry came from a sling suspended over the mother’s bed. Stepping over to the sling, one of the Tartars discovered a baby girl inside, and drawing his saber said to the mother, "Only one daughter allowed in each house."

Photo of Anna McKee with Easter eggs

Anna McKee with Easter eggs and embroidery. Photograph by Jan Kather

From Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph I to American President William J. Clinton, Anna McKee’s life spanned nearly a century of tremendous social and political change.

Peter Voorheis is Staff Folklorist at The ARTS of the Southern Finger Lakes in Corning.

NOTE: The New York Folklore Society Newsletter and New York Folklore Journal were replaced by Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore which debuted December, 2000.

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Winter/Spring 1998

WINTER/SPRING 1998 VOICES MAIN PAGE

Remembering Anna McKee
Peter Voorheis

In the early days of World War I, Tartar cavalrymen forced their way into the home of Mrs. Wasiowicz, who lived in a small village in the Carpathian mountain section of Austria-Hungary, not far from the border of the Russian Empire. After being told that her husband was in America, the Tartars asked her how many children she had. "Just what you see, " she replied, indicating the two sons and a daughter who were lined up beside her, but no sooner had she spoken than a baby’s cry came from a sling suspended over the mother’s bed. Stepping over to the sling, one of the Tartars discovered a baby girl inside, and drawing his saber said to the mother, "Only one daughter allowed in each house. " Before the Tartar could make good on his threat, one of the boys intervened. "Don’t kill her in here, " he said, "let me take her outside and I’ll drown her for you. " The Tartars let him take the baby, but instead of drowning her, he took her under the house and hid her deep in the hay which the family stored there for their animals. When the Tartars finally left, mother and son ran under the house and frantically dug their way into the center of the hay pile where they found the baby sound asleep with her thumb in her mouth.

Photo of Tartar cavalrymen, 1914

Tartar Cavalrymen of the Imperial Russian Army, 1914

Anna Wasiowicz McKee, the baby in the hay, died last September. Her experiences, and the experiences of her Ukrainian-speaking, Carpatho-Russian region are reminders of just how crowded our century’s history has been. Anna was born a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a subject of Emperor Franz Joseph I, only months after the assassination of the heir presumptive to the throne, the Archduke Ferdinand, by a Bosnian Serb fanatic. In the resulting war, Russia launched an offensive against Austria-Hungary through the Carpathians, so the "Tartars " who invaded the Wasiowicz home were most likely Cossacks or mounted troops from the Caucasian region of the Russian Empire. (In fairness, we should point out that reports of atrocities by the Russian military in World War I are very rare.)

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was dismantled after the war, and the Carpatho-Russians, or Ruthenians, as they are referred to in older texts, found themselves within the boundaries of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Soviet Ukraine, or along with Anna’s village, a resurrected Poland. In Anna’s region, where the mountain terrain made farm life grueling in the best of times, recovery from the war was particularly difficult, and her formal education was curtailed by her family’s financial needs. "My uncle didn't want me to go to school when I was supposed to go, " said Anna. "I had to wait till the snow disappeared. I had to go out in the pasture with a herd of cows. That’s women’s work. There were no real children in Europe," she added, meaning there was no time for a real childhood.

In the volatile environment between the wars, Poland strictly regulated passage in and out of the country and discouraged non-Polish ethnicity in an effort to foster national unity. Anna’s plans to join her father in America hinged on her learning the Polish language, since she wouldn’t be able to speak Ukrainian to the appropriate emigration officials. Polish was a required course in the schools. "I was so intense, I had to learn. My Polish teacher scared the hell out of me, but he was really a good guy. And he told me in Polish I had to learn Polish language, Polish speaking, Polish writing because he said when you get to Warsaw they are not going to give you your own. " Anna joined her parents in America in 1931, arriving with the proverbial single suitcase. Inside the suitcase were her report cards for 1929 and 1930 indicating "very good " for behavior, religion, and Polish. The brother who had hidden her from the Tartars never learned to read or write; he stayed behind, to die of starvation during World War II.

After working several years as a maid in New York City, where she met her husband, Anna settled in a house next door to her mother in Elmira Heights, with its large and active Ukrainian community. From members of her sister’s family, she learned to make pysanky, the intricately decorated Ukrainian Easter eggs. She was quickly recognized as having extraordinary talent, but to the frequent suggestion that she market that talent she would hold her hands in front of her and respond, "You see, this is a gift of God. He gave the gift to bring beautiful things into the world. You can’t put a price on that. " But she was always eager to share her gift with the community, and was a fixture at Elmira’s ethnic festivals, demonstrating alongside embroideress Anna Martyniak.

Along with many Ukrainians, Anna was frustrated by the general ignorance concerning the tragedies inflicted on her homeland, particularly the enforced starvation of seven million Ukrainians by the Russian-dominated Soviet government in the late 1920s. But she never translated that frustration into ethnic hostility. "I don't hate anybody, " she would frequently remark. But she also shared with Ukrainians a perception of the Russians as powerful, but unsophisticated and backward offshoots of themselves. I asked her once if she knew why Russians made wooden Easter eggs. "Oh yes, I know all about that, " she answered. She motioned me over so she could speak into my ear, even though no one else was present. "You see, " she whispered, "the Russians are so poor, they can’t afford to use real eggs. "

Anna’s ethnic pride never interfered with her devotion to her adopted country. "I was so proud that right next door to me in Europe there were people living that were Jewish, and she was so good to me. And when I was leaving on my uncle’s wagon she was clapping hands and said in Ukrainian, 'You go to God’s country, Heaven on Earth.' I always remember that. Well, it was the Depression, so it wasn’t Heaven on Earth. But I didn’t care, because I was free. So this country has been—I will always say that, and I will say it until I die—this country is the best in the world.

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