Summary Part 1
On 30 Nov 1835 a fundraising dinner was held in Edinburgh for Polish emigres. There were several Polish Army officers in attendance, and three in particular interest us because they married Scottish women from the Bremner family. Soter Drelinkiewicz married Jemima Bremner; Adam Grzybowski married Jemima’s first cousin Maria Bremner; and Joseph Peichowski married Maria’s younger sister Georgina Bremner. The weddings were held in the same Edinburgh church in 1834, 1836 and 1838 respectively.
In 1845 Jemima sued successfully to have her marriage to Soter annulled, and she then married James Bremner in 1848. He was the brother of Maria and Georgina and her own first cousin. Jemima and James moved to South Africa and fade from the picture.
Adam was born in Krakow on 10 Dec 1812 and baptised the next day at the Basilica of St Mary. His father was Piotr, a literate Customs Officer later described by Adam as a barrister (perhaps gilding the lily), and his mother was Anna Sobolewska. We know of three brothers and two sisters.
Adam graduated with a medical degree in Berlin then moved to Scotland, but was not able to practise because he was not admitted as a surgeon until Dec 1846.
We know that Adam was a freemason. He joined the Edinburgh No. 1 (Mary's Chapel) Lodge about 1834 and the Polish National Lodge in Kensington, London, in 1847, by which time he was a surgeon at St Thomas’s Hospital.
Adam and Maria had three children: Uladislaus Adam Grzybowski (b 1835); George Grzybowski Bremner (b about 1842); and Harriet Mary Bremner (b 1844). The lack of a Grzybowski among Harriet’s names might be significant, but when she died in 1877 Maria was described as “widow of Adam Grzybowski surgeon”, and she is using his surname. When the first child married in 1861 (calling himself Adam Bremner) he said his father was Adam Grzybowski, a sub-lieutenant in the Polish Army (dec’d), and his mother was Maria Grzybowski (nee Bremner).
Adam married again at St Botolph, Aldersgate, London, on 1 Aug 1848, to Harriet Sarah Chance (1827-1874) and they had a daughter, Harriet E. Grzybowski, born in France. We have no records for that birth. But the family then emigrated from Le Havre to New Orleans on the ship Manchester, arriving on 21 Dec 1849. Adam gave his birth date as 1814 in Poland, and said his last residence was Poland, which suggests he might have gone back to Poland between leaving London and arriving in the US.
From New Orleans the family headed upriver and when the Census was taken on 1 Jun 1850 they were at Brazeau Township in Missouri. The ages given were Adam, born Poland, 38; Harriet, born England; 23; and Harriet, born France, 1. We don’t know what happened to Adam after that. Harriet headed back to London and had another daughter on the way – Sophia Jane, born in New York in 1852. When Harriet was baptised at Holy Trinity, Marylebone Road, London, on 12 Dec 1852, Harriet described herself as a widow.
Harriet remarried, to a man named John Lee at Shoreditch in the first quarter of 1871. She died at Edmonton, Middlesex, in 1874. Her daughter Harriet married William Frederick Snow on 5 Feb 1872 at St Olave, Bermonsey. Harriet’s other daughter, Sophia Jane, married Henry Bentley in Oct 1879 at St Pancras, London.
