Before reading this please read Evelyn's Memories. These were recorded in 1992. They were then edited by Sabine and Paul and typed by Mary. Irv Osterer put this together wonderfully.
Our family, to the best of our knowledge, had lived for well over 100 years before their immigration to Canada in the 1930's, in two towns to the east of Warsaw. They are Stanislawow and Kaluszyn. Both are in the province (Voivodeship) of Mazowiecke, Poland. This area was under Russian rule from 1831 (at least) until about 1917.
Shia (Yehoshua) Itzhak Pinkusowicz (1891 - 1953) was born in Stanislawow. It is about 40 km east of Warsaw, and about 20 km northwest of Kaluszyn. It was a much smaller town than Kaluszyn. Here is a text excerpted and translated from a volume of "Pinkas HaKehilot" (Book of Communities) that contains two pages on Stanislawow. Families were very large, see for example our family tree. But there were major emigrations abroad and to the larger cities in Poland, most notably Warsaw. The major occupations of the Jews of Stanislawow were crafts and trade. Shia and his father and father-in-law were all tailors. According to Evelyn's "Memories" Shia was the best tailor in Stanislawow and to substantiate this claim, according to family lore, he sewed the priests' cassocks. Here is page 2043 of the 1929 Polish Business Directory. Look at near the bottom of the first column. Under "Krawcy (tailleurs)" in Stanislawow is "Pinkusowicz Sz". (Note that this Stanislawow is not to be confused with the much larger Stanislawow in Galicia that is now in the Ukraine and is called Ivano-Frankivsk.)
Sara Feige Warshaw (Varsav) (1895 - 1970) was born in Kaluszyn. Kaluszyn is about 60 km east of Warsaw. It was the home of the Warshaw family and was a predominantly Jewish town. In 1897, just after Sara Feige was born, it had a population of 6,419 of whom 76% were Jewish. Yad VaShem lists 13 people from Kalusyzn with the family name of Warshaw that perished in the Holocaust. For a history of Kaluszyn and its Jewish roots (from a translated portion of this Pinkas Hakehilot) see here. Googling “Jewish Kaluszyn” will get you more information.
Sara Feige's birth certificate, issued or reissued in 1933, can be found here. The birth certificate states that she was born on December 10, 1895 (and not November 28, 1895, as listed on the family tree). This is because she was born in the Russian empire prior to World War I where they used the Julian or Old Style Russian calendar that was 12 day behind the Gregorian calendar used today. Thus she was in fact born on December 10. However she considered her birth date to be November 28 and so who are we to contradict her.
Sophia Lazebnik has found the "marriage certificate" of Sara Feige Warsaw and Shia [Yehoshua Itzhak] Pinkusowicz. It may be found here. Their marriage is number 5 (top left) on page 3. The marriage took place in Astrakhan, where Sara Feige was living with her family. According to Michael Stanislawski this record is from the so-called `metrical book of the Jewish community in Astrakhan' and is from Book 2 dealing with marriages. These books were required by the Russian government of all religious communities. In most Jewish communities keeping these records was the main task of the so-called “crown rabbis” as opposed to the “spiritual rabbis” who headed communities; the former had to know Russian; the latter not. As can be seen these were pre-printed books with rubrics for who officiated at the wedding, the date in Russian and Hebrew, and the names and place of registration of the couple, etc. Translating a little bit: At the top of page 1 it says "Prayer house of the Jewish community of Astrakhan". Middle of page 1: "Jewish marriage record book 1915". The bride is listed as being 19 years old, while the groom was 24. According to this they were married on June 12, 1915. The Ktuba was for 100 rubel. In the last column on the right it says: "Pinkusowicz, Shia Itzek son of Shmuel, single, a tradesman from the village of Stanislawow, in the Novominsk district of Warsaw province. (Novominsk was the Russian name for Minsk Mazowiecki) together with Sura-Feiga Warshaw, single". In the right lower corner of page 4, the document is signed by the crown rabbi Iosef Vichman stating there were a total of 12 marriages in 1915. (Thank you to Sophia and Michael.)
Sophia Lazebnik also found online the gravestone of Sara Feige's mother Hana Liba (nee Pinkusowicz) Warshaw. Hana Liba died in December, 1928. This gravestone is from the Okopowa Jewish cemetery in Warsaw. The Jewish cemeteries of Stanislawow and Kaluszyn do not now exist (although there is a group working on the latter).
Shia came to Canada in 1935, sponsored by Sara Feige's brother Moishe Warshaw's son-in-law Morris (Moishe) Krasnow. The rest of the family arrived in 1936. To be precise, according to Canadian immigration form, see here, the registered name of Shia was Szyja Pinkusowicz and he was 44 when he arrived in Quebec on the ship Montcalm (owned by Canadian Pacific) that sailed from Liverpool on August 9, 1935 and arrived on August 17, 1935. The pdf file of that page is here. The rest of the family arrived in 1936 in Halifax on the newly built MS Stefan Batory (owned by Gdynia-America Line). For more information on the MS Batory see here.
The family name was Pinkusowicz (spellings often varied), but in line with Shia's brothers Abraham, Yaacov and Moishe Pinkusowicz who had earlier immigrated to New York and changed their names to Abe, Jack and Morris Pinkus, respectively, Shia Pinkusowicz became Sam Pinkus. For your information, Pinkusowicz is a slavic form of `Son of Pinchas'. On arrival in Canada Goldie Krasnow (their first cousin, daughter of Moishe Warsaw) gave anglicizied names to each of her cousins. Yocheved became Evelyn, Pinchas = Paul, Rochel = Ruth, Shmuel = Stanley, Hannah = Helen, Masha = Mary and Gittel = Gertrude.
Here is something Irv Osterer put together. A collection of photos.