Category: Giżyce

A Tale of Two Sources: Evaluating Evidence for the Szyfrynowicz Family

Published on by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz4 Comments

In my last post, I discussed the challenges inherent to researching a family whose documented surname variants strayed from the usual etymological and phonetic path. As previously noted, Antoni Szyfrynowicz was an individual whose name was recorded with a number of variant spellings, and who was documented in historical records spanning an area of more than 4,000 square kilometers. Is it possible, then, that there was more than one Antoni Szyfrynowicz? Since genealogical research is all about resolving questions of kinship and identity, how do I know that all of the records I’ve found are for the same Antoni?

Antoni and Anna (Naciążęk) Szyfrynowicz: Digging Deeper with “Alternate Facts”

By and large, I think the evidence pretty consistently describes the same individual, although there are a few conflicts within the data set that need to be resolved. Let’s take a closer look at what we know about Antoni Szyfrynowicz, and discuss a bit of methodology along the way.

My favorite method for keeping track of evidence for individuals in my family tree is the use of “alternate facts.” Different software platforms offer different methods for viewing alternate facts within your tree. If you keep your tree on Ancestry, you can enable this feature by selecting the profile of an individual in your tree, and then, in the “Facts” view, selecting “Filter” and ticking the boxes for “Name and Gender” and “Alternate Facts” as shown in Figure 1. When these “Name and Gender” alternate facts are enabled, it’s possible to view the different spellings found for Antoni’s surname and the sources attached to each.

Figure 1: Top portion of the profile page for Antoni Szyfrynowicz from my family tree on Ancestry, showing “Alternate Facts” and “Name and gender” displays enabled. Click image to enlarge.

I’m a Family Tree Maker (FTM) fan, and I especially like FTM’s display of this same information in a way that’s more visually compact, via the “Person” view for Antoni Szyfrynowicz (Figure 2). Note that FTM synchronizes with Ancestry, so updates to my FTM tree offline can be synced to my online tree, and vice versa. (Please note that I’m not affiliated in any way with FTM or its producer, Software MacKiev, I just like this product.)

Figure 2: Person view for Antoni Szyfrynowicz from my tree in Family Tree Maker, showing preferred facts and alternates, with occurrences of each fact tallied. Click image to enlarge.

The key utility in both of these applications is the ability to add “alternate facts,” in addition to a designated “preferred fact,” and to attach source citations to each. By doing so, you’re able to visualize those preponderances of evidence as they develop, and you can adapt your “preferred facts” accordingly. It was through this method that I was able to decide that the preferred version of my great-great-grandmother’s maiden name shouldn’t really be Maciążek, as was recorded on my great-grandfather’s marriage record, but rather Naciążek.

In order for this system to work, it’s necessary to extract every fact from each historical source discovered in the research, and attach it to the relevant person in the tree. As an example, the death record for Antoni Szyfrynowicz is shown in Figure 3.1

Figure 3: Death record from Dmosin parish for Antoni Szyfrynowicz, who died 10 February 1862.

The record states,

“14.
Osiny.
Działo się we wsi Dmosinie dnia dziesiątego Lutego, Tysiąc Ośmset Sześćdziesiątego Drugiego Roku, o godzinie drugiej w wieczór. Stawili się Jan Janaszek, parobek we wsi Osinowie zamieszkały lat dwadzieścia ośm, i Kazimierz Latka, służący Kościoła z wsi Dmosina, lat trzydzieści ośm mający, i oświadczyli: że w dniu dzisiejszym o godzinie ósmej rano umarł Antoni Szyfrynowicz, bedarz [sic] we wsi Osinach zamieszkały, urodzony we wsi Kamionie lat sześćdziesiąt ośm mający, syn Józefa i Maryjanny z Ziółkowskich, małżonków Szyfrynowiczów mularzy zmarłych. Zostawiwszy po sobie owdowiałą żonę Annę z Naciążków. Po Przekonaniu się naocznie o zejściu Antoniego Szyfrynowicza, Akt ten stawającym pisać nie umiejącym przyczytany, przez Nas tylko podpisany został. [Signed] Xiądz Franciszek Kostecki, Kommen[darz] Parafii Dmosińskiej, Utrzymujący Akta Stanu Cywilnego”

In translation,

No. 14. Osiny.
This happened in the village of Dmosin on the tenth day of February in the year one thousand eight hundred sixty-two, at two o’clock in the evening. Jan Janaszek, a farmhand residing in the village of Osiny, having twenty-eight years of age, and Kazimierz Latka, a church servant of the village of Dmosin, having thirty-eight years, appeared and declared: that on this day, at eight o’clock in the morning, Antoni Szyfrynowicz died, a cooper residing in the village of Osiny, born in the village of Kamion, age sixty-eight, son of the spouses Józef and Marianna née Ziółkowskich, deceased masons. He leaves after himself his widowed wife, Anna née Naciążek. After visual confirmation of the death of Antoni Szyfrzynowicz, this Act was read to those present, who are unable to write, and was signed only by us. [signed] Fr. Franciszek Kostecki, Pastor of the parish of Dmosin, Performing the Duties of Civil Registrar

Based on this translation, this record can serve as a source for Antoni Szyfrynowicz’s

  • name,
  • occupation in 1862,
  • date of death,
  • residence in 1862,
  • year of birth,
  • father’s name,
  • father’s occupation,
  • mother’s name, and
  • wife’s name

—at minimum. The record does not explicitly state that the burial took place on the date of the record, but some researchers infer that. It also sometimes happens that the witnesses were relatives, and when that is the case, the same record can also serve as evidence for their names, years of birth, places of residence, and occupations. So, once I’ve created a source citation for this death record, I can attach it to at least nine different facts, and four people, in my family tree. The same process is applied to every other historical document I discover for my family and attach to my tree. If you build your tree using documents found online through Ancestry’s subscription databases, Ancestry will walk you through this process to a certain extent. However, it’s just as important to create and attach source citations to facts in the tree for documents found elsewhere.

It takes some discipline to commit to crafting a unique citation for each source in your tree, but the benefits to doing that are huge. In fact, the most important piece of advice I would give to any budding genealogist is to cite sources thoroughly and consistently, for every piece of information you add to your family tree. While I I don’t consider myself an expert in writing source citations, I do my best to adhere to the principles and examples found in Elizabeth Shown Mills’ book, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace. To make things easier, FTM offers a source citation generator that roughly follows Mills’ structure, and the citations can be further refined manually. Whether or not my source citations are entirely perfect, I think (hope) they serve the purpose of allowing other researchers to understand where I found a particular piece of evidence: what source document, and where that source document can be located, whether online or offline, so that my research is reproducible. Better still, going forward, I will never again have to wonder where I found a certain bit of information. (As for the information added to my tree when I was a baby genealogist, going back and adding proper source citations is a work in progress.)

When all the evidence for Antoni Szyfrynowicz is tallied in this fashion, here’s what we know:

Date of birth

Antoni Szyfrynowicz was born between 1793 2 and 1803,3 but most probably between 1794 and 1795, based on the fact that five of 11 independent sources point to a birth circa 1794–1795.1,4,5,6,7  Although an 11-year range in estimated date of birth based on age reported in vital records may seem a little broad to some researchers, it’s not uncomfortably so, in my mind. His death record states that he was born in Kamion, which is ambiguous, since there are multiple places in Poland by that name. However, the fact that he was married circa 1822 to Anna Naciążek, who was born in Giżyce,8 suggests that he was born in the village of Kamion located 16.5 km/10 miles northeast of Giżyce.

Occupation

Despite the fact that Antoni was noted to be residing in a dozen different villages between 1823 and 1862, he was almost always recorded as a bednarz (cooper). Only two records mention another occupation: the birth record of his daughter, Marianna Szyfrynowicz, who was born in Kiernozia in 1836,9 and the marriage record of that same daughter, Marianna, from Oparów in 1855.10 In both of those records, Antoni was noted to be a szynkarz (innkeeper). That same marriage record presents another conflict in the evidence: it describes Marianna as, “Córka Antoniego już zmarłego i Anny z Naciążków Małżonków Szyfrynowicz, szynkarzy, urodzoną w Kiernozi parafii także (?) a zamieszkałą w Oporowie w służbie we Dworze zostająca lat dziewiętnaście mający.” In translation, “Daughter of Antoni, already deceased, and Anna née Naciążek, the spouses Szyfrynowicz, innkeepers, born in Kiernozia, parish likewise, and residing in Oporów in service at the manor, having nineteen years of age.”

That’s a bit more problematic. In this record, not only was Antoni recorded with a different occupation, but he was also reported to be already deceased, in contrast to the death record shown in Figure 3 which indicates that Antoni Szyfrynowicz, a cooper, died in 1862 at the age of 68. This does seem to suggest that there were two different men named Antoni Szyfrynowicz, both born around the same time, one a cooper who died in 1862, and one an innkeeper who died before 1855. But here’s why I don’t think that’s the case:

Wife’s Name

Antoni’s wife was recorded as Anna in all 17 documents discovered to date, nine of which specify a maiden name of Naciązek, and four of which indicate a reasonable misspelling thereof. Two more don’t identify her maiden name at all. The only real outlier is the death record for Józefa “Szufrynowicz” from Bielawy, which identifies her mother as Anna Strzelecka, which we’ll get to in a moment.11 Both of these surnames, Naciążek and Szyfrynowicz, are relatively rare. Naciążek is so rare, that there are only 150 instances of this exact surname found in the Geneteka database, which currently contains nearly 48 million indexed entries. Of those 150 instances, all of the indexed entries from the Łódź province are related to this family, and many (or most) of the entries from the Mazowieckie province are related as well. While it’s a little more difficult to estimate the popularity of the Szyfrynowicz surname due to the large number of variant spellings, a search on just that spelling indicates only seven entries in Geneteka, all of which pertain to this family. What are the odds that there were two different men named Antoni Szyfrynowicz, living concurrently in the same general part of Poland, both of whom were married to women named Anna Naciążek?

Negative Evidence

If we suppose that there were two different men named Antoni Szyfrynowicz, one of whom died before 1855 and was the father of Marianna, we might expect to find a corresponding death record. Extensive searching in Geneteka did not produce any promising matches, although the possibility remains that such a record exists in an unindexed parish. Similarly, if there were another Antoni who was married to Anna Strzelecka, we might expect to find a record of that marriage somewhere, or a death record for Anna (Strzelecka) Szyfrynowicz. Extensive searching in Geneteka did not produce any likely matches for those records, either. It’s also important to consider that the two occupations, innkeeper and cooper, are not mutually exclusive. It may be that Antoni was, at different times in his life, both an innkeeper and a cooper.

At this point, I think the data are reasonably consistent, pointing to the existence of only one Antoni Szyfrynowicz, who was an itinerant cooper from the Łowicz area, who sometimes kept an inn; who was married to Anna Naciążek, and who died in 1862, but apparently skipped out on the wedding of his daughter, Marianna, in 1855, and was misrecorded as being deceased. These conclusions are nonetheless preliminary and speculative, and some of them might be disproved with further research. This is why the Genealogical Proof Standard requires “reasonably exhaustive research” as its first requirement. Additional evidence—particularly from non-metrical records—can likely be discovered for Antoni Szyfrynowicz that will help to clarify our present understanding of his life story.

Sources:

1 Roman Catholic Church, Dmosin parish (Dmosin, Brzeziny, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Dmosinie, 1808–1920,” Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1862 r. [Birth, marriage and death certificates,1862), Zgony [deaths], no. 14, Antoni Szyfrzynowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : accessed 12 April 2023), Zespół: 1456d, Jednostka: 1862 / UMZ-1862, Katalog: Zgony, Plik: 010-015; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi [State Archive in Łódź].

2 Roman Catholic Church, Żychlin parish (Żychlin, Kutno, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Żychlinie, 1808–1911,” [Civil Status Records of the Roman Catholic Parish in Żychlin, 1808 – 1911], Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1833 r. [Birth, marriage, and death certificates, 1833], Urodzenia [Births], no. 52, Paulina Sitnerowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 12 April 2023), Zespół: 1757d, Jednostka: 1833 / UMZ-1833, Katalog: Urodzenia, Plik: 052-059; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

3 Roman Catholic Church, Wiskitki parish (Wiskitki, Zyrardów, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Wiskitkach, 1826 – 1911,” Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1843 r. [Birth, marriage and death certificates, 1843], Urodzenia [births], no. 15, Wincenty Apolinary Szafranowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 12 April 2023), Zespół: 0061d, Jednostka: 1843 / Księga UMZ-1843 r., Katalog: Urodzenia, Plik: 010-015; citing Archiwum Państwowe m. st. Warszawy, Oddział w Grodzisku Mazowieckim.

4 Roman Catholic Church, Bielawy parish (Bielawy, Łowicz, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Bielawach, 1809 – 1877 r.,” [Civil Status Files of the Roman Catholic Parish of Bielawy, 1809 – 1877], Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1852 r. [Birth, marriage and death files, 1852], zgony [deaths], no. 9, Paulina Szyfnerowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : 12 April 2023), Zespół: 1409d, Jednostka: 1852 / UMZ-1852, Katalog: zgony, Plik: 009-014; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

5 Roman Catholic Church (Śleszyn, Kutno, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Sołek–Śleszynie, 1810-1875,” Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów [Birth, marriage and death certificates], 1830; Urodzenia [births], no. 36, Joanna Sypnorowicz; indexed by anton_burza, Geneteka (https://geneteka.genealodzy.pl/ : accessed 12 April 2023); image copy obtained from indexer, citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Sygnatura 39/1675/0.

6 Roman Catholic Church, Leszno parish (Leszno, Warszawa Zachodnia, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Lesznie,1826–1913,” Ksiega Duplikat do zapisywania Akt Religijno-Cywilnych Urodzenia Malzenstw i Zeyscia dla Parafii Leszno na Rok 1841 r. [Duplicate Book of Religious Civil Certificates of Birth, Marriage, and Death of the Parish of Leszno, 1841], Urodzenia [Births], no. 9, Marcella Agnieszka Szifnerowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : accessed 12 April 2023), Zespól: 0071d. Jednostka: 116, Katalog: Urodzenia, Plik: 004-009.jpg; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Warszawie Oddział w Grodzisku Mazowieckim.

7 Roman Catholic Church, Plecka Dąbrowa parish (Plecka Dąbrowa, Kutno, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Pleckiej Dąbrowie, 1810-1918,” Księga urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów [Book of births, marriages, and deaths], 1847, zgony [deaths], no. 4, Joanna Szyfrynowicz; digital image, Skanoteka– Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl : accessed 12 April 2023), Zespół: 1627d, citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

8 Roman Catholic Church, Głowno parish (Głowno, Zgierz, Lódz, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Głownie, 1808 – 1919,” 1868, Deaths, no. 18, Anna Szyfrzynowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/: accessed 12 April 2023), Zespół: 1474d, Jednostka: 1868 / UMZ-1868, Katalog: Zgony, Plik 15-18.jpg.

9 Roman Catholic Church, Kiernozia parish (Kiernozia, Łowicz, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Kiernozi, 1810-1888 r,” Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1836 r. [Birth, marriage and death certificates, 1836], Urodzenia [births], no. 14, Marianna Szyfrynowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : accessed 12 April 2023), Zespół: 1508d, Jednostka: 1836 / UMZ-1836, Katalog: Urodzenia, Plik: 10-15; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

10 Roman Catholic Church, Oparów parish (Oparów, Kutno, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Oporowie, 1808 – 1919,” Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów [Birth, marriage and death certificates], 1855, Małżeństwa [marriages], no. 14, Michal Trafalski and Maryanna Szyfrynowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : accessed 12 April 2023), Zespół: 1606d, Jednostka: 1855 / UMZ-1855, Katalog: Małżeństwa, Plik: 12-15; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

11 Roman Catholic Church, Bielawy parish (Bielawy, Łowicz, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Bielawach, 1809 – 1877 r.,” Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1848 r. [Birth, marriage and death files, 1848], zgony [deaths], no. 140, Józefa Szufrynowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 March 2023); Zespół: 1409d, Jednostka: 1848 / UMZ-1848, Katalog: Urodzenia, Plik: 127-140; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

I would like to acknowledge with gratitude the kind assistance of Roman Kałużniacki in reviewing my transcription and translation of Antoni Szyfrynowicz’s death record, and for his helpful comments.

© Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz, 2023

Tracking Name Changes, Revisited: Polish Edition

Published on by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz14 Comments

Recently, I wrote about the challenges inherent to genealogists as they track name changes and variant surname spellings used by their immigrant ancestors. I used the example of the Batkiewicz/Bartkiewicz/Watkiewicz/Wątkiewicz family of Buffalo, New York, who informally changed their surname to Bitner/Bittner between 1910 and 1915. Although Polish surnames would seem to be especially susceptible to such changes, similar examples can be found across all ethnic groups, and even the “simple” Irish surname, Walsh, has been recorded with multiple variant spellings, ranging from Welch and Welsh to Breatnach, according to Irish researcher John Grenham.1

However, I’ve encountered another such example that’s so much fun, that I just have to share it. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may recall my ongoing quest to identify parents and place of birth for my great-great-grandmother, Antonina Zarzycka, whose maiden name was variously recorded as Naciążek, Raciążek, and Maciążek. Last fall, I was finally able to locate birth and death records for her which confirmed that her parents were Franciszek and Marianna (Kowalska) Naciązek. Of course, one discovery leads to another, and Franciszek Naciążek was identified as the son of Piotr and Małgorzata (__) Naciążek.2 Furthermore, there’s evidence that Piotr and Małgorzata had a daughter, Anna, who married Antoni Szyfrynowicz,3 and that’s where the variant-surname mayhem begins.

Introducing Antoni and Anna Szyfrynowicz/ Zytnerowicz/Szufrynowicz/Sypnorowicz… Whatever!

The picture that has emerged from the research thus far looks like this: Anna Naciążek was born to Piotr and Małgorzata (__) Naciążek between 1798 and 1804 in the village of Giżyce, in what is now Sochaczew County, Poland. She was born during that brief historical interlude when this area was under Prussian control, between the final partition of Poland in 1795 and the creation of the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807. (Further information on Poland’s changing borders can be found here.) She married Antoni Szyfrynowicz circa 1822, estimated from the 1823 birth of their oldest child discovered to date. However, the picture of these earliest years of Anna’s life is clouded by a lack of available evidence.

Significant gaps exist in collections of vital records for Giżyce from both the Archiwum Diecezji Łowickiej (diocesan archive in Łowicz) which has no birth records prior to 1826, and no marriage records prior to 1827, as well as the Archiwum Państwowe w Warszawie Oddział w Grodzisku Mazowieckim (state archive in Grodzisk Mazowiecki), which has limited birth, marriage and death records from the first half of the 19th century (1810, and 1823–1825 only). Furthermore, I believe that all the early 19th-century (and earlier) records from the parish archive have now been transferred to the diocesan archive, as discussed previously, so there’s no hope of finding additional records onsite at the parish to fill those gaps. This means that Anna’s birth record, her marriage record, and the birth records of any children born prior to 1823, may no longer exist, which complicates the research.

Nonetheless, we know that Antoni and Anna had a daughter, Katarzyna Marianna Zytnerowicz, who was born in Giżyce on 29 April 1823.4 Following Katarzyna’s birth in Giżyce, the family migrated to the village of Walewice in Bielawy parish, some 46 km/29 miles away, where their son, Ignacy Szufrynowicz, was born on 3 February 1825.5 Five years later, a daughter, Joanna Nepomucena Sypnorowicz, was born in the village of Śleszyn on 9 October 1830.6 Another daughter, Paulina Sitnerowicz, was born on 17 June 1833 in Budzyń,7 and the following year, Antoni and Anna suffered the loss of their daughter, Joanna, on 10 May 1834, while still living in Budzyń.8 At least within that parish, the same spelling of their surname was used consistently, and Joanna’s surname was recorded as Sitnerowicz on her death record, never mind the fact that she was Sypnorowicz when she was born.

By 1836, the family had migrated yet again, this time to Kiernozia, where their daughter, Marianna Szyfrynowicz, was born on 26 March 1836.9 Following a six-year gap, they emerged in the historical records in Leszno, 56 km/35 miles east of their previous residence in Kiernozia. Another daughter was born in Leszno—Marcella Agnieszka Szifnernowicz, on 16 January 1841.10 1843 found Antoni and Anna in Wiskitki, where a son, Wincenty Apolinary Szafranowicz was born on 8 January 1843.11 He died in Wiskitki two months later, on 12 March 1843 under the name Wincenty Appolinary Sznuffrynowicz.12

Antoni and Anna’s youngest known child was another daughter named Joanna who was born 24 May 1844 back in Śleszyn.13 She was baptized as Joanna Sitnerowicz, but was recorded as Joanna Szyfrynowicz when she died at the age of three on 3 March 1847 in Tomczyce.14 By 1848, the family had returned to Walewice, where their eight-year-old daughter, Józefa Szufrynowicz, died on 13 November 1848.15 Józefa’s birth record has not yet been located. Her age at the time of death suggests a birth circa 1840, but the fact that Anna and Antoni’s daughter Marcella was born in January 1841, suggests a greater likelihood that Józefa was born earlier, circa 1839.

At this point, it’s not known where the family was living at that time. Leszno would be a possibility, since that’s where Marcella was born. However, birth records for Leszno are indexed in Geneteka for the entire period from 1808–1916 with no gaps, yet Józefa’s birth record is not found. Moreover, there are no promising matches in any indexed parish within the present-day Mazowieckie or Łódzkie provinces, which most likely suggests that Józefa was baptized in a parish whose records have not yet been indexed for that time period. Alternatively, her birth record may no longer exist.

Eighteen-year-old Paulina Szyfnerowicz died on 1 February 1852 while employed as a housekeeper at Walewice Palace.16 Her sister, Marianna Szyfrynowicz, married Michał Trafalski on 17 June 1855 in Oporów,17 but died two years later in Wola Owsiana, on 24 October 1857.18 Their father, Antoni Szyfrynowicz, died on 9 February 1862 in the village of Osiny.19 A map showing the family’s travels between 1822 and 1862 is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Map of the Szyfrynowicz family’s migrations, which took place between 1822–1862, after Antoni and Anna’s probable marriage in Giżyce, and up to Paulina’s death in Walewice. Google Maps. Click image for interactive map.

Anna herself died six years later, in the village of Wymyśłow, on 7 August 1868. Her death record, written in Russian, is shown in Figure 2.3

Figure 2: Death record from Głowno parish for Anna (née Naciążek) Szyfrynowicz. Anna’s name is underlined in red, written first in Russian, then in Polish (Анна Шифриновичъ/Anna Szyfrynowicz). Her maiden name was similarly recorded (Націонжекъ/Naciążek) and is also underlined in red. Parents’ names (Піотра и Малгожаты Націонжекъ) are underlined in green.

This is the only record discovered to date which identifies Anna’s parents as Piotr and Małgorzata, thus appending her to my family tree. In translation,* the record states,

“No. 18. Wymysłów.
It happened in the town of Głowno on the eighth day of August in the year one thousand eight hundred sixty-eight at four o’clock in the afternoon. Filip Jagiełło, age thirty-two, and Marcin Nadolski, age twenty-six, manorial farm servants, living in the village of Wymysłów, appeared and stated that yesterday, at two o’clock in the morning, Anna Szyfrynowicz, née Naciążek, died, a widow of her deceased husband, Antoni Szyfrynowicz, laborer living in the village of Wymysłów, born in the village of Giżyce, daughter of the deceased spouses Piotr and Małgorzata Naciążek; she leaves behind her daughter Marcella; the deceased was age seventy. After visual confirmation of the death of Anna Szyfrynowicz, this document was read to those present and was signed only by Us due to their illiteracy. [signed] Rev. Stanisław Biekalski, Keeper of the Civil Registers, Głowno Parish.”

The fact that only one daughter is mentioned in the death notice suggests that Anna outlived eight of her nine children, although death records have not yet been discovered for the oldest two children, Katarzyna and Ignacy. Marcella’s story continues through vital records, and additional documents pertaining to the parents and siblings of Antoni Szyfrynowicz could probably be located; however, the examples shown thus far pertaining to Antoni and Anna’s immediate family are sufficient to illustrate the challenges inherent to this research.

Researching the Szyfrynowicz Family in Geneteka

All of this evidence for the Szyfrynowicz family was discovered thanks to the Polish vital records database, Geneteka. The surname variants, and the number of occurrences of each, are summarized in the table shown in Figure 3.

Surname VariantOccurrences Found in Vital Records
Sitnerowicz3
Sypnorowicz2
Szafranowicz1
Szifnerowicz1
Sznuffrynowicz1
Szufrynowicz2
Szyfnerowicz1
Szyfrynowicz5
Zytnerowicz1
Figure 3: Surname variants found in vital records documenting the family of Antoni and Anna Szyfrynowicz, and the number of occurrences found for each variant.

In addition to the wildly divergent surname variations observed with the Szyfrynowicz surname, Anna’s maiden name was found to be all over the place, as well. Although Naciażek was the spelling used in nine historical records,4, 8, 9, 10, 12,14,16,17,18 there were two instances of Maciążek,6,13 and one each of Maciorek,11 Naciąszek,7 and Zaciąska.5 Additionally, Anna’s maiden name was identified as Strzelecka in the death record of her daughter, Józefa.15 However, in light of the body of evidence, this can be considered a more egregious recording error, rather than a benign etymological or phonetic variant. In records pertaining to my great-great-grandmother, Antonina (Naciążek) Zarzycka, the surname variant Raciążek was also used on eight of the 22 documents which identified her maiden name. Nonetheless, Naciążek was the predominant variant found for her, as well.

Polish surname variants tend to arise based on common etymology, and similar phonetics. The surname Grzesiak, for example, derives from the given name Grzegorz (Gregory),20 so variant spellings found in historical records for the same individual or family might include Grzesiek, Grzeszak, Grzeszczak, Greześkiewicz, etc. Similarly, members of the Bartoszewicz family might be recorded as Bartosiewicz, Bartusiewicz, and Bartoszewski. A simple wildcard search in Geneteka is usually an effective strategy for dealing with these issues. A search for “Bart*” will include all etymological and phonetic surname variants that begin with these four letters. However, research into the Szyfrynowicz family is complicated by the lack of common etymological or phonetic patterns found in the first few letters of the surname, as shown in Figure 3. The only pattern found within all examples of the surname is the “-owicz” ending. Unfortunately, Geneteka does not permit the wildcard character (*) to be used as the first letter of a surname in such a way that it helps to resolve this problem. To clarify, it’s possible to perform a search for the surname, “*owicz,” but results do not include all indexed Polish surnames ending in “-owicz.” Instead, the asterisk is ignored, and results include surnames that begin with “Owicz-” as well as surnames that were undecipherable to the indexer and contain a question mark (?) or an ellipsis (…).

For this reason, searches for records pertaining to Antoni and Anna’s family were accomplished more easily by using Anna’s maiden name as a search term, rather than her married surname. The wildcard strategy was somewhat more effective that way, since a search for “Naci*” will include results for Naciążek, Naciak, and Naciąszek. However, the search must be repeated for “Raci*” and “Maci*” in order to tease out all possible variants related to those spellings. In contrast, wildcard searches for Anna’s married surname employing “S*” or “Z*” are too broad, yet the inclusion of even a second character in the search string makes them already too narrow, based on the list of surnames shown in Figure 3. Research into the Szyfrynowicz family was further complicated by the family’s migrations, which spanned villages located in both the present day Łódzkie and Mazowieckie provinces. This fact necessitated the repetition of all searches in both provinces, since searches in Geneteka are limited to one province at a time. All of these factors illustrate the importance of thinking broadly when devising strategies for searches in Geneteka.

This research into the Szyfrynowicz family illustrates the slipperiness of the “original surname” concept. Many researchers are under the impression that surname changes and variant spellings are a problem unique to immigrants to the U.S. or Canada. If they are able to trace their family back to records from the Old Country, they reason, it will be possible to identify the one, true version of the surname. Unfortunately, the reality is rarely so simple. In the case of the Szyfrynowicz family, the preferred version of the surname was found on only five of 17 vital records pertaining to the family. Sometimes, the best you can do is to keep gathering data, until a preponderance of evidence is obtained.

Sources:

1 John Grenham, “All variants of Walsh,” Irish Ancestors (https://www.johngrenham.com/ : accessed 28 March 2023).

2 Roman Catholic Church (Sochaczew, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Sochaczewie, 1781-1901,” Księga małżeństw, 1826-1842, 1826, no. 7, Franciszek Naciążek and Marianna Kowalska; Archiwum Diecezjalne w Łowiczu, ul. Stary Rynek 19 A, 99-400, Łowicz, Polska/Poland; and

Roman Catholic Church, Kocierzew Południowy parish (Kocierzew Południowy, Łowicz, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Kocierzewie, 1812 – 1918,” Księga urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1844 r. [Book of births, marriages and deaths, 1844], Małżeństw [Marriages], no. 34, Franciszek Naciążek and Marianna Siekiera, née Kotlarska; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 March 2023), Zespół: 1514d, Jednostka: 1844 / UMZ-1844, Katalog: Małżeństwa, Plik: 034-035.jpg.

3 Roman Catholic Church, Głowno parish (Głowno, Zgierz, Lódz, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Głownie, 1808 – 1919,” 1868, Deaths, no. 18, Anna Szyfrzynowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/: accessed 28 March 2023), Zespół: 1474d, Jednostka: 1868 / UMZ-1868, Katalog: Zgony, Plik 15-18.jpg.

4 Roman Catholic Church, Giżyce parish (Giżyce, Iłów, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Giżycach, 1810–1928 r.”, Akta Narodzonych w Roku 1823 [Birth Certificates, 1823], no. 8, Katarzyna Maryanna Zytnerowicz; digital image, Metryki GenBaza (https://metryki.genbaza.pl/ : accessed 28 March 2023), citing Archiwum Państwowe w Warszawie Oddział w Grodzisku Mazowieckim, Sygnatura [Reference code] 73/66/0.

5 Roman Catholic Church, Bielawy parish (Bielawy, Łowicz, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Bielawach, 1809 – 1877 r.”, Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1825 r. [Birth, marriage and death files, 1825], Urodzenia [births], no. 10, Ignacy Szufrynowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych.
(https://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 March 2023), Zespół: 1409d, Jednostka: 1825 / UMZ-1825, Katalog: Urodzenia, Plik: 08-11.jpg; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

6 Roman Catholic Church (Śleszyn, Kutno, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Sołek–Śleszynie, 1810-1875,” Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów [Birth, marriage and death certificates], 1830; Urodzenia [births], no. 36, Joanna Sypnorowicz; indexed by anton_burza, Geneteka (https://geneteka.genealodzy.pl/ : accessed 28 March 2023); image copy obtained from indexer, citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Sygnatura 39/1675/0.

7 Roman Catholic Church, Żychlin parish (Żychlin, Kutno, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Żychlinie, 1808–1911,” [Civil Status Records of the Roman Catholic Parish in Żychlin, 1808 – 1911], Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1833 r. [Birth, marriage, and death certificates, 1833], Urodzenia [Births], no. 52, Paulina Sitnerowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 March 2023), Zespół: 1757d, Jednostka: 1833 / UMZ-1833, Katalog: Urodzenia, Plik: 052-059; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

8 Ibid., Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1834 r. [Birth, marriage and death certificates, 1834] Zgony [deaths], no. 31, Joanna Sitnerowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 March 2023), Zespół: 1757d, Jednostka: 1834 / UMZ-1834, Katalog: Zgony, Plik: 29–36; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

9 Roman Catholic Church, Kiernozia parish (Kiernozia, Łowicz, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Kiernozi, 1810-1888 r,” Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1836 r. [Birth, marriage and death certificates, 1836], Urodzenia [births], no. 14, Marianna Szyfrynowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : accessed 28 March 2023), Zespół: 1508d, Jednostka: 1836 / UMZ-1836, Katalog: Urodzenia, Plik: 10-15; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

10 Roman Catholic Church, Leszno parish (Leszno, Warszawa Zachodnia, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Lesznie,1826 – 1913,” Ksiega Duplikat do zapisywania Akt Religijno-Cywilnych Urodzenia Malzenstw i Zeyscia dla Parafii Leszno na Rok 1841 r. [Duplicate Book of Religious Civil Certificates of Birth, Marriage, and Death of the Parish of Leszno, 1841], Urodzenia [Births], no. 9, Marcella Agnieszka Szifnerowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : accessed 28 March 2023), Zespól: 0071d. Jednostka: 116, Katalog: Urodzenia, Plik: 004-009.jpg; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Warszawie Oddział w Grodzisku Mazowieckim.

11 Roman Catholic Church, Wiskitki parish (Wiskitki, Zyrardów, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Wiskitkach, 1826 – 1911,” Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1843 r. [Birth, marriage and death certificates, 1843], Urodzenia [births], no. 15, Wincenty Apolinary Szafranowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 March 2023), Zespół: 0061d, Jednostka: 1843 / Księga UMZ-1843 r., Katalog: Urodzenia, Plik: 010-015; citing Archiwum Państwowe m. st. Warszawy, Oddział w Grodzisku Mazowieckim.

12 Ibid., Księga urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1843 r. [Book of births, marriages, and deaths, 1843], zgony [deaths], no. 56, Wincenty Appolinary Sznuffrynowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów Akt Metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : accessed 28 March 2023, Zespól: 0061d, Jednostka: 1843 / Ksiega UMZ-1843 r., Katalog: Zgony, Plik: 053-060.jpg; citing Archiwum Państwowe m. st. Warszawy, Oddział w Grodzisku Mazowieckim.

13 Roman Catholic Church (Śleszyn, Kutno, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Sołek – Śleszynie, 1810 – 1875,” Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów [Birth, marriage and death certificates], 1844; Urodzenia [births], no. 28, Joanna Sitnerowicz; indexed by anton_burza, Geneteka (https://geneteka.genealodzy.pl/ : 24 March 2023); image copy obtained from indexer, citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

14 Roman Catholic Church, Plecka Dąbrowa parish (Plecka Dąbrowa, Kutno, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Pleckiej Dąbrowie, 1810-1918,” Księga urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów [Book of births, marriages, and deaths], 1847, zgony [deaths], no. 4, Joanna Szyfrynowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl : accessed 28 March 2023), Zespół: 1627d, citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

15 Roman Catholic Church, Bielawy parish (Bielawy, Łowicz, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Bielawach, 1809 – 1877 r.,” Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1848 r. [Birth, marriage and death files, 1848], zgony [deaths], no. 140, Józefa Szufrynowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 March 2023); Zespół: 1409d, Jednostka: 1848 / UMZ-1848, Katalog: Urodzenia, Plik: 127-140; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

16 Roman Catholic Church, Bielawy parish (Bielawy, Łowicz, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Bielawach, 1809 – 1877 r.,” [Civil Status Files of the Roman Catholic Parish of Bielawy, 1809 – 1877], Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1852 r. [Birth, marriage and death files, 1852], zgony [deaths], no. 9, Paulina Szyfnerowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : 28 March 2023), Zespół: 1409d, Jednostka: 1852 / UMZ-1852, Katalog: zgony, Plik: 009-014; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

17 Roman Catholic Church, Oparów parish (Oparów, Kutno, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Oporowie, 1808 – 1919,” Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów [Birth, marriage and death certificates], 1855, Małżeństwa [marriages], no. 14, Michal Trafalski and Maryanna Szyfrynowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : accessed 28 March 2023), Zespół: 1606d, Jednostka: 1855 / UMZ-1855, Katalog: Małżeństwa, Plik: 12-15; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

18 Ibid., Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1857 r. [Birth, marriage and death certificates, 1857], zgony [deaths], no.68, Maryanna Trafalska; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : accessed 28 March 2023), Zespół: 1606d, Jednostka: 1857 / UMZ-1857, Katalog: Zgony, Plk: 61-68; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

19 Roman Catholic Church, Dmosin parish (Dmosin, Brzeziny, Łódź, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Dmosinie, 1808 – 1920,” Akta urodzeń, małżeństw i zgonów, 1862 r. [Birth, marriage and death certificates,1862), Zgony [deaths], no. 14, Antoni Szyfrzynowicz; digital image, Skanoteka – Metryki: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : accessed 28 March 2023), Zespół: 1456d, Jednostka: 1862 / UMZ-1862, Katalog: Zgony, Plik: 010-015; citing Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi.

20 William F. Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings, 3rd Edition, Vol. 2 (Chicago, Illinois: Polish Genealogical Society of America, 2012), p 224, “entry for “Grzes-.”

*I would like to acknowledge with gratitude the kind assistance of Monika Deimann-Clemens in reviewing my translation of Anna Szyfrynowicz’s death record.


© Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz, 2023





Searching No Longer: Antonina Naciążek Has Been Found!

Published on by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz10 Comments

I’m savoring a quiet victory today, a victory that comes not from my own efforts, but rather from the magnificent database that is Geneteka. Thanks to this discovery, I’ve been able to add two more generations of Zazycki ancestors to my family tree, and elucidate relationships between Naciążeks found in records from Sochaczew County.

For years, I have been searching for the place of birth, marriage, and death of my great-great-grandmother, Antonina (née Naciążek, Maciążek, or Raciążek) Zarzycka. Thus far, she has been known to me only through the birth, marriage and death records of her 11 children, all of whom were born in the village of Bronisławy in Rybno parish, Sochaczew County. However, it was clear that Antonina herself was from another parish, since her own birth, marriage and death were not recorded in Rybno. The location of that parish, and the identities of her parents, have been a subject of much speculation on my part.

The Naciążek Family of Giżyce and Sochaczew

Through FAN research (described previously), I was able to focus on two nearby parishes which seemed most likely to be Antonina’s place of birth and marriage: Giżyce and Sochaczew. However, I was hampered by major gaps in the indexed records for both parishes. As mentioned previously, “Records for Giżyce are especially limited, since there are no records for this parish in the diocesan archive in Łowicz. Moreover, the only vital records from Giżyce from the relevant time period that are in possession of the state archive in Grodzisk Mazowiecki are from 1810, and 1823–1825, all of which are indexed in Geneteka. This suggests that most of the records for Giżyce are at the parish itself, where they can only be accessed onsite, at the discretion of the parish pastor.”1 

The situation for Sochaczew was somewhat better, since indexed birth records from this parish were available to cover the period from 1828–1829, when Antonina was most likely to have been born. Her birth was not recorded in Sochaczew, so I strongly suspected that she was born in Giżyce. Since marriage records were not available from either parish circa 1849, when Antonina married Ignacy Zarzycki, a marriage in either parish, Sochaczew or Giżyce, seemed equally plausible.

FAN research further identified two couples that could hypothetically be Antonina’s parents: Franciszek Naciążek and Marianna Kowalska, who were married in Sochaczew in 1826, and Mateusz/Maciej Naciążek and Petronella Trawińska, who were the parents of six children whose births and deaths were recorded in Giżyce and Sochaczew between 1824 and 1840. In weighing the evidence for these two couples, I had a slight preference for the hypothesis that Mateusz and Petronella might be Antonina’s parents, because of indirect evidence that their daughter, Florentyna Marianna (Naciążek) Kowalska, was godmother to Antonina’s daughter, Florentyna Zarzycka, born in 1861.

With so much evidence pointing to Giżyce, I hired an onsite researcher to request permission to search in any 19th-century books held by the parish. The parish website states that they only have books since 1945, but it’s been my experience that such statements are not always accurate. Permission was not granted for the research, and the existence of 19th-century parish books was not confirmed. Them’s the breaks, as they say. With no way to confirm Antonina’s place of birth or marriage, the researcher suggested that we attempt to locate her death record in one of the nearby parishes, searching first in available records online, and then, if necessary, moving to onsite research in parishes that were more amenable to it. Knowing only that she died some time between 1904 and circa 1928, this was a daunting task, and one for which I was not able to summon up much enthusiasm, especially in light of all the other genealogical Bright Shiny Objects that were before me. I put Antonina on the back burner, and moved onto other research.

Antonina’s Birth Record

Well, good things come to those who wait. This past week, on a whim, I decided to try another search for Antonina in Geneteka, not really expecting to find anything new. But there it was (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Wildcard search result for birth records from Mazowieckie province for Antonina Naci*. The wildcard (*) will pick up search results for any surnames starting with “Naci-,” e.g. Naciążek, Naciąszek, etc. Click image to view search result at website.

I stared at the screen for several moments. It was almost anticlimactic. Antonina Naciążek was born in 1829 in Giżyce to Franciszek Naciążek and Marianna Kowalska. She was born in the expected time frame and parish, and to one of the sets of hypothetical parents I’d identified. Hovering over the infodots under the “Remarks” informed me that she was born on 11 June 1829, and that the original record is held by the Archiwum Diecezjalne w Łowiczu (Diocesan Archives in Łowicz). The archives’ online catalog for Giżyce now reports substantial holdings for the parish of Giżyce, which were not there the last time I checked (circa August 2021). So, at some point in the past year, the pastor apparently made the decision to transfer the archival books to the Diocesan Archives for preservation and safekeeping. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a small miracle, and an enormous blessing.

Since the digital image of Antonina’s birth record is only available from the Diocesan Archives, I requested a copy, and am awaiting a reply. However, the next step toward further research has already been taken. I previously obtained a copy of the marriage record for Franciszek Naciążek and Marianna Kowalska from that archive, based on my interest in them as as potential parents of Antonina. That marriage record is shown in Figure 2.2 At long last, I can add them to my family tree as a new set of great-great-great-grandparents.

Figure 2: Record of marriage from Sochaczew parish for Franciszek Naciążek and Marianna Kowalska, 22 January 1826. Click image to enlarge.

The record states,

“Kąty.

No. 7. Działo się w Mieście Sochaczewie dnia dwudziestego drugiego Stycznia, Tysiąc Osiemset dwudziestego Szóstego Roku o godzinie drugiej po południu.

Wiadomo czyniemy, że w przytomności Świadków Filipa Janiaka Rolnika lat piędziesiąt, i Piotra Kowalskiego Rolnika lat czterdzieści liczących we wsi Kątach zamieszkałych, na dniu dzisiejszym zawarte zostało religijnie Małżeństwo między Franciszkiem Naciążek, Młodzianem Parobkiem we wsi Giżycach zamieszkałym tamże urodzonym z Piotra i Małgorzaty Małżonków Naciążków, tamże zamieszkałych, lat dwadzieścia mającym, a Panną Maryanną, córką Wojciecha i Maryanny Małżonków Kowalskich w Kątach zamieszkałych lat Szesnaście mającą w Kątach zrodzoną i przy rodzicach zostającą. Małżeństwo to poprzedziły trzy Zapowiedzie w Parafiach Sochaczewskiej i Giżyckiej w dniach ósmym, piętnastym, i dwudziestym drugim Stycznia roku bieżącego jako też zezwolenie ustne obecnych Aktowi Małżeństwa rodziców nowo zaślubionych było Oświadczone. Tamowanie Małżeństwa nie zaszło. Małżonkowie nowi oświadczają, iż nie zawarli umowy przedślubnej.

Akt ten Stawającym i Świadkom przeczytany został, którzy oświadczyli, iż pisać nie umieją.

[Signed] X. Tomasz Kublicki, Proboszcz Sochaczewski.”

In translation,

“Kąty.

No. 7. This happened in the town of Sochaczew on the twenty-second day of January in the year one thousand eight hundred twenty-six, at two o’clock in the afternoon.

We hereby declare that—in the presence of witnesses, Filip Janiak, farmer, age fifty, and Piotr Kowalski, farmer, age forty, residing in the village of Kąty—on this day was contracted a religious marriage between Franciszek Naciążek, a young farmhand residing in the village of Giżyce and likewise born there of the spouses Piotr and Małgorzata Naciążek, likewise residing there; having twenty years of age, and Miss Marianna, daughter of Wojciech and Marianna Kowalski, spouses, residing in Kąty, having sixteen years of age, born in Kąty and living there with her parents. The marriage was preceded by three announcements in the parishes of Sochaczew and Giżyce on the eighth, fifteenth, and twenty-second days of January of the current year, and likewise by the oral consent of the parents of the newlyweds present at the ceremony. There were no impediments to the marriage. The newlyweds declared that they have not made a prenuptial agreement. This Act was read to the witnesses, who declared that they do not know how to write. [Signed] Fr. Tomasz Kublicki, Pastor of Sochaczew”

Franciszek Naciążek’s age at the time of his marriage suggests a birth circa 1805, given that the marriage took place in January, and it’s likely that his birthday had not yet passed. His parents were identified as Piotr and Małgorzata (__) Naciążek—a new set of great-great-great-great-grandparents, woot! The Naciążek family was from Giżyce, and the record suggests that Piotr and Małgorzata were still living at the time of the wedding in 1826. Marianna Kowalska was reported to be the daughter of Wojciech and Marianna (__), born in Kąty circa 1809. Another new set of 4x-great-grandparents! Although there are a number of places called Kąty located in Poland, the particular village of Kąty implied by this record was located in Sochaczew County, and included 18 homes and 208 residents in 1827, the year following Franciszek’s marriage to Marianna.3 Good stuff!

Antonina’s Death Record

The evening’s discoveries did not end there, however. Feeling hopeful, I searched Geneteka again to see if Antonina’s death record had been added within the past year. Sure enough, it had! In this case, a scan was linked to the index entry, and the record is shown in Figure 3.4

Figure 3: Death record from Warszawa-Wola (St. Stanisław parish) for Antonina Zarzycka, who died on 14 May 1915. Antonina’s name appears in Russian and Polish, underlined in red, followed by the identification of her parents, Franciszek and Marianna, the spouses Naciążek. Click image to enlarge.

The record is in Russian, and in translation, it states,

“No. 1625. Ochota. This happened in Wola parish on the second/fifteenth day of May in the year one thousand nine hundred fifteen at three o’clock during the day. Appeared Karol Zarzycki of Ochota and Wojciech Gornisiewicz of Warszawa, laborers of legal age, and stated, that yesterday at eight o’clock in the evening, Antonina Zarzycka died in Ochota, a widow, eighty-seven years of age, place of birth unknown to those present, daughter of Franciszek and Marianna, the spouses Naciążek. After eyewitness confirmation of the death of Antonina Zarzycka, this Act was read to those present and was signed by Us.”

Every good genealogist knows that sound conclusions require multiple sources of evidence, and nothing definitive can be stated on the basis of one, single document. (For proof of that, consider the question of the identity of my great-great-grandmother, Marianna Krawczyńska, a case discussed previously.) The fact that Antonina’s parents’ names were reported as Franciszek and Marianna, consistent with the birth record, gives me confidence that this information is correct. Antonina’s age in this record suggests a date of birth circa 1828, well within the usual margin of error for accuracy. The fact that she was reported to be a widow was also expected, since her husband, Ignacy, died in 1901.5

I had suspected previously that Antonina might have been living with one of her children when she died, but she had children living in several different towns around Poland, including Warsaw, so there were lots of places to check. Although the record does not specify the relationship, the fact that the witness, Karol Zarzycki, was living in the Ochota district of Warsaw, and that Antonina died in Ochota, strongly suggests that he was her son. Karol was also known to be living in St. Stanisław parish in Warsaw—the same parish where Antonina’s death was recorded—in 1919, when his first wife, Zofia, died.6

Antonina’s Marriage Record

While I wish I could say that I also found Antonina’s marriage record, alas, I did not. However, I am more convinced now than ever before that her marriage to Ignacy Zarzycki probably took place in Sochaczew. The recently indexed records in Geneteka from the parish of Giżyce include marriage records for the entire period from 1827 through 1893, with no gaps. Antonina and Ignacy were married circa 1849, but there is no marriage record for them in Giżyce. However, there is a gap in indexed marriage records from Sochaczew for the period from 1836 through 1861. So, if Antonina and Ignacy were married in Sochaczew, that would explain why their marriage record does not appear in Geneteka.

A marriage in Sochaczew would also fit with the emerging timeline for this family’s history. There is an indexed death record for Antonina’s mother, Marianna (née Kowalska) Naicążek, in Sochaczew in 1844 (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Geneteka search result for a death record for Marianna Naciążek in Sochaczew parish, Mazowieckie province. Click image to view search result at website.

Once again, the information linked to the infodots in the “Remarks” column provides enough information to confirm that this is the correct Marianna Naciążek, prior to requesting a copy of the original from the Diocesan Archive in Łowicz. Marianna was reported to be age 34, her maiden name was Kowalska, her husband was Franciszek, and her precise date of death was 25 March 1844. There is one conflict yet to resolve: Marianna’s mother’s name was recorded here as Katarzyna, rather than Marianna, as it was recorded on her marriage record. Despite this discrepancy, I believe there is sufficient evidence to conclude that the woman described in this death record was Marianna Naciążek, Antonina’s mother. Therefore, we know that the Naciążek family was living in the village of Duranów in Sochaczew parish, approximately five years prior to Antonina’s marriage.

These new records open up a brave, new world of research for me. I’m excited to start asking and answering questions about the Kowalski family and the Naciążek family. Who were Marianna Kowalska’s siblings? Where were her parents born, where did they marry, and where did they die? Was her mother’s name Marianna or Katarzyna? Who were the children of Piotr and Małgorzata? Discovering maiden names for both Małgorzata Naciążek and Wojciech Kowalski’s wife would also be great.

But all those things can wait for another day. Tonight, I’m lifting a glass to my great-great-grandmother, Antonina Naciążek Zarzycka. Until now, she was my closest “brick wall” ancestor. Not anymore.

Sources:

1Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz, “Still Searching For Antonina Naciążek: Some New Insights into Old Data,” From Shepherds and Shoemakers (https://fromshepherdsandshoemakers.com/ : posted 01 March 2019, accessed 27 October 2022).

2 Roman Catholic Church (Sochaczew, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Sochaczewie, 1781-1901,” Księga małżeństw, 1826-1842, 1826, no. 7, Franciszek Naciążek and Marianna Kowalska; Archiwum Diecezjalne w Łowiczu, ul. Stary Rynek 19 A, 99-400, Łowicz, Polska/Poland.

3 Filip Sulimierski, et al., Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich [Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and Other Slavic Lands] (Warszawa: Nakładem Władysława Walewskiego, 1880-1902), Tom III, 933, “Kąty (7),” DIR—Zasoby Polskie (http://dir.icm.edu.pl/pl/ : 27 October 2022).

4 Roman Catholic Church, Św. Stanisława Parish (Warszawa-Wola, Warszawa, Mazowieckie, Poland), Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej św. Stanisława w Warszawie (Wola), 1826 – 1942, Unikat akt zgonu parafii św. Stanisława 1915 r. [Unique death certificates of St. Stanislaus Parish, 1915], no. 1625, Antonina Zarzycka; digital image, Metryki.genealodzy.pl : Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : 28 October 2022), Zespół: 9179/D- , Jednostka: 591, Katalog: Zgony, plik: 1621-1628.jpg.

5 Roman Catholic Church (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Rybnie,1886–1908,” Księga zgonów 1886-1903 [Book of Deaths 1886–1903], 1901, no. 44, Ignacy Zarzycki; digital image, Metryki.Genealodzy.pl: Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 October 2022), Zespół: 1279d, Jednostka: 350, Katalog: Zgony, plik: 43-46.jpg.

6 Roman Catholic Church, Św. Stanisława Parish (Warszawa-Wola, Warszawa, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej św. Stanisława w Warszawie (Wola), 1826 – 1942,” Unikat akt zgonu parafii sw. Stanislawa 1919 r. [Unique death certificates of St. Stanislaus Parish, 1919], no. 908, Zofia Zarzycka; digital image, Metryki.genealodzy.pl : Baza skanów akt metrykalnych (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : 28 October 2022), Zespół: 9179/D- , Jednostka: 595, Katalog: Zgony, plik: 0905-0912.jpg.

The author wishes to acknowledge the kind assistance of Roman Kałużniacki in proofreading the transcription and translation of the marriage record of Franciszek Naciążek and Marianna Kowalska.

© Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz 2022

Manifest Mayhem! Identifying Józefa (Winnicka) Łukasik’s Place of Origin

Published on by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz6 Comments

One of the greatest challenges for genealogists who are attempting to make the leap from historical documents in the U.S., to historical documents in the Old Country (wherever that may be), is accurate identification of the immigrant’s place of origin. All too often, place names are badly butchered in source documents, which can be frustrating and perplexing for novice researchers. Recently, I found a passenger manifest that exemplified a classic place-name butchering, which I’d like to discuss today, along with some tips for identifying the correct, “unbutchered” place name.

Introducing Józefa (Winnicka) Łukasik

I’ve been researching a family of immigrants to North Tonawanda, New York, on behalf of a distant cousin and DNA match who lives in Poland. This cousin had a great-grandfather, Jan Łukasik, who came to the U.S. and lived here for a few years, along with his brothers, Andrzej and Franciszek. Jan Łukasik eventually returned to Poland, while Andrzej and Franciszek remained here, and my cousin was hoping to obtain a more complete picture of the history of this family in the U.S.

In 1915, all three of the Lukasik brothers were found to be living at 124 Center Avenue in North Tonawanda, as shown in Figure 1.1

Figure 1: Andrew Lukasik household in the 1915 New York State Census. Click image to enlarge.

Per the 1915 New York State census, the household included 30-year-old Andrew Lukasik, his 28-year-old wife, Josephine, and a 12-year-old daughter, Sophia, as well as two brothers—28-year-old John and 26-year-old Frank—and a boarder, Anthony Orlinski, age 25. All were recorded as having been born in Russia, but all arrived at different times. The length of U.S. residency reported for John, Frank and Anthony, 5 years, suggests an arrival circa 1910, while Andrew was reported as having arrived just a year earlier, circa 1914. Josephine was reported to have been living in the U.S. for four years, suggesting an arrival in 1911. Sophia is a bit of a mystery, in light of other evidence found for this family, but we’ll ignore that for now and focus on the primary research subjects, Andrew, Frank, and John Lukasik.

My Polish cousin informed me that the Łukasiks were from the parish of Młodzieszyn in Sochaczew County—information which was unsurprising to me, since I’ve found that many of the Polish immigrants who settled in North Tonawanda were from Sochaczew County, including two of my great-grandfathers, John Zazycki and Joseph Zielinski. In fact, thanks to chain migration, census records from “the Avenues” (North Tonawanda’s Polish enclave) read very much like a roll call of the families found in church books from Sochaczew County: Zieliński, Pałka, Kalisiak, Kalota, Szymański, Duplicki, Zażycki, Sikora, Orliński, Wieczorek, Pisarek, Koszelak, Rokicki, Włodarczyk, Adamczyk, Dąbrowski, Wilczek, and more. To be clear, I have not traced the origins of every Polish family in North Tonawanda with one of those surnames, and some of those names (e.g. Zieliński, Dąbrowski, Sikora) are so popular that the bearers might have originated anywhere in Poland. Nonetheless, I’d be willing to bet that many of the folks with those surnames who settled in North Tonawanda were originally from Sochaczew County.

So, when I discovered a record of marriage for Andrzej Lukasik and Josephine “Winicka” [sic] on 3 November 1914 in Buffalo, New York, my first thought was that Andrew married a girl from his hometown.2 I, too, have Winnicki ancestors from the parish of Młodzieszyn, and Winnicki is a popular surname in Sochaczew County. A quick way to test that hypothesis would be to find evidence for Józefa Winnicka’s place of origin from an online document such as her passenger manifest.

Finding the Manifest

Józefa Winnicka’s passenger manifest proved to be a tad elusive. From census and cemetery records, I knew that she was born between 1882 and 1887, and that she was from the Russian partition of Poland, consistent with the location of Sochaczew County.3 The 1915 and 1925 New York State censuses reported lengths of U.S. residency consistent with an arrival in 1911, and 1911 was also recorded as her year of arrival in the 1920 and 1930 U.S. censuses. I assumed that she would be traveling under her maiden name, Winnicka, since she did not marry Andrew Lukasik until 1914, and that her destination was probably Buffalo, where she married, rather than North Tonawanda. Nonetheless, there were no promising search hits. Not to worry, though; persistence usually wins the day, and there are a number of strategies that can be tried when an initial search fails to turn up the right passenger manifest, so I kept searching.

In this case, the use of wildcards ultimately proved to be effective. Ancestry had her indexed as “Jozefa Minnicka,” although she was clearly the right person. The two-page manifest is shown in Figures 2a and b.4

Figure 2a: First page of the passenger manifest from the SS Nieuw Amsterdam, showing Józefa Winnicka, traveling to Buffalo, New York, arriving in the port of New York on 31 October 1910. Click image to enlarge.
Figure 2b: Second page of the passenger manifest from the SS Nieuw Amsterdam, showing Józefa Winnicka, traveling to Buffalo, New York, arriving in the port of New York on 31 October 1910. Click image to enlarge.

Józefa Winnicka appears on line 16 of the manifest for the SS Nieuw Amsterdam, which departed from the port of Rotterdam on 22 October 1910, and arrived in New York on 31 October. She was identified as a single, female, farmhand, age 26, able to read and write. Her age suggests a birth circa 1884, and this date and her arrival date are both within the expected ballpark based on the accumulated body of evidence. She was an ethnic Pole and a Russian citizen, consistent with the fact that Poland was not an independent nation in 1910. (If that statement is confusing, here is a brief summary of Poland’s changing borders.) So far, so good.

Suchatzew, Suchatzin, Sawacew and Sawasew

The smoking-gun evidence needed for Józefa’s place of origin was found in the next columns. Her last permanent residence was recorded as “Suchatzew, Russia.” Her nearest relative in the country from whence she came was her father, Ludwig Winnicka [sic] from “Suchatzew.” We’ll come back to that place name in a moment. Józefa was traveling to Buffalo, New York, and on the second page, the record further specified that Józefa’s contact in the U.S. was her brother-in-law, Roch Dolak, residing at 152 Rother Avenue in Buffalo. Following details regarding her physical and mental condition and her philosophical disposition, the final column identified her place of birth as “Suchatzin, Russia.”

I was willing to bet that both of these spellings, “Suchatzew” and “Suchatzin,” were intended to refer to either the town of Sochaczew, or the county of Sochaczew, so I believed this was good evidence that my assumption was correct about Andrew Lukasik marrying a girl from his hometown. However, this manifest offered further confirmation of her place of origin, because Józefa was not traveling alone. Although it was not immediately obvious from the first page of the manifest, the second page of the manifest shows Józefa on line 16, bracketed together with three other passengers who were recorded on lines 18, 19, and 20 (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Detail from page 2 of the manifest from the SS Nieuw Amsterdam, showing Józefa Winnicka on line 16, bracketed together with a group of three other passengers from lines 18, 19 and 20.

The first page of that manifest identified these passengers as 25-year-old Bronisława Dolak and her children, 3-year-old Zofia, and 10-month-old Jan. Like Józefa, Bronisława named her father as her nearest relative in the Old Country, but this time his name was spelled “Ludwik Winitzky,” rather than “Ludwig Winnicka,” and his place of residence was spelled, “Sawasew, Warschau.” Similarly, Bronisława’s last place of residence was spelled, “Sawacew” (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Detail from page 1 of the manifest from the SS Nieuw Amsterdam, showing the last place of residence of Józefa Winnicka, “Suchatzew,” and her father’s place of residence, “Suchatzew.” Two lines below, her sister’s last place of residence was recorded as, “Sawacew,” and their father’s place of residence was recorded as “Sawasew, Warschau.”

Despite such wildly disparate spellings, it’s clear that “Sawacew” and Sawasew” must also refer to the town of Sochaczew or the county of Sochaczew, since Józefa and Bronisława had the same father, Ludwik Winnicki. At that time, Sochaczew was located in the Warsaw (Warschau, in German) gubernia, or province, which explains the reference to Warsaw in the entry on line 18. The use of such different spellings for both the place name and the father’s name, on the same manifest, nicely illustrates the importance of keeping an open mind when it comes to evaluating spellings found in historical documents.

The final column on the second page of the manifest is also enlightening (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Final column on page 2 of the manifest from the SS Nieuw Amsterdam, showing the places of birth of Józefa Winnicka, Bronisława (Winnicka) Dolak, and Zofia and Jan Dolak.

While Józefa Winnicka was reported to have been born in “Suchatzin,” (or Suchatzew?), her sister Bronisława’s birthplace looks like “Riwano,” while both children were born in “Modjesin.” Although “Modjesin” is a rough phonetic match to the actual village of Młodzieszyn, it took me a minute to realize that “Riwano” must be referring to the village of Rybno, another village in Sochaczew County, located 11 km/7 miles from Młodzieszyn.

Confirming Place Identification Using Geneteka

Of course, all of these place-name identifications can only be considered as speculative, until evidence for the target immigrant is found in historical records from that location. In this case, confirmation can be found in indexed Polish vital records from the Geneteka database. A search in all indexed parishes in Mazowieckie province for birth records containing surnames Dolek and Winnicki predictably turned up the births of Zofia and Jan Dolak, in or near Młodzieszyn parish (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Geneteka search result for all indexed births in Mazowieckie province containing surnames Dolak and Winnicka. Click image for interactive search page.

Although it was stated on the manifest that both children were born in Młodzieszyn, Geneteka informs us that only Zofia was born in Młodzieszyn, while Jan was born in the nearby village of Ruszki, which belonged to the parish in Giżyce, where he was baptized. (Clicking the “skan” button reveals that Jan’s birth record was, in fact, number 39 for 1909, not number 38, so the middle entry in Figure 6 is an error in the database.)

A public member tree online at Ancestry suggested that Józefa (Winnicka) Łukasik’s parents were “Ludwik Winicka” [sic] and “Agnieszka Bralun.”5 Although no source was cited for that information, I suspect it came from Josephine’s marriage record, or perhaps her death certificate, neither of which is available online. A search at Geneteka for records pertaining to Ludwik Winnicki and wife’s name Agnieszka (no maiden name specified) in indexed parishes within 15 km of Młodzieszyn, produced birth records for four children of Ludwiki Winnicki and Agnieszka Braun, all of whom were born in the village of Cyprianki and baptized in the parish of Rybno between 1870 and 1878 (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Geneteka search result for birth records mentioning Ludwik Winnick and Agnieszka (no maiden name specified) in indexed parishes within 15 km of Młodzieszyn. Click image for interactive search page.

Although birth records for Józefa and Bronisława are not included in this search result, limiting the search to Rybno parish provides the explanation: there’s a gap in indexed birth records for Rybno from 1879 through 1887, which would encompass their births circa 1884 and 1885. All of these locations can be found on the map in Figure 8 except Cyprianki, which may be too small a place to be included in this Google Map, but which can be found on the map here, a little to the north of Cypriany, and about halfway between Cypriany and Rybno.

Figure 8: Map showing locations of Młodzieszyn, Ruszki, Rybno, and Giżyce, relative to the county seat, Sochaczew, to the southeast.

Tips for Deciphering Mangled Place Names

I had a bit of an unfair advantage when it came to deciphering Józefa Winnicka’s place of origin from the manifest, since I already had a hunch about where she was from. But what if that weren’t the case? How would a person know that Suchatzew and Sawasew were supposed to be Sochaczew? The following strategies might help:

  1. Obtain more than one piece of evidence for place of origin. Passenger manifests, naturalization records, church records, and draft registrations are all common sources for this information, but place of origin might be found on a variety of other documents. Don’t limit your search to the research target, but look at the big picture and consider all known relatives of that person who also immigrated.
  2. Don’t overlook the second page of a passenger manifest, in cases where one exists. It’s a common rookie mistake to think that a document is limited to only one page, since the search engines at Ancestry, FamilySearch, etc., link to only one image. However, some passenger manifests, WWII draft cards, passport applications, and most naturalization files, consist of multiple pages. Be sure to use the arrow keys to browse through the additional images that come before and after the linked image, to ensure that you’ve seen all there is to see. Had I not done this, I would not have found the references to Rybno and Młodzieszyn.
  3. Consider that immigrants may have approximated their place of origin to the county or province seat, rather than referring to the specific, small village. Although Józefa Winnicka claimed to have been born in Sochaczew, birth records for the parish of Sochaczew are indexed in Geneteka from 1849 through 1884 without gaps, yet her birth record is not there. It’s probable that she was, in fact, baptized in Rybno, like her siblings who appear in Figure 7, but that she mentioned the county seat instead, as a larger (and presumably more recognizable) place.
  4. Use a phonetic gazetteer to decode place names that were recorded phonetically by the clerk. There are two that I use regularly, the JewishGen Gazetteer and the Baza Miejscowości Kresowych (Eastern Borderlands Places). The scope of the former is quite broad, and it can be used to identify places located in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, while the latter is specific to places in the Kresy Wschodnie, or eastern borderlands region (places that were within the borders of Poland during the era of the Second Republic, but are now located in western Ukraine, western Belarus, and southeastern Lithuania). The JewishGen Gazetteer offers quite a few search options for Soundex and fuzzy searches, and a search for “Suchatzew” using Beider-Morse Phonetic Matching quickly zeroed in on the town and county of Sochaczew (Figure 9).
Figure 9: JewishGen Gazetteer search result for “Suchatzew” using Beider-Morse Phonetic Matching. Click image to enlarge.

Although Beider-Morse did the trick here, I tend to use the second search option, Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex, more frequently, because it gives me more search hits. However, some trial-and-error will likely be involved in the process either way. The resulting list of search hits can be whittled down through consultation with the map; for example, the first candidate in the list shown in Figure 8, Sukhachëva, turns out to be located in Russia’s Oryol Oblast, a good 650 miles from the eastern border of Poland today, and well outside of Poland’s borders at any point in history. If all the evidence points to Józefa (Winnicka) Łukasik’s birthplace being in Poland (albeit the Russian partition of Poland), Sukhachëva can be safely ruled out.

5. Use a period gazetteer to reconcile “conflicting evidence.” While Młodzieszyn and Sochaczew are unique place names in Poland, there are 26 places in Poland today called Rybno, according to Mapa.szukacz.pl. If one were researching Bronisława Dolak and came across a reference to Rybno on one document, but to Sochaczew on another, a quick check in a gazetteer can shed some light on the confusion and aid in identifying the correct Rybno (Figure 10).6 An annotated list of useful gazetteers for Polish genealogy can be found here.

Figure 10: Entries for Rybno found in the Skorowidz Królestwa Polskiego (Index of the Kingdom of Poland).

6. Use Geneteka (or another indexed vital records database) to quickly test hypotheses about an immigrant’s place of origin. This may not work every time, but Geneteka is such a substantial database, that you stand a good chance of finding some trace of your family there, even if your target immigrant is not included. In this case, Józefa (Winnicka) Łukasik was not found in Geneteka, but evidence for her parents and for her sister’s family was sufficient to confirm accurate identification of several parishes which can be searched for records pertaining to the Winnicki family.

Deciphering place names on historical records can be pretty challenging at times, and manifests like this one for Józefa Winnicka may leave you wondering whether to laugh or to cry at the awful misspellings. However, the right tools and strategies, combined with some patience and persistence, will usually win the day. Happy researching!

Sources:

1 1915 New York State Census, Niagara County population schedule, North Tonawanda Ward 03, Assembly District 01, Enumeration District 01, p 33, lines 6-11, Andrew Lukasik household; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/ : 22 April 2022).

2 “New York State, Marriage Index, 1881-1967,” database with images, Ancestry (https://search.ancestry.com/ : 22 April 2022), Andrzej Lukasik and Jozefa Winicka, 3 November 1914, Buffalo, New York, certificate no. 35186.

3 1920 U.S. Federal Census, Niagara County population schedule, North Tonawanda Ward 03, Enumeration District 38, Sheet 4B, house no. 72, family no. 63, Andrew Lukasik household; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com : 21 March 2022), citing NARA microfilm publication T625, roll 1240 of 2076 rolls; and

1925 census of New York State, Niagara County population schedule, 3rd Ward North Tonawanda, Election District 01, Assembly District 01, p 43, Andrew Lukasik household; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com : 22 April 2022); and

1930 U.S Federal Census, Niagara County population schedule, 3rd Ward North Tonawanda, Enumeration District 32-87, Sheet 25B, house no. 26, family no. 539, Andy Lukassik household; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/ : 22 April 2022), citing National Archives and Records Administration publication T626, 2,667 rolls, Family History Library microfilm 2341353; and

1940 U.S. Federal census, Niagara County, New York, population schedule, North Tonawanda Ward 3, Enumeration District 32-130, Sheet 8B, house no. 26, visitation no. 135, Andrew and Chester Lukasik households; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/ : 22 April 2022), citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm publication T627, roll 2,698 of 4,643 rolls; and

Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/228947128/jozefa-lukasik : accessed 22 March 2022), memorial page for Jozefa “Josephine” Winnicka Lukasik (1884–13 Aug 1968), Find a Grave Memorial ID 228947128, citing Mount Olivet Cemetery, Kenmore, Erie County, New York, USA ; Maintained by Bonnie O’Brien (contributor 50514324).

4 Manifest, SS Nieuw Amsterdam, arriving 31 October 1910, p 167, lines 16, 18, 19 and 20, Jozefa Winnicka [indexed as Minnicka] and Dolak family; imaged as “New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957,” database with images, Ancestry (https://search.ancestry.com : 21 April 2022); citing Records of the U.S. Customs Service, Record Group 36, National Archives at Washington, D.C. Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1897-1957, Microfilm Publication T715, 8892 rolls, NAI: 300346, no specific roll cited.

5 Ancestry user “GiacomoKennedy,” public member tree, “Imogene Pasel – October 10, 2018,” Ancestry Public Member Trees database, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/ : 21 April 2022).

6 I. Zinberg, Skorowidz Królestwa Polskiego czyli Spis alfabetyczny miast, wsi, folwarków, kolonii i wszystkich nomenklatur w guberniach Królestwa Polskiego, z wykazaniem: gubernii, powiatu, gminy, parafii, sądu pokoju lub gminnego, oraz najbliższej stacyi pocztowej, wraz z oddzielnym spisem gmin podług najświeższej ich liczby i nazwy ułożony, wykazujący: odległość każdej danej gminy od miasta powiatowego i sądu swojego gminnego; czy i jakie znajdują się w gminie zakłady fabryczne lub przemysłowe, szkoły itp. oraz ludność każdej gminy, obejmujący także podział sądownictwa krajowego świeżo urządzonego, Tom 2 (Warsaw: W. Drukarni, I.J. Ałapina 1877), pp 125-126, “Rybno,” digital images, Śląska Biblioteka Cyfrowa (https://www.sbc.org.pl/ : 24 April 2022).

© Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz 2022

Still Searching For Antonina Naciążek: Some New Insights into Old Data

Published on by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz5 Comments

Sometimes I find that it pays to take a break from my research on a particular family line. When I come back to it, I notice clues in the data that I missed the first time around. This happened recently when I returned to the question of the parentage of one of my Brick Wall Ancestors, my great-great-grandmother Antonina (née Naciążek) Zarzycka, who was born circa 1828, married Ignacy Zarzycki circa 1849, and died after 1904. I’ve written about her in several posts previously, and she continues to haunt me. The crux of the problem is that all her children were baptized in Rybno parish, Sochaczew County, but she herself must have been from another parish, since there is no birth, marriage or death record for her in the records of Rybno.

The Search for Antonina, Revisited

My strategy thus far has been to search vital records in the popular database Geneteka in order to identify the families that were living in the vicinity of Rybno with the surname Naciążek, or with one of the known variant forms of this surname, Maciążek and Raciążek, to discover potential parents for Antonina. However, the effectiveness of this strategy is limited by major gaps in the indexed records in Giżyce and Sochaczew, which are the two local parishes where this surname is most prevalent. Records for Giżyce are especially limited, since there are no records for this parish in the diocesan archive in Łowicz. Moreover, the only vital records from Giżyce from the relevant time period that are in possession of the state archive in Grodzisk Mazowiecki are from 1810, and 1823-1825, all of which are indexed in Geneteka. This suggests that most of the records for Giżyce are at the parish itself, where they can only be accessed onsite, at the discretion of the parish pastor.  The situation for Sochaczew is somewhat better, since marriage records are available from the diocesan archive in Łowicz with no gaps from 1802-1842, although there is a large gap after that, from 1843-1861, which is when Antonina Naciążek would have been married (circa 1849).

Search results in Geneteka point to two couples who emerge as most likely candidates for Antonina’s parents. The first couple, Francizek Naciążek and Marianna Kowalska, married in Sochaczew in 1826. The entry noted that the groom was from the nearby parish of Giżyce, so it’s quite possible that they moved back there after their marriage. Since Geneteka contains no birth records from Giżyce after 1825, it’s impossible to identify any children that Franciszek and Marianna might have had without onsite research. My great-great-grandmother Antonina may have been one of those children.

The second couple was Mateusz Naciążek and Petronella Trawińska, who were already married by 1824 when their daughter, Marianna, was born in Giżyce. The data suggest that they subsequently moved to Sochaczew parish, where they had sons Michał in 1826, Stanisław Andrzej in 1832, and Ignacy in 1834, and a daughter, Florentyna Marianna, in 1836. Notice the 6-year gap in the births to this couple after Michał’s birth in 1826?  Such a large spacing is unusual in a family, and as luck would have it, Antonina’s birth circa 1828 would fall right into that gap. This gap in births can’t be explained by any gaps in the available records for Sochaczew, since birth records from this parish are indexed during this entire time period. However, these data are consistent with the hypothesis that Mateusz and Petronella moved back to Giżyce after 1826. Since birth records from Giżyce are not available after 1825, it’s entirely possible that Mateusz and Petronella were the parents of Antonina, circa 1828, and possibly even an additional child born circa 1830 whose births would not show up in Geneteka.

So the focus is presently on Giżyce, whose records might hold a birth record for Antonina, as well as her marriage record. Her death record remains elusive, however. Antonina was still noted be living in 1904 when her son Leonard married, but her husband, Ignacy Zarzycki, died in 1901.1 As a 76-year-old widow, one might expect Antonina to continue living in her own home with assistance from her children, or to move in with one of her adult children. Unfortunately, the former hypothesis does not bear up, because there is no death record for Antonina Zarzycka in the parish records of Rybno or the civil records of the gmina (a gmina is an administrative district smaller than a county, similar to a township). Nor have I been able to find a death record for her in the civil records of gmina Iłów, to which the parish of Giżyce belongs, or in the civil records of Sochaczew. However, the search is frustrated by local registry offices claiming that some books were transferred to the regional archive in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, while that archive asserts that they don’t have the books, so therefore they must be in the local registry offices. Moreover, if Antonina fled her home during the confusion and chaos of World War I, it’s entirely possible that her death may not have been recorded.

Research on the families of each of Antonina’s children is still a work in progress which needs to be completed in order to identify every location where Antonina’s death may have been recorded if she was living with one of her children when she died. Of Antonina’s 11 children, six survived to adulthood and married, four died in childhood or as young unmarried adults, and one is thus far unaccounted for. The six who married included daughters Marianna Gruberska, who was living near Łowicz as of 1887, Paulina Klejn, who was living near Sochaczew as of 1880, and Aniela Gruberska, who was living near Młodzieszyn as of 1914, as well as sons John Zazycki, who was living in North Tonawanda, New York, until his death in 1924, Karol Zarzycki, who was living in Warsaw as of 1908, and Leonard Zarzycki, who was also living in Warsaw as of 1905. No promising match for Antonina’s death record is found in the indexed death records in Geneteka, and there’s no evidence to suggest that she emigrated. Since Łowicz and Warsaw both contain multiple Catholic parishes, finding Antonina’s death record without knowing her exact date of death will be challenging.

The Search for Marianna Kowalska, Revisited

That brings us back to the search for Antonina’s birth and marriage records, which might be easier to locate than her death record. Previously, while gathering clues about Antonina’s early life, I noted an interesting set of records pertaining to the family of Marianna (née Naciążek) Kowalska, whom I hypothesized might be Antonina’s sister. I discovered Marianna by reasoning that one might expect to find other Naciążek relatives of Antonina’s in the records of Rybno, since family members often settled near one another. In fact, this surname was generally not found in Rybno, with one exception: the 1903 marriage record of one Roch Kowalski mentioned that he was the son of Marianna Naciążek and Aleksander Kowalski.2 The record indicated that Roch was born in Giżyce, and further research revealed four additional children of Aleksander Kowalski and Marianna Naciążek, all of whom married in Giżyce, Sochaczew, or Iłów, underscoring the importance of these parishes— especially Giżyce and Sochaczew—to my quest for the origins of my great-great-grandmother. In addition to these records pertaining to her children, a second marriage record was discovered for Marianna Naciążek herself following the death of Aleksander Kowalski. Marianna married Stanisław Marcinkowski in Giżyce in 1881, and the record indicated that she was born circa 1837 in Czerwonka, a village belonging to the parish in Sochaczew.3

As noted in that previous post, birth records from Sochaczew are available for the period from 1819-1841, but there is no baptismal record for a Marianna Naciążek during this time. The closest possibility is the birth of a Florentyna Marianna Naciążek in 1836, to parents Mateusz Naciążek and Petronela Trawińska, and I believe that this Florentyna Marianna Naciążęk is the same person as Marianna Naciążek Kowalska Marcinkowska. It’s a bit unusual that she seems to have been called “Marianna” and not “Florentyna” in her adult life, but I believe this may have occurred because she had an older sister named Marianna who died young. There is a birth record in Giżyce in 1824 for Marianna Naciążek, daughter of Mateusz and Petronela, and if this theory is correct, we should expect to find her death record between 1824 and 1836. Although no death record is presently available, this doesn’t mean much, since indexed death records are only available from 1823-1825. Once again, it seems that the records of Giżyce may hold the key to unlocking these genealogical mysteries.

As I looked at this research with fresh eyes, it dawned on me that there was another small piece of evidence I had overlooked previously, which was the fact that Antonina (née Naciążek) Zarzycka gave her daughter the name Florentyna, and that this child’s godmother was Marianna Kowalska (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Birth record from Rybno for Florentyna Zarzycka, born 5 June 1861. Text underlined in red translates,  “….was given the name Florentyna, and her godparents were the aforementioned Wincenty Zarzecki and Marianna Kowalska.” 4

Florentyna Zarzcyka birth 5 June 1861 marked

Yes, I’d analyzed the godparents of all the Zarzycki children previously, and I realized that despite the popularity of the Kowalski surname, this Marianna Kowalska was most likely Marianna Naciążek Kowalska of Giżyce. But somehow I’d failed to make the connection with Marianna Kowalska being named as godmother to this particular child, Florentyna, rather than any of the other children of Antonina and Ignacy Zarzycki.

Although it was not de rigueur in Polish culture to name a child after the godparent of the same sex, this practice was not unheard of. Indeed, Ignacy and Antonina Zarzycki named their second daughter Paulina, presumably in honor of her godmother, Paulina Jagielska.5 So it’s quite possible that little Florentyna Zarzycka was also named in honor of her godmother. This suggests that I’m definitely on the right track with my reasoning that Marianna Kowalska is, indeed, Florentyna Marianna Naciążęk Kowalska, who was pretty clearly some relative of her mother’s. However, at this point we still have too little evidence to conclude that Florentyna Marianna was necessarily Antonina Naciążek Zarzycka’s sister, rather than a cousin.

But wait, there’s more!

In reviewing the chart I made previously showing each of the Zarzycki children and their godparents (Figure 2) and rereading my notes, I noticed a careless supposition. That is, that the surname of Józef Zarzycki’s godmother, Jadwiga Bugajka, was necessarily rare. While this exact surname is rare, I realize now that I was thinking too narrowly, since the surname is merely a variant of the common surname, Bugaj. Given the lack of standardization of surname forms in the 19th century, it’s quite possible that this same Jadwiga Bugajka might be recorded as Jadwiga Bugaj in some records.

Figure 2: Summary of Godparents of Children of Ignacy Zarzycki and Antonina (née Naciążek) Zarzycka. Source citation numbers correspond to sources cited in original blog post.figure-1

So what does that do for us? Why do we care if she’s Jadwiga Bugaj or Jadwiga Bugajka? Well, more recent digging suggested an interesting possibility regarding her relationship to the Zarzycki family.  Figure 3 shows Geneteka search results for Jadwiga Bugaj in Sochaczew.

Figure 3: Geneteka search results for birth records which mention Jadwiga Bugaj in Sochaczew.Bugaj results in Geneteka

In 1851 and 1854, there were two births to children of Maciej Bugaj and Jadwiga Krzemińska. Then there is a gap, and in 1861, there is the birth of Józefa Bednarska to Józef Bednarski and Jadwiga Bugaj. Now, the timing there is rather curious, and might almost suggest a scenario in which Jadwiga Krzemińska married Maciej Bugaj and had two children with him before his death between 1854 and 1861, after which she remarried Józef Bednarski and had 7 more children. (Note that double entries for children with the same name in the same year represent different records for the same event.) However, it was customary in these records for the priest to record the mother’s maiden name, not her first husband’s surname, in the case of a woman who remarried. I think it’s unlikely that the priest would have misrecorded the mother’s maiden name on 10 different birth records, and wrote her surname from her first husband instead. So in absence of evidence to the contrary, I believe that Jadwiga (née Krzemińska) Bugaj is not the same person as Jadwiga (née Bugaj) Bednarska. But at this point, I’m not fussed about whether she remarried or not, I’m just excited to find evidence of the Krzemiński surname, because it just so happens that Ignacy Zarzycki’s mother was Joanna Krzemińska, who was born circa 1806 in Lubiejew, as evidenced by her death record (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Death record from Rybno parish for Joanna (née Krzemińska) Zarzycka, 30 April 1857. Text underlined in red translates as, “Joanna Zarzycka, wife, tenant colonist, daughter of Jan and Zofia, the spouses Krzemiński, already deceased; born in the village of Lubiejow [sic], having 52 years of age.” 6Joanna Zarzycka death 1857 crop

To answer the question of how Jadwiga (née Krzemińska) Bugaj is related to the Zarzycki family, we need to find the record of her marriage to Maciej Bugaj and hope that it states her parents’ names. If her parents were Jan and Zofia, we know that she was Ignacy Zarzycki’s aunt. If they are something else, then further research is needed to determine the connection. Maddeningly, there is a gap in existing marriage records for Sochaczew from 1842-1861, according to information from the diocesan archive in Łowicz about their holdings for Sochaczew. Since Jadwiga’s oldest child was apparently born in 1851 based on information found in Geneteka, Jadwiga most likely married circa 1850, right in that gap in the records.

The Krzemiński Family of Bielice, Lubiejew, and Szwarocin

What do we know about the family of Jan and Zofia Krzemiński, and how likely is it that Jadwiga (née Krzemińska) Bugaj and Joanna (née Krzemińska) Zarzycka were sisters? My 4x-great-grandfather, Jan Krzemiński, was born circa 1782 in either Czerwonka or Czyste.7 He married 17-year-old Zofia Bielska on Valentine’s Day in 1802 in Sochaczew.8 (The birthplaces of Jan and Zofia are uncertain because their marriage was recorded on a page pertaining to vital events from residents of the villages of Czerwonka and Czyste, but no indication was made regarding which individuals on the page were from which village.)  On 19 July 1802, their oldest son, Jakub, was born in the nearby village of Bielice.9 A gap in birth records from Sochaczew exists from 1803-1809, so it’s not possible to find the birth record for my great-great-great-grandmother, Joanna Krzemińska circa 1806. However, Joanna’s death record (Figure 4) states that she was born in the village of Lubiejow [sic], about 7 miles northwest of Bielice. Since couples had children every 2-3 years, typically, we might expect additional births to Jan and Zofia circa 1804 and 1808, but there are no indexed marriage or death records in Geneteka that identify any children born to this couple in those years.

By 1810, the Krzemiński family had moved to the village of Szwarocin, some 3 miles west of Lubiejew, where their son Błażej was born on 2 February and baptized in Rybno parish (Figure 5).10  Jan Krzemiński was described as a gajowy, which was a forester or gamekeeper. On 21 July 1812, a daughter, Magdalena, was born.11 Two years later, another daughter, Zofia, was baptized on 9 May 1814, and was probably born a day or so before that.12 On 25 February 1816, little Magdalena Krzemińska died of smallpox (ospa, in Polish) at the age of 3 1/2.13 Just nine days after her daughter’s death, Zofia Krzemińska gave birth to another son, Józef.14 Although no death record has been found for this child, it is likely that he died some time before 1821, because Jan and Zofia conferred the name Józef on their next son, born 17 March 1821.15

Figure 5: Map showing locations of places mentioned in records pertaining to the Krzemiński family. The towns of Sochaczew and Rybno, where the parishes are located, are underlined in red and the villages of Czerwonka and Czyste where Jan and Zofia were stated to have been born are similarly noted.Map of Krzeminski villages

After this, the family disappears from the records of Rybno. Justyna Krogulska, who performed the onsite research at St. Bartholomew church in Rybno for me in 2016, noted, “In the years 1826-1860 [there was] no record [of the] deaths of Jan Krzemiński and Zofia Krzemińska. Probably the family moved to another parish. In the years 1826-1846 [there was] no record [of any] marriage on the name Krzemiński / Krzemińska.” 16 

Consistent with the observation that the Krezemiński family moved out of Rybno, a death record for a 75-year-old widow named Zofia Krzemińska was found in the records of Sochaczew in 1843. At the time of her death, Zofia was living in Lubiejów [sic], and her age suggests a birth year circa 1768. Although “our” Zofia was only born circa 1785, based on her age at the time of her marriage, it’s nonetheless possible—likely, even—that the Zofia mentioned in the death record is the same woman, since priests frequently approximated people’s ages when this information was not known precisely. As a smallpox survivor who had already buried a husband and at least two children, Zofia may have looked much older than she actually was when she died.

Zofia Krzemińska was only 36 when her son Józef was born in Szwarocin in 1821, so it’s entirely possible that she might have had a few children after his birth, including, perhaps, Jadwiga (née Krzemińska) Bugaj. Geneteka contains a birth record for a Maciej Bugaj who might be the same as Jadwiga Krzemińska’s husband, and who was born in Sochaczew in 1823. If Jadwiga Bugaj was approximately the same age as her husband, she would have been born exactly two years after Józef Krzemiński was born in Rybno in 1821. However, birth records for Sochaczew are indexed with no gaps from 1819-1841, and there is no record of Jadwiga’s birth. However this lack of evidence for her birth in Sochaczew does little to disprove my theory about Jadwiga Bugaj’s parentage, given the extent of parish records in this area that are unindexed and can only be found in the parish archives. So at this point, we still don’t know precisely who Jadwiga Bugaj(ka) was, and what relationship she may have had to Antonina and Ignacy Zarzycki that would have inspired them to ask her to be godmother to their son, Józef. Present evidence suggests that she may have been Ignacy’s aunt or possibly a cousin through his mother’s Krzemiński family, but the frustrating difficulty with access to records makes it impossible to state anything definitively.

Despite the difficulties inherent in research in this area—or perhaps because of them—it’s fun to examine every minute detail of the precious data that have been found for my family. Knowing that Marianna Kowalska was actually Florentyna Marianna Naciążęk Kowalska Marcinkowska may not bring me closer to knowing whether she was sister or cousin to my great-great-grandmother, Antonina Zarzycka, but somehow, it’s satisfying to find yet another small consistency in the data. At this point, without knowing what’s contained in those records from Giżyce, I’m betting on Team Mateusz and Petronella as the parents of Antonina and Marianna, but there’s really no compelling reason for it. It may be that Antonina was the daughter of Franciszek and Marianna instead, and that Mateusz and Franciszek Naciążek were brothers. That would make Antonina Zarzycka first cousin to Florentyna Marianna, and it’s certainly plausible that a first cousin might be asked to serve as godmother. As evidenced by the new discovery that Jadwiga Bugajka was most likely Jadwiga Krzemińska Bugaj, a maternal relative of Ignacy Zarzycki, but definitely not his sister, anything is possible.

Perhaps, in time, I’ll be able to gain access to those records from Giżyce, and the answers to all these mysteries will be revealed. Maybe I’ll even get to know who the heck Weronika Jaroszewska was, and why she was named as godmother to three Zarzycki children. Hey, I can dream, right?

Sources:

1 “Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Rybnie,” (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księga ślubów 1888-1908, 1904, no. 15, marriage record for Leonard Zarzycki and Maryanna Majewska, accessed as digital image, Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki.Genealodzy.pl (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 February 2019); and

“Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Rybnie,” (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księga zgonów 1886-1903, 1901, no. 44, death record for Ignacy Zarzycki, accessed as digital image, Metryki.Genealodzy.pl (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 February 2019).

2 “Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Rybnie,” (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Ksiega slubów 1888-1908, 1903, no. 1, marriage record for Roch Kowalski and Anastazja Blaszczak, 2 February 1903, accessed as digital image, Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki.Genealodzy.pl (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 February 2019).

3 “Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Giżycach” (Giżyce, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księga ślubów 1856-1891, no. 9, marriage record for Stanisław Marcinkowski and Marianna Kowalska, 21 February 1881, accessed as digital image, Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki, (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 February 2019).

4  Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księga urodzeń 1855-1862, 1861, #36, baptismal record for Florentyna Zarzecka.

5 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księga urodzeń 1845-1854, 1853, no. 60, baptismal record for Paulina Zarzycka.

6 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga zgonów, 1853-1868,” 1857, #21, death record for Joanna Zarzecka.

7 Roman Catholic Church, St. Lawrence parish (Sochaczew, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księgi małżeństw, 1802-1825, 1802, no. 2, marriage record for Joannes Krzemiński and Sophia Bielska, 14 February 1802, Archiwum Diecezji Łowickiej, 99-400 Łowicz, Stary Rynek 19 A. “[Towns] Czerwonka et Czyste, [Number] 2, [Month] February, [Day] 14, [Marriage Statement] I, Sebastian Richter, (expositus?) of Sochaczew, after three banns. and without discovering (? “adinvento”) any Canonical impediments, blessed the marriage between the honorable Joannes Krzemiński, young man, and Sophia Bielska, virgin, “inetum” (?) with additional witnesses Jacob Skokoski and Florian Stolarek, Under column heading “Young Man with Virgin,” indicating that it is a first marriage for both the bride and the groom, the age of the groom is given as 20 and the age of the bride is given as 17.

8 Ibid.

9 Roman Catholic Church, St. Lawrence parish (Sochaczew, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księgi urodzonych, 1781-1802, 1802, no. 69, birth record for Jacobus Krzemiński. 19 July 1802, Archiwum Diecezji Łowickiej, 99-400 Łowicz, Stary Rynek 19 A.

10 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), 1810, births, no. 5, record for Błażej Krzemiński, 2 February 1810.

11 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), 1812, births, no. 46, record for Magdalena Krzemińska, 21 July 1812.

12 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), 1814, births, no. 26, record for Sophia Krzemińska, baptized 9 May 1814.

13 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), 1816, deaths, no. 9, record for Magdalena Krzemińska, 25 February 1816.

14 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), 1816, births, no. 13, record for Josephus Krzemiński, 5 March 1816.

15 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), 1821, births, no. 17, record for Josephus Krzemiński, 17 March 1821.

16 Justyna Krogulska, “Krzemiński Family,” report to Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA, 18 May 2016, original held by Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA.

© Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz 2019.

Godparents: Ideal Candidates for Analysis Via the FAN Principle

Published on by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz4 Comments

Who were your ancestors’ FANS?  Genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills first suggested this handy acronym for Family, Associates, and Neighbors and explained, “To prove identity, origin and parentage, study individuals in the context of their FAN club.”1 When it comes to researching my Catholic ancestors, some of my favorite FANS include the godparents that are named on their children’s baptismal records.

Why Godparents?

According to Catholic Canon Law, godparents must be baptized and confirmed members of the Catholic Church who have received the Eucharist.  They must also be at least 16 years of age, although exceptions can be granted, and they may not be the same as the parents.  Typically there is one godfather and one godmother, although sometimes additional godparents were named, especially for the baptism of a noble child.  Godparents were often relatives of the child, as is still the practice today, although there is no requirement for this, and it’s not uncommon for parents to ask close friends to serve as godparents.  Depending on the family culture, godparents might be a married couple, or one might come from the father’s side of the family and one from the mother’s side.  The role of godparents is to provide spiritual support to the parents as they raise their child in the Catholic faith, and some families have an understanding that the godparents will assume financial responsibility for the child in the event of the parents’ death.  Since this is such an important role, godparents are clearly worthy of some of our attention as genealogists.

Godparents are also especially noteworthy as FANs because one of them is usually a woman, which can provide clues about women’s married names in the era before women were commonly named as legal witnesses. Let’s examine some of the ways in which godparents can shed some light on questions of identity in genealogical problems.

The Naciążek Family, Revisited

In my last post, I wrote about my great-great-grandmother, Antonina (née Naciążek) Zarzycka, the frustrating lack of birth, marriage or death records for her, and why it’s possible that her birth and marriage records might no longer exist, based on where those events were likely to have taken place.  I also examined evidence regarding a contemporary of hers named Marianna (née Naciążek) Kowalska, who is likely to be a relative based on the rarity of the surname and the geographic proximity of her village of residence to that of Antonina.  However, one piece of evidence I did not examine in that post was the issue of godparents:  If Antonina Zarzycka and Marianna Kowalska were cousins or even sisters, as I suspect, then one would expect each of them to be named as a godmother to a child or children of the other.  So what do the records say?

Unfortunately, there are no baptismal records available for the five known children of Marianna (née Naciążek) Kowalska.  That leaves the baptismal records for the eleven children of Antonina (née Naciążek) Zarzycka, which are summarized in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Summary of Godparents of Children of Ignacy Zarzycki and Antonina (née Naciążek) Zarzycka.figure-1

And there we have it — the “smoking gun” is the godmother of Florentyna Zarzycka — Marianna Kowalska.  Kowalski (in combination with the feminine form of the name, Kowalska) is a very popular surname, and if we were to consider only the names of the godparents in absence of other data, it would not be obvious which Marianna Kowalska was meant here.  However, in light of the other evidence that Antonina had a cousin or sister with this name who lived nearby, it seems likely that these Marianna Kowalskas are one and the same.

So who are these other godparents?  There is documentary evidence that Ignacy Zarzycki had just three siblings:  a brother Wincenty, and twin siblings Wojciech and Wiktoria.  Wiktoria’s first husband was Ludwik Karol Pszenicki, and Wojciech’s wife was Aniela Tempińska,. so it’s reasonable to conclude that those four godparents — Aniela Zarzycka, Wojciech Zarzycki, Wincenty Zarzycki, and Wiktoria Pszenicka — were siblings to Ignacy Zarzycki by blood or marriage.

Unfortunately, for the rest of the list, there are no obvious matches to known members of the Zarzycki family, and certainly not to the Naciążek family, about whom we know so little.  At first glance, Marianna Marcinkowska’s name stood out as a possible clue. As discussed in my previous post, Marianna (née Naciążek) Kowalska was remarried to Stanisław Marcinkowski in Giżyce in 1881. However, it’s obvious that the timing does not work for this to be the same person as Tomasz’s godmother, since he was born in 1856, 25 years earlier.  Given the propensity for families to intermarry in those days, the fact that the Marcinkowski family was associated with the Naciążek family may still be significant. None of the other surnames mentioned were associated with the Naciążek family (0r any variant of that surname) in any of the indexed records in Geneteka, anywhere in Mazowieckie province.

It’s still possible that these other godparents might be related to the Zarzycki/Naciążek family, and that the proof of the relationships lies in records that simply have not yet been indexed, or in records that no longer exist.  However, it’s also possible that some of these godparents were merely good friends of Ignacy and Antonina, which is the clear drawback of godparent analysis.  Some of the godparents’ surnames (e.g. Zieliński) are so common that, in absence of any direct evidence, it will be difficult to tie them to the Zarzycki/Naciążek family with any degree of certainty.  Some of them, like Bugajka, are tantalizingly rare, and it’s fascinating to note that one of the only parishes in which this surname is found in Geneteka is Sochaczew, which is one of the two parishes that seems to be associated with my Naciążek family (Figure 2).

Figure 2:  Geneteka search results for death records with the Bugajka surname in Mazowieckie province.figure-1

Could it be that Antonina Naciążek had a sister named Jadwiga who married a Bugajka, and it is she who was named as godmother to Józef Zarzycki in 1859?  Might she even be a daughter-in-law to one of the widows whose deaths are reported here?  It’s possible, maybe even probable, but at present, there’s not enough evidence to draw any conclusions.  My family should have no reason to wonder why I have insomnia some nights.

Speaking of insomnia-provoking questions, who the heck was Weronika Jaroszewska, and why was she named as godmother to three of Antonina’s children?  Another question for another sleepless night.

To sum up, in this example, we hypothesized that two women were siblings, predicted that they should be named as godmothers to each other’s children if that hypothesis were true, and then examined the evidence, which supported the hypothesis.  In my next post, I’ll offer an example of how this sort of analysis can also be used in reverse, to suggest a mother’s maiden name in absence of direct evidence for that.  In the meantime, happy researching!

Sources:

1 Mills, Elizabeth Shown. QuickSheet: The Historical Biographer’s Guide to the Research Process. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2012, p. 1.

2 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga urodzeń 1845-1854,” 1850, #48, baptismal record for Maryanna Zarzycka.

3 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga urodzeń 1845-1854,” 1853, #60, baptismal record for Paulina Zarzycka.

4 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga urodzeń, 1855-1862,”1856, #48, baptismal record for Tomasz Zarzecki.

5 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga urodzeń 1855-1862,” 1859, #15, baptismal record for Józef Zarzycki.

6 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga urodzeń 1863-1869,” 1861, #36, baptismal record for Florentyna Zarzecka.

7 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga urodzeń 1863-1869,” 1863, # 72, baptismal record for Aniela Zarzecka.

8 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga urodzeń 1863-1869,” 1866, #27, baptismal record for Jan Zarzycki.

9 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga urodzeń 1863-1869,” 1868, #67, baptismal record for Joanna Walentyna Zarzycka.

10 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga urodzeń 1863-1869,”1869, #93, baptismal record for Karol Zarzycki.

11 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga urodzeń 1870-1880,” 1872, #15, baptismal record for Roman Aleksander Zarzycki.

12 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga urodzeń 1870-1880,”1876, #87, baptismal record for Leonard Zarzycki.

© Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz 2017

In search of Antonina Naciążek: Mining Geneteka for Clues in Absence of Direct Evidence

Published on by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz4 Comments

The year is drawing to a close. 2017 lies before us, all shiny and new, like a gift waiting to be unwrapped.  Like many of us in the genealogical community, I find New Year’s Eve to be a great time to reflect on the research triumphs and frustrations of the past year, and to make research plans for the coming year. When it comes to genealogical New Year’s resolutions, there are so many ancestors I’d like to learn more about, so many families that I’d like to understand better in their cultural and historical context.  But one of them in particular is at the top of my research to-do list for 2017:  Antonina Naciążek.

Antonina was my great-great-grandmother, notable because she is my only great-great-grandparent about whom I know little more than her name.  My first encounter with her was through the marriage record of her son (my great-grandfather), John Zazycki (Figure 1):

Figure 1:  Marriage record for John Zarzycki and Veronica Grzesiak from Buffalo, New York, 5 August 1901.jan-weronika-zazyki-marriage-1

Subsequent research turned up John’s baptismal record in the parish of Rybno, Sochaczew County, Poland, where her name is spelled “Antoniny z Raciążków” (Antonina née Raciążek, Figure 2).

Figure 2:  Baptismal record for Jan Zarzycki, Rybno parish, 5 March 1866.jan-zarzycki-birth-1866

Anyone who’s been doing genealogy for a while is familiar with the inconsistencies in surname spellings that frequently crop up in records prior to the 20th century, and Polish records are no exception.  Typically, however, the variations that one sees revolve around a common root with different endings, e.g. Grzesiak can become Grzeszak, Grzeszkiewicz, Grześkiewicz, etc.  So I was a little surprised to see Maciążek become Raciążek.  In fact, as further evidence accumulated and additional birth, marriage and death records for Antonina’s children were discovered, the most common variant of Antonina’s surname that emerged was Naciążek.  Naciążek appeared in the documents a total of 9 times, while Raciążek appeared 7 times, and Maciążek appeared just twice.

Unfortunately, I have yet to obtain any documentation that indicates Antonina’s parents’ names.  Based on the birth records for her children, I estimate that Antonina was born circa 1828 and married Ignacy Zarzycki circa 1849.  Her children all seem to have been born in the village of Bronisławy and baptized in St. Bartholomew’s church in Rybno.  However, she herself must have been from another parish, because neither her birth or marriage record, nor her death record, was found in the records of Rybno at either the parish or the local civil records office (Urząd Stanu Cywilnego, or USC).  A search of Geneteka for Naciążek, Raciążek and Maciążek anywhere in Mazowieckie province failed to produce any birth records for an Antonina born circa 1828.  So where was Antonina from?  Who were her parents?  She was last mentioned as a surviving widow in the marriage record of her youngest son, Leonard Zarzycki, in 1904, so she must have died after that time.  But where?

Geneteka reveals exactly one record that might give us a clue regarding this family’s origins. Figure 3 shows the results of a search of marriage records in Rybno for the Naciążek surname.  Searches for Maciążek and Raciążek produced no results, nor were there any birth or death records for Rybno associated with any of these surnames, apart from records pertaining to known children of Antonina (née Naciążek) Zarzycka.

Figure 3:  Geneteka search results for the Naciążek surname in marriage records for Rybno parish.roch-kowalski-marriage

Of the four records shown, numbers 1, 3 and 4 pertain to known children of Antonina (née Naciążek) Zarzycka.  However, record #2 (boxed in red) is for the marriage of Roch Kowalski to Anastazja Błaszczak.  Further examination of that record (Figure 4) reveals that Roch was “….born and residing in the village of Giżyce, son of the late Aleksander and still-living Marianna née Naciążek, the spouses Kowalski” (text underlined in red), and that he was age 26, suggesting a birth year of about 1877.

Figure 4:  Excerpt of marriage record of Roch Kowalski and Anastazja Błaszczak in Rybno parish, 2 February 1903.  roch-kowalski-marriage-excerpt

Since Roch Kowalski was a contemporary of Antonina Zarzycka’s children, it stands to reason that Roch’s mother was of the same generation as Antonina herself.  Since the parish of Giżyce is located just 8.2 km (about 5 miles) from Bronisławy, and since Naciążek is a relatively rare surname, both in the present-day and historically, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that Antonina and Marianna were related, perhaps even sisters.

Records for the parish in Giżyce are indexed on Geneteka from 1810-1905 with some significant gaps.  One such gap exists from 1826-1890 — during the time when Antonina Naciążek is most likely to have been born (1828-1829).  However, there is a rather tantalizing birth record in 1824 in Giżyce for a Marianna Naciążek, daughter of Mateusz Naciążek and Petronela Trawińska.  Could this be the same Marianna Naciążek who married Aleksander Kowalski?

Frustratingly, a province-wide search using both the Naciążek and Kowalski surnames does not produce a marriage record for Marianna and Aleksander, which would hopefully reveal Marianna’s parents’ names, nor does it produce Marianna’s death record.  However, it does produce marriage records for four additional children of that couple (Figure 5):

Figure 5:  Geneteka search results for marriage records in Mazowieckie province that contain both the Naciążek and Kowalski surnames.naciazek-kowalski-marriages

Hovering the cursor over the “i” in the column after “Naz. matki” indicates that Józefa Kowalska, Ignacy Kowalski, Ludwik Kowalski, and Stanisław Kowalski were all siblings of Roch Kowalski and children of Marianna Naciążek and Aleksander Kowalski.  Examination of the three records for which scans are available indicates that Józefa and Ignacy were also born in Giżyce.

Note that the search result for Józefa Kowalska’s marriage notes an alternate spelling of her mother’s maiden name, “Naciąszek.” Geneteka’s search algorithms do not automatically recognize Naciąszek and Naciążek as phonetic equivalents, so Naciąszek must be searched separately.  This subsequent search in Geneteka for Naciąszek produces an  especially intriguing result: a marriage record in Giżyce for Stanisław Marcinkowski and Marianna Kowalska in 1881 (Figure 6).

Figure 6:  Geneteka search result for Naciąszek surname in Mazowieckie province.marcinkowski-kowalska-marriage

The marriage record itself verifies that this is indeed “our” Marianna Kowalska, widow of Aleksander (Figure 7):

marcinkowski-kowalski-marriage-1856

The underlined text in Russian and Polish reads, “…Marianna Kowalska née Naciąszek, widow of Aleksander Kowalski [who] died in the village of Giżyce in the year 1878; born in the village of Czerwonka, now in Giżyce… residing, age 44.”

Pay dirt!  Although this record does not tell us the names of Marianna’s parents, it does tell us where and when she was born.  Czerwonka is a village that belongs to the parish in Sochaczew, and her age at the time of her second marriage suggests a birth year of 1837.  Clearly, this Marianna can’t be the same as the Marianna Naciąszek born in 1824 in Giżyce. Figure 8 shows the location of all these villages in relation to each other in Sochaczew County.

Figure 8:  Geographic  locations of Giżyce, Bronisławy, Sochaczew and Czerwonka.map-of-czerwonka

Records for Sochaczew are indexed in Geneteka, but unfortunately, there is no perfect match for a Marianna Naciąszek or Naciążek born in 1837 in Czerwonka.  However, there is a reasonably close match:  the birth of a Florentyna Marianna Naciążek in 1836 in Czerwonka, daughter of…. (dramatic music!)…..Mateusz Naciążek and Petronela Trawińska, the same couple who were the parents of the other Marianna Naciążek who was born in Giżyce in 1824! If the Marianna who was born in 1824 died prior to 1836, it’s possible that her parents would have honored her by naming a sibling Florentyna Marianna but calling her Marianna.  So maybe she’s our bride of Aleksander Kowalski?  Unfortunately — and frustratingly — there is no marriage record to prove it, nor is there a death record for the Marianna who was born in 1824.

 

Let’s take a moment to recap what we know so far:

  • Only one other Naciążek record exists in Rybno parish, where Antonina (née Naciążek) Zarzycka lived.
  • That record is a marriage record for Roch Kowalski, born in Giżyce, son of Marianna Naciążek and Aleksander Kowalski.
  • Roch Kowalski is the same generation as Antonina Zarzycka’s children, suggesting that Marianna Naciążek is of the same generation as Antonina, perhaps even her sister.
  • Marianna (née Naciążek) Kowalska’s second marriage record reveals her place of birth as Czerwonka (Sochaczew parish) in 1837 and her place of residence as Giżyce.
  • The closest match for Marianna’s birth in the records of Sochaczew parish is for a Florentyna Marianna Naciążek, born in Czerwonka in 1836, daughter of Mateusz and Petronela (née Trawińska).
  • Mateusz Naciążek and Petronela Trawińska were parents to another daughter named Marianna Naciążek born in Giżyce in 1824.  Although the Trawiński surname is fairly common, the relative rarity of the Naciążek surname makes it likely that this is the same couple as the one mentioned in the records in Sochaczew.

So, the focus is definitely on Giżyce and Sochaczew for the births and marriages of both Antonina Naciążek and her putative sister, Marianna Naciążek. Marriages for Sochaczew are indexed on Geneteka from 1826-1835,and 1879-1901, leaving a gap when Antonina and Marianna would have married, which would explain why her marriage record does not show up in the Geneteka index. Geneteka’s indexed birth records for Sochaczew cover 1781-1802, 1826-1841, 1849-1864, 1868-1870, and 1874-1884. So Antonina’s birth in 1828-1829 should be there, if she were born in Sochaczew.

But what if Antonina were born in Giżyce, and not Sochaczew?  Geneteka has births indexed for Giżyce for 1810, 1823-1825, and 1891-1905, so there’s a gap for both 1828  when Antonina would have been born, and also for 1849, which is approximately when she would have married. Unfortunately, in reviewing the available ranges of years for available records for both Sochaczew and Giżyce on LDS microfilm and at the Polish State Archives, the hope of identifying Antonina’s and Marianna’s parents definitively seems slim. It appears that Geneteka has indexed all the existing records for these parishes, so the records needed to fill those gaps no longer exist.  One of my goals for the new year is to have a researcher in Poland confirm this for me, and verify that there are no additional records available for either of these parishes at the parishes themselves or in a diocesan archive. Even if those early records are gone, and Antonina’s birth and marriage records are lost forever, it should still be possible to track down her death record after 1904, so that’s on my agenda, too.

If you’re like me, you like wringing every last drop of information from a data set, particularly in cases like this where data are limited.  So what else can Geneteka tell us about the Naciążeks in Giżyce and Sochaczew? Figure 9 shows Naciążek births in indexed records for all of Mazowieckie province.

Figure 9:  Geneteka search result for Naciążek births in Mazowieckie province.naciazek-births-in-mazowieckie

I’ve underlined the ones in red that I believe pertain to the same family.  Notice that the father’s name is sometimes recorded as Mateusz and sometimes recorded as Maciej.  This might be an artifact of the transcription and translation process.  Based on my experience with the records from Sochaczew for this time period, these records are likely to be in Latin, and those names in Latin might be written as Mattheus or Matthias — potentially difficult to differentiate if the handwriting is bad.  It’s also possible that the priest used either spelling indiscriminately, especially since he seems to have been a bit careless with Petronela’s name, which is recorded as Trawińska in most of the records, but as Slawińska in one of them.  Copies of these records are available from the Diocesan Archive in Łowicz, and I plan to order those in the New Year, so hopefully the originals can shed some light on this.

Based on these data, and data from the death records as well, a clearer image of the Naciążek family’s timeline emerges:

  • 1824:  Daughter Marianna born in Giżyce.
  • 1826:  Son Michał born in Sochaczew. (Note that Michał’s birth is recorded twice in the index, as record #134 and record #136.  Information contained in the infodot reveals that #134 is the Latin church record while #136 is the Polish-language civil copy.)
  • 1832:  Son Stanisław Andrzej born in Sochaczew.
  • 1834:  Son Ignacy born in Sochaczew.  (Again, both the Latin church version and the Polish civil copy are available for this record.)
  • 1836:  Daughter Florentyna Marianna born in Sochaczew.
  • 1837:  Son Ignacy dies in Sochaczew.
  • 1840:  Son Jan dies in Sochaczew.  Jan is noted to be 6 days old, and birth records for Sochaczew exist for the time of his birth, so it’s unclear whether his birth record is missing due to an omission by the priest or by the indexer.

If great-great-grandma Antonina does, in fact, belong to this family, her birth would fit into that 6-year-gap between Michał’s birth in 1826 and Stanisław Andrzej’s birth in 1832. Since her birth was not captured in the records for Sochaczew, it’s possible that the family returned to Giżyce for that time period.

One final record worth noting that pertains to the Naciążek family in Sochaczew and Giżyce is the marriage record in 1826 of Franciszek Naciążek and Marianna Kowalska.  (Figure 10).

Figure 10:  Geneteka search results for Naciążek marriages in Mazowieckie province.franciszek-and-marianna-naciazek

Hovering the cursor over the “i” in the “uwagi” column reveals that the groom, Franciszek Naciążek, was from Giżyce although the wedding took place in the bride’s parish in Sochaczew. Franciszek and Marianna could also be potential parents for Antonina Naciążek, although they seem to disappear from the records.  They are not mentioned as parents on any of the indexed birth records in Mazowieckie, and the only other mention of them is in Marianna’s death record in Sochaczew in 1844.

Despite the lack of direct evidence concerning Antonina Naciążek, the indexed records in Geneteka offer a powerful tool for gathering hints about her possible family origins.  While it’s disappointing that Antonina’s birth and marriage records may no longer exist, there’s still some hope of finding her death record, and Sochaczew and Giżyce would be logical places to look for it.  Maybe 2017 will be my lucky year in terms of locating that document, and maybe I’ll get even luckier and it will include her parents’ names, so I can know for certain whether Antonina Naciążek is the daughter of Mateusz and Petronela (née Trawińska) Naciążek. May 2017 be a lucky year for your genealogical research as well. Here’s to finding our dead ancestors!

© Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz 2016