Raciąż – From Shepherds and Shoemakers

Kroczewo Revisited

Published on March 29, 2022 by Julie Roberts SzczepankiewiczLeave a comment

It’s the dawn of a new day (metaphorically, if not literally), and I’m happy to report that Kroczewo’s been found! After last night’s post about the elusive village of Kroczewo, several people wrote to me, proposing candidates for its location. Two of those people were William F. “Fred” Hoffman, and Kasia Dane, and both of them nailed it.

I’ve mentioned both Fred and Kasia in this blog previously. Fred is the author, editor, translator, and publisher whose books include the best genealogical translation guides for Polish, Russian, German, and Latin that I’ve found: the In Their Words series, co-authored with Jonathan Shea, which you can read about on their website. He’s also the editor of Rodziny (the journal of the Polish Genealogical Society of America), and the free monthly e-zine Gen Dobry!, in addition to his other scholarly and professional activities. Kasia is an experienced researcher who published an index of Polish immigrants found in the 1920 census in Buffalo, New York, back in the 1990s, before indexes to U.S. census records were readily available online. In those days, I was trying to kick-start my family history research in between changing diapers, and her indexes were invaluable to me. She continued her efforts with an online index to church records from St. Stanislaus parish in Buffalo, the mother church of Buffalo Polonia. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting both Kasia and Fred, and the resources which they used to answer the Kroczewo question will be part of my arsenal going forward. I thought those resources were well worth sharing here, and they both gave me permission to quote them. So without further ado, we’ll start with Fred’s comments:

“Hi, Julie,
I found your latest blog entry very interesting. It made me wonder if any of my sources would tell us something about the mysterious Kroczewo.
I checked one of the best sources around, Nazwy miejscowe Polski or NMP, an ongoing multi-volume publication on names of places in Poland. The volume we need, No. V, can be downloaded here:
https://rcin.org.pl/dlibra/publication/15561/edition/2982
On page 318, attached, it lists Kroczewo, and the first entry is for “Kroczewo (1), a village no longer existing, was located in Raciąż gmina, Ciechanów province, 1 km. west of Raciąż.” It shows various forms of the names seen in documents over the years, then discusses the derivation of the name, saying it comes from the basic root seen in the verb kroczyć, “to step, to walk in rather large steps, formally.”
That may be helpful in that now we know this village no longer exists, so finding it on recent maps will be difficult. But it lay just 1 km. west of Raciąż. That has to be some help. Then I took a look at this map:
http://maps.mapywig.org/m/WIG_maps/series/100K/P37_S30_RACIAZ_1935_nnqsZct_BN_Sygn.ZZK_S-101_A.jpg
I’m attaching a detail of the map, and I circled a place named Kruczewo very near Raciąż. It is not too unusual to see -o- and -u- vary in Polish names — and I notice NMP does not have an entry for Kruczewo. Maybe?
I also think you’re right that ф. on the Russian map is probably short for Фольварокъ = Polish folwark.
I haven’t given you the answer, but I hope I’ve given you a little more to work with. Good luck!
Fred”

Figure 1 shows the page Fred mentioned from the Nazwy miejscowe Polski with the specified entry boxed in red.¹

Figure 1: Entry for Kroczewo from the book, *Nazwy miejscowe Polski : historia, pochodzen, ie, zmiany. [T.] 5, Ko-Ky* [*Polish Place Names: History, Origins, and Changes, Vol. 5, Ko-Ky*].

The map which Fred mentioned is a 1:100,000-scale map of Raciąż from 1935, which can be accessed from the index here, while previously, I had consulted the 1931 map of Raciąż at 1:25,000 scale, which can be accessed from the index here. The map he sent is shown in Figure 2.²

Figure 2: Map showing location of Kruczewo, 1 km west of Raciąż.

In hindsight, I think I was too focused on finding a map with a small scale (i.e. one that shows a smaller area in greater detail), or a map that was more contemporary to Antoni Nowicki’s birth in 1844. Ultimately, although Fred and I both used maps from the same source, the Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny (the Polish Military Geographical Institute), the 1:100,000 scale map from 1935 that Fred selected was sufficient to answer the question, while the 1:25,000 scale map from 1931 did not. Go figure.

Meanwhile, Kasia Dane approached the problem with a search in Google Books. She wrote,

“Julie, I read your latest and found this in Google Books: “KROCZEWSCY rzadko KROCZOWSCY h GRABIE z Kroczewa w ziemi zakroczymskiej Jest Kroczewo i pod Raciążem na którym również pewnie ciż sami Kroczewscy dziedziczyli.” It’s not much to go on but could it help a little? It is from Herbarz polski Wiadomosći historyczno-genealogiczne o rodach szlacheckich, Volume 12, by Adam Boniecki (1908).
Also, http://www.slownik.ihpan.edu.pl/search.php?id=13637 which puts it at 1 km w[est] of Raciąż?”

The book she referenced, Herbarz polski: Wiadomosći historyczno-genealogiczne o rodach szlacheckich (Polish Heraldry: Historical and Genealogical Information about Noble Families), mentions Kroczewo in the context of a place of origin for minor nobles of the Kroczewski family, who were apparently owners of the village of Kroczewo near Raciąż.³ The second site she mentioned is one with which I was completely unfamiliar, entitled, Słownik historyczno-geograficzny ziem polskich w średniowieczu, (Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Polish Lands in the Middle Ages). As the introduction explains, the site is the result of efforts dating back to the 1920s, to create a historical and geographical dictionary of Poland that would be the modern successor to the Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich. The ambitious project lasted for decades, and came to include an overwhelming amount of material. Some of the volumes were published by the Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk (Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences), while other volumes that were planned were never realized. Ultimately, all the volumes that were published will be made available online, after a two-year moratorium to protect the interests of the publishers.

The online Słownik historyczno-geograficzny can easily be searched for place names, although the entries themselves contain numerous abbreviations, making them a bit formidable to translate. Figure 3 shows the entry for Kroczewo, with the location underlined in red.⁴ Historical detail aside, it doesn’t take much translating to understand that it was 1 km from Raciąż, in line with the place identified on Fred’s map in Figure 2.

Figure 3: Entry for Kroczewo in the *Słownik historyczno-geograficzny* ziem polskich w średniowieczu.

As I think about this, it’s somewhat amazing to me that I found that birth record after all. Antoni Nowicki’s marriage record mentioned Kroczewo as his place of birth, and Kroczewo it was, all along. My strategy for locating the place based on finding a place that was similar phonetically was fundamentally flawed, and it was a stroke of luck that brought me to the correct parish, Raciąż.

Wow.

Had the right Kroczewo not been phonetically similar to the name of a village belonging to the parish in Raciąż, I might be looking still!

Putting a more positive spin on this, genealogical discovery is definitely a process, and no one hits a home run every time they’re at bat. Usually, when I hit a road block, I move on and come back to the question at a later date. Had I done this with the Kroczewo problem, hacking away at it with fresh eyes and renewed enthusiasm at some point in the future, I might have eventually stumbled upon the answer on my own. However, through blogging I leveraged the social network in the same way that genealogy message boards and Facebook groups do, and I’m a big fan of using those methods to find information related to the ancestral hunt. Thanks to Fred and Kasia, I’m getting by with a little help from my friends, once again.

Sources:

¹Kazimierz Rymut, editor, Nazwy miejscowe Polski : historia, pochodzen, ie, zmiany. [T.] 5, Ko-Ky [Polish Place Names: History, Origins, and Changes, Vol. 5, Ko-Ky], (Kraków, Poland: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Języka Polskiego PAN, 2003), p. 320; digital image, Repozytorium Cyfrowe Instytutów Naukowych (https://rcin.org.pl/dlibra/ : 29 March 2022), image 318 of 537.

²Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny, 4206 @ WIG – Mapa Taktyczna Polski 1:100 000 /1924 – 1939/, [Tactical Map of Poland], “P37_S30_RACIAZ_1935_300dpi_bcuj298338-288240.jpg;” digital image, Archiwum Map Wojskowego Instytutu Geograficznego 1919–1939 (http://mapywig.org/ : 29 March 2022).

³Adam Boniecki, Herbarz polski: Wiadomosći historyczno-genealogiczne o rodach szlacheckich (Polish Heraldry: Historical and Genealogical Information about Noble Families), Vol. 12 (Warsaw, Poland: Gebethner i Wolff, 1908), p. 257; e-book, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/ : 29 March 2022), image 299 of 424.

⁴Tomasz Jurek, editor, Słownik historyczno-geograficzny ziem polskich w średniowieczu (Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Polish Lands in the Middle Ages), electronic edition, Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk (http://www.slownik.ihpan.edu.pl/index.php : 29 March 2022), “Kroczewo,” citing “Płock,” p. 152.

Still Searching for Kroczewo

Published on March 28, 2022March 28, 2022 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz3 Comments

Last week, I wrote about my attempts to nail down a place of birth for my husband’s great-great-great-grandfather, Antoni Nowicki, whose marriage record from Gradzanowo Kościelne stated that he was born in the village of Kroczewo. There’s only one village in Poland today called Kroczewo, but Antoni Nowicki was definitely not born there. So, I identified a couple alternative locations that were phonetically similar to Kroczewo, including a constellation of villages whose names start with Kraszewo (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Map showing locations of Gradzanowo Kościelne with inset showing locations of Kraszewo-Czubaki, Kraszewo Podborne, Kraszewo-Rory, Kraszewo-Fałki, Kraszewo Sławęcin, and Kraszewo-Gaczułty. Click image for interactive Google Map.

All of these “Kraszewos” belong to the parish in Raciąż, and although birth records from the time of Antoni’s birth are digitized at FamilySearch, access is restricted, so I figured the research would have to wait until my next opportunity to visit my local Family History Center (FHC).

After writing that post, I took a look at my calendar, and realized that it might be a while before I had a chance to make it to the FHC. So, I opted for a quick remote research request from the Family History Library, in the hopes that they could at least give me a “yes” or “no” about whether Antoni Nowicki was baptized in Raciąż. This past Wednesday, that answer turned out to be “yes,” and they replied with a copy of Antoni’s birth record (Figure 2).¹

Figure 2: Birth record from Raciąż parish for Antoni Nowicki, born 23 July 1844. Click image to enlarge.

The record is in Polish, and is transcribed as follows:

“95. Kroczewo.
Działo się w mieście Raciążu dnia czternastego/dwudziestego szóstego Lipca, Tysiąc ośmset czterdziestego czwartego roku o godzinie dziesiątej przed południem. Stawił się Maciej Nowicki, Rolnik, zamieszkały w Kroczewie, lat dwadzieścia cztery mający, w obecności Albina Krolewskiego, lat dwadzieścia dwa, Pawła Bułakowskiego, lat czterdzieści mających, na Budach Kraszewskich zamieszkałych, rolników, i okazał Nam dziecię płci męskiej urodzone w Kroczewie dnia siedemnastego/dwudziestego trzeciego Lipca roku bieżącego o godzinie trzeciej rano z jego małżonki Joanny z Ługowskich, lat dwadzieścia mającej. Dziecięciu temu na Chrzcie Świętym odbytym w dniu dzisiejszym nadane zostało imię Antoni, a rodzicami jego Chrzestnymi byli Albin Królewski i Jadwiga Ostrowska (?). Akt ten przeczytany stawającemu i świadkom przez Nas podpisany został. Stawający i świadkowie pisać nie umieją. [Signed] X. Strzałkowski, proboszcz Raciążki”

In English, this translates as,

“95. Kroczewo.
This happened in the town of Raciąż on the fourteenth/twenty-sixth day of July, in the year one thousand eight hundred and forty-four, at ten o’clock in the morning. Maciej Nowicki appeared, a farmer, residing in Kroczewo, having twenty-four years of age, in the presence of Albin Krolewski, aged twenty-two, Pawel Bułakowski, aged forty, residents in Budy Kraszewskie, farmers, and presented to us a male child born in Kroczewo on the seventeenth/twenty-third day of July of the current year at three o’clock in the morning from his spouse Joanna, née Ługowska, aged twenty. At Holy Baptism, performed today, the child was given the name Antoni, and his godparents were Albin Królewski and Jadwiga Ostrowska (?). This document was read to the declarant and to the witnesses and was signed by Us. The declarant and the witnesses are unable to write. [Signed] Fr. Strzałkowski, pastor of Raciąż.”

This document adds to the growing body of evidence for the Nowicki family by providing a precise birth date for Antoni, who was born 23 July 1844. His parents’ ages suggest birth years circa 1820 for Maciej, and 1824 for Joanna, which makes Joanna a bit older, potentially, than what was supposed previously. Only one other document has thus far been discovered which offers evidence for her year of birth, and that document—the birth record for her son, Franciszek— suggested that she was born circa 1826. Most importantly, this document resolves the practical question of where to look for additional records for this family: Raciąż.

What it does not resolve is the question about where Antoni’s birthplace was located. He was definitely born in Kroczewo; the spelling is identical to the spelling of his birthplace as it was recorded in his marriage record, apart from the fact that this priest had an interesting habit of using the Polish ż in words where a z is typically used, e.g. cżternastego. So although Antoni’s place of birth was recorded as Krocżewo, I think we can safely interpret that as a simple Kroczewo. But where the heck was it? Other records on that same page refer to Kraszewo Gaczułty and Kraszewo Falki, yet the priest distinguished this place name from those in his spelling, which suggests that this was not merely another name for one of the assorted Kraszewos identified thus far. The Słownik Geograficzne Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, which typically mentions alternate spellings for place names when they were known to exist, does not mention any places called Kroczewo other than the one in Płońsk County, which is the wrong Kroczewo (not the one in Raciąż parish). Neither do the entries for the assorted Kraszewo villages mention any alternate spellings that might identify the precise location of “Kroczewo.”

It might be possible to locate a map which includes Kroczewo, assuming a map could be found for the correct time period, and at a sufficient scale to include very small villages. This 1:200,000-scale map from 1913 shows Kraszewo, and “Kraszewo Budy,” which appears to be the village known as Budy Kraszewskie today, given its position relative to “Pulka-Raciążska” which is Pólka-Raciąż today, but no Kroczewo (Figure 3).²

Figure 3: Detail from 1913 map showing locations of Kraszewo Budy, Kraszewo, and Gradzanowo. Click image to enlarge.

I tried again with a map from the David Rumsey collection, originally published in 1856 (Figure 4).³Unfortunately, at only 1:370,000 scale, the map only shows the larger villages. Raciąż is called Racionz on this map, but it’s unclear to me whether the “Radzanowo” mentioned here is actually Gradzanowo Kościelne, or if it refers instead to the village of Radzanów, located a little over 5 km north of Gradzanowo.

Figure 4: Detail from 1856 map showing locations of Radzanowo [sic] and Raciąż (Racionz). Click image to enlarge.

Next up was a map by Juliusz Kolberg, published in 1827 at a map scale ranging from 1:477,000 to about 1:525,000 (Figure 5).⁴

Figure 5: Detail from 1827 map showing locations of Radzanowo, Gradzanowo Kośc[ielne], and three of the Kraszewos (Czubaki, Podborne, and Gaczułki). Click image to enlarge.

This map clearly differentiates between Radzanowo and Gradzanowo, and shows three of the Kraszewo villages—Kraszewo Czubaki, Kraszewo Podborze [sic] and Kraszewo Gaczołki [sic]—to the northwest of Raciąż. Note that Kraszewo Podborze is called Kraszewo Podborne today, and Kraszewo Gaczołki is Kraszewo Gaczułty. Scanning all the other place names on the map within a reasonable distance of the parish in Raciąż, I don’t see any places called Kroczewo.

I finally pulled out the big guns and located a Russian-language 1931 map published at a 1:25,000 scale from the Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny (Military Geographic Institute). This map scale is such that an entire map quadrant is dedicated to the town of Raciąż and its environs (Figure 6).

Figure 6: 1931 Russian-language map of Raciąż and its environs. Click image to enlarge. From top to bottom, places underlined in blue are -Чубаки [Kraszewo-Czubaki], -Роры [Kraszewo-Rory], Подборне [Kraszewo Podborne], Ф Крашево [F. Kraszewo?], -Фальки [Kraszewo Falki], -Гачулти [Kraszewo Gaczułti], -Славенцинъ [Kraszewo-Sławęcin], and Ф. Крашево Дезерта [Kraszewo Dezerta].

This map shows the Raciąż area in incredible detail, and permits identification of not only the six Kraszewos shown in Google Maps, but Kraszewo Dezerta, which was mentioned in the Skorowidz Królestwa Polskiego published in 1877. Additionally, there’s a “Ф. Крашево” located south of -Podborne. Maybe that Ф stands for Фольварк, the Russian transliteration of folwark, which is a Polish word for a manor or estate? That’s my current hypothesis, at least.

As interesting as all of this may be, it’s unfortunately not getting me any closer to identifying Kroczewo, since Kroczewo [Крочево] does not appear to be anywhere on this map. At this point, I’m inclined to throw in the towel, and declare this village to be lost to the mists of time, an odd historical artifact preserved in the church books of Raciąż. Maybe Fr. Franciszek Strzałkowski had a clear idea of where this place was when he recorded the birth of Antoni Nowicki way back in 1844, but I sure wish he would have let the cartographers in on the secret.

Sources:

¹Roman Catholic Church (Raciaz, Plonsk, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego, 1808-1865,” 1844, Akta urodzeń, no. 95, Antoni Nowicki, born 23 July 1844; digital image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ : 23 March 2022), Family History Library film no. 730110/DGS no. 8024747, image 28 of 785.

²Offiz. A. Spaczek, Offiz. K. Ginzkey, “Mława,” 1913, 1:200,000 scale topographic map from 3rd Military Mapping Survey of Austria-Hungary; digital image, Térképtudományi és Geoinformatikai Intézet (Institute of Cartography and Geoinformatics)(http://lazarus.elte.hu/hun/digkonyv/topo/3felmeres.htm : 28 March 2022), map 38-53.

³Carl Ferdinand Weiland, Karte von den Konigl: Preussischen Provinzen Preussen und Posen, nebst dem Kaiserlich Russischen Konigreiche Polen. (with) Umgebung von Warshau. (with) Umgebung von Konigsberg. (with) Umgebung von Danzig. Entworfen und gezeichnet von C.F. Weiland. Gestochen von J. Madel III [Map of the Royal Prussian Provinces of Prussia and Posen, together with the Imperial Russian Kingdom of Poland. (with) Surroundings of Warshau. (with) Surroundings of Konigsberg. (with) Surroundings of Danzig. Designed and drawn by C.F. Weiland. Engraved by J. Madel III], (Weimar: Geographisches Institut Weimar, 1856); digital image, David Rumsey Map Collection (https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/s/f89w04 : 28 March 2022).

⁴Juliusz Kolberg, Atlas Królestwa Polskiego, “Mappa jeneralna województwa płockiego / podług Sotzmana ze względem na zaszłe odmiany przez Juliusza Colberg” [General map of Płock voivodship / according to Sotzman with regard to variations by Juliusz Colberg], (Warsaw: Instytut Litograficzny Szkolny, 1827); digital image, Polona (https://polona.pl/item/atlas-krolestwa-polskiego-atlas-du-royaume-de-pologne,NDcwMDgwNjE/11/#info:metadata : 28 March 2022).

⁵Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny, 11799189 @ WIG – Mapa Szczegółowa Polski [Detailed Map of Poland] 1:25 000 /1929–1939/, “P37 S30 H (alt. 3730 H) RACIĄŻ (RAZIONSCH), 1931;” digital image, Archiwum Map Wojskowego Instytutu Geograficznego 1919–1939 (http://maps.mapywig.org/m/WIG_maps/series/025K/P37-S30-H_1931_LoC_G6520_s25_.P6.jpg : 28 March 2022).