Rybno – From Shepherds and Shoemakers

Final Resting Places of the Last Generation of My Family in Poland

Published on December 12, 2022 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz15 Comments

Two of my adult children are in Poland right now, spending two weeks there during the Advent season. I’m so excited for them to have this opportunity to visit the land that was home to three-quarters of their ancestors. Neither of them is especially interested in genealogy, so their tour is focused on sightseeing, and discovering a bit of the history and culture of Poland. Consequently, I have no expectation that my kids will tour the cemeteries where their ancestors were laid to rest. I’ve discovered that visiting cemeteries isn’t really the kind of thing that non-genealogists seem to enjoy, for some odd reason. (Yes, my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek as I write that.) Nonetheless, I started thinking about the most recent generation of our family who lived and died in Poland: the parents of the immigrants. Who were they, when did they live, what churches were they buried from, and in what cemeteries were they buried?

A Word About Polish Cemeteries…

Even if my kids did wish to visit our ancestral cemeteries, there wouldn’t be much to see in terms of ancestral graves, because none of those graves are still marked. Although it seems strange to us here in the U.S.—and particular so here in New England, where we have an abundance of cemeteries with grave markers that date back to the early 1700s—permanent graves are uncommon in Poland. Graves are rented out for a particular term—perhaps 25 years—and at the end of that period, the family must renew the lease in order to maintain the grave. If the cemetery fees are not paid, the grave is resold, and the grave marker is replaced with a new one. For this reason, it’s rare to find grave markers in Poland that are more than 100 years old. In fact, when we visited Poland in 2015, the only grave of a known relative that I could identify in all the ancestral cemeteries we visited, was that of Barbara (née Kalota) Mikołajewska, sister of my great-great-grandmother, Marianna (née Kalota) Zielińska. Barbara was buried in this Mikołajewski family plot, shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Grave of Barbara Mikołajewska in the Młodzieszyn parish cemetery. Photo taken by the author.

Despite the fact that the graves are no longer marked, most of the small, country parishes in Poland have only one Catholic cemetery. So, if a death was recorded in a particular parish, it follows that the deceased was buried in that parish cemetery. Consequently, there’s a feeling of connection for me that comes from visiting an ancestral village—and particularly its cemetery; a connection that comes from the knowledge that, in this place, my family had roots. These are the streets my ancestors walked, and the fields that they farmed. This is the church where they came to pray; where they stood before the congregation to be joined in holy matrimony, and where they brought their babies to be baptized. This is the cemetery where they were laid to rest, and where they returned to dust. This place is a part of my DNA, just as my ancestors’ DNA has become a part of this place.

But how to convey this to my non-genealogist kids? Making family history meaningful and interesting to my immediate family has always been a challenge for me, so whenever I have a family history story to tell—especially one related to a distant ancestor—my husband has always advised me to start with someone he knows.

My kids have nine great-great-grandparents who were themselves born in what is now Poland, and three more who were born in the U.S. of Polish immigrant parents. However, some of those great-great-grandparents who were born in Poland came to the U.S. with their parents. So, we have to go back several generations to uncover the 3x-, 4x-, and 5x-great-grandparents who were still living in Poland when they died. Those connections are pretty distant for non-genealogists to appreciate, so I’ll take my husband’s advice, and frame these ancestors in terms of their relationships to great-grandparents that my children knew personally, or knew from family stories.

Grandma Helen’s Family

My maternal grandmother, Helen (née Zazycki) Zielinski, died in 2015, so all my children knew her well. Her pedigree chart is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Pedigree chart for my maternal grandmother Helen (née Zazycki) Zielinski. Blue squares represent people who died in the U.S., while red squares represent those who died in what is now Poland. Click image to enlarge.

Grandma’s father, Jan/John Zazycki/Zarzycki, was born in 1866 in the village of Bronisławy in Sochaczew County. John died in North Tonawanda, New York, but his parents both died in Poland. His father, Ignacy Zarzycki, died on 8 August 1901 in Bronisławy—a village which belongs to the parish in Rybno. Ignacy was survived by his wife, Antonina (née Naciążek), who died on 14 May 1915 in the Ochota district of Warsaw. She was probably living with her son, Karol, at the time of her death, since he was named as a witness on her death record, and was identified as a resident in Ochota. Antonina’s death was recorded at the parish of St. Stanisław in the Wola district of Warsaw, which suggests that she was buried in the Cmentarz Wolski w Warszawie (Wolska Cemetery in Warsaw), which was established in 1854 and belongs to the parish of St. Stanisław.

Grandma Helen’s mother, Weronika/Veronica (née Grzesiak) Zazycki, was born in the village of Kowalewo-Opactwo in Słupca County in 1876. Her mother, Marianna (née Krawczyńska) Grzesiak, died in the village of Zagórów on 29 May 1904. Curiously, this is contrary to the story I heard from Grandma Helen, that Veronica’s mother was already deceased when Veronica emigrated in 1898, but that’s another story for another day. Grandma Helen had no idea that her father, Józef Grzesiak, ever set foot in the U.S., so she was astonished (and somewhat doubtful) when I discovered a passenger manifest for a family group which included Józef, his daughter, Józefa, and daughter-in-law, Kazimiera Grzesiak. The family arrived in May 1900 and Józef was enumerated in the 1900 census in June, but after that, he disappeared. Oral family history held that Kazimiera was disenchanted with life in the U.S, left her husband, and returned to Poland. I suspect Józef returned as well, since he disappears from U.S. records after that 1900 census, and since his wife was, in fact, still living until 1904.

It’s unclear where Józef went when he returned to Poland, but it is probable that he died in Poland rather than the U.S. His wife’s death record mentioned Józef as a surviving spouse, which implies that he was living in Zagórów when she died in 1904, and that he died between 1904 and 1939 (assuming he lived no more than 100 years). However, no death record was found for him in Zagórów, or in Kowalewo-Opactwo, the parish where he was married and his children were born. The family lived in Warsaw circa 1899, where two of Józef’s children married, and he was named as a witness on the 1899 birth record of his grandson, Marian Cieniewski. Thus far, no death record has been found for Józef in Warsaw, either, but the large number of churches there makes the search difficult. He is not listed in the Buffalo, New York, Death Index, which was searched from 1897 through 1914, so it’s unlikely that he died in Buffalo. Józef Grzesiak’s place and date of death remains a mystery that may one day be solved, as additional indexed records come online.

Grandpa John’s Family

My maternal grandfather, John Zielinski, died on 15 February 2003. My oldest son remembers him pretty well, although he was not quite nine years old when Grandpa died. My other sons have some memories of him, but my daughter knows him only from stories. His pedigree chart is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Pedigree chart for my maternal grandfather, John Zielinski. Blue squares represent people who died in the U.S., while red squares represent those who died in what is now Poland. Click image to enlarge.

Grandpa’s father, Joseph/Józef Zieliński, was born in the village of Mistrzewice (Sochaczew County) in 1892, to Stanisław Zieliński and Marianna (née Kalota) Zielińska. Stanisław died 23 December 1915 in Mistrzewice, a village which once had its own parish church, but which was reassigned to the parish in Młodzieszyn in 1898. I suppose, but do not know with certainty, that Stanisław would have been buried in the old cemetery in Mistrzewice, rather than the cemetery in Młodzieszyn. Both cemeteries are still in use today, but searching burials online (for example, at Mogiły (Graves) does not provide much insight into use of the cemeteries during the early 20th century, since most of the graves from that era have new occupants by now.

Marianna Zielińska died 4 April 1936 while living in the village of Budy Stare with her sister. I wrote about her difficult history here. She was the most recent ancestor to die while still living in Poland, and Grandpa John met her when, as a small boy, he returned to Poland with his parents in 1921 for a visit. That visit was precipitated by the death of Grandpa John’s uncle, Władysław Zieliński, who died on 23 March 1921 at the age of 23, leaving his elderly mother, Marianna, as the sole survivor of the family in Poland.

It’s not clear why Marianna did not emigrate when her son, Joseph, returned to the U.S. with his family. They were already settled in North Tonawanda, and enjoying a good life there. But for whatever reason, she chose to remain in Poland, presumably giving up the family farm that Grandpa remembered. I have yet to discover the location of that farm, or documents pertaining to its sale.

Marianna Zielińska had three sisters whom I have been able to identify to date: Barbara, who married Józef Mikołajewski; Józefa, who married Roch Sikora; and Katarzyna, who married Wojciech Wilczek. Marianna outlived both Barbara and Józefa, which suggests that she was living with Katarzyna Wilczek at the time of her death—a conclusion which is supported by the fact that Wojciech and Katarzyna lived in Budy Stare, the village in which Marianna died. Since the village of Budy Stare belongs to the parish in Młodzieszyn, it’s likely that Marianna Zielińska was laid to rest in the that cemetery—perhaps in a grave that is currently occupied by more recent generations of the Wilczek family.

Grandpa John’s mother, Genowefa/Genevieve (née Klaus) Zielinski, was born in Buffalo in 1898, to parents who were Polish immigrants from the Galicia region, in villages that are located in southeastern Poland today. Grandma Genevieve’s mother was Marianna/Mary (née Łącka) Klaus, who was born in the village of Kołaczyce, in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. She emigrated in 1884 with her father, Jakub Łącki, and brothers, Jan and Józef, after the death of her mother, Anna, in 1879.

More research is needed to determine Jakub’s date and place of death, since he disappears from indexed records subsequent to his passenger manifest. Since his daughter, Mary, was married in Buffalo, New York, in 1891, he may have died there. However, the family had ties to the Polish community in Dunkirk, New York, and Find-A-Grave contains a promising match for Joseph Lacki’s grave in St. Hyacinth Cemetery in Dunkirk. It’s possible that Jakub is buried in that cemetery as well, without a marker. Further research is needed here; however, the situation with his wife is more definitive. Anna (née Ptaszkiewicz) Łącka, Mary’s mother and Jakub’s wife, died on 13 November 1879 in Kołaczyce, and was laid to rest in the parish cemetery. Jakub’s parents, Franciszek Łącki and Magdalena (née Gębczyńska) Łącka, were buried in that cemetery as well, after their respective deaths on 12 December 1847 and 17 January 1848.

Grandpa John’s mother, Grandma Genevieve (née Klaus) Zielinski, was the daughter of Andrzej/Andrew Klaus, who was born in the village of Maniów in Dąbrowa county, a village which lies just south of the Wisła/Vistula River, along the modern-day border between the Małopolskie Voivodeship and the Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship. Andrew immigrated to the U.S. in 1889, proceeding first to Plymouth, Pennsylvania, according to his passenger manifest, before moving on to Buffalo, where he married Mary Łącka in 1891. His parents were Jakub and Franciszka (née Liguz) Klaus, whose dates and places of death are unknown. Prior to 1981, the village of Maniów belonged to the parish in Szczucin, so they were presumably buried in the parish cemetery there.

And Now, a Map

When it comes to telling family history stories, my husband gave me another piece of sound advice: keep it short, or people’s eyes will start to glaze over. I’m pretty sure that by now, only die-hard genealogists are still reading this, given its length. So, for the sake of my children in Poland, for whom it was also intended, I’ve created the “TL;DR” version. (That’s “too long; didn’t read,” for those of you who aren’t keeping current with your internet acronyms.) Here is a map, showing each of these ancestral burial places.

In contrast to the situation in my family, five of my husband’s Polish immigrant great-grandparents came to the U.S. with their parents. So, it takes a little longer to dig back to the last generation buried in Poland. I’ll discuss them in my next post. As for my kids, I love you, and I hope you’re having a wonderful time in the land of your ancestors!

Searching No Longer: Antonina Naciążek Has Been Found!

Published on October 28, 2022October 29, 2022 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).

²Roman 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.

³Filip 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.

⁵Roman 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.

^⁶Roman 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.

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

Published on April 24, 2022April 26, 2022 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:

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.
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.
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.
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).

⁶I. 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).

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

Published on March 1, 2019October 27, 2022 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.⁵So 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.” ⁶ Joanna 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.⁷He 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.⁹A 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.¹¹Two years later, another daughter, Zofia, was baptized on 9 May 1814, and was probably born a day or so before that.¹²On 25 February 1816, little Magdalena Krzemińska died of smallpox (ospa, in Polish) at the age of 3 1/2.¹³Just nine days after her daughter’s death, Zofia Krzemińska gave birth to another son, Józef.¹⁴Although 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).

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

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

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

⁷Roman 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.

⁸Ibid.

⁹Roman 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Leonard Zarzycki Family of Warsaw

Published on September 28, 2017 by Julie Roberts SzczepankiewiczLeave a comment

Genealogists are often too familiar with the frustration of painstakingly gathering documentation to identify an ancestral village, only to discover that the family didn’t stay there for long, nor did they leave any hint about where they went. Sometimes, it’s just a branch or two that disappears from the records, but in such cases, it can be really difficult to find people in the absence of indexed records. I have quite a few family lines that dead-end this way, but the good news is that indexing efforts in Poland are bringing more and more of these missing relatives to light. Just yesterday, in fact, I managed to discover evidence for a previously unknown Zarzycki cousin who went to Warsaw.

I’ve written about my Zarzycki/Zażycki family in the past. This is the family of my great-grandfather, Jan Zażycki, who was born in the village of Bronisławy in Sochaczew County in 1866, and immigrated to Buffalo, New York. The village of Bronisławy belongs to the parish of Rybno, and it’s challenging to obtain records from this parish since so few of the parish books were ever transferred to the state or diocesan archive. Most of them are still onsite at the parish itself, but thanks to the diligence of my onsite researcher, Justyna Krogulska, and the generous pastor who was willing to permit access to the records, I’ve been able to gather baptismal records for Jan and his siblings, trace the family’s roots a bit further back, and also trace some of Jan’s siblings forward, to identify their spouses and at least some of their children. However, some of Jan’s siblings disappeared from the records in Rybno. Did they die in infancy, and their deaths were somehow not recorded? Did they move and perhaps marry elsewhere in Poland? So far I haven’t found evidence of emigration (I’ve looked), but maybe a surname was dramatically altered?

Today, one of those missing siblings emerged, in the indexed records for Warsaw in the vital records database, Geneteka. Leonard Zarzycki was the youngest brother of my great-grandfather Jan. Leonard was born 6 November 1876,¹and his marriage to Marianna Majewska was recorded in Rybno parish on 14 February 1904.²After that marriage, however, the couple disappeared from the records. No birth records for their children were discovered in Rybno, and I had no idea where they went until today, when I discovered the following marriage record for Leonard and Marianna’s son, Zygmunt, at All Saints Church in Warsaw in 1929.³

The translation of the record is as follows:

“#525. This happened in Warsaw in the office of All Saints parish on the eighth day of September in the year one thousand nine hundred twenty-nine at ten o’clock in the morning. We declare that — in the presence of witnesses, Leonard Zarzycki, public works entrepreneur, and Michał Kurkiewicz, railroad official, adult residents of Warsaw — that on this day, in this church, was contracted a religous marriage between Zygmunt Zarzycki, bachelor, office worker, having twenty-four years of age, born in the parish of St. Stanisław, son of the living Leonard and Marianna née Majewska, the spouses Zarzycki, residing in Warsaw on Krochmalna Street in house number five thousand four hundred ninety eight in St. Andrew’s parish, and Henryka Michalina Kurkiewicz, single, [residing] with her father, having twenty-four years of age, born in the parish of St. Barbara in Warsaw, daughter of the living Michał and the late Leokadia née Miałkowska, residing in Warsaw on Pańska Street in house number one thousand two hundred forty-three in the parish here. The marriage was preceded by three announcements, proclaimed in the parish of St. Andrew’s and here, on the eighteenth and twenty-fifth days of August and the first day of September. The newlyweds stated that they had no prenuptial agreement between them. The religious ceremony of marriage was performed by Fr. Jan Mecheta, local vicar. This document was read aloud to the newlyweds and witnesses, and we signed. [Signed] Fr. Mecheta, Zygmunt Zarzycki, Henryka Kurkiewicz, Michał Kurkiewicz.”

The ages reported here suggest that both Zygmunt and his bride, Henryka, were born circa 1905 in Warsaw. The parish in which Zygmunt was baptized, St. Stanisław, Bishop and Martyr, was founded in 1611 in the Wola district of Warsaw, and Zygmunt’s birth record was subsequently located in the records from that parish. The address at which Leonard Zarzycki’s family was living at the time of Zygmunt’s marriage, 5498 Krochmalna Street, appears not to correspond to any present address there, but this is hardly surprising, given that 90% of Warsaw was destroyed during World War II. Krochmalna Street itself was a very poor neighborhood, largely Jewish, and the eastern part of the street was within the area walled off by the Nazis in November 1940 to form the Warsaw Ghetto, just 11 years after the date of Zygmunt and Henryka’s wedding.

I have to wonder what happened to the Zarzyckis during the war. Did they leave the city and go back to family in Bronisławy? Were they forcibly relocated? Might they have participated in the Warsaw Uprising? One resource to check for answers to these questions is the “Loss” database. In 2006, The Polish Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (Institute of National Memory) and the Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego (Ministry of Culture and National Heritage) developed this database to assist families in discovering the fates of individuals who suffered the loss of life or property as a result of Nazi oppression. A broad search for Zarzycki/Zarzycka, with father’s name Leonard (to locate Zygmunt) or Ignacy (to locate Zygmunt’s father, Leonard) did not produce any likely matches, suggesting that the family might, indeed, have left Warsaw before the war.

Another broad search in the indexed records at Geneteka for St. Stanisław Church in Warszawa-Wola reveals a large number of births to Zarzyckis between 1904, when Leonard and Marianna were married, and 1908, when indexed records end for this parish. I hoped that some of these might be for additional children of this couple, so I examined each record individually, since the index is of the “bare bones” variety which lacks key identifying information such as mother’s maiden name. Unfortunately, none were for children of Leonard and Marianna. Zygmunt’s marriage record stated that the family was living in Warsaw in St. Andrew’s parish at that time, so perhaps they moved there soon after he was born, and additional siblings can be found in those records. Birth records for St. Andrew’s are not indexed in Geneteka for the period from 1904-1912, but they’re available (unindexed) at Geneteka‘s sister site, Metryki. So perhaps I’ll be able to discover a few more children of Leonard and Marianna Zarzycki in due time. Stay tuned!

Sources:

Featured Image: All Saints Church in Warsaw, Poland, image courtesy of Wikipedia user Masti, licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.5.

¹Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księga urodzeń 1870-1880, 1876, #87, baptismal record for Leonard Zarzycki.

²Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Rybnie, Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki.Genealodzy.pl, 1904, #15, marriage record for Leonard Zarzycki and Maryanna Majewska, accessed on 28 September 2017.

³Ksiegi metrykalne parafii rzymskokatolickiej Wszystkich Swietych w Warszawie, Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki.genealodzy.pl (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl), Ksiega zaslubionych 1929 r., #525, marriage record for Zygmunt Zarzycki and Henryka Michalina Kurkiewicz, accessed on 28 September 2017.

The Mysterious Wanda Gruberska: The Next Chapter

Published on September 1, 2017August 22, 2021 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz1 Comment

In my last post, I shared an article I wrote for the Polish Genealogical Society of America’s journal, Rodziny, about finding a new DNA match to a cousin who knew only his grandmother’s birth name, Wanda Gruberska, but little else about her, since she was adopted as a child and had her name changed. Today I’d like to provide a few updates to the story, based on new research findings since its publication.

To briefly recap, when I was contacted by this DNA match, I recognized the Gruberski surname because my maternal grandmother’s Zazycki family had multiple ties to the Gruberski family in Poland through marriage. However, Wanda Gruberska herself was not in my family tree, and at that point, I did not know who her parents might be. By process of elimination I was able to identify Wanda’s parents as Jan/John Gruberski and Marianna/Mary (née Pindur) Gruberska, demonstrate that they immigrated to Minnesota, prove that Mary died in 1918, and discover that one of the Gruberskis’ children was living in an orphanage in St. Paul in 1920. However, I still had no direct evidence of Wanda’s birth to these parents or of her own placement in that orphanage. I suspected that Wanda might have been baptized at St. Adalbert’s church in St. Paul, Minnesota, based on her family’s address in city directories.

The Smoking Gun, and a New Sister

What I did not realize at that time was that baptisms and marriages from this parish, as well as other Polish parishes in Minnesota, were indexed by John Rys and compiled into searchable databases which can be accessed via the website of the Polish Genealogical Society of Minnesota. John kindly provided me with a copy of Wanda’s baptismal record (Figure 1),¹ as well as a copy of the baptismal record for another sister, Helena Josepha (Figure 2).²

Figure 1: Baptismal record from St. Adalbert’s church, St. Paul, Minnesota, for Wanda Grubarska, born 7 May 1916.¹ Wanda Gruberska baptism 1916

Figure 2: Baptismal record from St. Adalbert’s church, St. Paul, Minnesota, for Helen Josepha, born 18 March 1914.² Helena Gruberska baptism 1914

Wanda’s surname is spelled “Grubarska” in the first record, and her year of birth, 1916, makes her a full three years younger than her family suspected. However, this birth record is nonetheless a “smoking gun” — the direct evidence which irrefutably identifies Wanda as a child of the parents whom I predicted for her, based on all prior evidence. Although I was previously unaware of another sister, Helena, it makes sense that John and Mary might have had another child born in the U.S. if Wanda was born as late as 1916. John and Mary’s oldest children, Stanisław and Genowefa, were born in Poland in 1908 and 1910, respectively, and arrived in the U.S. in April 1913 with their mother Mary and uncle Bolesław (Bill) Gruberski. Helena had to have been the first of John and Mary’s children born in the U.S., since her March 1914 birth date suggests that she was conceived in June 1913.

The Godfather

Helena’s godfather, Leon Gruberski, was another surprise, since I don’t have him in my family tree. However, my data on the children of Marianna Zarzycka and Józef Gruberski are still incomplete. As mentioned previously, the family lived in Bronisławy, a village belonging to the parish in Rybno. The majority of the 19th-century records for Rybno have not been microfilmed, nor are they available from the Polish State Archives (apart from a narrow range of years starting in 1886). Instead, the records are still in possession of the local Catholic parish. Thanks to a gracious pastor and a diligent researcher (Justyna Krogulska), I have been able to obtain records for my family from this parish, but it looks like another round of research is in order, focusing specifically on the Gruberski family.

Although Leon’s birth record is currently unavailable, a quick check on Ancestry produced his passenger manifest (Figures 3a and b, which can also be viewed free via Ellis Island):

Figure 3a: Extract from first page of passenger manifest for Leon Gruberski.⁴ Leon Gruberski passenger manifest page 1

Figure 3b: Extract from second page of passenger manifest for Leon Gruberski.⁴ Leon Gruberski passenger manifest page 2

The manifest informs us that Leon arrived in New York on 5 May 1909, that he was single, and that he was born about 1885 in “Bronislawa.” His nearest relative in that place was his father, Józef Gruberski, who was living in “Bronislawa, Warschau,” and Leon was a citizen of Russia. All of this is consistent with the village of Bronisławy, which was located in the Warsaw gubernia (province) of the Russian Empire. On page 2, we see that he was headed to his “step brother,” Piotr Przanowski, living at 153 Box (?) Street in St. Paul, Minnesota. Leon may have used the term “step brother” in a rather broad sense. The Przanowski family was clearly associated with the Gruberski family because Leon’s brother, Roman Gruberski, was married to Julianna Przanowska, who was the daughter of Stanisław Przanowski and Franciszka Dobińska. A quick check in Geneteka reveals that Julianna did indeed have a brother named Piotr Przanowski, who married Łucja Gajowniczek in Iłów in 1897, and this is probably the Piotr Przanowski mentioned in Leon’s passenger manifest. Assuming that further research does not turn up evidence of a closer relationship, Piotr can’t properly be called a “step brother” to Leon. However, our ancestors typically employed a very expansive concept of family when reporting their relationships to contacts in the U.S., and this fact, compounded with the language barrier, probably explains the notation on the manifest.

In any case, Leon seems to disappear from U.S. records subsequent to that 1909 passenger manifest. We know he must have remained in the U.S. through 1914 at least, since he was godfather to his niece, Helena Józefa, in April of that year. This, in turn, implies that he should be found in the 1910 census. Very often, Polish immigrants can be tough to locate in U.S. census records because their names were misspelled by the census-taker on the original form, or mistranscribed during the indexing process. One of my favorite tricks for getting around this is to omit the surname entirely and search using other known data. However, a search of the 1910 census for men named Leon, no surname specified, born 1880-1890 in Russia, living in St. Paul, Minnesota, produced no promising hits. I also checked for his contact in the U.S., Piotr Przanowski, since occasionally one might see a boarder mistakenly recorded on a census record under the surname of the head of household. I successfully located the household of Peter Przanowski — misindexed as Peter Pozanowski — living in South St. Paul in 1910. I’m sure it’s the right family, because his wife’s name was Lucy and he and his wife reported that they’d been married for 13 years, suggesting a marriage date of 1897. Both of these facts match the marriage record in Geneteka precisely. However, there was no Leon living with them, so for now I’ll put Leon on the back burner and move on.

Crowdsourcing at its Best

Since publishing that article, I also obtained Mary Gruberski’s death certificate (Figure 4).⁴

Figure 4: Death certificate for Mrs. John (Mary) Gruberski, 11 December 1918. Mary Gruberski death 1918.jpg

At the time of her death, the Gruberskis were living at 844 Gaulthier (sic) Street in St. Paul. Mary’s date of birth was reported to be 25 March 1880, but based on her age reported on her marriage record, 1890 would be a more probable birth year for her. Mary died of epidemic influenza on 14 December 1918 and was buried two days later in Calvary Cemetery. She was reported to be the wife of John Gruberski, but the document is worded in such a way that it makes no distinction between a wife, a widow, and a divorcée, so we cannot tell from this information whether or not John Gruberski is already deceased. However, the fact that John himself was not the informant is potentially significant. The name of the person who was the informant is unclear, but he did not know Mary’s parents’ names, or her precise place of birth, which suggests that he may not have known her well.

I was really bothered by the fact that I couldn’t read the informant’s name on this document. The disjointed appearance of the signature made it look almost like a short name, e.g. Geo. (George) Doun or Dorn, followed by a phrase, which I thought might contain some clue about the relationship of the informant to the deceased. Moreover, the 1910 census did indeed show a man by the name of George Dorn who lived at 1058 Rice Street in St. Paul in 1910, less than a mile from the Gruberskis’ address on the death certificate. However, this theory was blown out of the water last night by the amazing Kasia Dane in the Polish Genealogy group on Facebook.

One of my favorite strategies when I need another pair of eyes or a fresh perspective, is to crowdsource the problem by posting in a Facebook group. I posted this record in Polish Genealogy recently, and after some discussion, Kasia produced irrefutable evidence that the informant was a Belgian immigrant named Georges Dommels-Huizen. Kasia’s most compelling piece of evidence was this World War I draft card, which informs us that Georges was employed as a records clerk at the City and County Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota. As a hospital records clerk, Georges would have had access to the basic information contained in Mary’s medical chart when she was admitted to the hospital.

Bill Gruberski’s Day in Court

Rather than resting on her laurels, Kasia dug a little deeper and turned up a spectacular find in Internet Archive. It’s often surprising what information one can find by a simple internet search using the name of a research subject combined with an identifying fact or two. In this case, a search for “Mary Gruberski 1918” produced a book entitled Minnesota Reports, which is a summary of cases argued and determined in the Supreme Court of Minnesota, published in 1922.⁵The case summary tells us that Mary took out a life insurance policy on herself in 1918, shortly before her death, naming her brother-in-law, Bolesław “Bill” Gruberski, as the beneficiary. The insurer was the Brotherhood of American Yeomen, which was a fraternal beneficiary organization. The policy was issued in September of 1918, but prior to issuance of the life insurance certificate, the insurer required Mary to undergo a physical examination and to answer questions about her own health history, family health history, and her physical condition. The medical examination took place on 18 August 1918, and one of the questions asked was, “Are you pregnant?” At the time of the exam, Mary was 5 1/2 months pregnant, and she delivered a full-term baby on 15 November 1918, one month before her death.

Since the death claim was made so soon after the policy issued, it seems that the insurer balked at making the payout on the policy. They argued that the policy was void if any of the statements made during the medical exam regarding Mary’s physical condition were untrue, and they claimed that Mary stated that she was not pregnant. Never mind that her death was completely unrelated to her pregnancy, the whole case came down to the question of whether or not the statements made during the exam were warranties that could invalidate the insurance certificate if proven to be false. The plaintiff, on the other hand, charged that the medical examiner erroneously inserted Mary’s answers into the medical report, and that Mary did, in fact, admit to being pregnant. Mary was known to be illiterate, with limited English-speaking skills. Both sides offered conflicting testimony regarding Mary’s actual oral statement, and whether or not an interpreter was used, and it was noted to be strange that the medical examiner recorded her waist measurement, yet did not realize that she was 5 1/2 months pregnant. When the case was first tried in the Ramsey County District Court, it was judged in favor of the plaintiff — that is, the insurer was required to pay a death benefit of $1,000 to Bill Gruberski for his sister-in-law’s death. The defendant appealed that verdict, but it was upheld by the State Supreme Court.

So what are the genealogical implications of this new evidence? First, we now know that John and Mary Gruberski had at least 5 children prior to Mary’s death in 1918: Stanisław, Genowefa, Helena, Wanda, and this new baby born in November 1918, just a month before Mary’s death. Second, these data support my suspicion that John Gruberski might have preceded Mary in death. It’s a little odd that she would have named her brother-in-law as her beneficiary if her husband were still alive. Perhaps her intention was to have Bill use the money for the care of her children. In any case, the question remains as to when John Gruberski died, and the probable timeframe for this event is pretty narrow. If John and Mary’s youngest child was born in November 1918, the baby would have been conceived in February of that year. Therefore John must have died some time after the baby’s conception, but before Mary applied for the life insurance policy in August 1918, and named her brother-in-law, and not her husband, as beneficiary. It’s also theoretically possible that John did not die in 1918, but rather abandoned his family and moved back to Poland, and I hope to address this question with further research.

The Seven Siblings

There’s one final new development that I want to share in this next chapter of the story. As mentioned previously, John and Mary’s oldest son, Stanisław, was reported in the 1920 census to be an inmate at St. Joseph’s German Catholic Orphan Society Home in St. Paul, Minnesota. I contacted the Archdiocesan Archives for St. Paul to inquire about records from the orphanage, and was delighted to learn that they do have records for Wanda and all her siblings, which I can request from their archive 100 years after the date of the record. The earliest records will be available in January 2019 and the latest in September 2025. It seems a long time to wait, but I’m in this for the long haul. The surprise came when the archivist wrote that they have records for seven Gruberski children, not just five. Based on the dates of birth of the children previously discovered, the remaining two children must have been born in 1915 and 1917. Given how large this family was, it seems odd that Stanisław was the only one of the siblings who was reported to be living in the orphanage in 1920. Prior to my correspondence with the Archdiocesan Archive, I assumed that the younger children might already have been adopted by 1920, leaving only Stanisław there. However, assuming that the release dates on the orphanage case files correspond to the dates when each child was legally adopted, there should have been three additional Gruberski children reported on the census, based on the census date of January 1920. Why they were not reported on the census is another mystery for another day.

There’s also the mystery of where these children would have been baptized, since the only baptismal records found at St. Adalbert’s were for Wanda and Helena. The obvious answer is that they must have been baptized in a different parish, so I took a look at the family’s addresses in city directories to determine what other parish they might have lived in. Unfortunately, this approach didn’t help much. In the 1914⁷ city directory for St. Paul, John Gruberski was reported to be living at 720 S. Concord Street, which isn’t especially close to any of the ethnic Polish Roman Catholic churches in St. Paul. In 1915,⁸ he was listed in several places in the directory. He appears first in the alphabetical listing of residents, which confirmed the previous home address of 720 S. Concord Street, and was also mentioned in the business directory under both “blacksmiths” and “horseshoers” where it was noted that his blacksmithing business was located at 161 Milford. In 1916,⁹the only Gruberski listing is for “Jochim,” although it’s clearly the same as our John, since he’s a blacksmith working at 161 Milford. This time his residence is reported to be 865 Rice Street, but that’s still only a mile away from St. Adalbert’s.

In 1917,¹⁰ I found John’s brother, Bill Gruberski, living and working at his brother’s former address, 161 Milford. Moreover, the 1917 directory shows “Joachim Gruberski,” also a blacksmith, living at 887 Albemarle. Google Maps informs me that 887 Albemarle is about 26 feet away from 161 Milford, so right next door. By 1918,¹¹ there’s no longer any mention of any John, Jochim, or Joachim Gruberski, but William Grubarski is mentioned as a “helper” living at 844 Galtier, which is again, quite close to St. Adalbert’s. 844 Galtier is an address we’ve seen before: it’s where Mary Gruberski was living at the time of her death in December 1918. Moreover, both of these facts are consistent with our present hypothesis, that John Gruberski died (or perhaps abandoned his family) between February 1918 and November 1918. It seems quite plausible that Mary and her children might have moved in with her brother-in-law and his family if her husband died suddenly while she was pregnant with her seventh child.

Although this analysis of the city directories has helped us to understand some aspects of the story, it did not suggest any other parishes where the Gruberski children might have been baptized, since all the addresses associated with the family point to St. Adalbert’s. At this point, I don’t have any answers, merely speculation. Maybe, for some reason, some of the children were baptized at nearby St. Stanislaus parish, even though it was an ethnic Czech parish and therefore probably not the first choice for Polish immigrants? They were most likely not baptized at the ethnic Polish St. Casimir church in St. Paul, because their baptisms would have been captured in John Rys’s database. So this, too, remains another mystery for another day.

To Be Continued….

To sum it up, this next chapter in the saga of the Gruberski family in St. Paul has been pretty interesting, and the pieces of the story are starting to come together. We now have Wanda’s baptismal record, which provides direct evidence for her parentage, and we have a baptismal record for one additional sibling, Helena. We’ve learned of the existence of three more siblings, previously unknown, and we know the dates on which we can request adoption records for each of the seven siblings from the Archdiocesan Archive. We’ve discovered Leon Gruberski, John’s brother, and have a plan in place for further research in Polish records to obtain his birth record, and the birth records for all additional children of Józef Gruberski and Marianna Zarzycka. The report of a successful lawsuit, brought by Bill Gruberski against the Brotherhood of American Yeomen after their refusal to pay the death claim on Mary Gruberski’s life insurance policy, provided key genealogical details including the date of birth of Mary’s youngest child, and the fact that Mary named her Bill, rather than her husband, as her beneficiary. This, in combination with data from Mary’s death record and city directories, contributed evidence to our developing hypothesis that John Gruberski died between February 1918 and August 1918. Some questions still remain, of which the most important are those regarding the fate of John Gruberski, but hopefully further research can resolve those. Stay tuned!

Sources:

¹Roman Catholic Church, St. Adalbert’s Parish (St. Paul, Ramsey, Minnesota), Baptisms, 1911-1923, 1916, #61, baptismal record for Wanda Gruberska.

²Roman Catholic Church, St. Adalbert’s Parish (St. Paul, Ramsey, Minnesota), Baptisms, 1911-1923, 1914, #15, baptismal record for Helena Josepha Gruberski.

³New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 (images and transcription), Year: 1909; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 1257; Line: 14; Page Number: 149, record for Leon Gruberski, accessed 31 August 2017

⁴Minnesota, Division of Vital Statistics, Death Certificates, 1918, #8746, record for Mrs. John (Mary) Gruberski, died 14 December 1918 in St. Paul, Ramsey, Minnesota.

⁵Minnesota Reports, Supreme Court of the State of Minnesota (1922), Bill Gruberski v. Brotherhood of American Yeomen, a Fraternal Beneficiary Organization, May 6, 1921, Case number 22,197, pp. 49-53.; book digitized by Google from the library of Harvard University and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb., Internet Archive (https://archive.org/), accessed 31 August 2017.

⁶1920 United States Federal Census (image and transcription), Year: 1920; Census Place: St Paul Ward 11, Ramsey, Minnesota; Roll: T625_855; Page: 4A; Enumeration District: 140; Image: 1041, https://www.ancestry.com, Record for Stanislaus Gruberski, accessed 31 August 2017.

⁷U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989 (image and transcription), R.L. Polk and Co.’s St. Paul City Directory, 1914, (St. Paul, Minnesota: R.L. Polk & Co.), record for John Gruberski, p. 734, https://www.ancestry.com, accessed 31 August 2017.

⁸U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989 (image and transcription), R.L. Polk and Co.’s St. Paul City Directory, 1915, (St. Paul, Minnesota: R.L. Polk & Co.), record for John Gruberski, pp. 698 and 1757, https://www.ancestry.com, accessed 31 August 2017.

⁹U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989 (image and transcription), R.L. Polk and Co.’s St. Paul City Directory, 1916, (St. Paul, Minnesota: R.L. Polk & Co.), record for Jochim Gruberski, p. 712, https://www.ancestry.com, accessed 31 August 2017.

¹⁰U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989 (image and transcription), R.L. Polk and Co.’s St. Paul City Directory, 1917, (St. Paul, Minnesota: R.L. Polk & Co.), record for Bill and Joachim Gruberski, p. 708, https://www.ancestry.com, accessed 31 August 2017.

¹¹U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989 (image and transcription), R.L. Polk and Co.’s St. Paul City Directory, 1918, (St. Paul, Minnesota: R.L. Polk & Co.), record for Wm. Grubarski, p. 501, https://www.ancestry.com, accessed 31 August 2017.

The Mysterious Wanda Gruberska: A Genetic Genealogy Success Story

Published on August 26, 2017November 8, 2018 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz4 Comments

Note: This story was originally published in the Spring 2017 issue of Rodziny, the journal of the Polish Genealogical Society of America. With their permission, I’m publishing it again here, with the intention of following it up with some new data that I’ve obtained since it was published.

Recently I got some exciting new autosomal DNA test results for my “Uncle” (mother’s maternal first cousin), Fred Zazycki. Uncle Fred generously consented to provide a saliva sample for autosomal DNA testing through Ancestry, which is really an incredible gift. Why is it better for me to have his DNA tested in addition to my own? Let’s quickly review some basic concepts in genetic genealogy.

The ABCs of DNA

Each of us has 23 pairs of chromosomes located in the nucleus of almost every cell in the body. These chromosomes contain the genetic material (DNA) that makes us unique individuals. Of these 23 pairs of chromosomes, 22 pairs are called autosomes, and the final pair are the sex chromosomes. For men, the sex chromosomes are an X inherited from the mother and a Y inherited from the father. Women inherit two X chromosomes, one from the mother and one from the father.

One copy of each of the 22 paired autosomes comes from the mother, and one from the father, so roughly half our genetic material comes from each parent. Each parent’s genetic contribution gets cut in half with each successive generation, so although I inherit half my DNA from my mother, I only inherit a quarter of my DNA (on average) from each of my maternal grandparents, and only 1/8 of my DNA (on average) from each of my maternal great-grandparents. If we extend this further, each of us has 64 great-great-great-great-grandparents, and each of them will only contribute 1/64 of our genetic makeup, or about 1.563%, on average. However, due to a process called recombination that affects the way bits of DNA are inherited, these are only statistical averages. In practice, one might inherit a bit more or a bit less from any given ancestor, and all of us have many ancestors from whom we’ve inherited no DNA at all.

For this reason, it’s important to try to test the oldest generations in a family first. Since Uncle Fred is one generation closer than I am to our immigrant ancestor, John Zazycki, Uncle Fred will have inherited an average of twice as much DNA from John Zazycki as I did. This means that his DNA “looks back” into the family tree a generation further than mine is able to.

The Zarzycki and Gruberski families of Bronisławy and Błędów

Almost as soon as Uncle Fred’s DNA test results posted, and before I’d even had a chance to look at them, I already had a message in my Ancestry inbox from a DNA match who wanted to investigate the connection. The DNA match,”Cousin Jon,” has a family tree on Ancestry which included a surname I recognized: Gruberski. My great-grandfather John Zazycki had an oldest sister, Marianna Zarzycka, who married Józef Gruberski in 1874 in Rybno (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Marriage record from the parish in Rybno, Sochaczew County, for Marianna Zarzycka and Józef Gruberski, 25 October 1874.¹

marianna-zarzycka-and-jozef-gruberski-1874

A full translation of this record is provided in the footnotes, if you’re really interested in reading the whole thing.

From this record and from the parish records in Łowicz, we know that Józef Gruberski was a 40-year-old widower when he married 24-year-old Marianna Zarzycka. His first wife, Anna Trojanowska, had died four years earlier, and he came into this second marriage with four children. The records of Rybno also reveal that the paths of the Zarzycki and Gruberski families crossed in other ways besides just this marriage. In 1890, Józef Gruberski and Anna Trojanowska’s third son, Antoni Gruberski, married Aniela Zarzycka. Aniela was the younger sister of Antoni’s step-mother, Marianna (née Zarzycka) Gruberska. (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Marriage record from the parish in Rybno, Sochaczew County, for Aniela Zarzycka and Antoni Gruberski, 19 January 1890.² aniela-zarzycka-and-antoni-gruberski-1890

For my great-grandfather Jan Zarzycki, Józef Gruberski was not only husband to his sister Marianna and father-in-law to his sister Aniela, he was also the boss. Józef Gruberski was the master blacksmith under whom Jan had apprenticed. We know this because one of the documents which Jan brought with him from Poland, which was handed down in our family, was an identification booklet that included basic biographical information written in Russian and Polish. (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Identification booklet from Russian Poland for Jan Zażycki.³ jan-zazycki-working-papers-p3

In our family, my grandmother’s brother, Joseph, fondly known as Uncle J, was the one who inherited the book from his father, Jan Zażycki. He, in turn, passed it down to my cousin, John, who is Jan Zażycki’s namesake. Consequently, I don’t have the actual book in my possession, but my cousin kindly made a photocopy of some of the pages for me, which included notes from a translator. Some of these aren’t especially accurate, but I don’t have a copy without the notes, so we’ll overlook that part. The interesting thing to note in this context is the part highlighted in red, that states, “Pracuje u Józefa Gruberskiego/Majstra tegoż kunsztu kowalskiego.” This tells us that Jan Zażycki was a blacksmith who was working for Józef Gruberski, master of the blacksmithing craft. The word “czeladnik” in the corner next to Jan’s name means “journeyman,” which would suggest that Jan had completed his training and was now fully qualified to be employed as a blacksmith.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker….

Given all the ways in which the Zarzycki family and the Gruberski family had intertwined, it seemed very likely that this must be how Uncle Fred’s new DNA match was connected to our family. So what do we know about the match itself? Well, GEDmatch reports that it consists of substantial matches on Chromosome 12 (32.8 cM), Chromosome 17 (28.4 cM) and Chromosome 21 (30.4 cM), for a total of a whopping 91.5 cM, which is fantastic, given that this is to a cousin previously unknown to the family (Figures 4a and 4b).

Figure 4a: GEDmatch Autosomal Comparison Between Uncle Fred and Cousin Jon. Green = base pairs with full match, yellow = base pairs with half match, red = base pairs with no match, and blue = matching segments > 7 cM (centiMorgans, a measure of genetic distance). gedmatch-1

Figure 4b: gedmatch-2

GEDmatch estimates 3.6 generations to the MRCA (Most Recent Common Ancestor) between Uncle Fred and Cousin Jon. Interestingly, when I checked my own matches, I also match Cousin Jon, although the match is much smaller. I ran a GEDmatch Segment Triangulation, which verified that all three of us do share a common segment consisting of 12.2 cM on Chromosome 17 (Figure 5):

Figure 5: GEDmatch Segment Triangulation graphic showing start and stop points for the matching segment shared by Uncle Fred, Cousin Jon and me.

In my case, GEDmatch estimates 5.1 generations to MRCA, even though I’m only one generation away from Uncle Fred, which nicely illustrates the inequalities of DNA inheritance.

The Sad Tale of Wanda Gruberska

So who was the mystery Gruberska cousin? Unfortunately, Cousin Jon’s family didn’t know much about the Gruberski family at all. According to family recollection, Jon’s grandmother was born Wanda Evangeline Gruberska. The family believed that she was Polish. Wanda was born circa 1913, and was left at an orphanage, either in Minnesota or Michigan, shortly after arriving in America. She was adopted out of the orphanage and her name was changed to Katherine Burke. By the time the 1930 census was enumerated, she was living with her adoptive family. Cousin Jon’s family suspected that she was not actually an orphan, but that her biological mother was unable to care for her. Armed with that information, I set out to see how Wanda fit into my family tree.

Since two of the Zarzycki women (Marianna and Aniela) had married Gruberski men (Józef and Antoni), I took a look at both of those lineages to identify the most likely candidates to be Wanda’s father. Józef and Marianna Gruberski had four children that I’d been able to discover through Polish vital records: Roman (b. 1876), Jan (b. 1877), Bolesław Leopold (b.1880), and Julia Antonina (b. 1887). Any one of the boys could have been Wanda’s father, or Julia might have been Wanda’s unwed mother.

Antoni and Aniela Gruberski had two sons, both named Bronisław, the second one (b. 1903) named after the first son Bronisław who died at the age of three. Aniela Gruberska was born in 1863, so she would have been 50 by 1913 when Wanda was born — too old to be Wanda’s mother. Similarly, her son Bronisław, and any unknown sons born after him, would be too young to be Wanda’s father. That ruled out that lineage, so the focus must be on the children of Józef and Marianna Gruberski. What was known about their descendants?

Parish records from Ilów show that Roman Gruberski married Julianna Przanowska on 21 February 1906.⁴Althoughbirth records for this parish are online and indexed at Geneteka through 1909, there are no births to this couple during that time, nor are there any births to this couple recorded in any of the indexed records on Geneteka. Parish records from Szymanów reveal that Jan Gruberski married Marianna Pindor on 23 July 1907.⁵In addition to the marriage record, indexed records in Geneteka contain one birth for a child from this marriage, that of Stanisław Alfons Gruberski, who was born in Ilów on 1 May 1908.⁶Finally, parish records from Rybno indicate that Bolesław Gruberski married Helena Zarzycka on 6 March 1902.⁷ Yes, it’s another connection between the Zarzycki and Gruberski families. Helena was Bolesław’s first cousin once removed, the youngest of the ten children of Wojciech Zarzycki and his wife, Aniela (née Tempińska). Therefore she was first cousin to Bolesław’s mother, Marianna Gruberska, even though there was 31 years’ difference in the ages of the two women. Bolesław and Helena had at least four children that I’ve been able to discover, Wacław (b. 1902), Marianna (b. 1903), Genowefa (b. 1905) and Stanisław (b. 1906), all of whom married in Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki parish between 1926-1930.

So at this point, we have some individuals who might be good candidates to be the parent(s) of Wanda Gruberska. Was there any evidence that any of them had emigrated?Yep! A little digging on Ancestry turned up a passenger manifest from 1910, which showed both Jan and Roman Gruberski coming to the U.S. in 1910 (Figure 6).

Figure 6: First page of the passenger manifest for Jan and Roman Gruberski, arriving 4 May 1910.⁸ new-york-passenger-lists-1820-1957-jan-gruberski

On closer inspection, we see that Jan and Roman Gruberski are reported to be 31 and 34, respectively, suggesting birth years of 1879 and 1876, which is reasonably consistent with what we’d expect for our Gruberski brothers. Younger brother Jan is noted to be a laborer, while Roman was recorded as a blacksmith, consistent with the tradition of blacksmithing in the Gruberski family. Jan is reported to be from “Blędowo,” while Roman is from “Bronisławow,” which correspond to the locations of Błędów and Bronisławy, where the family is know to have lived. Jan’s nearest relative in the old country is his wife, Marya Gruberska, and Roman’s is his wife, Julia Gruberska — names that fit exactly with what is known about our Gruberski brothers. They were headed to Buffalo, New York, which is where my great-grandfather Jan Zazycki first settled when he immigrated in 1895. The manifest contains a second page which I won’t discuss in detail, since we already have more than enough information to verify that these are our Gruberski brothers and since it doesn’t add anything significant or contradict anything already supposed.

So far, so good. Two of our potential candidates for Wanda’s Gruberska’s father have made it to Buffalo. But how do we get from Buffalo to an orphanage in Michigan or Minnesota, and which one is the father? Further digging produces a second passenger manifest, this one from 1913, which shows the third brother, Bolesław Gruberski, accompanying his sister-in-law, Marianna Gruberska, to the United States, along with her two children, Stanisław and Genowefa (Figure 7).

Figure 7: First page of the passenger manifest for the Gruberski family, arriving 22 April 1913.⁹ new-york-passenger-lists-1820-1957-boleslaw-leopold-gruberski

Again, the ages match with what we would expect for our three known Gruberski family members, and there is a new addition to the family: little Genowefa Gruberska, age 2 years 6 months, who is the daughter of Marianna Gruberska. Genowefa’s age indicates a birth date of October 1910. All of them are reported to be from “Jeziorka,” which suggests the village of Jeziorko, about halfway in between Błędów and Bronisławy. Marianna reported her nearest relative in the old country to be her mother, Florentyna Gonsewska. The surname Gonsewska is new, perhaps indicating a second marriage, but her mother’s given name was definitely Florentyna. Marianna’s brother-in-law, Bolesław Gruberski, reports his nearest relative as his wife, Helena Gruberska. The final column gives us a critical bit of information: they were headed to St. Paul, Minnesota!

The second page of the manifest confirms that their relative in St. Paul is, in fact, Marianna’s husband, Jan Gruberski, who is also reported as the father of Stanisław and Genowefa and the brother of Bolesław (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Detail of second page of passenger manifest for Gruberski family, arriving 22 April 1913.⁹ detail-of-manifest

The pieces are starting to fall into place, and we’re getting closer now to the orphanage in “Michigan or Minnesota” where Wanda Gruberska was adopted. The 1915 St. Paul City Directory confirms that our John Gruberski is still living there, two years after the arrival of his wife and children, and that he’s still working as a blacksmith (Figure 9).

Figure 9: Detail of R.L. Polk and Co.’s St. Paul City Directory 1915, showing John Gruberski.¹⁰ john-gruberski-1915-city-directory-marked

Since John’s wife Marianna arrived in April of 1913, it’s entirely possible that another daughter, Wanda, could have been born to them by January of 1914, which is reasonably consistent with Wanda’s approximate birth year of 1913. Minnesota did not conduct a state census in 1915, so the next opportunity for catching a glimpse of the whole family in documents would be the 1920 U.S. Census. However, the only member of the family who is readily found in the 1920 census is the young son, Stanisław — living in an orphanage (Figure 10).

Figure 10: Detail of the 1920 census for St. Paul (Ward 11), Minnesota, showing Stanislaus Gruberski.¹¹ 1920-united-states-federal-census-stanislaw-alfons-gruberski

Interestingly, Stanisław is the only Gruberski child found in the census listings for that orphanage. His sister Genowefa is not there, nor is there any sign of a sister Wanda. Moreover, I have not yet been able to locate the parents, Jan and Marianna, in the 1920 census. So what happened?

The Minnesota Deaths and Burials database gives us a clue (Figure 11), although the year of birth is significantly off from what we’ve seen in other records.

Figure 11: Entry for Mary Gruberski in the Minnesota Deaths and Burials database.¹² mary-gruberski-death

Marianna’s year of birth suggested by records from Poland (her marriage record and Stanisław’s birth record) was 1890-1891. However, it was 1886 based on her passenger manifest, and the fact that her husband was the only Gruberski noted in the 1915 St. Paul City Directory suggests that Gruberski wasn’t a popular surname in the city at that time. Morever, the death date of 1918 is consistent with her son being placed in an orphanage by 1920. Without a family support system to help care for his children after his wife’s death, John Gruberski may have felt that he had few options.

Epilogue

Of course, this still leaves many unanswered questions, which can hopefully be resolved with more data. Although the evidence points to Wanda Gruberska being the daughter of Jan and Marianna (née Pindor) Gruberski, it should be possible to confirm that by locating a birth/baptismal record for Wanda. It would also be nice to obtain death and burial records for her mother and possibly her sister, Genowefa. St. Adalbert’s parish was an ethnic Polish parish located just one mile from the Milford Street address noted for John Gruberski in the 1915 city directory, so that would be a reasonable place to search for such records. And what became of the father, John Gruberski? He and his brother Roman seem to disappear from indexed records. However, the paper trail for his brother Bolesław suggests that he adopted the name William in the U.S. (a common choice for men named Bolesław), was still married to Helena (“Ellen”) when he registered for the draft in 1917, was a widower by 1940, and died in Chicago in 1943. Helen is not mentioned in any indexed records in the U.S. discovered to date, apart from her husband’s World War I draft registration. So her stay in the U.S. may have been brief, especially considering that all her children married in Poland.

The story had a happy ending for young Wanda, who became Katherine Burke. Cousin Jon’s family reports that she married, raised her family, loved to cook, and was beloved by her children and grandchildren until her death in 1991. But what of her brother, Stanisław Gruberski, last seen as an 11-year-old boy in the orphanage in 1920? He, too, disappears from the records, but like his sister Wanda, his name might have been changed upon adoption. We may never know if there are any cousins stemming from his line — unless, of course, they wonder about their origins and turn to DNA testing for answers.

Sources:

¹Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księga ślubów 1868-1886, 1874, #15, marriage record for Józef Gruberski and Maryanna Zarzycka. “#15, Bronisławy. It happened in the village of Rybno on the thirteenth/twenty-fifth day of October in the year one thousand eight hundred seventy-four at four o’clock in the afternoon. We declare that, in the presence of witnesses Maciej Bartoszewski, age thirty-eight, and Wawrzyniec Pytkowski, age forty, both farmers residing in the village of Bronisławy, that on this day was contracted a religious marital union between Józef Gruberski, widower after the death on the tenth/twenty-second day of October in the year one thousand eight hundred seventy in the village of Błędów of his wife, Anna née Trojanowska; blacksmith residing in the village of Błędów, born in the village of Ożarów, age forty, son of the late Mateusz and Nepomucena née Banowska, the spouses Gruberski; and Maryanna Zarzycka, single, born in the village of Bronisławy, age twenty-four, daughter of Ignacy and Antonina née Naciążek, the spouses Zarzycki, farmers residing in the village of Bronisławy; in that same village of Bronisławy residing with her parents. The marriage was preceded by three announcements on the twenty-second day of September/fourth day of October, the twenty-ninth day of September/eleventh day of October, and the sixth/eighteenth day of October of the current year in Rybno and in the parish church in Łowicz. The newlyweds stated that they had no prenuptial agreement between them. The marriage ceremony was performed by Fr. Józef Bijakowski (?). This Act to the declarant and witnesses was read aloud but signed only by us because they are unable to write. [Signed] Fr. Józef Bijakowski, pastor of Rybno performing the duties of Civil Registrar.”

²Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Rybnie, Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki.genealodzy.pl: Projekt indeksacjia metryk parafialnych (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl/), 1890, Marriages, #1, accessed on 26 January 2017. “#1. This happened in the village of Rybno on the seventh/nineteenth day of January in the year one thousand eight hundred ninety at three o’clock in the afternoon. We declare that, in the presence of witnesses Mateusz Kania, farmer residing in the village of Bronislawy, age thirty-seven (?), and Aleksander Lesiak, organist residing in the village of Rybno, age thirty-two; on this day was contracted a religious marriage between Antoni Gruberski, blacksmith, soldier on leave, single, born in the village of Bledów, in the district of Lowicz, son of Józef and the late Anna née Trojanowska, the spouses Gruberski, residing in the village of Bronislawy, having twenty-six years of age; and Aniela Zarzycka, single, residing and born in the village of Bronislawy, living with her parents, daughter of Ignacy and Antonina née Naciazek, the spouses Zarzycki, having twenty-four years of age. The marriage was preceded by three readings of the banns in the local parish church on the twenty-fourth and thirty-first days of December in the year one thousand eight hundred eighty nine [corresponding to the fifth and twelvth days of January and the] seventh/nineteenth days of January of the current year, after which no impediments were found. The newlyweds stated that they had no premarital agreement between them. The religious ceremony of marriage was performed by Fr. Grigori Gruzinski (?), local administrator of the parish of Rybno. This document was read aloud to the declarants and witnesses and was signed by Us and by the second witness due to the illiteracy of the other witnesses. [Signed] Fr. Grigori Gruzinski, Administrator of the parish and keeper of vital records [signed] Aleksander Lesiak”

³Książka Rzemieślnicza Czeladnika Kunsztu Kowalskiego Jana Zarzyckiego, Worker’s identification book for Jan Zarzycki, 29 August 1886, privately held by John D. Zazycki, Milford, Ohio, 2000.

⁴Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Ilowie, Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki.genealodzy.pl: Projekt indeksacji metryk parafialnych (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl/), 1906, Marriages, #15, record for Roman Gruberski and Julianna Przanowska, accessed on 26 January 2017.

⁵Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Szymanowie, Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki.genealodzy.pl: Projekt indeksacji metryk parafialnych (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl/), 1907, marriages, #25, record for Jan Gruberski and Maryanna Pindor, accessed on 26 January 2017.

⁶Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Ilowie, Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki.genealodzy.pl: Projekt indeksacji metryk parafialnych (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl/), 1908, births, #52, record for Stanislaw Alfons Gruberski, accessed on 26 January 2017.

⁷Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Rybnie, Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki.genealodzy.pl: Projekt indeksacjia metryk parafialnych (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl/), Ksiega slubów 1888-1908, 1902, #6, marriage record for Boleslaw Leopold Gruberski and Helena Zarzycka, accessed on 26 January 2017.

⁸New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 (image), Jan Gruberski and Roman Gruberski, S.S. Bremen, 4 May 1910, http://ancestry.com, subscription database, accessed January 2017.

⁹New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 (image), Marianna, Stanisław, Genowefa, and Bolesław Gruberski, S.S. President Lincoln, 22 April 1913, http://ancestry.com, subscription database, accessed January 2017.

¹⁰U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 (images), John Gruberski, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1915, http://ancestry.com, subscription database, accessed January 2017.

¹¹1920 U.S. Census (population schedule), St. Paul, Ramsey, Minnesota, ED 140, sheet 4A, Stanislaus Gruberski, St. Joseph’s German Catholic Orphan Society (institution), http://familysearch.org, accessed January 2017.

¹² Minnesota Deaths and Burials, 1835-1990, index-only database, https://familysearch.org, record for Mary Gruberski, 14 Dec 1918; citing St. Paul, Ramsey, Minnesota, reference 1407; FHL microfilm 2,218,025, accessed on 27 January 2017.

Godparents: Ideal Candidates for Analysis Via the FAN Principle

Published on January 5, 2017January 30, 2023 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:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published on December 31, 2016February 7, 2019 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!

On Antibiotics And the Brief Life of Wiktoria Zarzycka

Published on June 8, 2016February 28, 2019 by Julie Roberts SzczepankiewiczLeave a comment

Yesterday I had to see my doctor for a possible Lyme disease rash. He agreed that it looks suspicious and prescribed a course of prophylactic antibiotics. And oddly enough, that got me thinking about genealogy. Lyme disease is one of many diseases known to modern-day physicians that is readily treated with antibiotics, and has an excellent prognosis if it’s caught early. But life was very different for our ancestors, and I often remind myself of this fact when I start romanticizing those by-gone, simpler times.

As I’m sure is true for many of us, I find some ancestors’ stories to be more compelling than others. For me, one such compelling ancestor is Wiktoria Zarzecka, one of my great-great-great-great-grandmothers. I first encountered Wiktoria in this 1826 marriage record for her son, Józef Zarzycki, and his bride, Joanna Krzemińska¹:

Jozef Zarzycki and Joanna Krzyminska marriage 1826

The record describes the groom, Józef Zarzycki, as a “bachelor, of Szwarocin residing, master of the shoemaking profession, born in the village of Szwarocin of Adam and Wiktoria née Stolarska, the married couple Zarzycki; having twenty-two years of age.”¹Interestingly, this record is the only time we see Wiktoria’s maiden name recorded as Stolarska. In her own marriage record to Adam Zarzecki in 1802, shown below,² the priest calls her only, “Victoria, from the voivodeship of Sieradz, the names of whose parents I do not know” and tells us that she was age 23 at the time of her wedding, suggesting a birth year of about 1779. Bransk

The Sieradz Voivodeship (Palatinatus Siradiensis), where Wiktoria was said to have been born, existed at that time as an administrative division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and encompassed 6 counties and close to 200 Roman Catholic parishes. Without knowing her parents’ names and an exact place of birth, further research on this line will be difficult at best. Wiktoria was born into tumultuous times for Poland. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had already been diminished in size after the first partition of Poland in 1772, and Poland would be partitioned twice more, in 1793 and 1795, until it no longer existed by the time of Wiktoria’s marriage in 1802. Both her birthplace, and her new hometown in the parish of Rybno, had become part of the Prussian Empire when she married Adam Zarzecki, gave birth to their only son, and died on 19 May 1807. This political situation was as brief as Wiktoria’s life, however: just two months after her death, the Duchy of Warsaw was created by the Franco-Prussian treaty signed at Tilsit on 9 July 1807, creating a semi-autonomous Polish state that was in personal union with the Kingdom of Saxony.

One wonders why the priest might have recorded Wiktoria’s surname as Stolarska on her son’s marriage record in 1826, when it was unknown in 1802. Perhaps her name truly was Stolarska, but the priest in 1802 was careless in his premarital examination, forgot to ask this information or failed to remember it, and then recorded later that he simply did not know her parents’ names? How could she not have known her at least her father’s surname, if not her parents’ given names? Was she born to an unwed mother, and perhaps she was orphaned at a young age? How did a young, unmarried woman come to travel a distance of perhaps 90 miles from her home and settle in a distant village? Did she travel with other family members, perhaps? Unfortunately, the records of Rybno remain silent in regard to most of these questions. The surname Stolarski does not appear in the parish records at all during this time period,³which suggests that no other family members accompanied Wiktoria to Rybno.The name “Stolarski” itself, like all Polish surnames with the root “Stolar-,” derives from the word, “stolarz,” meaning “joiner, carpenter,”⁴ so it’s also possible that the priest in 1826 created this surname for Wiktoria when he recorded her son’s marriage, perhaps based on someone’s recollection that her father was a carpenter. As one might expect with such an etymology, the surname is not uncommon in Poland today, and is widely distributed geographically. However, it does display a moderately increased prevalence in present-day Piotrków Trybunalski County, which was contained within the Sieradz Voivodeship. It’s tempting to speculate that perhaps this surname really was used by Wiktoria’s family from that area, whose descendants still live there today.

Wiktoria’s life was sadly brief. Following her marriage in 1802, she became the mother of her only child, Józef Zarzycki, who was born some time between August 1803 and March 1804 in Szwarocin.⁵One might expect to see births to a married couple every two years, on average, but this was not the case for Wiktoria and Adam Zarzycki. Unfortunately, fewer births mean fewer records which might mention Wiktoria and provide us with glimpses into her life. In 1807, she died at the age of 28.⁶This close-up of her death record tells us that she died of “petocie,” which is mentioned here as an old Polish form of the Latin word, “Petechiae.” Victoria Zarzycka death crop.png

Petechiae are small, red or purple spots on the skin, caused by minor bleeding from a broken capillary, and can have a variety of causes ranging from infectious diseases, to trauma, to leukemia, and a variety of autoimmune or otherwise non-infectious causes. However, an infectious, contagious disease is suggested here, since at least eight other deaths on this page were attributed to the same cause (two are shown here). Two serious illnesses that cause a rash and were common during this time are scarlet fever and typhus. Both of these illnesses are presently treated with antibiotics, and these diseases are no longer life-threatening with timely intervention.

As a 21st-century American, I’m very grateful for the easy access to antibiotics which I enjoy, and which is one reason why rashes and fevers no longer terrify us as they did our ancestors. We’ll never know what Wiktoria’s life might have included had she lived longer. Probably she would have lived quietly, just another illiterate peasant woman, raising her family, tending to her home and garden, and supporting her husband’s shoemaking business in whatever ways she was capable. She probably never imagined that one day her descendents would live all over the world. Although her story is short, it’s one that captivates me. Rest in peace, Wiktoria.

Sources:

¹Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga ślubów 1826-1828,” 1826, #11, marriage record for Józef Zarzycki and Joanna Krzymińska.

²Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga ślubów 1790-1802,” 1802, #9, marriage record for Adam Zarzecki and Victoria, parents’ names unknown.

³Justyna Krogulska, Warsaw, Poland to Julie Szczepankiewicz, Zarzycki research notes; privately held by Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA.

⁴Hoffman, William F. Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings. 3rd ed. Vol. 2. (Chicago: Polish Genealogical Society of America, 2012), 729.

⁵Justyna Krogulska, Warsaw, Poland to Julie Szczepankiewicz, Zarzycki research notes; privately held by Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA. .”I didn’t find the birth certificate of Józef Zarzycki! There is a gap in the documents in the Aug 1803 – Mar 1804. It follows that Joseph was born at the turn of the year 1803-1804. In the years 1802-1807 were not born other children of Adam Zarzecki and Wiktoria.”

⁶Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga zgonów, 1802-1807,”1807, #39, death record for Victoria Zarzecka.