Category: Buffalo, New York

A Case of Mistaken Identity

Published on by Julie Roberts SzczepankiewiczLeave a comment

Have you ever known something about your family for a fact, yet discovered through research that it’s just not true after all?  I’ve had this experience very recently, and it came about as a result of this blog post.  Recently, my mother-in-law’s cousin shared with me this photograph (Figure 1).

Figure 1:  Konczal Fabiszewski family circa 1906 lower resolution 001He wondered if I might have any insight into who the people were.  I was excited to see the photo, and believed I could tell him exactly who these people were because Grandma Barth showed me this same photo before she died, and filled me in. I thought this photo would be a nice subject for a blog post, so I started to gather a bit of background documentation to provide some insight into the lives of the people shown here.  In the process,  I’ve discovered that things aren’t really what they seemed, and maybe — just maybe — Grandma might have been wrong about a thing or two.

I admit that I haven’t done much research with Grandma’s family.  She had accumulated so much information on her own, including where her family had come from in Poland, and preliminary research showed her information to be pretty accurate.  So it was easy to accept all her information as fact, and put this on the back burner while working on lines that seemed more challenging.  By way of background, Grandma Barth’s parents were Albert Drajem and Mary Kantowska, both born in Buffalo, New York, to Polish immigrants.  Mary Drajem, Grandma’s mother, was the fourth of seven children born to John Kantowski and Mary (née Kończal) Kantowska, who came to Buffalo from Łabiszyn, a small town in what is now Żnin County in the  Kujawsko-Pomorskie province of Poland, but what was at that time part of the Prussian Empire.  According to Grandma Barth, her maternal grandmother, Mary Kantowska, had several siblings who also eventually settled in Buffalo:  a brother, John Kończal, and sisters Katherine and Josephine.  Grandma also reported that Katherine married Constantine Fabiszewski and had seven sons, while Josephine married Teofil Mroziński, and had four children.  It is the Fabiszewski family —  Constantine, Katherine, their children, and an old woman, whom we’ll discuss more closely in a moment — who are shown in this photograph.

The Fabiszewski Family of Buffalo, New York

Figure 2 shows the Fabiszewski family in the 1910 U.S. Federal Census:

Figure 2:  Extract of 1910 U.S. Federal Census for Buffalo, New York, showing the Constantine Fabiszewski family:

Fabiszewski family 1910 census

Based on their heights in this photograph, it seems logical to infer that the oldest son, Peter, is standing in the back row, behind his father, with his brother Casimir to the left in the photo, and Leon to the left again, behind the old woman.  The fourth-oldest son, Frank, appears to the be boy holding the candle and prayer book, both of which suggest that this portrait was taken on the occasion of his First Communion.  The very youngest son, Stanislaus, is standing between his parents, with Joseph and Anthony to the left in the photo of the old woman.  So who is the old woman?

The Mysterious Anna (née Woźniak) Kończal

Grandma Barth told me that this woman was her own great-grandmother, that her name was Anna (née Woźniak) Kończal, and that she was the mother of Katherine Fabiszewski, John Kończal, Josephine (née Kończal) Mroziński, and Mary (née Kończal) Kantowska (Grandma’s grandma).  Grandma remembered her vividly, even though Grandma was only six years old when Anna died in 1922.  She’s buried in St. Stanislaus Cemetery, whose records indicate that she was 60 when she died,1 conflicting with Grandma’s assertion that her great-grandmother died at the age of 70.  In 1920, per both Grandma and the 1920 U.S. Federal Census, Anna was living with the family of her daughter Mary Kantowski, in the same house as Grandma Barth’s family (Figure 3):

Figure 3:  Extract of 192o U.S. Federal Census for Buffalo, New York, showing the Kantowski and Drajem families at 221 Clark Street.  Anna Konczal is noted as mother-in-law to head of household, John Kantowski. 1920 Census Kantowski family

Grandma Barth appears in this census as “Jennie,” age 3 years 8 months.  The census indicates that Anna is a 70-year-old widow (Grandma wins on the age question!) and a resident alien who immigrated in 1891.  This immigration year is in contrast to her daughter Mary, who immigrated in 1886 with her husband John.

That 1891 immigration year gave me a good lead in finding her passenger manifest,2 which shows Anna and daughter Josepha Konszal (sic) arriving at the Port of New York on 19 November 1892 (Figure 4).

Figure 4:  Passenger manifest2 for Anna and Josepha Konszal (sic), 19 November 1892:Konszal passenger manifest 1892

 

Anna is 40 here and Josepha is 16, which is consistent with their dates of birth from other sources.  They’re from “Clotildowo, Germany,” which fits nicely with the village of Klotyldowo, a village which belonged to the Catholic parish, in Łabiszyn.  They’re headed to Buffalo, New York, which makes sense.  So we know that Anna came over with the then-single Józefa, but was living with her daughter Mary in 1920.  Where was Anna during those intervening years?

Well, ten years earlier, in the 1910 U.S. Federal Census, Anna Kończal  seems to be found living with her daughter, Józefa Mrozińska, and family (Figure 5):

Figure 5:  Extract from the 1910 U.S. Federal Census for Buffalo, New York, showing the Mroziński family.Teofil Mrozinski family 1910 census

Although we suspect immediately that this is really “our” Anna Kończal and not Teofil’s mother, there are a couple of problems.  Anna’s name is misrendered as “Kończak” instead of “Kończal,” and she is erroneously reported to be Teofil’s mother, and not his mother-in-law.  However, “Kończak” seems pretty close to “Kończal,” and her age and year of immigration match up nicely with the information for “our” Anna that was reported on the 1920 census.  Unfortunately, it can be argued that these latter facts might also be true for Teofil’s mother, so they don’t constitute irrefutable evidence that this Anna is his mother-in-law and not his mother.  Perhaps his mother remarried a man named Kończak after Teofil’s father died, so she was no longer “Mrs. Mrozińska” at the time of the census.  Fair enough.  So how do we resolve this problem?

Next stop, Pennsylvania

Well, Teofil and Josephine’s marriage record should tell us their parents’ names.  Where do well look for that record?  If you’ll notice, the final column on the right in Figure 4 indicates that the oldest two Mroziński children, Stanislaus and Casimir, were born in Pennsylvania, while the younger two were born in New York. Similarly, if you go back to Figure 1, you see that the oldest two Fabiszewski boys, Peter and Casimir, were also born in Pennsylvania.  These data suggest that both the Mrozińskis and the Fabiszewskis might have married in Pennsylvania, prior to the births of their children there.  Sure enough, I found records of marriage for both couples in Shamokin, PA.

The  Mrozińskis’ marriage record  (Figure 6) gave valuable information, but no surprises.

Figure 6:  Marriage certificate for Teofil Mroziński and Józefa Kończal, 1894.Teofil Mrozinski and Jozefa Konczal marriage 1894 crop

Both the bride and groom are from Prussia, consistent with the “German Polish” notation found on census records.  Teofil was living in Shamokin and working as a miner.  His parents were Andreas Mroziński and Rozalia Mrozińska (no maiden name provided).  Josephine was also living in Shamokin, working as a domestic, and her parents’ names are given as Franciszek and Annie Konczal [sic].  Taken together, these facts offer conclusive evidence that the “Anna Kończak” living with the Mroziński family in Buffalo in 1910 really is Teofil’s mother-in-law, and not his mother.

Will the Real Katherine Fabiszewski Please Stand Up?

However, the real surprise came with the marriage record for Josephine’s sister, Katherine, to Constantine (Konstanty, in Polish) Fabiszewski (Figure 7):

Figure 7:  Marriage certificate for Konstanty Fabiszewski and Katarzyna Kubiak, 1894.

Konstanty Fabiszewski and Katherine Konczal 1894 crop marked

Katherine’s name is given as Katarzyna Kubiak, not Kończal, and she’s the daughter of John and Agnieszka Kubiak!  What?  How can that be?  Grandma said that Katherine was sister to John, Mary and Josephine Kończal, and she’s been right about everything else so far!  How could Katherine be a Kubiak?  Could there be two Konstanty Fabiszewskis in Shamokin, both about the same age, both married to women named Katherine?  Well, stranger things have happened, but then where is the marriage record for Katherine Kończal? And didn’t Grandma say that her great-grandmother’s name was Anna (née Woźniak) Kończal, not Anna (née Kubiak) Kończal?

At this point, I don’t have enough data to resolve this problem.  More work needs to be done. Grandma Barth has proven to be a very reliable source in the past, but this could very well be an instance in which she’s wrong.  I looked back to see where Grandma might have gotten the idea that the surname Woźniak was associated with this family, and found it in Mary Kantowska’s birth certificate, an official copy of which Grandma had carefully preserved (Figure 8):

Figure 8:  Official transcript from 1906 of Mary Kantowska’s 1891 baptismal record from St. Stanislaus Church, Buffalo, New York

Maria Kantowski 1891.jpg

This indicates that Mary Kantowska’s parents were, in fact, John Kantowski and Maria Kończal, and that her godparents were John Kończal and Anna Woźniak. John Kończal is likely to be Mary (née Kończal) Kantowska’s brother, whom Grandma mentioned among the known Kończal siblings. So Woźniaks might indeed be connected to the Kończal-Kantowski family, but this does not explain why Katherine, who was purportedly”née Kończal” Fabiszewska, is actually Katherine, née Kubiak, Fabiszewska.

The Poznań Project Weighs In

Some interesting insight is gained by search results from the Poznań Project. A search for Franciszek Kończal and Anna, no surname specified — which are the names reported for Josephine’s parents on that marriage record — reveals the following (Figure 9):

Figure 9:  Extract of results from Extended Search in the Poznań Project for marriages between grooms with name Franciscus/Franz/Franciszek Konczal and brides named Anna.Franciscus Konczal and Anna Kubiak Poznan Project hit

Here we see Kubiak again, and in Łabiszyn, the home parish of Grandma’s Kończals.  Anna Kubiak’s age in this record suggests a birth year of 1844 –older than what we would expect based on U.S. records, which point to a birth year of 1850-1852, but within the ballpark.  Moreover, a search for Jan Kubiak and Agnieszka, no surname — the names reported for Katherine Fabiszewski’s parents — produces this hit (Figure 10):

Figure 10:  Extract of results from Extended Search in the Poznań Project for marriages between grooms with name Joannes/Jan/Johann Kubiak and brides named Agnes/Agnieszka.

Jan Kubiak and Agnes Konczal

Curiouser and curiouser!  Same parish, and it would seem that Katherine Fabiszewski’s mother was a Kończal.  Taken together, this might suggest a case of siblings marrying siblings — perhaps Joannes Kubiak and Anna Kubiak were siblings, and they married siblings Agnes Kończal and Franciscus Kończal.  The records from Łabiszyn and Buffalo will tell us for sure.

The Mysterious Anna (née Woźniak) (née Kubiak) Kończal

So where does this leave us?  Who IS the woman in the photo, after all?  Is she Grandma Barth’s great-grandmother, Anna (née Kubiak) Kończal?  If so, why is she in a portrait with the family of her probable niece, and not her daughter?  Was Grandma mistaken, and this photo shows Katherine Fabiszewski and her family with her own mother, Agnes (née Kończal) Kubiak?  It appears that Grandma was misinformed about Katherine Fabiszewski being a sister to her own mother, Mary — present data suggest that they were cousins, or perhaps double cousins, but not siblings.  Yet one wonders if it’s even possible that Grandma would misidentify her own great-grandmother in a family photo.  Like Grandma Barth, I was six when one of my great-grandmothers died, and I can easily pick her out in old family photos.  The very fact that this photograph was handed down in Grandma’s family, and not just in the Fabiszewski family, suggests that it was significant to both families, possibly due to the image of a shared great-grandmother.  Moreover, when Anna Kończal died in 1922, her daughter Mary Kantowska was 54, and her granddaughter Mary Drajem (Grandma Barth’s mother) was 31.  Surely they were the ones to pass this photo down to Grandma Barth, and they would have been able to correctly identify their own mother and grandmother.

There are two final bits of information that we can wring out of that 1910 census listing for Anna Kończal in Figure 4.  The “M1” in the column after age tells us that Anna Kończal was married once, and that she’s been married for twenty years.  The next two numbers tell us that she was the mother of six children, three of whom were still living at the time of the census. Starting with those numbers about Anna’s children, the fact that is says three children still living at the time of the census is significant — not four, Katherine, John, Mary and Josephine — as Grandma Barth recollected.  This would make sense if Grandma was wrong about Katherine Fabiszewska being one of the Kończal siblings.   The next bit, about the “M1/20” only adds to the confusion, however.  Josephine Mrozińska is reported to be 36 years old at the time of this 1910 census — making her 16 at the time of her mother’s wedding, if her mother’s only been married 20 years.  So the census-taker appears to have erred with at least some part of that story.  Either this is a second marriage for Anna, or she’s only been married once, but Josephine was born 16 years out of wedlock.

It’s hard to think of a single hypothetical scenario that would resolve all these conflicts in the data. I considered the fact that perhaps Anna Woźniak was married twice — first to a man named Kubiak, with whom she had Katherine, and then to Franciszek Kończal, with whom she had Josephine, John and Mary.  But if that were the case,then the mother’s name reported on Katherine Fabiszewska’s marriage record should be Anna, and not Agnieszka, and we would expect to see two marriage records for Anna in the Poznań Project.  It’s possible that mistakes were made in recording the census, and also possible (though it seems less likely) that a mistake was made in the marriage record.  Further research should be able to resolve these conflicts and reveal the full story.  In the meantime, we’re left with something of a mystery, and questions today where I thought I had answers yesterday.

Sources:

Note:  Where possible, links are provided to sources online.  Other sources are summarized below.  

1St. Stanislaus Roman Catholic Cemetery (Buffalo, Erie, New York, USA) to Julie Szczepankiewicz, Phone Call, Inquired about a burial for Anna Konczal.  Was informed that she died on April 23, 1922 at age 60 and was buried April 26, 1922  in Sec. K, Lot 79, Grave 7.  Her funeral was at Corpus Christi Church and Urban Funeral Home.

2Anna Konszal, 19 Nov 1892; citing departure port Rotterdam, arrival port New York, ship name Werkendam, NARA microfilm publication T715 and M237 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), accessed on 30 August 2016.

© Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz 2016

Walter Wed Where? Wow! A Genealogical Breakthrough

Published on by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz7 Comments

The sweetest victories are the ones that took the longest time in coming.  A couple days ago, I happened upon some documents that fundamentally changed my understanding of my Grzesiak family history, documents I’ve been seeking for many years.  So there is some major happy dancing going on in the Szczepankiewicz house today, albeit limited to just one of its residents.

The Grzesiaks of Kowalewo-Opactwo and Buffalo, New York

In a previous post, I wrote a little about the family of my great-grandmother, Veronica (née Grzesiak) Zazycki.  Veronica immigrated from the little village of Kowalewo-Opactwo in Słupca County to Buffalo, New York, where she was eventually joined by three of her siblings:  Władysław (“Walter”), Tadeusz/Thaddeus, and Józefa/Josephine.  Regarding Veronica’s oldest brother, Grandma told me that Walter had married an actress in Poland, whose name Grandma remembered as “Wanda,” but she didn’t want to leave her career, so he left her and came to the U.S. without her. There were no children from this marriage.

When I began to look for documentation for these family stories, I realized the situation wasn’t exactly as Grandma had portrayed it.  The 1900 census (Figure 1) shows the Grzesiak family all living on Mills Street in Buffalo, consisting of patriarch Joseph, sons Władysław and Thaddeus, daughter Jozefa, and daughter-in-law Casimira — Walter’s wife of two years.  Clearly, Walter’s wife DID come to Buffalo, rather than staying in Poland while he left without her – but her name was Casimira, not Wanda. The census goes on to state that at that time, she was the mother of 0 children, 0 now living, consistent with family reports.

Figure 1:  Extract from the 1900 U.S. Federal Census, showing the Grzesiak family.1900 United States Federal Census - Kazimira Grzesiak

In the 1905 New York State Census (Figure 2), Walter and Casimira were still living in Buffalo, so the marriage lasted at least 7 years.  Subsequent records (e.g. the 1940 Census) do indeed show Walter as divorced or a widower.

Figure 2:  Extract from 1905 New York State Census showing Walter and Casimira Grzesiak.1905 NY State Census for Walter Grzesiak

Walter’s death certificate1 reports his ex-wife’s name as “Katarzyna Dutkiewicz (Figure 3), and the informant was his brother, Thaddeus.

Figure 3:  Extract from Walter Grzesiak’s death certifcate.Katarzyna Dutkiewicz

Clearly, Thaddeus made a mistake with the first name, reporting it as Katarzyna (Katherine) instead of Kazimiera/Casimira.   So how much faith should we put in his version of her maiden name, Dutkiewicz?  Death records are often viewed with some circumspection, since someone other than the deceased is providing the information, and that person might be grieving or in shock.  However, it was all there was to go on, and it seemed like it should have been a good start:  Name, Kazimiera Dutkiewicz (or similar), born about 1880 (based on those census records), married to Władysław Grzesiak in Poland circa 1898.

The Hunt Is On!

Since Walter Grzesiak was born in Kowalewo-Opactwo, it seemed logical that he would have married somewhere in that vicinity, although not necessarily in that parish.  Things get a little tricky with the records for Kowalewo-Opactwo in that time period.  Records are not online, or on microfilm from the LDS, so one must write to the Konin Branch of the State Archive in Poznań to request a search.  Moreover, although Walter was baptized in Kowalewo, that parish was temporarily closed from 1891-1910.  Parish operations were transferred to the church in nearby Ląd, but after 1911, the parishes and their records were separated again.   Unfortunately, the archive reported that there was no marriage record in Ląd for Władysław Grzesiak, or for any of his siblings, during this period.

Initially, this finding didn’t concern me too much.  It’s traditional for a couple to marry in the bride’s parish, so this suggested merely that Kazimiera was from some other parish in the area.  So how does one find a marriage in the Poznań region, when one has no idea what parish the couple married in?  The Poznań Marriage Project, of course.   For those who might be unfamiliar with this resource, the Poznań Project is an indexing effort conceived by Łukasz Bielecki, which is intended to include all existing marriage records for the historic Poznań region from 1800-1899.  Currently, the project is estimated to be at least 75% complete, so there was a good chance I’d be able to find Walter and Casimira’s marriage in there. Frustratingly, there were no good matches, so I assumed that their marriage record must be among the 25% of existing records that remain unindexed.  At this point, finding it would be like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.  I put this on the back burner and went back to more productive research on other family lines.

Until two days ago.

My Breakthrough

It seemed like a perfectly ordinary Wednesday afternoon.  I paid bills, ran some errands, took the cat to the vet, and sat down to check e-mail.   But if you’re like me, some small part of your brain is always thinking about genealogy, and suddenly it dawned on me:  the family story was that Casimira was an actress.  How could she have been an actress in a small village with a couple dozen farms?  She must have been from a big city — Warsaw!

Immediately, I went to Geneteka, my favorite database for indexed vital records from all over Poland.  Normally, I advise people to use documentation from U.S. sources to determine where their ancestors came from before they start randomly searching records in Geneteka, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and I had a pretty specific idea of what I was looking for.  But would the record be there?  Geneteka is not complete — it’s a brilliant, ambitious idea, and new indexes for different parishes and different time periods are constantly being added, but it still represents only a fraction of the vital records available in the tens of thousands of parishes and civil registries across Poland.  In this case, my hunch paid off, and Geneteka came through for me. I was stunned, absolutely stunned, when I saw what had to be their marriage record (Figure 4):

Figure 4:  Geneteka search results for Grzesiak marriages in Warszawa between 1897 and 1899.

Geneteka

I hit “skan” to get a copy of the record itself (isn’t Geneteka great?!) and here it is, in all its glory:Wladyslaw Grzesiak and Kazimiera Olczyk 1898 crop

The record is in Russian, because Warsaw was in the Russian Empire in 1898 when the event took place, so here’s my translation:

“223. Koło. It happened in Wola parish on the eighteenth/thirtieth day of August in the year one thousand eight hundred ninety-eight at five o’clock in the afternoon. We declare that, in the presence of witnesses Adam Franczak and Wincenty Płocikiewicz, both ecclesiastical servants of Wola, on this day was contracted a religious marriage between Władysław Grzesiak, age thirty-seven, miller of Koło residing, born in Ląd, Słupca district, son of Józef Grzesiak, owner, and his wife Maryanna née Krawczyńska, in the village of Borowo residing, and Kazimiera Marianna Olczak, age eighteen, single, with her mother residing, born in Warsaw, daughter of an unknown father and mother Paulina Olczak, seamstress, in Koło residing.  The marriage was preceded by three readings of the banns on the 2nd/14th, 9th/21st, and 16th/28th days of August of the present year.  The newlyweds stated that they had no prenuptial agreement between them.  Permission was given orally by those present at the ceremony.  The religious ceremony of marriage was performed by the Reverend Jan Kowalski.  This document, after being read aloud, was signed by us and by the groom because the witnesses state that they do not know how to write.”2

Let’s break this down a bit.  First, the double dates are often confusing to those who aren’t familiar with the format of Polish civil records, but they’re a result of the fact that Poland and Western Europe adopted the Gregorian calendar  while Russia and the Eastern Europe continued to use the old Julian calendar.  In order to have these records be clear to everyone, both dates were included on legal documents like this.  The second, later date is the date according to the Gregorian calendar, which we would go by.

Second, Kazimiera’s name isn’t Dutkiewicz, as expected — but we’ll worry about that in a minute.  The date of the marriage (1898) is correct, as is the groom’s name, and parents’ names.  His age is a bit off (he should only be 30, not 37), but it’s not unusual for ages reported in these records to be very much “ballpark estimates.”  Walter was actually born in Kowalewo, not Ląd, but if you recall, the parish functions had been transferred from Kowalewo to Ląd at this time, so perhaps this can be interpretted as a reference to that.

Getting back to Kazimiera, her age (18) matches with what we expected based on U.S. records.  The priest doesn’t mention her budding theatrical career, but perhaps her star had not yet risen very far (if it ever really rose at all).  So this is clearly the right marriage record.  But how did we get from Olczak to Dutkiewicz?

The answer lies again in the indexed records of Geneteka (Figure 5):

Figure 5:  Geneteka search results for marriage records with surnames Olczak and Dutkiewicz between 1880 and 1900:

Olczak

It appears that shortly after Kazimiera’s birth in 1880, her mother Paulina married Tomasz Dutkiewicz.  Whether Tomasz Dutkiewicz ever legally adopted Kazimiera is doubtful, but this certainly explains why she might have at least informally used the name of her step-father as her own.

But Wait, There’s More!

So all this is nice, right?  But why is a marriage record for a great-granduncle really THAT exciting?  As I mentioned, my great-grandmother Veronica emigrated along with three siblings, Walter, Thaddeus and Josephine.  What we didn’t know until I began researching records from Poland, was that there were two additional siblings — Konstancja3 and Pelagia4 — who did not emigrate.  No descendant of the Grzesiak family in the U.S. that I interviewed was aware that these sisters existed.  The Konin Branch of the State Archive in Poznań had no record of marriage for either of them, and I was planning to write again to request a search for their death records, assuming they might have died before reaching a marriageable age.  However, I noticed that there was a marriage record for a Konstancja Grzesiak on the same page of Geneteka search results (Figure 4, result 2) that gave me Walter’s marriage record!  Sure enough, the marriage record5 reveals that Konstancja is the daughter of Józef Grzesiak and his wife, Marianna née Krawczyńska, residing in the village of Ląd.

Unfortunately, I still can’t find a birth record for Pelagia, and it’s still possible that she died before reaching a marriageable age.  But the implications of these new data are tremendous for me.  My great-grandmother arrived in the U.S. in March of 1898,6 and in June and August of that same year, her sister and brother each married in Warsaw, prior to most of her family joining her in Buffalo in 1900, while the one married sister stayed behind in Poland with her family in Warsaw.  Wow!   A little further digging confirmed that Konstancja also had children (Figure 6):

Figure 6:  Geneteka search results for birth records in Warszawa mentioning surnames Cieniewski and Grzesiak:

Cieniewski

So I might have cousins in Poland from this Cieniewski line!  However, it’s interesting that there are only two births.  Birth records for this parish, St. Stanislaus, Bishop and Martyr, and St. Adalbert, in the Wola district of Warsaw, are indexed from 1886 to 1908 without any gaps.  Therefore one might expect to see more than two children born between their marriage in 1898 and 1908 when the records end.  There is no evidence that they immigrated to Buffalo, no good matches in U.S. census records for this family in Buffalo or anywhere else.  So where did they go?

The Grzesiaks of Kowalewo-Opactwo, Warsaw, Buffalo, and Borowo

One clue, in Walter’s marriage record, might point the way.  It stated that he was the son of “Józef Grzesiak, farmer, and his wife Maryanna née Krawczyńska, in the village of Borowo residing”  Borowo is new to me.  This is the first time this place has been mentioned in connection with my family.  And unfortunately, there are at least 20 places in Poland today by that name.  But if Borowo was where her parents were living at the time of Konstancja’s marriage, maybe that’s where she and her young family eventually went to live.  So which Borowo is correct?

Well, Konstancja’s marriage record, from just two months earlier, states that her parents were residing in Ląd.  That, and the fact that there were no good matches for a place called Borowo that’s very close to Warszawa, suggests that this may be the correct place, Borowo in Konin County, about 22 miles east of the Grzesiak’s previous home in Kowalewo-Opactwo:

map

According to the Skorowidz Królestwa Polskiego, a nice period gazetteer of Russian Poland published in 1877, the village of Borowo belongs to the Roman Catholic parish in Krzymów, so that’s where we can look for records.  Records are online and on microfilm, but only from 1808-1884, which doesn’t help us any with finding additional births to Konstancja and Julian Cieniewski after 1900.  However, the Branch Archive in Konin has birth records up to 1911,  so this is an obvious next step to take.

The Old Mill, Revisited

There’s one other really cool connection I’d like to make before I sum things up.  In my previous post about my Grzesiak family, I mentioned my grandmother’s recollection that her mother Veronica’s family owned a grain mill near the parish church.  Try as I might, I couldn’t find any reference to Veronica’s father being a miller.  However, when I visited Veronica’s birthplace of Kowalewo-Opactwo on a trip to Poland last year, I was amazed to see this old windmill, missing its vanes, in close proximity to the church, exactly as Grandma described.  So I found it fascinating that Walter’s marriage record described him clearly as a miller, even though a more general term (“хозяин,” meaning “owner,” but seemingly used as a non-specific synonym for “farmer” or “peasant”) was again used to describe his father, Józef.  This makes me more convinced that the mill in the photo actually was a place associated with Veronica’s family.  Maybe her father didn’t own the mill, maybe he just worked for the miller — but between the existence of this mill where it should be, based on Grandma’s story, and the fact that her uncle Walter was described as a miller, I think there’s good reason to believe that this was the mill that Grandma’s story referred to.  IMG_4542

That’s a Wrap

So what general research insights can be gained from this?

  1.  Once again, my ancestors were more mobile than I expected them to be — and yours might be, too.

When I began my research, I really thought I’d find “the” ancestral village for each surname line and be able to go back for many generations in that same village.  Time and time again, that seems to be the exception, rather than the rule.  I was so blinded by my expectation that Walter would have met his bride some place near to where he was born, that I overlooked obvious resources, like indexed records for Warsaw on Geneteka, because it seemed too improbable.  Logic requires us to search in the obvious places first — those associated with the family.  But when searching in the obvious places doesn’t pan out, it’s time to think outside the box.

2.  Family stories can sometimes hold the key.

If you are among the oldest generation in your family, it’s not too late to write down everything you remember from older relatives, for the next generation.  But if you still have any older relatives remaining, talk to them!  My third cousin and research collaborator, Valerie Baginski, told me that her grandmother always said that the family came from Warsaw, rather than Poznań, which was my family’s version of the story.  Once we figured out that our Grzesiaks’ ancestral village was Kowalewo-Opactwo, closer to Poznań than Warsaw, we dismissed that mention of Warsaw.  Since Warsaw was a bigger city than Poznań, we chalked up this discrepancy to our ancestors’ tendency to paint their place of origin with a broad brush, referencing the closest big city.  Now we realize that it’s quite possible her great-grandmother mentioned Warsaw because she was one of the younger siblings who may have lived there for a time, while my great-grandmother mentioned Poznań because she was the first one to leave Poland, and may never have gone to Warsaw with the others.

3.  Pay your dues.

This last “insight” is a shameless plug for Geneteka, the database for indexed Polish vital records that enabled me to find my Grzesiaks in Warsaw.  For those of you who might be unfamiliar with it, Geneteka is a project sponsored entirely by volunteers from the Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne (PTG, or Polish Genealogical Society), in Poland.  Although all the indexing and photographing of vital records (for Geneteka’s sister site, Metryki, which I wrote about previously) is done by volunteers, funds are still required to pay for servers to host the websites.  If you’ve used Geneteka and found it helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the PTG.  Let’s help them to help us find our ancestors!

Walter’s marriage record was a puzzle piece that’s been missing for a long, long time.  It just goes to show you that you never know when that great idea will hit, or when serendipity will strike, so keep chipping away at those brick walls.  Stay thirsty, my friends.

Sources:

1New York, Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, County of Erie, City of Buffalo, Death Certificates, #2600, Death certificate for Walter Grzesiak, 25 April 1946.

2“Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej sw. Stanislawa i Wawrzynca w Warszawie,” Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki.genealodzy.pl:  Projekt indeksacji metryk parafialnych (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl/), 1898, Malzenstwa, #223, record for Wladyslaw Grzesiak and Kazimiera Marianna Olczak, accessed on 17 August 2016.

3Roman Catholic Church, Sts. Peter and Paul the Apostles Parish (Kowalewo, Słupca, Wielkopolskie, Poland), Kopie księg metrykalnych, 1808-1879, 1872, births, #5, record for Konstancja Grzesiak.; FHL #1191028 Items 1-4.

4“Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej Kowalewo-Opactwo (pow. slupecki)”, Narodowego Archiwum Cyfrowego, Naczelnej Dyrekcji Archiwów Panstwowych, Szukajwarchiwach (Szukajwarchiwach.pl), Ksiega urodzen, malzenstw i zgonów, 1869, births, #48, record for Pelagia Grzesiak, accessed on 21 June 2016.

5“Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej sw. Stanislawa i Wawrzynca w Warszawie “, Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki.genealodzy.pl:  Projekt indeksacji metryk parafialnych (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl/), 1898, Malzenstwa, #142, record for Julian Aleksander Cieniewski and Konstancja Grzesiak, accessed on 18 August 2016.

6Ancestry.com, Baltimore, Passenger Lists, 1820-1948 and 1954-1957 (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006), http://www.ancestry.com, The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Records of the US Customs Service, RG36; NAI Number: 2655153; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85, record for Veronika Gresiak, accessed on 21 July 2016.

Featured Image:

Wodzinowski, Wincenty. Wesele. Digital image.Http://muzeuminstrumentow.pl/. Muzeum Ludowych Instrumentów Muzycznych W Szydłowcu, 18 Sept. 2015. Web. 18 Aug. 2016.  This painting from 1896 seemed very fitting for my cover photo, since it depicts a wedding celebration very close to the time when Walter and Casimira married.

© Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz 2016

 

Productive Insomnia

Published on by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz5 Comments

We genealogists often have a sense that our ancestors want to be found.  It sounds a little crazy or superstitious, but I think there might be something to it.  Judy Russell wrote about this serendipity in genealogy recently, and her post got me thinking of instances when I’ve had similar experiences.  My favorite example occurred when I awakened suddenly one night with one thought:  “Take another look at that passenger manifest for the Lewandowski family.”

The Lewandowskis (or Levanduskis, or Levindoskis….) of Orleans County

Katherine Lewandowski (or Levanduski, as the family came to spell it in the U.S.) was my husband Bruce’s great-grandmother.  She emigrated from Poland with her parents when she was about three years old, and the family settled in the village of Shelby in Orleans County, New York.  Now the funny thing was, I wasn’t actively researching this family when I woke up with this sudden insight.  I could almost understand it, if I’d been researching them before I went to bed, and my subconsious brain came up with this great idea while I slept.  But in this case, my subconscious brain must have been working overtime, because I hadn’t given any thought to the Levanduskis in about a year.  But this thought just wouldn’t fade away.  After tossing and turning for another half hour, I finally gave up and went downstairs to rev up my laptop and pull up the image of the passenger manifest.

I should backtrack for a moment here to explain that finding this particular manifest was something of an accomplishment for me.  I discovered Katherine’s parents’ names from the record of her marriage to Joseph Bartoszewicz in 1907 (Figure 1):

Figure 1:  Marriage record for Joseph F. Bartoszewicz and Katherine Levinduski, 1907.Katherine Levanduski and Joseph Bartoszewicz 1907

The marriage record stated that Katherine’s parents were Edward Levinduski and Mary Wozniak, and this information facilitated the identification of the family in census records for Orleans County.  Mary was only seen in one census record, that for New York State in 1892 (Figure 2), as she passed away in 1896 (1).

Figure 2:  Extract from the 1892 New York State Census for Shelby, Orleans County, New York, showing the family of Edward Levanduski.

Edward Lewandowski fam 1892 NY State Census crop

The family’s names are a bit mangled here — Edward is recorded as “Adcker,” his son Peter has become Patrick, and the surname looks more like “Lewenoboski,” than “Lewandowski.”  But the ages, birthplaces, and location match up very well with family recollections and other documentation.

By 1900, we see Edward “Lavindusky” married to his second wife, Anna (Figure 3).  His son, Joe, and daughter Anna from his first marriage are still living at home, but the other children (Katherine, John and Peter) are apparently living independently. He also has three children with his second wife: Tony  and “Wallace,” (probably known to his parents by the Polish name Władysław, he becomes Walter in later records), shown on this page, and Martha, who appears at the top of the next page.

Figure 3:  Extract from the 1900 U.S. Federal Census for Shelby, Orleans County, showing the family of Edward Levanduski.

1900 census for Edward Lavenduski family

This census tells us (among other things) that Edward was born in “Poland (Ger)” — in other words, he was an ethnic Pole from the Prussian Partition who immigrated in 1886 and was already naturalized by 1900.

Finding their *&%# Passenger Manifest

My next step was to look for his passenger manifest.  Frustratingly, I wasn’t finding it, no matter how I tweaked the search parameters.  I assumed I was looking for a family group, although I realized that it was also possible that Edward came first and sent for his wife and children later on.  But I thought I had enough information to go on that this should have been straightforward:  immigration year about 1886, father Edward Lewandowski, born about 1858; mother Mary (probably Marianna, in Polish), born about 1856; children Katherine (in Polish, Katarzyna), born about 1883, and John (Jan in Polish, Johann in German), born about 1885, all coming from Prussia.  But I just couldn’t find them.

Sometimes, when faced with this problem, it helps to obtain a copy of the individual’s naturalization records.  For naturalizations that took place after 1906, the Petition for Naturalization will often tell the name of the ship, the port of entry, and the specific date of arrival of an immigrant, as seen in this petition for Katherine Levanduski’s husband, Joseph Bartoszewicz (Figure 4).

Figure 4:  Extract of Petition for Naturalization for Joseph Bartoszewicz, showing arrival at the port of Philadelphia, PA on the 12th day of October, 1890, on the vessel Pennsylvania.

Joseph Bartoszewicz Petition for Naturalization crop.png

However, prior to 1906, naturalization records were less standardized, and these tend to state only the country from which the immigrant renounced citizenship, rather than providing any specifics about how or when he arrived in the U.S.  The fact that Edward Levanduski was already a naturalized citizen by 1900 meant that his naturalization records might be nice to have, for the sake of completeness, but they weren’t likely to give me any significant hints.

A Critical Clue

My breakthrough came one day when a distant cousin of my husband’s found me through a Rootsweb message board, and sent me the following message:  “I came across an old web site where you were researching Edward. An uncle recently gave me some of our history and we are maybe looking for the same Great-grandfather. If this email is still active get back to me.”  (This is Reason #503 why it pays to post online about the ancestors and geographic areas you’re researching.)  When I contacted him, he wrote that his Uncle Walter Lewandowski told him that Edward Levanduski’s name was originally Stanisław!  You could have knocked me over with a feather.  Stanisław?!  It’s not uncommon for Polish immigrants with traditional Slavic names like Stanisław to choose to Anglicize them in their attempts to assimilate into American culture.  But most men named Stanisław choose a name that’s got some phonetic similarity, like Stanley, rather than something completely different, like Edward.

Armed with this information, it was easy.  I found their Hamburg Emigration manifest, shown below (Figure 5).   The departure date was 10 April 1886, the father was Stanislaus Lewandowsky, age 27, from “Wolla,” Prussia, with his wife, Maria, age 23, and children Kateryna, 3, and Jan, 1.  Bingo!  A perfect match!  I was so excited to try to figure out where “Wolla” might be that I paid no attention to the names below theirs on the manifest.

Figure 5:  Extract from Hamburg Emigration manifest for Stanislaus Lewandowsky and family.

Lewandowski family passenger manifest

Or at least, not consciously.

“I see dead people….”

But my subconscious brain had my back, or maybe the spirit of Weronika Wozniak was talking to me in my sleep, just like in the movie, The Sixth Sense. But whatever it was, something woke me up on the night of November 17, 2o13, and I just had to check that manifest again.  And when I did, I noticed the two passengers mentioned after my Lewandowski family:  Weronika Wozniak and Michał Lewandowski.  If you remember from that marriage record in Figure 1, Stanisław “Edward” Lewandowski’s wife, Maria, had the maiden name of Woźniak.

By this point I was wide awake, so I spent the next few hours running through records online to see where this discovery might lead me.  I had to wade through a bit of a mess with the various surname and given name changes that were typical in the Polish community in Orleans County, but by 5:30 am, when Bruce came downstairs, shaking his head, I had new information on his family to report.  My preliminary evidence, which I shored up later with additional documentation, indicated that Weronika Woźniak settled near Edward and Mary Levanduski in Shelby, New York, became Veronica “Lena” Wisnock, and married Stanisław “Edward” Lepkoske/Lepkowski.  My guess — and I still don’t know the answer to this definitively — is that Veronica will end up being a younger sibling to Maria Woźniak Levanduska.  I’m sure the answers lie in the vital records in Poland, as the U.S. records seem to be inconclusive on this question, but suggesting a common father, at least. Interestingly, this Stanisław also adopted Edward as his name in the U.S.  Two Stanisław-to-Edward transitions in the same tiny town makes me wonder if someone (parish priest, maybe?) was really pushing the idea that men named Stanisław should prefer Edward over the more-common Stanley when choosing a name to go by.

A Lightbulb Moment

Edward and Lena Lepkoske had eight children, including a son, Joseph, who married Margaret Wisnock (probably a distant cousin on his mother’s side).  Suddenly, the 1920 Census for my husband’s grandfather’s family made so much more sense (Figure 6).  In 1920, Bruce’s grandfather, Henry, was a baby living at what his family considers to be the Bartoszewicz family home at 929 Smith Street in Buffalo.  But in 1920, the Bartoszewicz family weren’t the only ones living there — it was also the home of Anthony and Frances Lewandowski and Joseph and Margaret Lipkowski.

Figure 6:  Extract of 1920 U.S. Federal Census for the families of Anthony Lewandowski, Joseph Lipkowski and Joseph Bartoszewicz.  1920 United States Federal Census10 crop

When I first located this census record, Anthony Lewandowski’s presence there seemed natural.  He was the oldest son of Edward Levanduski and his second wife, Anna Budzynska, and so half-brother to Katherine Levanduska Bartoszewicz.  The house at 929 Smith Street was a multi-family home, so at that time, I didn’t think about the presence of the Lipkowskis too much, figuring they were just friends of the family, distant cousins, or maybe just unrelated boarders.  But if I’m correct with my hypothesis that Marianna and Weronika Wozniak were sisters, then this would make Joseph Lepkoske first cousin to Katherine Levanduska Bartoszewicz.

It’s interesting to note that the census taker in Buffalo automatically wrote these names with their correct Polish spellings (Lewandowski, Lipkowski) rather than with the phonetic versions (Levanduski, Lepkoske) the family used in rural Orleans County.  Census records for Orleans County also show some Lewandowski families who persisted with the correct, original spelling, and of course, there are many Lewandowski families in Buffalo, as well, so it remains to be determined exactly which families are related, and how.  There seemed to be a lot of back-and-forth movement between Buffalo and Orleans County for members of these families, and tracking the movement of the family members geographically, given the diverse spellings of the surname, can be challenging.  “Lewandowski” is among the most popular Polish surnames, so caution must be taken in researching, because there are probably quite a few Lewandowskis who were living in Buffalo in the early 1900s who were unrelated to these Lewandowski/Levanduskis.

All in the Family

One final point of interest here:  This census shows Anthony’s wife, Frances, under her married name of Levanduski.  But it’s interesting to note that her maiden name was Lepkoske — and she was none other than the daughter of Edward and Lena Lepkoske and sister of Joseph Lepkoske!  To sum up, Joseph and Frances Lepkoske were full siblings.  Joseph married Margaret Wisnock/Wozniak, who is probably his distant cousin.  Frances married Anthony Levanduski, who is the half-brother to Katherine Levanduska, whose mother was a Wisnock/Wozniak.  And Joseph and Frances Lepkoske are probably first cousins to Katherine Levanduska Bartoszewicz, assuming that Weronika Wozniak and Mary Wozniak are sisters.  Whew!

For now, this research is on the back burner for me, due to time constraints. But my work is certainly cut out for me when I’m ready to return, as there are a lot of unanswered questions.  Here are the final take-home messages with which I’d like to conclude:

1.  Be sure to utilize ALL the information available from a given source.

Don’t do what I did and focus on one piece of information (the Lewandowskis’ place of origin, “Wolla,” — which, by the way, I was eventually able to locate) to such an extent that you ignore other valuable clues contained in the source.

2.  Pay attention to your ancestors’ FANS (Friends, Associates and Neighbors).

The FAN principle was elucidated by Elizabeth Shown Mills as a strategy for learning more about our ancestors through careful analysis of indirect evidence.  In hindsight, I might have suspected a connection between the Lepkoske and Levanduski families even without that passenger manifest, because census records often show their families living in close proximity or listed sequentially.  This approach can be especially helpful when researching ancestors with common surnames.

3.  Follow your hunches.

Whether you believe it to be serendipity, wild coincidence, luck, the promptings of your subconscious mind, or nudges from Great-Grandma up in heaven, every genealogist seems to have these stories.  Go with it, and see what turns up.

Sources:

  1.  Shelby, Orleans, New York, “Death Records”, 1896, April 10, record for Mary Levenduski.

 

© Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz 2016

 

 

Fun with Genetic Genealogy

Published on by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz5 Comments

A couple days ago, I checked my autosomal DNA matches at Ancestry and discovered a new DNA match with a familiar surname, Ptaszkiewicz, in his family tree.  I wrote to him immediately, and to my pleasant surprise, he wrote back, expressing an interest in collaborating to determine definitively how we’re related.  At this point, I suspect that my new cousin, M. Snyder (name used with permission), and I are double fourth-cousins once removed.  So what does that mean?

One of my great-great-great-grandmothers was Anna Ptaszkiewicz, born 29 April 1834 in Kołaczyce,1 in what is now the Podkarpackie province of Poland, but was the Austrian Empire at that time.  She was the youngest of five children born to Franciszek Wojciech Ptaszkiewicz and Salomea Sasakiewicz.  Anna had an older brother, Franciszek, who was born 23 March 18272 and here’s where the plot thickens:  Franciszek and Anna married twin siblings.  Franciszek Ptaszkiewicz married Anna Łącka on 15 November 18523 and Anna Ptaszkiewicz married Jakub Łącki on 26 November 1861.4  Anna and Jakub Łącki were the oldest children of Franciszek Łącki and his second wife, Magdalena Gębczyńska, born 24 July 1835:5

Figure 1: Baptismal record for Jakub and Anna Łącki5Jacobus and Anna lacki birth crop

 

Franciszek and Anna (née Łącka) Ptaszkiewicz had eight children, including a daughter, Katarzyna, who was born 10 October 1864.6  It is this daughter, Katarzyna, whom I believe might be the same as “Cousin M’s” great-grandmother, Katherine/Catherine (née Ptaszkiewicz) Grzebińska.

Catherine (née Ptaszkiewicz) Grzebińska, was born in November 1866, in Austrian Poland, according to the 1900 U.S. Federal Census7, shown in Figure 2.  Experienced researchers know that our ancestors weren’t always as precise when reporting their birth dates as we are today, so the birth dates for these two Catherines, October 1864 and November 1866, are well within the ballpark range for them to be the same person.

Figure 2:  1900 United States Federal Census for Kate Grzebinski [sic]71900 census Grzebinski

 

Moreover, “Kate” settled in Buffalo, New York, as did her putative double first cousin, Marianna (née Łącka) Klaus, who was my great-great-grandmother.

Although all of this looks promising, there’s still no “smoking gun” yet — no definitive evidence that would confirm that “Cousin M” and I are related through this particular surname line.  It would be nice to find a marriage record in Kołaczyce or Buffalo for Katarzyna Ptaszkiewicz and Jan Grzebiński.  It would also be nice to find a passenger manifest or church records for “Cousin M’s” Catherine Ptaszkiewicz, indicating that she was from Kołaczyce.  And there’s a good chance that we’ll be able to find those church records.  A search of the records in Kołaczyce for marriages of the children of Franciszek Ptaszkiewicz and Anna Łącka was already on my to-do list.  And it should be easy to determine if Catherine Ptaszkiewicz Grzebińska was from Kołaczyce, since her oldest children were probably baptized at St. Stanislaus Church in Buffalo.  Not only are records from St. Stan’s easily searched on microfilm, but they also reliably indicate the place of birth of the parents of the baptized child, as shown here in this baptismal record8 for my great-grandmother Genowefa Klaus, daughter of Marianna (née Łącka) Klaus (and granddaughter of Anna Ptaszkiewicz).

Figure 3:  Baptismal record for Genowefa Klaus indicating father as Andrzej Klaus from Maniów, Galicia and mother as Marya Łącka from Kołaczyce, Galicia.8Genevieve Klaus baptismal record crop

 

So we know what we need to find in terms of documentation, and we have a plan to get it. But right now, what we have is DNA evidence.  Both “Cousin M” and I have uploaded our raw DNA data to GEDmatch, which is a free site offering tools for analyzing and understanding one’s autosomal DNA results.  Among the useful tools at GEDmatch is a chromosome browser, which provides a graphic depiction of our match, including the number of SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) included in it.  As is shown in Figure 4, “Cousin M” and I share a 29.3 centimorgan stretch along Chromosome 9:

Figure 4:  Graphic depiction of match from GEDmatch.com.  Red lines indicate base pairs with no match, yellow lines indicate base pairs with half match, green lines indicate base pairs with full match, blue bar indicates a matching segment greater than 7 centimorgans.Chromosome 9

 

GEDmatch estimates 4.5 generations to our most recent common ancestor (MRCA).  That’s just about right.  It’s actually 5 generations to the MRCA for “Cousin M” and my Mom, as shown in Figure 5. (Since I’m one generation removed from my Mom, I fall on the second page of this chart, not shown here.)

Figure 5:  Relationship Chart for me and Cousin M through Łącki ancestors.Relationship 1 (through Łącki)

 

And it’s the same relationship through our Ptaszkiewicz ancestors, as shown in Figure 6.  Since Marianna Łącka and Katarzyna Ptaszkiewicz are double first cousins, meaning they share all four of their grandparents in common, they share about as much DNA as half siblings.  If that’s as clear as mud, you might find this explanation to be helpful.

Figure 6:  Relationship Chart for me and Cousin M through Łącki ancestors.Relationship 2 (through Ptaszkiewicz)

 

So I’m pretty excited about all of this!  This is a beautiful example of how genetic genealogy can complement, extend, and confirm results obtained through traditional documents-based research.  I can’t wait to dive into the records in Kołaczyce and Buffalo to find the documentation that will allow us to stamp this case as “solved.”  In the meantime, please feel free to share your latest DNA mysteries or success stories in the comments.  I’d love to hear how DNA results are helping you with your own research.

Sources:

1Roman Catholic Church, St. Anna’s Parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Podkarpackie, Poland), “Urodzenia, 1826-1889”, Stare Kopie, 1834, April 29,  record for Anna Ptaszkiewicz. [date of birth] 29.04.1834, [date of baptism] 29.04.1834, [house number] 56, [child’s name] Anna, [father’s name] Franciscus Ptaszkiewicz sutor, [mother’s name] Salomea Patre Francisco Sasakiewicz nata, [godparents] Nicolaus Sękowski Hava Francisci Wiejoski uxor Civis.

2Roman Catholic Church, St. Anne’s parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Małopolskie, Poland), “Księga urodzeń, 1784 – 2015”, 1827, baptismal record for Franciscus Ptaszkiewicz. [Date of birth] Martius 23, 1827, [Date of baptism] Martius 25, 1827, [House number] 53, [Child’s name] Franciscus, Catholica, Puer, Legitimi, [Father] Franciscus Ptaszkiewicz sutor civis, [Mother] Salomea patre Francisco Sasakiewicz nata, [Godparents] Paulus Wiejoski, Francisca Mathai Kowalski uxor, cives.

3Maciej Orzechowski, “Kołaczyce Marriages,” Marriage record for Franciscus Ptaszkiewicz and Anna Łącka, transcribed from the collection, “Roman Catholic Church records, St. Anna’s Parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Małopolskie, Poland), Śluby, 1826-1889,” Stare Kopie, record #6 on the spreadsheet. [Number] 20, [Date] 15.11.1852, [House number] — , [sponsus (groom)] Franciscus Ptaszkiewicz sutor filius Francisci Ptaszkiewicz ac Salomea nata Francisco Sasakiewicz oppidariorum, [Aetas (age)] 25, [Viduus] — [House number] — , [sponsa (bride)] Anna Łącka filia def. Francisci Łącki ac Magdalenna nata Joanne Gębczyński ooppidari, [Aetas (age)] 18, [vidua] — , [Testes] Josephus Dutkiewicz pellio Antonius Kołeczek textor.; report to Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA, 9 January 2015; Excel Spreadsheet held by Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA.

4Roman Catholic Church, St. Anna’s Parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Podkarpackie, Poland), “Śluby, 1826-1889,” Stare Kopie, 1861, #11, marriage record for Jacobus Łącki and Anna Ptaszkiewicz. [Record number ]11, [Marriage date] 26.11.1861, [House number] 308, [Groom] Jacobus Łącki filius def. Francisci Łącki ac Magdalenna nata Joanne Gębczyński oppidari, [age] 27, [house number] 77, [Bride] Anna Ptaszkiewicz filia Francisci Ptaszkiewicz ac Salomea nata Francisco Sassakiewicz oppidario, [age] 26, [witnesses] Franciscus Ptaszkiewicz oppidarius Laurentius Kowalski sutor.

5Roman Catholic Church, St. Anna’s Parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Podkarpackie, Poland), “Urodzenia, 1826-1889”, Stare Kopie, 1835, Record for Jacobus Łącki and Anna Łącka. [date of birth] 24.07.1835, [date of baptism], 25.07.1835, [house number] 191, [babies’ names] Jacobus et Anna Gemelli, [father’s name] Franciscus Łącki figulus, [mother’s name] Magdalena patre Michaele Gębczyński nata, [godparents] Constantinus Niedzielski Magdalena Michaelis Gałkiewicz uxor Michael Gałkiewicz Catharina Constantini Niedzielski uxor Civis.

6Maciej Orzechowski, “Kolaczyce Births”, Baptismal record for Catharina Ptaszkiewicz, transcribed from the collection, “Roman Catholic Church records, St. Anna’s Parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Małopolskie, Poland), ‘Urodzenia, 1826-1889,’ Stare Kopie.”, record number 66 on the spreadsheet. [Record number] 53, [Date of birth] 10.10.1864, [Date of baptism] 11.10.1864, [House number] 308, [Child’s name] Catharina, [Father] Franciscus Ptaszkiewicz sutor, [Mother] Anna filia Francisci Łącki et Magdalenna nata Gębczyńska, [Godparents] Josephus Forys ruricola in Bukowa Catharina uxor Leonhardi Kolbusz ruricola in Bukowa; report to Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts, Original report made on 9 January 2015; most recent update on 2 April 2015, all on the same spreadsheet; Original held by Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts.

7Ancestry.com, 1900 United States Federal Census (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004), http://www.ancestry.com, Year: 1900; Census Place: Buffalo Ward 11, Erie, New York; Roll: 1027; Page: 37A; Enumeration District: 0083; FHL microfilm: 1241027. Record for Kate Grzebinski, accessed on 2 July 2016. http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1900usfedcen&h=78760547&indiv=try

8Roman Catholic Church, St. Stanislaus Parish (Buffalo, Erie, New York, USA), Baptisms, 1874-1903, 1897, #620, baptismal record for Genowefa Klaus.; 371 vol. 1.

© 2016 Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz

 

 

 

 

What’s in a name? My Zarzycki family of Buffalo, Rybno and Brańsk

Published on by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz4 Comments

I’ve been very busy with adding new data to my family tree for my Zarzycki family, thanks to my fabulous researcher in Warsaw, Justyna, who visited my ancestral parish in Poland to obtain records that are not available on microfilm, online, or in any archive.   By way of introduction, my maternal grandmother’s father was Jan/John Zażycki, who immigrated to Buffalo, New York in 18951 and eventually settled in North Tonawanda, New York.  My extended Zazycki family always insisted that the surname was spelled “Zażycki,” rather than the phonetically-equivalent “Zarzycki,” and furthermore, I was told by some that anyone with the surname “Zarzycki” was not likely to be related to us.  It may indeed have been the case that my great-grandfather preferred the spelling without the “r.” As you can see from the signature on his civil marriage record, John clearly spelled his name as “Zażycki”2:  Jan & Weronika Zazycki Marriage 2
John Zazycki’s naturalization papers contain both spellings, but one could argue that the places in which it was spelled with the “r” were the result of carelessness on the part of the clerk, since there is one place on the naturalization certificate where John’s name not only contains the “r,” but also appears as “Jarzycki”3:

Jan Zazycki naturalization certificate 2

Compare this with the Petition for Naturalization1, which John himself signed at the bottom:

Jan Zazycki Petition for Naturalization

However, any experienced family historian can tell you that one needs to be flexible and keep an open mind regarding variant spellings of surnames, and that is true in this case as well.  In records from Poland, I have only rarely seen the surname spelled as Zażycki.  For example, in records in which Jan’s father, Ignacy, is mentioned, the surname is spelled as “Zarzycki” on 17 occasions and as “Zarzecki” on 3 documents. In documents pertaining to Ignacy’s father, Józef, the surname has been spelled as “Zarzycki” 7 times, and as “Zażycki” only once.  In fact, that’s the only time I have ever seen the name spelled as “Zażycki” on a document from Poland.

My Zarzycki family was from the villages of Szwarocin and Bronisławy, which belong to the Roman Catholic parish of St. Bartholomew in Rybno.  All of these villages are presently in Sochaczew County, Mazowieckie province, but were in the Warsaw province of the Russian Empire at the time of my great-grandfather’s birth in 1866.  Literacy rates were quite low in the Russian Empire in those days — one estimate places the overall literacy rate of the Russian Empire at 24% in 1897, while the rural literacy rate which would include small villages like Bronisławy, was as low as 19.7%.4  Despite this, there is evidence that Ignacy Zarzycki was literate:  his signature appears as distinct from that of the priest, on the birth records of two of his children.  Below is the birth record for Ignacy’s son, Leonard Zarzycki, in 1876.5   Ignacy clearly signed his name as “Zarzycki.”  Leonard Zarzycki birth 1876

The same is true on this birth record for his son, Roman Aleksander Zarzycki in 18726:

Roman Aleksander Zarzycki birth 1872

So although it may have been the case that my great-grandfather preferred the spelling “Zażycki,” it appears that that preference may have begun with him, and has no bearing on the spellings that we see on records from Poland for this family.  In fact, not only does the spelling with the “r” predominate, but John’s own father spelled his name that way.

According to the paper trail for this family, Jan Zażycki was the son of Ignacy Zarzycki and Antonina Maciążek,2 and Ignacy was the son of Józef Zarzycki and Joanna Krzemińska.7 Going back one generation further on the paternal line, Józef Zarzycki was the son of Adam Zarzycki and Wiktora Stolarska.8  In records pertaining to Adam, we see a different trend in spelling.  Out of twelve documents found to date in which he is mentioned, six of them give his name as “Zarzecki,” five of them spell it “Zarzycki,” and only one of them (the marriage record for his son, Józef) shows the spelling, “Zażycki.”  Interestingly, the documents that contain the spelling “Zarzecki,” tend to be older (1802-1812) whereas the spelling “Zarzycki” is found on documents dated between 1812-1828.

The record for Adam’s first marriage to his wife, Wiktoria, states that he was a newcomer to the community in Rybno, having moved there from his original place of birth in Brańsk:9

Bransk

If there were any doubt about which place called Brańsk was meant, it would be cleared up by the record for Adam’s second marriage to Agnieszka Kruczewska in 1810, in which Adam is said to be from Podlachia (Podlasie):10

1810 crop

Taken together, these two documents suggest the town of Brańsk, which is currently the seat of gmina Brańsk in Bielsk County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, approximately 143 miles from Rybno:

13246316_10207640187954005_3609992669130168736_o

Adam Zarzycki was born about 1769 to Kazimierz Zarzycki and his wife, Zofia,9 but there are no vital records for the parish in Brańsk available for this time period from the Polish State Archives. The LDS Family History Library does have some vital records for Brańsk on microfilm including death records from 1797-1823, but no birth or marriage records from this or any earlier time periods, which suggests they might have been lost or destroyed.  So although it may not be possible to locate a birth record for Adam Zarzycki, it might be possible to locate death records for his parents, and this is an obvious direction for future research. Some of the existing records are indexed on Geneteka, including marriages from 1885-1896, and a search for “Zarzycki” reveals two marriage records with the spelling “Zarzecki”:

Bransk

Taken together, these data suggest that the original spelling of the surname was “Zarzecki,” and that it evolved to “Zarzycki” after Adam Zarzecki migrated to Rybno.  Analysis of the geographic surname distributions for both variants of the name (based on data from 2002) confirms that, although the “Zarzecki” spelling is generally less popular in Poland, it is significantly more common than “Zarzycki” in Bielsk County (124 bearers for Zarzecki/a vs. fewer than 50 for Zarzycki/a).

As this case demonstrates, surnames can evolve significantly over time and place, and the spelling variants that one sees may follow a particular pattern, rather than occurring at random. Tracking these changes can sometimes lead to a better understanding of a family’s geographic origins.  It will be interesting to see whether I can find additional traces of this family in the microfilmed death records from Brańsk — it’s unclear from Adam’s marriage record whether he was from the Brańsk area generally, or from that parish specifically.  But if I am able to find additional records there, you can be sure that I’ll pay close attention to how the Zarzycki/Zarzecki surname is spelled.

Sources:

1Erie, New York, #1892, Petition for Naturalization for Jan Zazycki, 12 July 1900.; Erie County Clerk’s Office, 92 Franklin St. Buffalo, NY 14202.

2Buffalo, Erie County, New York, 1901, #202, marriage record for John Zazycki and Veronica Grzesiak.; Erie County Clerk’s Office, 92 Franklin St., Buffalo, NY 14202.

3Erie, New York, #1892, Certificate of Naturalization for Jan Zazycki, 8 August 1900.; Erie County Clerk’s Office, 92 Franklin St. Buffalo, NY 14202.

4“Likbez.” Wikipedia. Accessed May 29, 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbez#CITEREFGrenoble.

5Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga urodzeń 1870-1880”, 1876, #87, baptismal record for Leonard Zarzycki.

6Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga urodzeń 1870-1880”, 1872, #15, baptismal record for Roman Aleksander Zarzycki.

7Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Early birth records (before 1831)”, 1828, #34, baptismal record for Ignacy Zarzycki. 

8Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga ślubów 1826-1828”, 1826, #11, marriage record for Józef Zażycki and Joanna Krzymińska.

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

10Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew’s Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Księga ślubów, 1803-1810”, 1810, #8, marriage record for Adamus Zarzecki and Agnes Kruczewska.

© 2016 Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz