Rabbit-Hole Research – From Shepherds and Shoemakers

Off-Roading From the Paper Trail: Locating the Birthplace of Antoni Nowicki

Published on March 20, 2022 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz4 Comments

As genealogists, we’re taught to follow the paper trail, gathering evidence from historical documents that tell the story of our ancestors’ lives. Even when our ancestors moved around, we can often find clues in the historical records that point to their previous place of residence. So, don’t you just hate it when you find a document that clearly states a person’s place of origin, but it’s not the right place?

Born in Kroczewo? Not So Fast….

I ran into this problem recently while researching my husband’s Nowicki ancestors. His great-grandmother, Helen (Majczyk) Skolimowski, was the daughter of Stanisław and Aniela (Nowicka) Majczyk. Aniela Nowicka was the daughter of Antoni and Jadwiga (Krogulska) Nowicki, so this story begins with Antoni and Jadwiga’s marriage record, which I recently obtained from the Archiwum Diecezjalne w Płocku (diocesan archive in Płock). (I’d like to add that the archive is really a pleasure to work with, and requests can be made quite simply by filling out this form on their website.) A copy of the marriage record is shown in Figure 1.¹

Figure 1: Marriage record from Gradzanowo Kościelne for Antoni Nowicki and Jadwiga Agnieszka Krogulska, 13 February 1865.

The full text of the marriage record is transcribed and translated in the footnotes, for those who are interested, but the portion relevant to this discussion is the passage shown in Figure 2, which describes the groom.

Figure 2: Passage from marriage record of Antoni Nowicki and Jadwiga Krogulska which describes the groom. Underlined text reads, “urodzonym w Kroczewie,” or “born in Kroczewo.” Click image to enlarge.

The marriage record describes Antoni as a young man, urodzonym w Kroczewie (born in Kroczewo), son of Maciej and Joanna née Ługowska, the spouses Nowicki, residing with his parents in Bojanowo, age 20. This suggests a birth circa 1845 in Kroczewo, a village with its own church. Both Bojanowo and Kroczewo were located in the Płock gubernia, but the villages are 67 km apart (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Map showing locations of Bojanowo and Kroczewo. Google Maps. Click image for interactive map.

So far, so good, right? However, births for Kroczewo are indexed in Geneteka for the entire period from 1817 to 1903 with no gaps, and there is no birth record for Antoni Nowicki. Moreover, Kroczewo is not especially close to Gradzanowo, and generally, when a marriage or death record references a birthplace that was not nearby, the priest made an effort to mention the parish, county, or country in which the birthplace was located. Conversely, a lack of further identifying information suggests that the place in question must be sufficiently nearby that the priest felt no further description was necessary.

This suggests two possibilities: one, that Antoni Nowicki was baptized in Kroczewo, but his birth was recorded or indexed in such a way that I did not locate it in my initial search, and two, that he was baptized elsewhere. A broader search in Geneteka might address both possibilities, so I expanded the parameters to include all indexed birth records in the Mazowieckie province. The result? No promising hits. I played around with search parameters still further, using his parents’ names and the “Wyszukaj jako para/Relationship Search” option, to see if I could find records for any of Antoni’s siblings, and used wildcards under the assumption that their names might have been misrecorded, or that his mother’s maiden name might have been omitted from the record. Even that search, for birth records to surname Nowicki, given names M* and J*, between 1840 and 1850, anywhere in Mazowieckie province, produced no clues, nor did it help to use a wildcard in the surname and search for Now*. As of this writing, he’s just not in Geneteka.

So, what other place might “Kroczewo” be? Antoni married in Gradzanowo Kościelne, and he was living in Bojanowo at the time of his marriage, so I pulled out the map to see what villages are located nearby that resemble “Kroczewo” phonetically. I found a village called Kocewo near Bieżuń, 20 km from Gradzanowo. There’s also a geographic cluster of six “Kraszewo” villages, Kraszewo-Czubaki, Kraszewo Podborne, Kraszewo Rory, Kraszewo-Falki, Kraszewo-Sławęcin, and Kraszewo Gaczułty, all located within 20 km of Gradzanowo. While other candidates exist that are a bit further away, these are my top candidates at the moment.

Down a Rabbit Hole In Search of Kocewo

The next question is, to what parishes did those villages belong? Kocewo’s proximity to Bieżuń suggests that this would be the parish to which it was assigned. However, I was unable to confirm that, using the Skorowidz Królewstwa Polskiego (a gazetteer published in 1877 which includes locations in the Królestwo Polskie, or Kingdom of Poland). In fact, the Skorowidz does not even mention the village of Kocewo (Figure 4); the closest option is Kocewia, which is not the same place.²

Figure 4: Detail from the Skorowidz Królestwa Polskiego showing page on which Kocewo should appear.

Undaunted, I checked the Skorowidz miejscowości Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, published in 1933. Still no Kocewo; the closest entries were Kocewe and Kocewko, but again, neither refers to the same place. What the heck? Mapa.szukacz.pl confirmed my findings from Google Maps: the village of Kocewo is located in gmina Bieżuń, Żuromiń County, Mazowieckie, and has a population of 46. Wikipedia repeats that information, so the village is clearly found in modern sources. However, the only mention of Kocewo in the Słownik Geograficzne Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich was a reference to mudflats (błota) of the river Pełta. The Pełta river runs roughly north-south, but well to the east of the Gradzanowo area. Kocewo was proving to be surprisingly elusive in historical sources.

A search of the Polish version of Wikipedia gave me the clue I needed: “dawn. Myślin-Kocewo,” where “dawn.” is an abbreviation for dawniej, formerly. Apparently, Kocewo is so small even today that it was formerly united with the nearby village of Myślin, which likely accounts for its absence from historical sources. Repeating my gazetteer searches in the M’s rather than the K’s permitted identification of the parish for Myślin-Kocewo as Chamsk circa 1877 and Bieżuń circa 1933 (Figure 2).³

Figure 5: Entry for Myślin Kocewo in the Skorowidz Królestwa Polskiego.

A search for the parish of Chamsk in Geneteka reveals a gap in indexed birth records from 1842 until 1889. Since Antoni Nowicki was born circa 1845, this could explain the absence of his birth record in Geneteka. (On the other hand, the fact that the village of Kocewo did not exists as an independent municipality at the time of Antoni’s marriage, casts doubt on the hypothesis that the priest would have mentioned it as Antoni’s place of birth.) Records for Chamsk from 1826–1911 are online at Metryki, which means I’ll be able to find an answer to the question of whether or not Antoni Nowicki was baptized there. However, a quick peek revealed that no end-of-year index was created in the book that contains the births from 1845, so all 115 of them will have to be browsed individually to find Antoni’s birth, if in fact he was baptized in this parish. It’s research for another day.

Thankfully, identification of the parishes for the assorted Kraszewos (if that’s a word) was more straightforward. Figure 6 shows the Kraszewo entries in the Skorowidz.⁴

Figure 6: Entries in the Skorowidz Królestwa Polskiego for Kraszewo. Column headings are shown at the bottom of the image; click image to enlarge.

The first Kraszewo, in Ciechanów County, is 53 km from Bojanowo, so I excluded it from the first round of candidates to consider. The last Kraszewo, Kraszewo Czarne, was not even in the Płock province, so it, too, seems less likely. The remaining eight Kraszewos include the six found on the contemporary map, as well as two additional places, Kraszewo Dezerta and Kraszewo Budy, which may have been absorbed by one of the other villages. Kraszewo Bory may have been an older name for Kraszewo Rory, found on the modern map, but from the perspective of finding vital records, it’s irrelevant whether they were two distinct villages or one village under two names, since all the Kraszewos in this cluster belonged to the parish in Raciąż.

Although birth records from Raciąz are indexed in Geneteka, there’s a gap from 1808 through 1875, which might also explain why Antoni Nowicki’s birth is not found. Neither are scans of birth records from Raciąż for the appropriate time period available online at Szukajwarchiwach or another convenient source. They are digitized at FamilySearch, but access is restricted, so this research will have to wait for another day when my local Family History Center is open.

Further Clues

Additional clues regarding the Nowicki family’s migrations can be found in Geneteka. My search for children of Maciej Nowicki and Joanna Ługowska produced a birth record for Antoni Nowicki’s brother, Franciszek Nowicki, who was born in Gołuszyn (Radzanów parish) in 1858 (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Geneteka search result for Nowicki birth records in all indexed parishes in Mazowieckie province, searching for given names starting with “Ma-” and given name Joanna as a pair.

Clicking over to the scan reveals that Franciszek was born 22 September 1858, and that his father, Maciej, was a 38-year-old farmer and resident of Gołuszyn, while his mother was 32 years old.⁵ Similarly, a search of the marriage records produced a marriage record for another son of Maciej and Joanna, Andrzej Nowicki, who married Józefa Maciejewska in Dąbrowa in 1875 (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Geneteka search result for Nowicki marriage records in all indexed parishes in Mazowieckie province, searching for given names starting with “Ma-” and given name Joanna as a pair.

According to that marriage record, Andrzej Nowicki was twenty-four years old and born in Gołuszyn.⁶

From this information, a timeline begins to emerge for Maciej and Joanna. Maciej was born circa 1820, and Joanna was born circa 1826, but we don’t know where either of them was born. We don’t know where they married, either; all that searching in Geneteka did not turn up their marriage record. Based on Joanna’s age, we can guess that they were married circa 1844, so Antoni was likely their oldest child. Accurate identification of Antoni’s birthplace may be the key to finding their marriage record as well. By 1851, they were living in Gołuszyn, where Andrzej was born, and they were still living there in 1858 when Franciszek was born. Andrzej’s marriage record also stated that his father, Maciej, was already deceased while his mother, Joanna, was still living, which helps narrow down the time frame for searching for death records for Maciej and Joanna. Joanna’s death record might state her place of of birth, if it was known, and that, too, could point to her place of marriage and birth.

Although this research has gone off the road for the moment, at least the records still offer a compass! Stay tuned!

Sources:

¹Roman Catholic Church (Gradzanowo, Żuromin, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Gradzanowie,” 1865, Małżeństwa, no. 14, Antoni Nowicki and Jadwiga Agnieszka Krogulska, 13 February 1865, privately held by Archiwum Diecezjalne w Płocku, 09-400 Płock, Poland. Proofreading and editing of the following transcription and translation were kindly provided by Dr. Roman Kałużniacki.

Transcription:

“No. 14 Chomąc.
Działo się w Gradzanowie dnia trzynastego Lutego, tysiąc ośmset sześćdziesiątego piątego roku o godzinie trzeciej po południu. Wiadomo czynimy, iż w przytomności świadków Damazego Uzdowskiego, właściciela częściowego z Bojanowa, i Leona Kocięda, gospodarza z Chomącu po lat trzydzieści ośm mających—na dniu dzisiejszym zawarte zostało religijne małżeństwo między Antonim Nowickim, młodzianem, urodzonym w Kroczewie, synem Macieja i Joanny z Ługowskich małżonków Nowickich, w Bojanowie przy rodzicach zamieszkałym, lat dwadzieścia mającym, a Jadwigą Agnieszką Krogulską panną, urodzoną w Łaczewie, córką Marcina i Katarzyny z Pawełkiewiczów, małżonków Krogulskich, w Chomącu przy rodzicach zamieszkałą, lat dziewiętnaście mającą. Małżeństwo to poprzedziły trzy zapowiedzie w dniach dwudziestym drugim, dwudziestym dziewiątym Stycznia i piątym Lutego roku bieżącego w Kościele Parafialnym Gradzanowskim ogłoszone. Małżonkowie nowi oświadczają, iż umowy przedślubnej nie zawarli. Zezwolenie rodziców obojga nowozaślubionych, obecnych Aktowi małżeństwa ustnie oświadczone było. Obrząd ten religijny dopełwiony został przez miejscowego Kommendarza. Akt ten po odczytaniu przez nas został podpisany, Nowożeńcy i świadkowie pisać nie umieją. Xiądz Piotr Pawłowski Komm. Gradzanowski Utrzymający Akta Metryczne-Cywilne.”
Translation:

14. Chomęc. It happened in Gradzanowo on the thirteenth day of February, in the year one thousand eighteen hundred and sixty-five, at three o’clock in the afternoon. We hereby declare that in the presence of witnesses Damazy Uzdowski, a part land owner from Bojanowo, and Leon Kocięda, a farmer from Chomęc, both thirty-eight years old, on this day was celebrated a religious wedding between Antoni Nowicki, a young man born in Kroczewo, son of Maciej and Joanna, nee Ługowska, the spouses Nowicki, residing in Bojanówo with his parents, aged twenty years, and Jadwiga Agnieszka Krogulska, single, born in Łaczewo, daughter of Marcin and Katarzyna, nee Pawełkiewicz, the spouses Krogulski, residing in Chomęc with her parents, aged nineteen years. This marriage was preceded by three announcements made at the Gradzanowo parish church on the twenty-second and twenty-ninth days of January and the fifth day of February of this year. The new spouses declare that they have not entered into any prenuptial agreement. The consent of the parents of both newlyweds who were present at the ceremony was verbally declared. This religious rite was performed by the local magistrate. This document having been read was signed by us, since the Newlyweds and the witnesses, do not know how to write.
Rev. Piotr Pawłowski Komm. Gradzanowo Keeping Civil Metrical Files.

²I. 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 1 (Warsaw: W. Drukarni, I.J. Ałapina 1877), p. 272; digital image, Śląska Biblioteka Cyfrowa (https://www.sbc.org.pl/ : 19 March 2022).

³Ibid., p. 405, “Myślin-Kocewo.”

⁴Ibid., p. 299, “Kraszewo.”

⁵Roman Catholic Church (Radzanów, Mlawa, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Radzanowie, 1826-1909,” Akta Urodzonych w roku 1858, no. 100, Franciszek Nowicki; digital image, Metryki.GenBaza (https://metryki.genbaza.pl : 20 March 2022), image _M_1967.jpg, citing Archiwum Państwowe w Warszawie Oddział w Mławie.

⁶Roman Catholic Church (Dabrowa, Mlawa, Mazowieckie, Poland), “Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymsko-katolickiej Dabrowa k. Mlawy, 1826-1912,” 1875, marriages, no. 9, Andrzej Nowicki and Józef Maciejewska; digital image, Metryki.genealodzy.pl (https://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : 20 March 2022), Zespól: 0632/D- , image 008-009.jpg.

Genealogical Lost and Found

Published on March 8, 2022 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz4 Comments

When researching, I sometimes stumble across records that are out of place or badly indexed. I’m usually struck with a feeling of empathy for some poor researcher out there, looking for a particular historical record and being unable to find it, due to this error.

Lost to Posterity

I’ve been researching my husband’s Lewandowski ancestors lately, and was searching in Ancestry’s database, “New York, U.S., Death Index, 1852-1956,” for a death record for yesterday. Anyone researching this popular Polish surname in U.S. records is probably familiar with the plethora of phonetic variants that were adopted by immigrant Lewandowskis. I’ve found that wildcard searching is an effective strategy for locating all possible variants, such as Levanduski, Levindoski, Lavandeski, Levinduskee, etc. All of these variants follow the pattern, L?v?nd?sk*, where ? replaces one character, and * replaces one or more characters. You can even go one step further, and search for L*nd*sk*, in consideration of the fact that some versions of the surname might have retained the original w instead of the English phonetic equivalent, v. This will return results which include the original spelling, Lewandowski, as well as variants such as Lanvondoski, Lawndowski, Lewandorsky, etc. Due to the popularity of this surname, it should go without saying that you’ll want to confine your search to a particular place and time period, to avoid an overwhelming number of search results.

But what about that first letter, L? Frequently, in old documents, the cursive upper case L was mistaken for an S. If the indexer could not read the handwriting on the original document, then Lewandowski and related phonetic variants could be indexed under Sewandowski. In fact, a search in Ancestry’s Passenger Lists database for the exact surname Sewandowski, produces 86 results. And while this number may not seem huge, it might be significant if your ancestor is among those 86 passengers.

Could Sewandowski be an authentic surname? Not likely. A search of nearly 44 million records in Geneszukacz—the search portal for all the databases of the Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne (Polish Genealogical Society)—produces exactly one result for Sewandowski, which includes Lewandowski as an alternate transcription of the surname, provided by the indexer. If the “Sewandowski” surname does not exist in Polish records, chances are good that all of those 86 passengers should have been indexed as Lewandowski.

This brings me back to my search for a Lewandowski death record. Bearing in mind this L-to-S transcription issue, I repeated my search in the New York Death Index, this time for *nd?sk*. Behold, search results included this one for Fanny Sewandoska, shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: “Fanny Sewandoska” in the New York, U.S., Death Index, 1852-1956 *database*.

The entry appears with other S entries, so it’s evident that the mistake was made when the original, handwritten index was created from the death certificates. Since Ancestry permits the addition of alternate information to database entries, I added “Levandoska” as an alternate surname for Fanny. I’m not even going to hazard a guess as to the original Polish given name for “Fanny.” However, the fact that her surname was recorded in its feminine form, Levandoska, rather than Levandoski, suggests that she was probably an immigrant from Poland, since feminine surname endings were typically abandoned within a generation or two after immigration.

Found Treasures

Conversely, we sometimes encounter “bonus records,” tucked into record books for one reason or another, that become found treasures. Back in 2014, while perusing microfilmed records from Transfiguration parish in Buffalo, New York, I stumbled across this baptismal certificate, shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Certificate of Baptism for Stella Kapela, baptized at St. Stephen’s parish in Middleport, New York, tucked into the marriage register from Transfiguration parish in Buffalo. Image from FamilySearch.

The certificate was included as proof of baptism for a bride, Stella Kapela, who was married at Transfiguration church in 1911. The date on the certificate, 1943, was curious, since it was so much later than the records in the place where this certificate was tucked into the book. Perhaps Stella remarried in the parish in 1943? Her name, and her parents’ names, Jacob Kapela and Frances Kraczyk, meant nothing to me, but I did a double-take when I noticed that her godparents were Edward Levenduski and Veronica Lepkoski. Edward was my husband’s great-great-grandfather, and Veronica was the sister of Edward’s wife, Mary (Woźniak) Levanduski. St. Stephen’s church in Middleport is the parish in which my mother-in-law’s paternal grandparents married, and it’s a good 40 miles from Transfiguration. Seriously, what were the chances that I’d be reading through the baptisms in one parish, for an unrelated family, and find names I recognized from a parish 40 miles away?!

Although my first thought was that Stella must be a relative, a little digging suggested that she is not. Rather, I think it’s likely that her family was connected to my husband’s family simply because they were all Poles from the Prussian partition, and specifically from the Posen province. Maybe if I dig back a few more generations, something more concrete will emerge, but for now, I think it’s time to lay this aside and move onto other things.

That’s enough rabbit holes for one night!

©Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz 2022

Off the Beaten Path: Finding Vital Records in the Martin-Opitz-Bibliothek

Published on October 22, 2021 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz2 Comments

For most genealogists, vital records create the backbone of a family tree, so it’s important for us to be able to locate the ones we need for our research. As a general rule, those of us researching Polish ancestors expect to find vital records in local registry offices, parish offices, state archives, and diocesan archives. However, it’s important to remember that sometimes, we find them in libraries or other repositories that are further from the beaten path. Once such library that’s recently come onto my radar, thanks to a tip from my colleague in Germany, Marcel Elias, is the Martin-Opitz-Bibliothek, located in Herne, Germany.

Why Should I Care About This Library?

The Martin-Opitz-Bibliothek offers unique collections which can be accessed online, as well as those which must be accessed in person. As their website states,

“The collections of Martin-Opitz-Library, founded in 1948, cover the history and culture of Germans in East Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. An emphasis of the collection is the historical eastern provinces of Prussia. It is the largest scientific library of this kind in Germany.”

The library holds church books—both Roman Catholic and Protestant—as well as a few civil registers, for a number of locations that may be of interest to those researching Polish ancestors. Locations include places in Warmia-Masuria, Silesia, Pomerania, Greater Poland, Galicia, and Volhynia, and online collections include both digitized scans (original sources) as well as abstracts and transcriptions (derivative sources). Many of the transcripts are found in the 62-volume collection known as the Hipplersche Kirchenbücher (Hippler’s Church Books). Dr. Erich Hippler (1892–1969) made complete transcripts of all the baptisms, marriages and deaths recorded from a number of parishes in the northern Warmia area, which encompass the period from 1485–1882. In some cases, the original books no longer exist, making these transcripts invaluable as a genealogical resource.

In many cases, the collections found in the Martin-Opitz-Library are complementary to those found in other repositories. For example, Roman Catholic parish books for Samoklensk in Kreis Schubin, known today as Samoklęski Duże in gmina Szubin in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, are available in several collections which span the period from 1750–1830. These records predate the collections available from FamilySearch, which are images of original records held by the Archiwum Archidiecezjalne w Gnieźnie (Archdiocesan Archive in Gniezno) and include vital records from 1831–1951. (The end date of that collection is nominal; in practice, birth records are protected by Polish privacy laws for 100 years, and marriage and death records are protected for 80 years, which might explain why the more recent collections have not yet been digitized by FamilySearch.) For the parish of Giedlarowa in gmina Leżajsk, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in the former Galicia region, the Martin-Opitz library has a collection of baptisms from 1787–1827. In contrast, FamilySearch has no vital records for this parish, and the Archiwum Państwowe w Rzeszowie (state archive in Rzeszów) only has 19th-century records starting in 1852 (plus some 20th-century holdings). Although the Archidiecezjalne w Przemyślu (archdiocesan archive in Przemyśl) can often be counted on to have collections of Roman Catholic church books for parishes in this area, even they only have records for Giedlarowa dating back to 1826, at least according to the Ekstrakty Metrykalne w Archiwum Diecezjalnem Przemyskiem, which is an old catalog of the holdings of this archive created by Fr. Dr. Jan Kwolek and published in 1928. Besides the vital records, the Martin-Opitz-Library offers an interesting collection of postcards from Łódź with a focus on 20th-century images prior to World War I; a Galicia-German Archive, a collection focused on Volhynian Germans, assorted maps, and so much more.

Since this is a German library, you’re likely to find places referred to by their German names, and you may be wondering how to convert those names to their current Polish equivalents. There are two good options for that. The first is Kartenmeister, where you can search Uwe-Karsten Krickhahn’s database of locations according to their German names, and the results will include alternate names for each place in Polish, Russian, or Lithuanian. The second option is the Meyers Gazetteer, where you can search for a German place name, then view the results on the map, varying the transparency so that the default, historical map fades into the modern map, revealing the current place name.

How Do I Search the Holdings of This Library?

You’ll probably want to search both the digital offerings and also the library’s catalog. I found it worthwhile to browse to the genealogy collections from the main page, since that method permits a bit of an overview of some of the different collections along the way. The library’s homepage is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Homepage of the Martin-Opitz-Bibliothek.

Although the site offers options for English and Polish as well as German, those translation features are a little glitchy, as of this writing. For example, if you’re viewing a page other than the home page and you select “English,” the site kicks you back to the home page, rather than translating the current page. Nonetheless, if you click on “More Collections” (boxed in green), and then choose “Digitale Sammlungen” (digital collections), as shown in Figure 2, you can eventually get to the site’s “Familienforschung” (Genealogy) page.

Figure 2: The library’s Collections page. Digital collections are highlighted in the green box.

At any point during this process, you can always cheat and machine translate the page using Chrome as your browser. Right-click anywhere on the webpage, and the box shown above the blue arrow in Figure 3 will pop up, offering you the option to Translate to English. Alternatively, stick with German and click on “Familienforschung” (Genealogy), boxed in green, or browse first to some of those other collections that may be of interest.

Figure 3: Location of “Familienforschung” (Genealogy) in drop-down menu of digital collections.

Figure 4 shows the machine-translated version of the Genealogy page. You can also shortcut the process by navigating to this page directly.

Figure 4: The library’s “Familienforschung” (Genealogy) page, machine-translated to English.

Once you’re on the Genealogy page, you’ll probably want to view “Church records,” unless your ancestors happened to be from Reinswalde/Złotnik or Rogsen/Rogoziniec, both in Lubusz Voivodeship, or Zimdarse/Siemidarżno in West Pomeranian Voivodeship, as these are currently the only locations for which civil vital registrations are available online.

When you select “Church records” (or “Kirchenbücher,” if you’re continuing in the German original), you’ll have options to view the special collection of Hippler’s Church Books from the Warmia-Masuria region, Warmian church book films, or further parish registers. The Warmian church book films include digitized vital records from two locations, Mehlsack/Pieniezno in the present-day Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, and Tiefenau/Tychnowy in the Pomeranian Voivodeship. The further parish registers (“weitere Kirchenbücher”) consist of church books from 44 parishes (mostly Protestant) located throughout Poland today (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Subcategories within the Kirchenbücher collection, machine-translated into English.

Hippler’s Church Books and the Warmian church book films are really the highlight of this library’s digital offerings, in terms of vital records, because Dr. Hippler seemed to be intent on creating accurate transcriptions.

On Abstracts and Rabbit Holes: A Word of Caution

In contrast, one should exercise caution in using some of the books from the “weitere Kirchenbücher” (further parish registers). As an interesting example, I chose to examine the library’s collection of Roman Catholic church books, identified as being from Kazimierza Wielka from 1802–1845 (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Collection of church books from Kazimierza Wielka from the “weitere Kirchenbücher” (further parish registers) collection at the Martin-Opitz-Bibliothek.

This collection consists of typed abstracts of the church books, as well as a 109-page alphabetized index of the individuals whose vital events are recorded in those books. Apparently, these abstracts are not complete, but were created selectively, aimed at identifying individuals of German descent, so the record numbers are not continuous, going from 4 to 6 to 54 and 55, as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7: Abstract of births for 1827 from the Roman Catholic parish of Kazimierza Wielka, from the collection of the Martin-Opitz-Bibliothek.

Unfortunately, I hit a snag when I tried to find the original records that were abstracted here. Roman Catholic books from Kazimierza Wielka (located northeast of Kraków in the Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship) are digitized at GenBaza, which has images from the duplikat books (1810–1939), held by the state archive of Kielce (Archiwum Państwowe w Kielcach), as well as the unikat books (1690–1868) held by the diocesan archive in Kielce (Archiwum Diecezjalne w Kielcach). The duplikat books were created from the original church records (unikat) at the end of each year and stored in the archives of the district court, and for Kazimierza Wielka, many books from both the unikat and duplikat collections have survived. (More information on the practice of creating vital records books can be found here.) Unikat scans from the diocesan archive from 1690–1870 can also be found in Metryki, which makes them slightly more accessible than the scans in GenBaza since Metryki does not require a login. Moreover, records from Kazimierza Wielka are indexed at Geneteka (1670–1874).

With all those resources available online, it was easy to look up birth record number 4 from 1827 for Kazimierza Wielka from the unikat records of the diocesan archive in Kielce, and this is shown in Figure 8. That birth record was clearly not a birth record for Karoline Wilhelmine Emilie Bohr, as suggested by the typed abstract from Figure 7, but rather one for Błażej Czupierda, son of Kazimierz and Franciszka née Wrześniak.

Figure 8: Original church records from the *Archiwum Diecezjalne w Kielcach* for Kazimierza Wielka from 1827, showing birth record no. 4 with names of the parents and child underlined in red.

Figure 9 shows the duplikat version of this same record from the state archive in Kielce, and it, too, confirmed that the fourth birth recorded in 1827 in Kazimierza Wielka was that of Błażej Czupierda, not Karoline Wilhelmine Emilie Bohr.

Figure 9: Duplikat church records from the Archiwum Państwowe w Kielcach for Kazimierza Wielka in 1827, showing birth record no. 4 with the names of the parents and child underlined in red.

Since both of those original records agreed, the only logical explanation was that the parish had been misidentified. Mapa.szukacz.pl identifies 14 places within the borders of Poland today called Kazimierz. So which Kazimierz was the source of the abstracts held by the Martin-Opitz-Bibliothek?

Closer examination of the other abstracted records in Figure 7 revealed references to other local villages that were presumably located within the parish, such as Krzywiec in no. 54, Rąbień in no. 55, and “Konst.,” in no. 4, where Karoline Bohr herself was born. Already deep inside the rabbit hole, I checked out Krzywiec and Rąbień in Mapa.szukacz.pl. There’s only one Rąbień in Poland and it’s near Łódź. Similarly, there’s a village called Krzywiec near there, and “Konst.” must be Konstantynów Łódzki. Lo, and behold, “Kazimierza Wielka” must be Kazimierz, presently located in gmina Lutomiersk, within Pabianice County, Łódź Voivodeship (Figure 10).

Figure 10: Map showing location of the parish of Kazimierz and nearby villages mentioned in birth record abstracts shown in Figure 7. Google Maps.

Having come thus far, I felt the need to confirm this location by finding the scan of the birth record for Karoline Wilhelmine Emilie Bohr, which was available online at Metryki (Figure 11).

Figure 11: Birth record no. 4 from 1827 for Karolina Wilhelmina Emilia Bohr, baptized in the parish of Kazimierz, which is presently located in gmina Lutomiersk, Pabianice County, Łódź Voivodeship (Figure 10).

If nothing else, this exercise really underscored for me the richness and abundance of historical records that are now available online, thanks to the efforts of volunteers from Polish genealogical societies and Polish archives. It also underscored the need for careful evaluation and understanding of source material for genealogical research.

Using the Catalog of the Martin-Opitz-Bibliothek

As is true for most other libraries and archives, the digitized offerings available at the website of the Martin-Opitz-Bibliothek represent only a small fraction of their holdings. To see what else they have that might be relevant to one’s research, it’s necessary to check the catalog. This can be accessed from the search bar at the top (“Suchen und Finden”) of the home page shown in Figure 1. Since this is a German site, I like to use correct German spellings for my search terms, as a rule. However, the search engine does not seem to be particularly fussy about diacritics. A search for “Kirchenbucher” came up with the same 1,779 results as a search for “Kirchenbücher,” and a search for “Krakow” returned results for “Kraków.” One thing that does not seem to be readily available is a complete list of parishes for which the library holds original books, whether digitized or not. Most librarians and archivists are extremely helpful, however, so a quick email is probably all that will be required in order to confirm the availability of collections that may be of interest.

Knowing where to find collections of historical documents that are relevant (or potentially so) to our research is important for all genealogists, and sometimes those collections may be found in places that are a bit off the beaten path. Poland’s tumultuous history and changing borders can make it even more challenging to locate records, and metrical books can sometimes turn up in surprising places, after being hidden from—or confiscated by—invading armies. When in doubt, professional, onsite researchers can be invaluable allies in our quest to locate records. In cases where originals no longer exist, derivative sources can help fill in the blanks. However, it’s important to evaluate them carefully, making an effort to understand why they were created, and by whom, and what originals were used in their creation. Hopefully some of you readers will be able to find your ancestors in these records from the Martin-Opitz-Bibliothek. If you do, be sure to let me know in the comments. Happy researching!

On the Trail of Stanisław Majczyk!

Published on July 18, 2020July 18, 2020 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz3 Comments

It’s probably happened to all of us: you get an email from a DNA match, and your curiosity is piqued to figure out the match. Some may think of this kind of research as pursuit of a BSO (Bright Shiny Object); others may think of it as a serendipitous research prompt. Today, I’m thinking it’s the latter, because it was thanks to this kind of spontaneous, drop-everything-and-go-down-the-rabbit-hole research, that I broke through a brick wall and discovered a new generation of names in my husband’s ancestry.

The Party of the First Part

It all started when Karen Benson (whose name I’m using with her permission) wrote to me regarding DNA matches on Ancestry between her family and my family. Specifically, both Karen and her brother were matches to my husband (Bruce), and two of our sons, and she was hoping I might be interested in collaborating to determine precisely how our two families are related. Since Bruce’s family is of entirely Polish ethnicity, she suspected that the connection was through one of her Polish grandparents, Franciszek/Frank Kondzik or Antonina “Anna” (née Kocot) Kondzik, rather than through the Slovak side of her family.

Karen had obtained good evidence that both Frank and Antonina were from the same part of Poland; namely, the area around the town of Różan. To briefly summarize, Frank’s naturalization petition stated that he was born in “Rozan, Poland” circa 9 July 1883 (Figure 1), and on his World War II draft registration card, his birth was reported as 8 June 1883 in “Roziun, Poland” (Figure 2).

Figure 1: Extract from naturalization petition for Frank Kondzik with date and place of birth boxed in red.¹ Frank Kondzik declaration

Figure 2: Extract from Frank Kondzik’s World War II draft card with place and date of birth boxed in red.² Frank Kondzik WWII draft card

Those birth dates are reported to a degree of precision that was typical for Polish immigrants of this era, so it’s okay that they don’t match exactly. There’s only one place within the borders of Poland today called Różan (and no places called Rozuin), so the evidence is consistent so far, and we’re off to a good start. Although vital records from Różan are indexed in Geneteka, coverage doesn’t begin until 1897, so it’s not possible to find Franciszek’s birth record to confirm the location. However, this surname does exist in this parish, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Search result from Geneteka for birth records from Różan parish with surname Kondzik. “Inne nazwiska Kondzik” means that the father of the person whose birth record was indexed, Franciszka Kłendzik, was noted to go by an alternate surname, Kondzik, in addition to Kłendzik.

Kondzik in Geneteka

Unfortunately, a search of PRADZIAD (the vital records database of the Polish state archives), accessed through Szukajwarchiwach, indicates that no Roman Catholic civil birth records for Różan prior to 1897 are in the holdings of the Polish state archives. It may be that these early records are available onsite at the parish, or in the diocesan archive in Łomża, but for now, we’re at a standstill.

Although Frank’s naturalization declaration stated only that his wife’s name was Anna and that she was born in Poland, Karen had other evidence to help us locate Anna’s family in Polish records. The Social Security Death Index (SSDI) for Anna Kondzik provided her date of birth as 21 November 1890 and her date of death as 4 June 1992 (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Entry from SSDI for Anna Kondzik.³ Anna Kondzik SSDI

Her grave marker confirmed that this same “Anna” Kondzik was originally Antonina (Figure 5), and her entry in the Social Security Applications and Claims index provided her parents’ names as “Vincent Kocot” and “Rosalie Kacmarchek” (Figure 6).

Figure 5: Antonina Kondzik in Ancestry‘s Find-a-Grave index.⁴ Antonina Kondzik FAG

Figure 6: Anna Kondzik in the Social Security Applications and Claims Index.⁵ Anna Kondzik in SSA&C

Anna’s parents’ given names are translated, while her mother’s maiden name is transliterated, so we can expect that their names in Polish records will be Wincenty Kocot and something along the lines of Rozalia Kaczmarczak.

Anna/Antonina’s passenger manifest is the final clue needed to locate her family in Polish records. According to the manifest, 20-year-old Antonina Koczot [sic] was a Polish immigrant from Russia. (If you’re puzzled as to why a Pole might be living in Russia in this era, this might help.) She departed from the port of Hamburg in 1913, leaving behind her father, “Vincenti Kocot” in their home village of “Dusababa,” transcribed by Ancestry as Busababa (Figure 7). There’s no place in Poland today or within Polish borders historically that was called Dusababa or Busababa, but the village of Dyszobaba is a good fit, phonetically—and as a bonus, it’s located just north of the town of Różan, where Anna’s husband Frank was born (Figure 8).

Figure 7: Extract from passenger manifest for Antonina Koczot.⁶ Antonina Kocot manifest

Figure 8: Map courtesy of Google Maps, showing relative locations of Dyszobaba and Różan, presently located in the Mazowieckie province of Poland.

The Słownik Geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich [Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and Other Slavic Lands] informs us that the village of Dyszobaba belonged to the Roman Catholic parish in Sieluń, which appears north of Dyszobaba on the map in Figure 8, so we’ll need to start with parish records from Sieluń in order to find records of Antonina’s family.⁷

Birth records from Sieluń circa 1890 when Antonina Kocot was born are not indexed in Geneteka. Nonetheless, a quick search in the database reveals a number of marriage records for children of Wincenty Kocot and Rozalia Kaczmarczyk (Figure 9).

Figure 9: Results of a search in Geneteka for marriage records from Sieluń with parents’ names Kocot and Kacz*, searching as a pair. Wincenty and Rozalia's kids

The Party of the Second Part

Now that we’ve got a good handle on the region in Poland where both of Karen’s Polish grandparents were from, the question remains as to how they might be connected to Bruce’s family. Since this part of Poland was under Russian control throughout most of the 19th century, my first thought was that the connection must lie within one of Bruce’s family lines which also originated in Russian Poland. The majority of his immigrant Polish ancestors were from Prussian Poland, leaving only three immigrants from the Russian partition for us to consider: Michał Szczepankiewicz, Stanisław Skolimowski, and Helena Majczyk. Michał’s family was from Kleczew and other parishes in what is now Konin County, Wielkopolska—not especially close to the Różan area. Helena Majczyk was born in Rostowa, a village belonging to the parish in Gradzanowo Kościelne, and Stanisław Skolimowski was born in Garlino-Komunino, a village belonging to the parish in Grudusk. These places are shown on the map in Figure 10.

Figure 10: Map courtesy of Google Maps, showing locations of Bruce’s ancestral parishes relative to Karen’s. Map of Bruce's villages relative to Rozan

Since Grudusk is a little less than 40 miles from Sieluń, I thought perhaps the Skolimowski family was the key. However, as I wrote recently, the deeper roots of Stanisław Skolimowski’s father, Tadeusz, lay in Boleszyn, a village located in Prussian Poland, rather than in the Grudusk area. Maybe then the match was through Stanley Skolimowski’s mother, Marianna Kessling? Could be, but what about those Majczyk lines? It occurred to me that, if the shared DNA came from the Majczyk side, I’d never know, because my research into Bruce’s Majczyk ancestors was fairly shallow. I’d only gotten as far as the marriage record for his great-great-grandparents, Stanisław Majczyk and Aniela Nowicka, who were the parents of his immigrant great-grandmother, Helena (née Majczyk) Skolimowska, when I hit a snag. The marriage record is shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11: Marriage record from the parish of Gradzanowo Kościelne for Stanisław Majczyk and Aniela Nowicka, 17 September 1888.⁸ Stanislaw Majczyk and Aniela Nowicka

The record is in Russian, and states in translation,

“Rostowa and Bojanowo. It happened in the village of Gradzanowo on the fifth/seventeenth day of September in the year one thousand eight hundred eighty eight at seven o’clock in the afternoon. We declare that—in the presence of witnesses, Jan Woźniak, homeowner [хозяин], age forty-four years, of the village of Bojanowo, and Paweł Krogulski, homeowner, age forty-five years, of the village of Gradzanowo Kościelne—on this day a religious marriage was performed between Stanisław Majczyk, bachelor, reserve soldier, twenty-seven years of age, born in the village of Bronisze and residing in the village of Rostowa as a homeowner; son of Józef and the late Katarina née Smiadzinska, the spouses Majczyk; and Aniela Nowicka, single, nineteen years of age, born in the village of Bojanowo and residing there with her parents, homeowners; daughter of Antoni and his wife Jadwiga, née Krogulska, the spouses Nowicki. This marriage was preceded by three announcements before the assembled people on Sundays here in the parish on the seventh/nineteenth [and] fourteenth/twenty-sixth days of August, and the twenty-first day of August/ second day of September of the current year. The newlyweds stated that they contracted a prenuptial agreement with the notary of the town of Sierpc, Domagalski, on the twenty-second day of August/third day of September of the current year, [document] number six hundred sixty-fourth. Permission of the father of the bride, present in person at the marriage ceremony, was given orally. The religious ceremony of marriage was performed by Us. This document was read to the illiterate newlyweds and witnesses and was signed by Us only. [signed] Civil Registrar, Administrator of Gradzanowo Parish, Fr. Julian Kaczyński.”

The Snag

The part underlined in red states, “урожденномъ въ деревни Бронишъ,” and a bit further down, his mother’s maiden name is written as “Смядзинской.” We’ll revisit that maiden name later, but the first bit translates as “born in the village of Bronisz.” That’s all we get, “born in the village of Bronisz,” before the priest continues by telling us where Stanisław was residing at the time of his marriage, and who his parents were. Normally when the bride or groom was born in a village that was in a different parish from the one in which the marriage was being conducted, the priest would note the parish that the birthplace was in. Similarly, if the birthplace was in a different partition (e.g. Kingdom of Prussia or Kingdom of Austria) that would also be noted. No such clues were provided in this record, however, so we’re left to fend for ourselves when it comes to figuring out where Stanisław Majczyk was born.

Since there’s no place in Poland called Bronisz, it’s probable that the village of Bronisze was meant. The Skorowidz Królestwa Polskiego, a gazetteer of places in Russian Poland published in 1877, informs us that there were two such places in Russian Poland (Figure 12).

Figure 12: Extract from the Skorowidz Królestwa Polskiego showing entries for Bronisze.⁹Column headings are place name, gubernia (province), powiat (county), gmina (administrative level comparable to a township), and parish.

The two candidates for the parish in which Stanisław Majczyk’s baptismal record might be found are Żbików and Karniewo, and neither one is especially close to Gradzanowo. Could I have mistranslated the place name? Figuring that a second pair of eyes couldn’t hurt, I ran my translation of the place name past a Polish genealogy colleague, and he read it as Bronisze as well.

I set off to find a birth record for Stanisław Majczyk circa 1861 in records from one of these parishes. I first discovered that marriage record back in August 2014, and at that time, according to my research notes, Karniewo records were online at Metryki GenBaza, but only for a very limited range of years (1884; 1890-1912). Zbików, however, had records online from 1808-1912. I checked birth records from Zbików between 1857–1864 for a baptismal record for Stanisław Majczyk, to no avail. Not only was there no record of Stanisław’s birth, the Majczyk surname did not even appear in the parish records. There were some Maciaks and Marczaks in the parish, but no Majczyks. I took this to mean that he was probably born in Karniewo, and I commented in my research notes that records for Karniewo from 1775-1890 were at the diocesan archive in Płock, along with some earlier records from the 1600s. I wrote to that archive back in September 2014 and never received a reply. (Presently, those records from the diocesan archive in Płock are digitized and available at FamilySearch.) In the meantime, I busied myself with other research, and pretty much forgot about poor Stanisław Majczyk—until Karen wrote to me about that DNA match.

Geneteka to the Rescue, Again!

As I pondered the match, I realized that six years is a long time in the world of internet genealogy, and there are many more scans and indexed records online now, than there were back in 2014, when I first discovered Stanisław Majczyk’s marriage record and hit the snag with Bronisze. Birth records for Żbików are now indexed in Geneteka from 1808–1914, with just a few gaps, and a quick search confirmed my earlier findings: no Majczyks in general, and no Stanisław in particular. That left Karniewo, which also happens to be in Maków County—the same county in which Różan and Dyszobaba are located! That seemed to be a promising sign that things were moving in the right direction toward figuring out this DNA match. Karniewo is also indexed now, with an uninterrupted chunk of birth records from 1843–1875, so I eagerly repeated the search for Stanisław in that parish and found…nada. What the heck? I opened up the search to all indexed parishes in the Mazowieckie province and searched for Stanisław Majczyk, born between 1857–1866…and there it was, in all its glory, the birth record for my husband’s great-great-grandfather! (Figure 13)

Figure 13: Search result from Geneteka for a birth record for Stanisław Majczyk, born in any indexed parish in Mazowieckie province between 1857–1866.

Quite honestly, this one would have been tough to find using old-school methodology, but the index entry states that he was born in 1860, father’s name Józef, and mother’s name Katarzyna, as expected. The mother’s maiden name, Radzińska, is in the same phonetic ballpark as Smiadzinska, if we assume that Fr. Julian Kaczyński was a little hard of hearing. The hypothesis that Fr. Kaczyński was either hard of hearing, or a bit careless, or perhaps tired and overworked, is supported by the fact that Stanisław was actually born in Bromierz, not Bronisze. And apparently this problem plagued the parish priest in Rogotwórsk, as well, because another search for additional children born to Józef and Katarzyna, no maiden name specified, produced yet another variation of her maiden name (Figure 14).

Figure 14: Search result from Geneteka for children of Józef and Katarzyna Majczyk baptized in Rogotwórsk parish. Majczyk siblings

Birth records for two of Stanisław’s siblings, Jan Majczyk and Marianna Majczyk, report their mother’s maiden name as Śledzieńska, rather than Radzińska, which is somewhat closer to the “Smiadzinska” version recorded on the marriage record. The best part is that when we click over to the “Marriages” tab, Józef and Katarzyna’s own marriage record has been indexed, which provides the names of their parents—another generation back in the family tree! (Figure 15)

Figure 15: Search results in Geneteka for marriage records mentioning Józef Majczyk and Katarzyna in Rogotwórsk parish. Jozef and Katarzyna Majczyk marriage

Coming Full Circle

I’ll have a lot of fun researching all these new Majczyks in a brand-new parish in the coming days and weeks, but there’s a bit of irony here. None of these new Majczyk discoveries are likely to help me determine how Bruce and his DNA match, Karen, are related. Although I initially approached the DNA match from the angle of historical records, reasoning that the match was most likely through Bruce’s Russian-partition ancestors since Karen’s immigrant Polish ancestors were from the Różan area in Russian Poland, there was a very basic step I should have taken first. Both of Bruce’s parents have contributed DNA samples for autosomal testing, so what I should have done was first checked to see which of his parents was also a match to Karen and her brother. When I went back and did that, after my heady, rapid progress on the Majczyk line, I realized that Karen and her brother are a match to my mother-in-law, not my father-in-law.

None of my mother-in-law’s immigrant ancestors came from the Russian partition, at least as far back as I’ve managed to research each line. They were all from Prussian Poland. The joke’s on me, I guess! Shared matches suggest that the match is through Bruce’s maternal Bartoszewicz line, which is another line I’ve been neglecting to research due to time constraints. However, preliminary research in U.S. records point to origins in the vicinity of Toruń, some 225 km/140 miles from Karen’s ancestral area of Różan, so this match will definitely take some time and research to figure out.

Even though progress toward understanding the DNA match has currently left me with more questions than answers, I’d say this was a worthwhile rabbit hole to go down, after all. It led to the parish of Rogotwórsk, Stanisław Majczyk’s birth record, and abundant new discoveries to further my understanding of Bruce’s Majczyk ancestry. I’ll take it!

Sources:

¹Frank Kondzik, declaration of intention for naturalization no. 125740 (10 September 1928); imaged in “Pennsylvania, Federal Naturalization Records, 1795–1931,” database and images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 18 July 2020), citing Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685–2009; National Archives at Philadelphia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Record Group 21, no specific roll cited.

²“U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942,” digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 18 July 2020), Frank G. (only) Kondzik, serial no. U-2382, no order no., Draft Board 23, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; citing World War II Draft Cards (Fourth Registration) for the State of Pennsylvania, State Headquarters ca. 1942, NARA microfilm publication M1951; no specific roll cited.

³“U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935–2014,” database, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 18 July 2020), entry for Anna Kondzik, 1992, SS no. 161-50-9266; citing “U.S. Social Security Administration, Death Master File, database (Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, ongoing).”

⁴“U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s–current,” database, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 18 July 2020), entry for Antonina Kondzik (1890–1992), citing memorial page 62609270, originally created by Margaret Janco; citing Saint Mary’s Cemetery, Lower Burrell, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, USA; maintained by Karen Benson (contributor 49425389).

⁵“U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936–2007,” database, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 18 July 2020), entry for Anna Kondzik, 1992, SS no. 161-50-9266; citing U.S. Social Security Administration, Numerical Identification (NUMIDENT) Files, 1936 – 2007, NARA Record Group 47.

⁶Manifest, SS Pretoria, arriving 23 May 1913, p 185, line 20, Antonina Koczot; imaged as “New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (Including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820–1957,” database with images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 18 July 2020); citing National Archives microfilm publication T715, 8892 rolls, no specific roll cited.

⁷Filip 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 II, 258, “Dyszobaba,” DIR—Zasoby Polskie (http://dir.icm.edu.pl/pl/ : 18 July 2020).

⁸“Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej Gradzanowo 1873-1907,” 1888, Małżeństwa, no. 36, marriage record for Stanisław Majczyk and Aniela Nowicka, accessed as browsable images, Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki.genealodzy.pl: Projekt indeksacji metryk parafialnych (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl/ : 18 July 2020), Zespół 0619/D, citing 76/619/0 Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Gradzanowie, Archiwum Państwowe w Warszawie Oddział w Mławie [Mława Branch, State Archive of Warsaw].

⁹I. 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 1 (Warsaw: W. Drukarni, I.J. Ałapina 1877), p 55, “Bronisze,” digital images, Śląska Biblioteka Cyfrowa (https://www.sbc.org.pl/ : 18 July 2020).

Down the Rabbit Hole

Published on May 5, 2019May 6, 2019 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz3 Comments

As genealogy researchers, we often stumble upon interesting historical tidbits while researching other things. Since time for research and writing is limited, I do my best not to let my curiosity take me too far down the rabbit hole into further exploration of those individuals or events. Yet sometimes, those individuals stay with me, returning to my thoughts every now and then, so I decided to write about two of them today.

Lament for a Nameless Child

The first item I’d like to share is a death certificate I discovered recently while reviewing the entry for Thomas Coyle on the same page. Number 2827, bordered in red on the image below, is the death certificate for an unnamed child from Nepean township, Carleton County, Ontario.¹ Records on this page were erroneously described in the FamilySearch catalog as being from the city of Toronto, some 400 km away. Nameless Child Death Certificate

The death record is for an unnamed baby girl who died on 7 June 1896 having lived for just a few minutes. As was typical for civil death records from Canada in this era, no parents’ names were required on the form, so her identity may be lost to the descendants of any siblings she may have had. Her cause of death was noted to be “difficult parturition,” meaning she died as a result of some trauma from her birth. The informant was her father, who was a resident of City View, which is a neighborhood formerly located in Nepean, which is now located in Ottawa.

As family historians, we often think in terms of preserving the stories of those who have gone before us. Stories like this one, of lives ended before they’d even begun, always make me sad. Perhaps there’s a genealogist out there somewhere who’s researching a family from Nepean, wondering about that gap in the births of the children, noting that there should have been another baby born circa 1896. Or maybe that genealogist has already discovered a Catholic burial record which identifies the parents for this little one, so this civil death record is just one more piece of evidence to document a life cut short. In an era when infant mortality was so much higher than it is today, it’s quite possible that her parents had already lost children prior to the death of this baby girl, yet losses like this aren’t something one ever forgets. I hope that her parents and any siblings found some measure of peace in this life after her death, and as a person of faith, I also hope that the souls of all the family are reunited in the joy of the next life.

A Cinderella Story

The second historical tidbit is this 1891 baptismal record for Cinderella Maria Howe, found in the records of St. Stephen’s parish in Middleport, Niagara County, New York.² I stumbled across it one day last year when researching my husband’s Lewandowski/Levanduski ancestors (there’s a baptismal record for Joseph Levanduski on the preceding page). Cinderella Baptism

The record is in Latin, and it states that Cinderella Maria Howe was baptized on 15 August 1891, and that she was the daughter of Morgan L. Jones and Elizabeth White. Godparents were Maria Butler and Daniel Hurlihan. All of this is pretty standard, apart from the uncommon given name, but what really intrigued me was the fact that Cinderella was 62 years old at the time of her baptism, having been born on 13 February 1829.

Although people can get baptized into the Roman Catholic faith at any age, infant baptism is common practice. So if one is researching ancestors that one knows or suspects were Catholic, one might expect to find a baptismal record within a year or so after birth, not 62 years later. A researcher investigating the family of Cinderella (née Jones) Howe would have absolutely no reason to go looking for her baptism in these records, in this time period, unless there were an oral family tradition which stated that Cinderella was baptized as a Catholic late in life. Moreover, since these church records from St. Stephen’s are not presently indexed online, this record can only be found by browsing through the digital images, page by page, or by visiting the parish. (More information on finding such unindexed scans at FamilySearch can be found here.)

Quick searches on Ancestry and FamilySearch reveal quite a lot of “low-hanging fruit” in the form of easily-found documents that can further inform us about the life of Cinderella Howe, but this baptismal record was not cited in any of the family trees I reviewed that mention Cinderella. This is perhaps unsurprising in light of the factors already discussed. One wonders what the factors were that inspired her to convert to Catholicism at the age of 62. As a widow who had buried her husband a few years previously, was she merely pondering her own mortality, and felt drawn to the Catholic faith? Were there other family members who converted as well? Perhaps these questions will one day be answered by one of her descendants. In the meantime, I need to climb back out of the rabbit hole and get back to my own genealogy projects. Those dead ancestors aren’t going to research themselves.

Sources:

¹“Ontario Deaths, 1869–1937, and Overseas Deaths, 1939–1947,” database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org: 4 May 2019), no. 002827, register entry for Not named, died 7 June 1896 in Nepean, Carleton, Ontario, Canada, accessed as browsable images, path: Deaths > 1896 > no 1001-6523 > image 579 of 1466.

²Roman Catholic Church, St. Stephen’s parish (Middleport, Niagara, New York, USA), “Church records, 1878-1917,” database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org: 4 May 2019), Baptisms, 1891, p. 35, unnumbered entries, Cinderella Maria Howe, baptized 15 August 1891, accessed as browsable images, image 23 of 154.