Surnames – Page 12 – From Shepherds and Shoemakers

The Walsh family of St. Catharines in the Parish Census

Published on October 27, 2016September 23, 2021 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz1 Comment

Recently, I wrote about census records in Poland, and the kinds of census records one might find. One type of census record that I mentioned is called the status animarum in Latin, and it’s a parish census that the pastor would conduct annually as he took stock of his parishioners’ spiritual well-being. These types of censuses were conducted throughout the Catholic Church, not just in Poland. Some of them happen to be available online — namely, parish census records from the Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria in St. Catharines, Ontario, which was the home parish of my Walsh ancestors.

Meet the Walshes

The featured photo is a copy of an old tintype photo of four generations of the Walsh family, circa 1905. On the far left is Elizabeth (née Hodgkinson) Walsh (1818-1907), my great-great-great-grandmother, and on the far right is her son (my great-great-grandfather), Henry Walsh (1847-1907). Next to Henry is his oldest daughter, Marion (née Walsh) Frank (1878-1954), and next to her is her daughter, Alice Marion Frank. The image was cleaned up a bit courtesy of Jordan Sakal in the Genealogists’ Photo Restoration Group on Facebook.

The Walshes were an interesting bunch. My great-great-great-grandfather, Robert Walsh (1808-1881), was a Roman Catholic immigrant from Ireland to Canada who arrived some time before 1840 and worked as a tailor. Around 1840, he married Elizabeth Hodgkinson (1818-1907), an Anglican native of Ontario, and a granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Loyalists. Census records show that Robert and Elizabeth had 9 children: B. Maria, James George (later known as George James), Henry, Mary Ann, Robert, Elizabeth, Ellen (also known as Nellie), Thomas J. (baptized as John), and Joseph P. (baptized as Peter Joseph). Unfortunately, baptismal records have only been discovered for three of these: Elizabeth, Thomas J., and Joseph P., all of whom were baptized in the Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria. It’s likely that their parents were married there as well. The parish was certainly in existence circa 1840 when the Walshes were married, but unfortunately, early records were destroyed when an arsonist burned down the original wooden church in 1842.¹ No one seems to know what became of the records created after the fire, between 1842 and 1851. The earliest records that have survived date back to 1852 (baptisms and marriages only). Apparently, duplicate copies of the parish registers were never made, and neither the parish itself, nor the archives for the dioceses of Toronto (to which the parish belonged before 1958) or St. Catharines (to which the parish belonged after 1958) is in possession of any records from before 1852.^2,3,4

As is evident from the list of their children’s names, the Walsh family had a propensity for switching first and middle names, and they also used variations of their surname indifferently, appearing as Walsh, Welsh, and Welch. One example of this can be seen in Figures 1 and 2, which show the grave marker that Elizabeth Walsh shares with her husband and youngest son (Joseph P), in comparison with her newspaper death notice.

Figure 1: Walsh monument in Victoria Lawn Cemetery for Robert, Elizabeth, and youngest son Joseph P. Walsh. The inscription for Elizabeth reads, “Elizabeth/Wife of/Robert Walsh/Died/Jan. 1, 1907/Aged 89 Years/Rest in Peace.” Photo courtesy of Carol Roberts Fischer.

Although the name appears as “Walsh” on the family monument, both her newspaper death notice⁵ and her death certificate⁶ report her name as Elizabeth Welch (Figure 3):

Figure 2: Death notice from the Buffalo Evening News for Elizabeth Welch, 3 January 1907.⁵

With so much variation in spellings of names, and with a surname that is so common to start with, particularly in St. Catharines, which was home to a large Irish immigrant population, one must proceed with caution when examining any records that might potentially pertain to this family. Canadian census records, city directories, and church records all show a number of different Walsh, Welsh and Welch families which may or may not be related to my own. This parish census collection was no exception.

Identifying the Walsh Family in the Parish Census

Once I started searching the parish census, it didn’t take long to find this record (Figure 4):

Figure 4: Walsh family in the 1885-1886 Status Animarum for St. Catherine of Alexandria parish, St. Catharines, Ontario.

This shows a Mrs. Walsh with sons Thomas and Robert. Not a lot of information to go on, but I’m sure these are mine, for several reasons. First, Mr. Walsh is not mentioned, consistent with the fact that the census is from 1885-1886 and “my” Robert Walsh died in 1881. Second, the entries on this page all seem to be families living on Lake Street, which is where my Walshes were listed on several city directories as having residence (Figure 5):⁷

Figure 5: “Welch” entries in St. Catharines City Directory, 1877-78.⁷

The above entries for “Welch” include Robert, a merchant tailor, and his sons, Henry, a teamster, and Robert, Jr., who was co-owner of the “Rogers and Welch” livery service, all living at 34 Lake Street. This is consistent with the parish census, which indicates that the mother, “Mrs. Walsh,” is (or was) a tailor. The fact that the word “tailor” is crossed out may suggest a correction made by the priest, due to the fact that her late husband was a tailor but she herself was living as a dependent of her sons at that point. Thomas was originally recorded as being occupied in the livery business, but this, too, is crossed out, and corrected to “tailor.” The second son, Robert, is recorded as being employed in the livery business, consistent with the information from the city directory.

The family’s religious observance is recorded in the next column with Elizabeth being described as “careless” in her Mass attendance, while her sons were apparently not practicing. Perhaps by way of explanation, the priest noted in the final column that she was “a convert” and added, “three mixed marriages: James — Main Street/Henry Lake Street/Mrs. Divine at Henry’s.” This notation points to the other ecumenical marriages in the family at that time: Elizabeth’s son, James George married Jane Lawder, a Protestant; her son Henry married Martha Agnes Dodds, also Protestant, and daughter Ellen (“Nellie”) married Charles DeVere (recorded here as “Divine”). On the preceding page in the book, we find the family of Henry Walsh (Figure 6):

Figure 6: Henry Walsh family in the 1885-1886 Status Animarum for St. Catherine of Alexandria parish, St. Catharines, Ontario.

Henry Walsh is listed as a carter here, consistent with other sources which stated his occupation as teamster. His wife’s name is not stated here, but his wife, Martha Agnes Dodds, was Protestant. The child living with them, “Maud,” is noted to be 8 years old and attending day school. This suggests that “Maud” is their oldest daughter, Marion, who was born in 1878. It’s unclear why none of their other children are mentioned, since Henry and Martha’s daughters Clara and Katherine were born in 1880 and 1883, respectively. The other couple living with them, “Chas. Divine and Mrs. Divine,” are undoubtedly Henry’s sister, Ellen “Nellie” and her husband, Charles DeVere, also known as Charles Dolphin or Charles Dolfin. Although this is another fine example of variant surname spellings run amuck, their civil marriage record (Figure 7) shows that the groom was Protestant and the bride was Catholic, consistent with the notation about a “mixed marriage” on the parish census record.

Figure 7: Civil marriage record for Nellie Welch and Charles Dolphin

Although the original parish census entry for “Mrs. Walsh” mentioned the family of James Walsh, living on Main Street, there is no corresponding entry for this family in the parish census book, nor was Main Street listed as an address for any families in the census book. It’s possible that these addresses would have belonged to another parish in St. Catharines since there were several Catholic parishes in St. Catharines by the mid-1880s.

Parish census records are unlikely to provide any earth-shattering new data in areas in which other census records survive. Nonetheless, they may offer some useful insights to add to our understanding of our families within their local communities. If you have Catholic ancestors from St. Catharines, be sure to check out this collection to see what you might find!

Sources

¹“Roman Catholic Diocese of Saint Catharines.” Wikipedia. Accessed October 21, 2016. https://www.wikipedia.org/.

²Price, Rev. Brian. Archives of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kingston. E-mail message to author. July 7, 2016.

³Sweetapple, Lori. Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto. E-mail message to author, July 11, 2016.

⁴Wilson-Zorzetto, Liz. Archives of the Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Catharines. E-mail message to the author, July 14, 2016.

⁵Death notice for Elizabeth Welch, January 3, 1907, http://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html, Buffalo Evening News, Buffalo, New York, online images.

⁶Buffalo, Erie, New York, Death Certificates, 1907, #198, record for Elizabeth Welch.

⁷Leavenworth, E.S., ed. “Welch” in Directory of St. Catharines, Thorold, Merriton, and Port Dalhousie, for 1877-78. St. Catharines: Leavenworth, 1877. 79.

Overview of Vital Records in Poland: Part III: Additional Examples and Observations

Published on October 1, 2016 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz2 Comments

In my previous two posts, I gave some historical background about the evolution of vital records keeping in Poland, and about the implications of those practices for researchers today, seeking records of their ancestors. Today, I’d like to provide some examples of the kinds of records you might expect to see from the various partitions and from different time periods, to give you an idea of what you might expect to encounter in your own research.

Examples from Prussian Poland

I’ll start off with a couple of examples from the Prussian partition, and a little confession: Although my husband has ancestors from Prussian Poland, and although I have every intention of researching those ancestors at some point, I haven’t done much research in this area yet. Therefore, I don’t have a huge wealth of examples to offer, but here are a couple. Figure 1 shows a Catholic baptismal record from 1858 for Stanislaus (Stanisław in Polish) Lewandoski,¹also known as Edward Levanduski, my husband’s great-great-grandfather, about whom I wrote previously.

Figure 1: Baptismal record from Gąsawa parish for Stanislaus Lewandoski [sic], born 29 October 1859.¹ stanislaus-lewandowski-1859-p-1-crop

The record is in columnar form, and column headings, from left to right, tell us the number of the birth record, the year, day and month of the birth, the place of birth, date of baptism and child’s name, the name of the priest who baptized the child, the parents’ names, father’s occupation, and then additional information on godparents’ names (cut off in this image). The record is written in Latin. Unfortunately, no information is given on the parents’ ages.

Figures 2a and 2b show a civil marriage record from Kucharki from 1890 for my husband’s great-great-grandparents, Augustyn and Agnieszka Drajem.²

Figure 2a: Civil marriage record from Kucharki for August Drajem and Agnieszka Jamrozik, 1 February 1890, p. 1.² august-draheim-and-agnieszka-jamrozik-1890-p-1

Figure 2b: Civil marriage record from Kucharki for August Drajem and Agnieszka Jamrozik, 1 February 1890, p. 2.² augustyn-draheim-and-agnieszka-jamrozik-1890-p-2

As we would expect, the record is in German, and the translation, kindly provided by Johann Kargl in the Facebook group “Genealogy Translations,” is as follows:

“Kucharki 1st February 1890
1. Before the undersigned registrar appeared the farm servant August Draheim, personally known, Catholic, born on 25 July 1866 in Mielno, county Mogilno, living in Kucharki, son of the deceased master tailor Josef Draheim and his wife Marianne, nee Kaszynska, living in America
2. the unmarried maiden Agnes Jamrozik, personally known, Catholic, born on 9 January 1865 in Kucharki, county Kleschen, living in Kucharki, daughter of the innkeeper Johann Jamrozik and his wife Rosalie, nee Juszczak, living in Kucharki.
As witnesses appeared:
3. The innkeeper Jakob Tomalak, personally known, 60 yers old, living in Kucharki
4. the innkeeper Adalbert (Wojciech) Szlachetka, personally known, 48 years old, living in Kucharki
…
read, approved and signed
August Draheim Agnieszka Draheim, nee Jamrozik
Jakob Tomalak
Wojciech Szlachetka
The registrar
signed Grzegorzewski

Kucharki, 8 February 1890
(signature)”

Notice that the record was created on a fill-in-the-blank form, with all the standard boilerplate text preprinted, so translating these civil records becomes a matter of learning to read a relatively small amount of German script. In contrast to the brief church book entry, this record contains a lot of wonderful genealogical details, including the precise birthdate and birth place of the bride and groom, occupations and ages of the witnesses, and more.

For those of you who might be panicking and thinking, “But I can’t read German!” help is on the way. The very best translation guides that I have found for genealogy are written by Jonathan D. Shea and William F. Hoffman. Their “In Their Words” series of genealogical translation guides encompasses 3 volumes to date, Volume I: Polish, Volume II: Russian, and Volume III: Latin. Volume IV: German is currently in the works and will hopefully be out very soon. I cannot praise these books highly enough. These are the books that are constantly lying around the house, never making it back to the bookshelf, because I’m always referring to one or another of them for something. I can’t wait for their German book to be published so I can learn to read these records for myself. In the meantime, there’s always the Genealogy Translations group on Facebook, if you (or I) need assistance.

Examples from Russian Poland

In Russian Poland, the standard Napoleonic format existed from 1808-1825, followed by a modified format that was used from 1826 through the 20th century. So a civil death record from 1936 (Figure 3) looks much the same as a civil death record from 1838 (Figure 4).

Figure 3: Death record from Budy Stare for Marianna Zielińska who died 4 April 1936.³ marianna-zielinska-death-1936

Translation: “Budy Stare. It happened in Młodzieszyn on the 4th day of April 1936 at 8:00 in the morning. They appeared, Stanisław Wilanowski, age 40, farmer of Mistrzewice, and Kazimierz Tomczak, farmer of Juliopol, age 26, and stated that, on this day today, at 5:00 in the morning, in Budy Stare, died Marianna née Kalota Zielińska, widow, age 79, born and residing with her sister in Budy Stare, daughter of the late Roch and Agata née Kurowska, farmers. After visual confirmation of the death of Marianna Zielińska, this document was read aloud to the witnesses but signed only by us. Pastor of the parish of Młodzieszyn actiing as Civil Registrar.”

Figure 4: Death record from Kowalewo-Opactwo for Wojciech Grzeszkiewicz [aka Grzesiak], who died 25 April 1838.⁴ Wojciech Grzeszkiewicz death.jpg

Translation: “Kowalewo. It happened in the village of Kowalewo on the 15th/27th day of April 1838 at 10:00 in the morning. They appeared, Stanisław Grzeszkiewicz, shepherd, age 31, father of the deceased, and Jan Radziejewski, land-owning farmer, age 40, both of Kowalewo, and stated to us that, on the 13th/25th of the current month and year, at 4:00 in the afternoon, died in Kowalewo, likewise born there in house number two, Wojciech Grzeszkiewicz, son of the aforementioned Stanisław and Jadwiga née Dąbrowska, having one year of age. All persons mentioned in this Act are of the Catholic religion. After visual confirmation of the death of Wojciech, this document was read aloud to the witnesses and was signed.”

Since records from all villages within a parish were kept in the same book in Russian Poland, we see the name of the village where the event took place inscribed in the margin, next to the record number. So in Figure 4, the death occurred in Budy Stare, but was recorded by the priest in the Catholic parish in Młodzieszyn. When you compare the translations of these two records, you see that there’s not much difference in the format. It’s pretty stable across 102 years and 120 miles in these examples. That’s even true during the period from about 1868 until 1918, when records from Russian Poland were required to be kept in Russian. Take a look at this death record from Mistrzewice in 1897, for my 3x-great-grandmother, Antonina (née Ciećwierz) Grzegorek (Figure 5):⁵

Figure 5: Death record from Mistrzewice for Antonina Grzegorek, who died 21 March 1897.⁵ antonina-grzegorek-death-1897-crop

Translation: “Mistrzewice. It happened in the village of Mistrzewice on the 11th/23rd day of March 1897th year at 12:00 at noon. They appeared, Józef Grzegorek, farmer, age 47, and Wawrzyniec Wilanowski, farmer, age 38, residents of Mistrzewice, and stated that, on the 9th/21st day of March of the present year, at 1:00 am [literally, “in the first hour of the night”], died in the village of Mistrzewice, Antonina Grzegorek, farm wife, age 59, born in Mistrzewice, daughter of Jan and Katarzyna, the spouses Ciećwierz. She leaves after herself her widower husband, Ludwik Grzegorek, residing in the village of Mistrzewice. After visual confirmation of the death of Antonina Grzegorek, this document was read aloud to those present and was signed.”

The style of this record is very much the same as in the previous examples. This is good news for those who are interested in learning to translate vital records, and it suggests a potential research strategy: If the prospect of translating Russian records is intimidating, try to trace back before 1868, and work on the records written in Polish first. This worked really well for me. My first foray into vital records from Poland occurred when I began researching the family of my great-grandmother Weronika Grzesiak. She was born in 1876 in a village within Russian Poland, so her birth record was written in Russian, along with the birth records for most of her siblings. I took one look at the page and thought it was hopeless. However, I knew her parents were married about 1865, back when the records were still written in Polish. I decided to look for their marriage record first, and then research earlier generations of the family tree. Starting out with those Polish records gave me a chance to familiarize myself with the grammatical structure of Slavic languages and the format of the vital records, and eventually I gained enough confidence to tackle that Russian cursive.

There are some good translations aids out there, some of which I shared previously. However, if you’re going to get serious about learning to translate Polish and Russian vital records comfortably, then you really need to get copies of Shea and Hoffman’s translation guides that I mentioned at the beginning of this post. I know quite a few people — native English speakers — who never studied Polish or Russian formally, but have nonetheless taught themselves to read vital records in those languages, and it’s thanks to Shea and Hoffman.

Examples from Austrian Poland

In contrast to the relatively stable format found in records from Russian Poland, Austrian records seem to become progressively more informative throughout the 19th century, to a greater extent than is true for the other partitions. In this first example (Figure 6) from 1843, we see the typical columnar format that was prescribed for both church and civil records at this time:⁶

Figure 6: Marriage record from Kołaczyce for Franciszek Łącki and Magdalena Bulgewiczowa, 3 August 1834.6 franciscus-lacki-marriage2

Column headings, from left to right, tell us the month and date of the wedding, the house numbers of the bride and groom and who is moving in with whom. In this case, “de 33 ad 84” suggests that after the marriage, the groom will be moving from his house, number 33, to the bride’s house, number 84. The groom’s name and occupation (“figulus,” i.e. potter) is given, and check marks in the appropriate columns tell us that he was Catholic and a widower. The “Aetas” column tells us that he was 46 years old. Similarly, the bride was a 35-year-old Catholic widow named Magdalena Bulgewicz, widow of the late Dominik. Although the standard nominative form of Magdalena’s married name was Bulgewicz, the form used here, “Bulgewiczowa,” describes a married woman of the Bulgewicz family. Her maiden name is not provided. Additional information includes the names and social position of the witnesses, and the name of the priest who performed the marriage.

In contrast, this slightly later record from 1861⁷ in the same parish (Figure 7) includes all the same information as the earlier record, but also includes the names of the parents of the bride and groom (boxed in red) and provides a bit of a description about them (“oppidario,” meaning “townsperson”).

Figure 7: Marriage record from Kołaczyce for Jakub Łącki and Anna Ptaszkiewicz, 26 November 1861.⁷ jacobus-lacki-marriage2

Disappointingly, this early marriage record from Kołaczyce from 1750⁷ (Figure 8) shows relatively little information.

Figure 8: Marriage record from Kołaczyce for Stanisław Niegos and Teresa Szaynowszczonka.⁸ stanislaw-niegos-and-teresa-szajnowska-1750

In translation, this reads, “On this same day, I who am named above, blessed and confirmed a marriage contract between Stanislaus Niegos and Teresa Szaynowszczonka, having been preceded by three banns and with no canonical impediments standing in the way, in the presence of witnesses Casimir Rączka and Joannes Dystanowicz, all of Kołaczyce.” The form of the bride’s name used here, “Szaynowszczonka,” indicates an unmarried woman of the Szaynowski family, which would be rendered “Szajnowska” in modern Polish.

It helps to remember that this record predates the requirement for church records to perform double-duty as civil records for the Austrian authorities. Therefore, the priest’s only purpose in keeping it was to fulfill the obligations imposed upon him by the Roman Ritual. Since the Church had no interest in the addresses, ages, or occupations of the individuals mentioned in the record, that kind of information does not appear. In any case, finding a marriage record from 1750 for one’s Polish ancestors is actually pretty respectable, which brings us to my next point.

A Word About Early Records…..

Don’t expect too much from early records, and by “early,” I’m referring to Polish vital records for peasants, late-1600s to about 1750 records. As is evident from the history, recognition of the importance of vital records developed gradually. Perhaps this is why I have frequently found church records to be somewhat “spotty” in the late 1600s and early-to-mid 1700s. By “spotty,” I mean that records that “ought” to be found in a particular parish in a given year just aren’t there. It’s impossible to say for certain why this is, and in some of these cases, the event may have occurred in Parish B, despite evidence from other documents stating that it occured in Parish A. But for whatever reason, it seems that priests became more conscientious about over time, as their responsibilities as record-keepers for the civilian authorities increased. If you’re able to locate those early vital records, that’s a victory, but understand that there’s a chance the record will just not be there.

Poland’s complicated geopolitical history is reflected in her record-keeping practices, which can be confusing to the uninitiated. The different languages in which the records are kept might be challenging, too. However, the payoff comes in the satisfaction of being able to locate and read your ancestors’ story for yourself, as preserved by their paper trail. I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at the history of Polish vital records, with some examples from each partition. As always, I welcome feedback, including observations and insights based on your own research, so feel free to leave a note in the comments. Happy researching!

Sources

¹Roman Catholic Church, Gąsawa parish (Gąsawa, Żnin, Poland), Księgi metrykalne, 1782-1960, Akta urodzeń 1847-1860, 1859, births, #73, record for Stanislaus Lewandoski.; 1191249 Items 1-3.

²“Urzad Stanu Cywilnego Kucharki,” Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe, Szukajwarchiwach (http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/), Akta malzenstw 1874-1909, 1890, #13, marriage record for August Draheim and Agnes Jamrozik, accessed on 1 October 2016.

³Urząd stanu cywilnego gminy Młodzieszyn, Sochaczewski, Mazowieckie, Poland, 1936, #16, death certificate for Marianna Zielińska.

⁴“Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej Kowalewo-Opactwo (pow. slupecki),” Narodowego Archiwum Cyfrowego, Naczelnej Dyrekcji Archiwów Panstwowych, Szukajwarchiwach (Szukajwarchiwach.pl), 1838, Zgony, #5, record for Wojciech Grzeszkiewicz, accessed on 1 October 2016.

⁵“Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Mlodzieszynie, ” Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki.genealodzy.pl: Projekt Indeksacji Metryk Parafialnych (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl/), 1897, Zgony, #3, record for Antonina Grzegorek. Accessed on 1 October 2016.

⁶Roman Catholic Church, St. Anna’s Parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Podkarpackie, Poland), “Śluby, 1826-1889,” Stare Kopie, 1834, record for Franciscus Łącki and Magdalena Bulgewiczowa, Archiwum Archidecezjalne w Przemyślu, Przemyśl, Poland.

⁷Roman 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, Archiwum Archidecezjalne w Przemyślu, Przemyśl, Poland.

⁸Roman Catholic Church, St. Anne’s parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Podkarpackie, Poland), “Księga małżeństw parafii Kołaczyce 1748 – 1779,” 1750, marriage record for Stanislaus Niegos and Teresia Szaynoszczonka, Archiwum Archidecezjalne w Przemyślu, Przemyśl, Poland.

Overview of Vital Records in Poland, Part II: Practical Implications of Historical Practices

Published on September 23, 2016September 23, 2016 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz2 Comments

In my previous post, I gave an overview of the history of vital records in Poland. Today I’d like to go into a little more detail about the implications of that history. Originally I thought I’d offer some examples of vital records from the different partitions as well, but in the interests of keeping these individual blog posts to a reasonable length, I think I’ll break it down a bit further and include those additional examples and observations in a “Part III.”

1. First, there is no single, centralized repository for vital records in Poland (or in any other country, for that matter).

It sure would be nice if there were, but just as in the U.S., where you have to go to a town clerk’s office to find a civil marriage record, and a parish to find a church marriage record, the same is true in Poland — more or less. The lines get a bit blurred because of the role that church officials played in acting as civil registrars, so sometimes it’s not immediately apparent whether a given register is the original church register or a civil transcript. It’s probably safe to say that the state archives have more civil records collections than they do church books, but the state archives do have plenty of original church books nonetheless, as you can see from this collection. Theoretically, church records more than 100 years old are supposed to be transferred to the appropriate diocesan archive, just as their civil counterparts are supposed to be transferred from the registry office to the appropriate state archive. However, some parishes choose not to comply with this, so it’s not uncommon to find parish priests with 300 years’ worth of vital records sitting in their office.

Because of this, you may have to get creative in order to get full coverage for your parish of interest, and check a variety of sources. Some diocesan archives are more forthcoming than others about what their holdings include, and some parishes and diocesan archives aren’t very responsive to requests for records by mail, so I often find it’s most expeditious to hire a local researcher to investigate holdings and obtain records from parishes or archives. For example, for my ancestral parish of Kołaczyce, records can be found in the parish, in the Archdiocesan Archive in Przemyśl, in the USC (civil registry office), and in the Sanok Branch of the Polish State Archive of Rzeszów (Figure 1):

Figure 1: Vital Records Coverage Table for Kołaczyce, Podkarpackie province, Poland

Repository	Range of Years for Birth Records	Range of Years for Marriage Records	Range of Years for Death Records
Sanok Branch of the State Archive in Rzeszów	1900-1908	1871-1896	1863-1906
USC in Kołaczyce	Presumably, 1916 to present	Presumably, 1916 to present	Presumably, 1916 to present
Archdiocesan Archive in Przemyśl	1746-1782; 1826-1889	1748-1779; 1826-1889	1762-1779; 1826-1889
St. Anne’s Church in Kołaczyce	1784-present	1784-present	1784-present

As you can see from this table, there’s quite a bit of overlap in the coverage, which is nice, but there are also a few gaps. The Archdiocesan Archive’s collection only includes births through 1782, which suggests that birth records from 1783 are missing, since the parish collection of birth records begins in 1784. Similarly, there’s a 4-year gap from 1780-1783 in both marriage records and death records. It’s not clear why the State Archives have relatively few records and such a disparate range of years for the different vital events, but the fact that there’s so much overlap in coverage means that researchers interested in this parish won’t lack for material.

Coverage differs dramatically in different parts of Poland. If you’re researching in Galicia, you’re lucky, because coverage there is generally good. Researchers in Mazovia might have a different experience, however. Figure 2 shows the coverage table for another one of my ancestral parishes, Młodzieszyn, in Sochaczew County.

Figure 2: Vital Records Coverage Table for Młodzieszyn, Mazowieckie province, Poland

Repository	Range of Years for Birth Records	Range of Years for Marriage Records	Range of Years for Death Records
Grodzisk Mazowiecki Branch of the State Archive in Warsaw	1885-1912	1889-1911	1889-1901
USC in Młodzieszyn	Presumably, 1916 to present	Presumably, 1916 to present	Presumably, 1916 to present
Diocesan Archive in Łowicz	—-	—-	—-
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Młodzieszyn	1945 to present	1945 to present	1945 to present

This area suffered a great deal of damage during the Battle of the Bzura in 1939, and all the vital records from before 1885 were destroyed. All of them. Gone. The point here is that your mileage may vary quite a bit when it comes to the availability of records for your ancestral parish of interest. Records may exist dating back to the 1600s, or the only existing records may be relatively recent.

2. The existence of separate record books for each village within a parish in Austrian Poland/Galicia means that you can search for individual village names in sites like Baza PRADZIAD and Szukajwarchiwach, rather than searching only under the parish name.

For example, the village of Nawsie, which belonged to the parish in Kołaczyce, has its own collection of birth records here (births from 1859-1900) at the State Archive Branch in Sanok. As a corollary to this, since I know that my ancestors were from Kołaczyce, the other villages belonging to that parish would be the very next place I would look for records, if I could not find a record of a particular vital event in Kołaczyce itself. Note that this is only true for villages and parishes that were within Austrian Poland/Galicia. If I want to find records for the village of Wierzbno in Słupca County, Wielkopolskie province, which was in Russian Poland, I will not find them by searching under “Wierzbno” in Baza PRADZIAD, Szukajwarchiwach, or any other site which indexes or catalogues Polish vital records. Instead, I have to use a gazetteer to determine the parish, which is Kowalewo-Opactwo in this case. Records from Russian Poland and Prussian Poland typically note the home village(s) of the key participants within each record, but all the records are bound in the same book.

3. The existence of separate record books for each village within a parish in Austrian Poland means that you need to identify the present parish for the village, when requesting records from the parish itself.

As new parishes are created in Poland to serve the evolving needs of the community, parish borders change. When a village that belonged previously to one parish is reassigned to a new parish, all the old record books for that village are transferred to the new parish. As an example, my great-great-grandfather Andrzej Klaus was born in the village of Maniów in gmina Szczucin in the Małopolskie province in 1865. At that time, Maniów belonged to St. Mary Magdalene parish in Szczucin, so that is the church in which he was baptized. However, in 1981, a new parish called Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima and of the Rosary,was founded in the village of Borki, and the village of Maniów was assigned to this new parish. So when I visited Poland last summer, and wanted to see the original record book which contained Andrzej Klaus’s baptismal record, that book was in the shiny new parish in Borki rather than in the centuries-old parish in Szczucin.

Of course, in this case the problem is somewhat academic, because these records are also available on microfilm from the LDS. However, it does frequently happen that the desired parish records that are not available online or on microfilm, and in that case, it is incumbent upon the researcher to determine the correct parish to write to before making an inquiry.

4. The fact that duplicate copies were created in every partition increases the likelihood that at least one copy survived.

There’s a pervasive myth out there that “all Polish records were destroyed in the wars” that often keeps people from even trying to find those records. While it’s true that many records were destroyed, there are plenty of records that survived, and in some places, it’s possible to find both the civil and the church record for the same vital event. As an example, Figure 3 shows the church version of the 1843 baptismal record for my great-great-grandmother, Marianna Krawczyńska,¹from the parish of Zagórów, in what is now the Wielkopolskie province, but was at the time part of Russian Poland.

Figure 3: Baptismal record from Zagórów for Marianna Krawczyńska, born 1 February 1843.¹ film 2162127 item 2 record 31 page 226

The record is in Latin, in paragraph form, and it’s fairly brief. It’s dated February 2, and in translation, it indicates that the same priest who was named in the preceding record baptized a female child named Marianna, born the previous day at 9:00 in the evening, daughter of Antoni Krawczyński and his lawful wife, Wiktoria Dęboska. (The spelling of Wiktoria’s surname is usually standardized to “Dębowska” in modern Polish.) Godparents are also named.

In contrast, Marianna’s civil birth record² includes quite a bit more information (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Civil birth record from Zagórów for Marianna Krawczyńska, born 1 February 1843.² maryanna-krawczynska-1843

The translation is as follows: “It came to pass in the village of Zagórów on the 21st day of January /2nd day of February, at 3:00 in the afternoon. He appeared: Antoni Krawczyński, shoemaker, of Zagórów residing, having 39 years of age, in the presence of Mikołaj Otto, shoemaker, age thirty, and Sylwester Bogusławski, farmer, age 41, both residing in Zagórów, and showed us a child of the female sex born in Zagórów in house number 113 (?), born yesterday at 9:00 in the evening of his wife, Wiktorya née Dęboska, age 37. To this child at Holy Baptism performed today, was given the name Maryanna, and her godparents were the aforementioned Mikołaj Otto and Antonina Bogusławska. All parties mentioned in this Act were of the Catholic religion. This act was read aloud to the declarant and witnesses, but signed by us only, because they do not know how to write. [signed] Fr. Mikołaj Wadowski, Pastor.”

Although the key facts are identical between these two records, the civil version includes the names, ages, occupations, and places of residence of two adult, male, legal witnesses in addition to the age, occupation, and place of residence of the father. This particular record provides the address of the house where the child was born, although this information may be omitted, depending on the parish. The use of double dates for both the date of baptism and the date of birth was required by the Russian authorities, and reflects the fact that Poland and Western Europe had adopted the Gregorian calendar, while Russia and Eastern Europe persisted in using the old Julian calendar. The second date (Gregorian) is the one we use today.

This brings us to our next point:

5. Whenever both church and civil records exist for the same vital event, get both. One may be more informative or accurate than the other.

In Russian Poland and Prussian Poland, the civil transcrips were created in parallel, at the same time as the church record. So a record from the civil transcript (“Kopie księg metrykalnych”) is likely to be as accurate as one from the parish register, (“Księgi metrykalne”) though it might contain additional information, as shown with Figures 1 and 2. However, one would predict that discrepancies between the church and civil records might occur somewhat more frequently with civil transcripts (“Kopie księg metrykalnych”) from Galicia, where church records were recopied at the end of the year. If a discrepancy were found between the civil transcript and the parish register for a vital event from Galicia, I would be inclined to trust the parish register over the transcript. In many cases, only one set of records (church or civil) is available, so you may not have the luxury of comparing the two.

6. If you’re looking for a relatively recent record, and the state archive does not have it, write to the USC for the township where the village is located.

As an example, my great-great-grandmother had a sister, Barbara Mikołajewska, who died in 1926 in Juliopol, gmina Młodzieszyn, Mazowieckie province. Since her death occurred more than 80 years ago, it is classified as archival, and therefore anyone may request a copy whether or not they are a direct descendant. However, If you check the holdings of the state archives (e.g. Baza PRADZIAD, as discussed previously) you see that the the local archive for Młodzieszyn, which is the Grodzisk Branch of the State Archive of Warsaw, only has death records for Młodzieszyn going up to 1901. Records from 1926 have not yet been transferred to the local state archive, so this particular record was still found in the USC for Młodzieszyn. Tip: USCs can be rather slow to respond to requests for records, especially if you don’t have an exact date for the event. You may have better luck with hiring a local researcher to visit the USC in person to obtain records for you.

In the next post, I’ll provide some additional examples of vital records from all three partitions, as well as a few additional tips and observations. In the meantime, happy researching!

Sources:

¹Roman Catholic Church, Zagórów parish (Zagórów (Słupca), Poznań, Poland), Księgi metrykalne, 1592-1964, 1843 #31 birth record for Marianna Krawczyńska, p. 226.; 2161271 Item 5.

²“Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej Zagórów (pow. slupecki)”, Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe, Szukajwarchiwach (http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/), 1843, #31, birth record for Marianna Krawczyńska, accessed on 18 September 2016.

Fun With Genetic Genealogy, Revisited

Published on September 14, 2016September 29, 2016 by Julie Roberts SzczepankiewiczLeave a comment

Back in July, I wrote about a recent DNA match whose great-grandmother, Catherine (née Ptaszkiewicz) Grzebińska of Buffalo, New York, seemed likely to be the double first cousin of my great-great-grandmother, Marianna (née Łącka) Klaus. Marianna had a known double first cousin named Katarzyna Ptaszkiewicz whose birth record I had obtained from the parish records of their home village in Kołaczyce in what is now the Podkarpackie province of Poland. The DNA evidence was consistent with the relationship I hypothesized, and the birthdate of “my” Katarzyna Ptaszkiewicz was fairly close to the estimated birth date of Catherine (née Ptaszkiewicz) Grzebińska. However, my newfound cousin did not have a marriage or death record for his Great-Grandmother Grzebińska, so we had no documents indicating her parents’ names or her place of birth. The year of immigration reported on the 1900, 1920, and 1930 censuses was the same for both John and Catherine Grzebiński, suggesting that they might have married in Poland and emigrated together. With this in mind, I requested a search of the records of Kołaczyce from the ever-reliable Lucjan Cichocki, whom I frequently work with when I need records from that part of Poland. He was unable to find a marriage record for Katarzyna Ptaszkiewicz, suggesting that the marriage might have taken place in Buffalo.

This past weekend, I was in Buffalo giving a talk for the Polish Genealogical Society of New York State, and I planned an extra day into my trip for some research at the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library. The Library has a fine collection of Buffalo church records on microfilm, and it was there that I hoped to find the marriage record for John and Catherine Grzebiński. Sure enough, there it was, in the collection of marriage records from St. Stanislaus Parish (Figure 1):

Figure 1: Record of marriage of Jan Grzebiński and Katarzyna Ptaszkiewicz on 24 July 1884 at St. Stanislaus Church in Buffalo, New York.¹ jan-grzebinski-and-katarzyna-ptaszkiewicz-1884-closeup

The record states that Katarzyna Ptaszkiewicz was the daughter of “Franc. P.” (i.e. Franciszek Ptaszkiewicz) and Anna Łącka, and that she was born in Kołaczyce, exactly as the earlier evidence predicted. What a nice, tidy way to wrap up a little genetic genealogy puzzle!

As I thought about this, I wondered if my great-great-grandmother Mary Klaus was close with the family of her cousin. Surely she would have known that her first cousin (double first cousin, no less!) was also living in Buffalo. But did the families socialize together much? Amazingly, I found the answer to my question in those very same records from St. Stanislaus Church. While searching baptismal records for children of Katarzyna and Jan Grzebiński, I stumbled across a baptismal record I’d somehow missed before. Apparently, my great-great-grandparents Andrzej and Marianna Klaus had a child that must have died young, a child unknown to subsequent generations of the family, until now. In 1895, there was a baptismal record for a Bolesław Klaus, son of Andrzej Klaus and Marianna Łącka (Figure 2)!²

Figure 2: Baptismal record for Bolesław Klaus, born 24 October 1895 in Buffalo, New York. boleslaw-klaus-1895-crop

The godfather’s name, underlined in red, is a bit hard to make out in that version of the record, but this expanded version (Figure 2a) reveals that he was none other than Jan Grzebiński.

Figure 2a: Close-up of baptismal record for Bolesław Klaus, showing godfather’s name as “Grzebiński Jan.” jan-grzebinski

The fact that Marianna Klaus asked her cousin’s husband to be godfather to her child suggests that the two families were on good terms.

This record was also an interesting find for me because it helps me to date the arrival of my Klaus ancestors in Buffalo. Prior to this, I knew only that they were in Buffalo by September 1897 when my great-grandmother Genevieve (Genowefa in Polish) was born there.³Before that time, the family was living in St. Louis, Missouri, where their daughters Anna and Pauline were born in 1892⁴ and 1894,⁵ respectively. So until now, I knew only that they arrived in Buffalo some time after January 1894 and before September 1897. This baptismal record for Bolesław demonstrates that they were already in Buffalo by October 1895. All in all, it was a very successful research trip to Buffalo. It’s such a thrill when all the puzzle pieces fall into place!

Seeing as how I’m stoked about the wonderful discoveries that can be made via genetic genealogy, I’d love to win a copy of Blaine Bettinger’s new book, The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy. Geneabloggers is giving away a free copy, and if you check out this link, you can enter the giveaway, too. Good luck, and happy researching!

Sources:

¹Roman Catholic Church, St. Stanislaus Parish (Buffalo, New York), Marriages, 1874-1917, 1884, #42, record for Jan Grzebiński and Katarzyna Ptaszkiewicz.

²Roman Catholic Church, St. Stanislaus Parish (Buffalo, Erie, New York, USA), Baptisms, 1874-1903, 1895, #757, record for Bolesław Klaus.

³Roman Catholic Church, St. Stanislaus Parish (Buffalo, Erie, New York, USA), Baptisms, 1874-1903, 1897, #620, baptismal record for Genowefa Klaus.

⁴Roman Catholic Church, St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish (St. Louis, Missouri, USA), “Church records, 1880-1993,” Baptisms, 1880-1923, 1892, #127, record for Anna Klaus.; 1872178.

⁵Roman Catholic Church, St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish (St. Louis, Missouri, USA), “Church records, 1880-1993,” Baptisms, 1880-1923, 1894, #2, record for Apolonia Klaus.; 1872178

A Case of Mistaken Identity

Published on September 3, 2016September 3, 2016 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: He 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:

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,¹conflicting 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.

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 manifest²for Anna and Josepha Konszal (sic), 19 November 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Grandma Barth’s Box of Genealogical Treasures

Published on August 29, 2016 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz8 Comments

My husband’s grandmother, Joanna “Jean” (née Drajem) Barth was the family historian for her generation, and I loved her for it. I loved her for other reasons, too, of course, but listening to her stories about Buffalo’s East Side in her childhood and youth gave me such a vivid impression of Buffalo’s pious, hard-working Polish immigrants who brought with them their language, culture, faith, and traditions and created a microcosm of Poland in their new homeland. Grandma Barth was my Grandma-in-law for seventeen years before she passed away in 2008 at the age of 92, but she was mentally sharp as a tack until she died and an incredible font of family knowledge. She could tell me names, birth, marriage and death dates from memory for the entire extended family for several generations, with stories about each person, all in her East-Side Polish accent that was somehow comforting to hear.

Grandma Barth’s stories laid the foundation for my research into my mother-in-law’s family. In the spring of 1999, she traveled from Buffalo to our home in Illinois for our third son’s christening. I remember spending as much time as possible during that visit, cradling my baby in one arm while typing with my free hand, inputting all the family data from Grandma’s memory into Family Tree Maker. A few years later, she was back for another christening, this time for my daughter, in 2003. And this time, she brought with her a plastic shoebox that I came to refer to as, “Grandma Barth’s Box of Genealogical Treasures.”

This plastic box contained newspaper clippings, funeral home prayer cards (my family always called them “obrazki,” which means, “pictures” in Polish), and assorted scraps of paper on which Grandma had jotted down bits and pieces of family history. Never one to waste paper, most of these notes were written in Grandma’s neat, careful penmanship on the backs of junk-mail coupons for pizza and car washes. What she preserved was amazing. There were obrazki in there from the 1930s through the early 2000s. Her parents’ marriage certificate was there, along with other vital records. There were newspaper articles about her home parish, Corpus Christi, a collection of articles about Fr. Justin Figas (founder of the Father Justin Rosary Hour, a Polish-language radio program) and a series of “Anniversary Books” from Corpus Christi, arranged according to month. Each monthly book covers the years 1898 through 1997, and lists the names of all those who died in the parish during that month in each year.

I tried to photocopy as much of it as I could during her visit, but I recognized that care needed to be taken with this project. Some of these newspaper death notices had been trimmed into tiny, yellowed bits of paper not more than two inches square. Moreover, there was clearly an organizational system in place that must be respected. Grandma paper-clipped the scraps of paper together in batches, and put these individual batches into plastic storage bags according to the branch of the family tree to which they belonged. Grandma admitted that in some cases, she didn’t know exactly how some of these people fit into the family, she only knew that they were cousins, which made it all the more important to maintain the associations between the documents which she created through her organizational scheme.

As much as I wanted to photocopy all of it, there was only so much that I could do, given that I had a houseful of out-of-town guests visiting for my fourth child’s christening and only a few days’ time. Grandma told me there was no rush — she wanted me to have the box when she passed away. In the meantime, though, she wanted to share it with a cousin. I thanked Grandma wholeheartedly, congratulated myself on getting as much scanned as I did, and went back to raising my family and researching my family tree.

After Grandma passed away in 2008, we discovered that the box was missing. The cousin who was supposed to have it didn’t remember anything about it. My mother-in-law asked around the family, but no one seemed to know what happened to it. It was presumed to have been thrown out with the trash. It was an inestimable loss — I was sick at heart over the thought of so much family history, Grandma’s legacy, rotting in a landfill somewhere.

But as you can tell from the photo at the top, the story has a happy ending, and my worst fears never materialized. One day last spring, my Mom-in-law got a phone call from this cousin, saying he’d found a box of her mother’s things, and he’d like to return it to her. She called me immediately, and said, “I have some good news for you! Are you sitting down? My cousin found the box!” So this past weekend, several of us got together for breakfast, including Mom, her cousin, Grandma’s youngest sister, and me, and the box found its way back to me at last, looking exactly as I’d remembered it. Mom’s cousin also kindly shared with me some additional family history treasures from his personal collection. The poor man was so apologetic — Grandma never mentioned to him about her intentions for the box, and he had no idea what kind of treasure trove he was sitting on. I’m sure that my discoveries based on the contents of this box will fill quite a number of future blog posts, but it’s going to take some time to process and analyze all of this. In the meantime, a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are a few of the “goodies” from the box.

Figure 1: Obrazek from the funeral of Agnieszka (née Jamrozik) Drajem, Grandma Barth’s paternal grandmother, who died 13 February 1946.

Figure 2: Notes from Grandma’s notebook regarding the family history on her mother’s side (Kantowski and Kończal).

Figure 3: Photocopy of newspaper interview with John and Mary Kantowski (Grandma Barth’s maternal grandparents), published circa 1934.

So you can see why I’m pretty excited! So far I’ve scanned 27 “batches” of clippings, and there’s still more to go. Here’s to you, Grandma Barth, with love and gratitude for all your love and diligence in preserving the family history for future generations to enjoy.

Walter Wed Where? Wow! A Genealogical Breakthrough

Published on August 19, 2016October 8, 2018 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.

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.

Walter’s death certificate¹reports 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.

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.

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

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 2^nd/14^th, 9^th/21^st, and 16^th/28^th 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:

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 — Konstancja³and 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 record⁵reveals 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:

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:

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.

That’s a Wrap

So what general research insights can be gained from this?

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.

Productive Insomnia

Published on August 14, 2016September 13, 2019 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:

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

On Research Distractions and Why a Good Archivist Can Be Your Best Friend

Published on August 4, 2016September 23, 2021 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz4 Comments

I’ve never been one of those family historians who likes to stick to researching just one family line until it’s “complete” and then start another line. For one thing, in our hobby, each answer (i.e. a person’s name) leads to two more questions (his or her parents’ names). Sometimes a new bit of data can turn up unexpectedly, which prompts me to drop the research I’d been working on and follow the new trail for a while to see where it leads. This tendency toward distraction is sometimes referred to as “genealogical ADD,” and there are plenty of internet memes which suggest that this is a good way to waste a lot of time with little to show for it in the end. However, I often find that taking a break from a line and coming back to it later helps me to see the research with fresh eyes, allowing me to make new connections in the data that I’d missed previously.

I’ve discovered that the secret to making progress while jumping around in my research is to keep good research notes. I use Family Tree Maker, which currently offers options for both “person notes” and “research notes.” I use this section to keep a research journal, where I analyze my data, brainstorm hypotheses, plan my next steps, and keep track of phone calls and correspondence with archives, collaborators, churches, cemetery offices, etc. Sometimes it takes time before a reply is received, so rather than sitting by the phone with bated breath, I move on to other research tasks.

The other day, something prompted me to take a look at where I’d left things with my Dodds line from St. Catharines, Ontario. Robert Dodds was one of my great-great-great-grandfathers on my Dad’s side of the family, born in England on 28 January 1817, according to the 1901 Census of Canada. He died on 16 August 1906, according to his civil death certificate, and is buried in St. Catharines in Victoria Lawn Cemetery, Section G. Unfortunately, this civil death certificate does not reveal Robert’s parents’ names, which I need to know in order to further my research. His marriage record might also mention his parents’ names, but unfortunately, that’s been difficult to locate as well.

Robert married Catherine, whose maiden name has been variously reported as Irving¹ or Grant.² Most sources agree that Catherine was born in Ontario of Scottish parents, rather than having herself been born in Scotland, as suggested by the death record of her daughter (my great-great-grandmother), Martha Agnes (née Dodds) Walsh.¹ Robert and Catherine probably married circa 1839-1840, since their oldest daughter, Hannah Dodds, was born 20 January 1841. However, early records for Upper Canada/Canada West are very spotty, as many did not survive, and it’s not clear exactly where Robert and Catherine married, or even in what faith.

Robert Dodds reported his faith as Methodist in 1861, Church of England in 1871, Methodist in 1881, and Church of England again in 1891 and 1901. Catherine Dodds reported her faith as Methodist in 1861, Presbyterian in 1871, and she died in 1872. Rather conveniently, the Methodist and most of the Presbyterian churches in Canada merged with some other Protestant faiths in 1925 to become the United Church of Canada, so their archive is an obvious place to check for the marriage record. About 30% of the Presbyterian churches in Canada chose not to participate in this merger, and these non-concurring or continuing Presbyterian churches became the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Again, their archive is another obvious place to check. However, many congregations have retained their own records instead of sending them to the archives, so it’s important to know where the marriage took place.

This brings me to the second problem, determining where they married. It’s common to use census records to track the movement of families and individuals, but unfortunately, the first time we see Robert and Catherine in the census is in 1861, when they are living in Grantham and are already the parents of seven children. As mentioned previously, it’s likely that Robert and Catherine were married circa 1840, so the 1842 Census for Canada West would be an obvious place to search for the young family to see if they were already in Grantham at that point, or if they were elsewhere in the province. Unfortunately, most of the returns for this census did not survive, including those for Lincoln, Elgin, and Glengarry Counties, which are the three counties associated with this family based on other records. The situation is not much better with the 1851 Census. As luck would have it, and despite the fact that many returns for the Lincoln District did survive, the returns for the Township of Grantham and the City of St. Catharines did not.

By 1871, the family had moved to Yarmouth Township in Elgin County, where Catherine died in 1872 and is buried in Union Cemetery. Her grave transcription reads, “DODDS / In Memory of / Catharine / wife of / Robert DODDS / died / June 12, 1872 / aged 54 yrs. 1 month & 22 days. / My children dear assemble here / A mother’s grave to see / Not long age I dwell with you / But soon you’l dwell with me.” (I find that transcription especially compelling in a morbid sort of way.) Catherine’s death certificate states that she was born in “Martin Town,” that she was Presbyterian, and that she died at the age of 53, which would suggest a birth year of 1819. Her grave marker suggests a birth date of 20 April 1818. “Martin Town” points clearly to Martintown, Glengarry County, Ontario, a place settled by immigrants from the Scottish Highlands, which is consistent with what we know of Catherine’s Scottish parentage.

The original Presbyterian Church that served Martintown was St. Andrew’s in Williamstown. Marriage records for this church are indexed here for the time period from 1779 to 1914 “with a couple of gaps.”³ However, closer inspection reveals that there are no marriage records past 1815. In fact, this index seems to correspond to the collection of St. Andrew’s church records available on microfilm from the LDS, which exhibits the same gap from 1818 until 1855. And as luck would have it, that gap neatly encompasses both Catherine’s birth record, circa 1818, as well as the record of her marriage, if it took place in this parish, circa 1840. So at this point, we can’t say whether the negative result is because the record no longer exists, or because Robert and Catherine Dodds did not marry in this parish. For kicks, I checked all the indexed births, marriages and deaths for the surnames Grant and Irving, even though the particular range of years I need is not available. Interestingly, I discovered that the surname Irving does not exist anywhere in these indexed records, although the surname Grant is quite common in the parish.

So where does that leave us? Well, at this point, I still don’t know where Catherine and Robert might have met and married. It might have been at St. Andrew’s in Williamstown, but if that’s the case, then the record may no longer exist. I still don’t know Catherine’s parents’ names, although the data seem to point toward Grant as a more likely candidate for her maiden name than Irving. But even in the absence of birth and marriage records, it occurred to me that I could still try to find church burial records for both Catherine and Robert, and perhaps by some miracle, these might contain their parents’ names, even though the civil death records did not.

I struck out fast with Catherine’s death record. I contacted Union United Church, which is the descendant of the original Union Wesleyan Methodist Church which operates the cemetery in which Catherine was buried, to inquire about burial records. Unfortunately, I was told that they, “have no records that date that far back any longer either.”⁴Robert’s church death record seemed a bit more promising, as there were a number of Anglican churches in St. Catherines by the time of his death in 1906. To help me determine which one might have his death record, I telephoned Victoria Lawn Cemetery, where he is buried. The secretary was very helpful. She informed me that Robert Dodds’ interment was handled by MacIntyre Funeral Home, and “Rev. R. Kerr” was the pastor who performed the services. A quick Google search shows that Rev. Robert Kerr (or Ker) was the rector of St. George Anglican Church in St. Catharines. A bit more digging revealed that burial records from St. George have been microfilmed and are available from the archive at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. I contacted them immediately to inquire about obtaining a look-up.

And that was when “real life” and other research pulled me away, and I put my Dodds line on the back burner again. I wrote that e-mail to the archivists at McMaster University back on 4 September 2014, almost two years ago. Almost immediately, I received one of those standard, “thank you for your inquiry, one of our archivists will be in touch with you shortly,” e-mails, and then nothing further. I didn’t think about it again (obviously!) until just recently. Flash forward to earlier this week, when something made me look back at my Dodds research. In reviewing my notes, I realized that I’d never received a reply from the archivist at McMaster. So I wrote to them again, mentioning my previous e-mail from September of 2014.

Lo, and behold! I received a reply from a library assistant, informing me that one of the archivists, Bridget Whittle, had replied to me back in 2014, but the e-mail was sent accidentally to the Research Help department. She forwarded Bridget’s old e-mail to me:

“Your email was forwarded to us here in the Archives. Thank you for your inquiry. I’ve had a look at St. George’s Church in St. Catharine’s and there was no burial record for Robert Dodds in 1905 or the surrounding years. Is it possible it was a different church in St. Catharine’s?”⁵

How about that? She’d actually taken the time to review the microfilm for me, no charge!

I wrote back to her to explain the conversation with the cemetery office at Victoria Lawn, and wondered if perhaps Rev. Robert Kerr ministered at more than one parish in St. Catharines, which might account for the lack of burial record at St. George. Bridget replied,

“Given the information you received from Victoria Lawn Cemetery, it really does sound like it should be St. George’s to me. I checked again, just to be certain that I hadn’t missed it somehow, but he’s definitely not there.

I checked all the other churches in St. Catharines that had burial records for that time and didn’t see Robert Dodds in any of them (or records suggesting that Robert Kerr was performing services there). I’m not certain whether this means that for some reason the entry was never made or if there is some other place it might be. I have checked the vestry records for the time as well as a miscellaneous file in the hopes that there would be something, but again, came up short.

While all this is unfortunate, I’m afraid that for the names of his parents, you wouldn’t be likely to get it from the burial record anyway. I know you said you were having a hard time tracking down his marriage record, but that would be more likely to have the information.

Do you know if he was married in St. Catharines? Around 1840 is pretty sparse record wise, but I would be happy to have a look if you know the city he was married in.⁵

Wow! It just makes my day to encounter someone so wonderfully helpful. Of course I replied with more information regarding my search for their marriage record. Bridget’s response was both thoughtful and on-point:

Thanks for going through all of those details. I can see why you’re running out of options. Based on your information I checked a few of the other churches (namely the one in Grantham and a few that are now part of St. Catharines, but were not at the time). Frustratingly, I’ve still come up with nothing new. I was hoping I might catch a baptismal record for Hannah, at least so that we knew we were on the right track, but still nothing.

I have put a call into the Archivist for the Niagara Diocese, Archdeacon Rathbone, to see if we can figure out how it is that all of that information about Robert Dodds can be recorded at the cemetery and then not show up in the burial register. He’s away today, but I’ll let you know what I come up with.

The records we have here don’t go as far east as Yarmouth, East Elgin. That falls under the Diocese of Huron. If you haven’t been in touch with them already, you can reach them here: http://diohuron.org/what/HR/archives.php

You probably know this already, but the Methodist church in Canada merged with a few others to become the United Church. If you go hunting for the Dodds’ under the Methodist connections, you’ll want to get in touch with them: http://www.united-church.ca/leadership/church-administration/united-church-canada-archives

And good grief! I see what you mean about that 1901 census. I’m inclined to agree that it’s Jany [the month of Robert Dodds’ birth], but it’s a shame that it is so difficult to read (and that the UK census doesn’t go back that far). I will let you know what the Archdeacon has to say. Hopefully he’ll have some other lead.⁵

So what are the take-home messages in all of this?

1. Keep good research notes.

You never know when life is going to intervene and you might have to put down your research for a while. As long as you have good notes, it should be easy to pick up again when you’re ready.

2. Follow up with all your leads (even if it’s two years later).

E-mails do get lost sometimes. If you don’t hear from someone for a while, don’t assume he or she was ignoring you.

3. Be sure to reach out to the librarians and archivists in the geographic areas in which you’re searching.

They are a fantastic resource — typically knowledgeable about the history of the area in addition to knowing what records, maps, finding aids, and reference works are available, and where to look for them. Nothing beats local knowledge. The search may continue for my elusive Robert and Catherine Dodds, but at least it’s nice to know that I’ve got some allies in my quest.

Sources:

New York, Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, County of Erie, City of Buffalo, Death Certificates, 1935, #4549, Death Certificate for Martha Dodds Walsh.
Death record for Hannah Dodds Carty, eldest daughter of Robert and Catherine Dodds (click link for details and image).
Per information at the parent website (http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~onglenga/), this index was created from, “‘St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church,’ (aka the Rev. John Bethune records); Williamstown, Charlottenburgh Twp., Glengarry, Ontario. Transcript by Dr. K. A. Taylor Registers of births, marriages and burials: 1779-1914 (original and typescript versions). MS 107 Reel 1. File contains transcriptions from 1779 up to 1839 with a couple of gaps.”
Whitehead, Karen. “RE: [Cemetery] Availability of Church Records.” Message to the author from unioncemetery.uucc@gmail.com. 4 Sept. 2014. Email.
Whittle, Bridget. “RE: Question submitted through Ask a Librarian chat.” Message to the author from archives@mcmaster.ca. 3 Aug. 2016. Email.
Featured image: Gordon, Bruce. Photo of St. Andrews United Church Cemetery. Digital image.Find A Grave. Find A Grave, Inc., 1 Sept. 2014. Web. 4 Aug. 2016.

Fun with Genetic Genealogy

Published on July 2, 2016July 8, 2016 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 1852³and 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 Łącki⁵ Jacobus 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]⁷ 1900 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.⁸ Genevieve 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.

Meet the Walshes

Identifying the Walsh Family in the Parish Census

Sources

Examples from Prussian Poland

Examples from Russian Poland

Examples from Austrian Poland

A Word About Early Records…..

Sources

1. First, there is no single, centralized repository for vital records in Poland (or in any other country, for that matter).

2. The existence of separate record books for each village within a parish in Austrian Poland/Galicia means that you can search for individual village names in sites like Baza PRADZIAD and Szukajwarchiwach, rather than searching only under the parish name.

3. The existence of separate record books for each village within a parish in Austrian Poland means that you need to identify the present parish for the village, when requesting records from the parish itself.

4. The fact that duplicate copies were created in every partition increases the likelihood that at least one copy survived.

5. Whenever both church and civil records exist for the same vital event, get both. One may be more informative or accurate than the other.

6. If you’re looking for a relatively recent record, and the state archive does not have it, write to the USC for the township where the village is located.

Sources:

Sources:

The Fabiszewski Family of Buffalo, New York

The Mysterious Anna (née Woźniak) Kończal

Next stop, Pennsylvania

Will the Real Katherine Fabiszewski Please Stand Up?

The Poznań Project Weighs In

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

Sources:

The Grzesiaks of Kowalewo-Opactwo and Buffalo, New York

The Hunt Is On!

My Breakthrough

But Wait, There’s More!

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

The Old Mill, Revisited

That’s a Wrap

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

2. Family stories can sometimes hold the key.

3. Pay your dues.

Sources:

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

Finding their *&%# Passenger Manifest

A Critical Clue

“I see dead people….”

A Lightbulb Moment

All in the Family

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

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

3. Follow your hunches.

Sources:

1. Keep good research notes.

2. Follow up with all your leads (even if it’s two years later).

3. Be sure to reach out to the librarians and archivists in the geographic areas in which you’re searching.

Sources:

Sources: