Czajkowskis, Kuczynskis and Gorals

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Czajkowski, genealogy, goral, Kuczynski, microfilms, Olesko, Rozwaz

I am still trying to go through the Roman Catholic microfilms for Olesko (LDS numbers 2328926 and 2328927). It is daunting, to say the least, because  I am trying  to focus on the 1700s and early 1800s. Yesterday I spent an hour and a half trying to train my eyes to the Latin paragraph form of register recording, and did not come up with a single name to add. Once I get to the 1780s I begin to celebrate the printed registers in a way I never had before! Even though it is the same struggle with handwriting, just having an orderly format is such a relief!

So far I seem to be finding that my Kuczynski surname is mainly found in Olesko, while  the Gorals are staunchly in the Rozwaz village.The Czajkowskis are found in Olesko and in several of the surrounding villages.

A word of warning to those who may be searching through 2328927. Item 1 reminded me of the Dead Sea scrolls exhibit I saw recently. Even with a top of the line reader, there are lots of torn edges with missing information. Here are my findings so far. I am listing every one of my surnames as an event with that surname, so you will find  father and child, for instance, separately, as two events even though there was only one birth.

Goral	Agnes	was married to Stephanus Witkowski, age 20	16?	1786 Jan 19	Rozwaz	RC	2328927		mar Stephanus Witkowski age 20, Michal Dutkiewicz, sutor, wit.
Goral	Josephus	was born to Matthias and Marianna nee Bykowska?	x	1794 Jan 4	Rozwaz	RC	2328926	6	Matthias Goral and Marianna Bykowska?
Goral	Magdalena	was born to Mathias and Marianna nee Golab	x	1803 Mar 19	Rozwaz	RC	2328926	6	Mathias Goral and Marianna Golab
Goral	Matthias	became the father of Josephus	x	1794 Jan 4	Rozwaz	RC	2328927
Goral	Matthias	became the father of Magdalena	x	1803 Mar 19	Rozwaz	RC	2328926	6

Kuczynska	Agnes	was born to Joannes and Catharina nee Urbanska	x	1803 Feb 19	Olesko	RC	2328926	6	Joannes and Catharina nee Urbanska
Kuczynska Rudnicka	Catharina	gave birth to Marianna	x	1805 July 21	Olesko, HN 304	RC	2328926	6
Kuczynski	Antonius	became the father of Thomas	x	1792 Dec 29	Olesko, HN 277	RC	23228926	6
Kuczynski	Joannes	died	56	1837 oct 15	Olesko, HN 150	RC	2328927	6	hn 150
Kuczynski	Joannes	was married to Apolonia Lonska ?, age 19	25	1801 Nov	Olesko	RC	2328927	2	mar Apolonia Lonska? Age 19
Kuczynski	Nicolaus	died	67	1822 mar 8	Olesko	RC	2328927	6	(generoses)
Kuczynski	Thomas	was born to Antonius and Catharina nee Lytwn	x	1792 Dec 29	Olesko, HN 277	RC	23228926	6

?	Agatha	was born to Petrus — and Marianna nee Czajkowska	x	1808 Feb 7	Olesko	RC	2328926	6	parents: Petrus — and Marianna Czajkowski
Czajkowska	Julianna	died	14	1834 Mar 15	Ozydow, HN41	RC	2328927	7	dau of Joannes and Marya, hn 41
Czajkowska	Marianna	was married to Mattheus Gugalski, age 40	28	1800? Oct 9	Olesko	RC	2328927	2	mar Matheus Gugalski age 40
Czajkowska	Marianna	was married to Andreas Kawa-ck of Usznia, age 30	29	1814 oct 16	Olesko	RC	2328927	2	mar Andreas Kawa-ck de Usznia age 30
Czajkowska	Marianna	was born to Joannes and Marianna nee Bankowska	x	1788 Aug 3	Rozwaz, HN 64	RC	2328926	6	parents: Joannes and Marianna Bankowska
Czajkowska –	Marianna	gave birth to Agatha –		1808 Feb 7	Olesko	RC	2328926	6
Czajkowska Honkowska	Marianna	gave birth to Thecla		1786 Jan 26	Juskowice	RC	2328926	6
Czajkowska Nizenska	Anna	gave birth to Marianna		1802 Nov 9	Olesko	RC	2328926	6
Czajkowska Nizenska	Anna	gave birth to Thomas		1802 Nov 9	Olesko	RC	2328926	6
Czajkowski	Francis	was born to Jacobus and Barbara nee –	x	1804 Jul 17	Olesko	RC	2328926	6	parents: Jacobus and Barbara —
Czajkowski	Gregorius	was married to		1792	Olesko	RC	2328927	2
Czajkowski	Josephus	was listed as father of Paul	x	1836 may 20	Rozwaz	RC	2328927		Czajkowski, Paulus, son of Josef and Anna, mar Anna
Czajkowski	Josephus	died	57	1827 oct 1	Olesko	RC	2328927	6
Czajkowski	Josephus	became the father of Francis		1804 Jul 17	Olesko	RC	2328926	6
Czajkowski	Paulus	was married to Anna nee –		1836 may 20	Rozwaz, HN 43	RC	2328927		Czajkowski, Paulus, son of Josef and Anna, mar Anna

A little progress with LDS microfilms

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microfilms, Olesko, Rozwaz, Schmutz

In my quest for the Austrian soldier who married my great great great grandmother, Catharina Kuczynska, I discovered that there were some Roman Catholic records for Rozwaz filmed with the nearby town of Olesko. I received the first of these recently, and after a couple of hours of searching through the Rozwaz sections, I became discouraged at the lack of familiar surnames. Out of desperation I began to look at the actual town of Olesko records. After all, that was probably where Josef was posted originally, and I reasoned that perhaps not all listings were recorded in the small village.

Lo and behold! I discovered a listing for the death of a Josef Schmutz in March, 1830. He was living in Olesko at the time of death. So now I know his death date and approximated year of birth, but this was one of those sketchy records that says nothing at all about his family or birthplace. Of course I now feel the need to go over this microfilm with a fine tooth comb!

A lesson learned — although going over each item on a microfilm may seem like a waste of time, you might be surprised to find something  in a different place from  where you originally thought it would be. So go with your hunches and consider spending more time with the microfilm reader’s forward, rewind, zoom and focus features!

When one thing leads to another..

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Gmund, refugee camps, Ukrainians, World War I

Last week I got inspired by a patron who had found some Mexican records from around the year 1800 and started to review an old loose end on my own family tree.

Although most of my ancestors are Polish or Ukrainian, there is one Austrian soldier who was stationed in Galicia and married one of my great great grandmothers. Isn’t it always the odd one who captures our attention? Anyway I began looking through some old information and realized that there were still some films left to order that might give an indication of my ancestor Joseph’s history.

After filling out the LDS form, I rechecked some information about the possible geographic location of his surname in Austria.  I came upon the region containing the town of Gmünd in Lower Austria. As I Googled the town, I came across the most amazing story! According to a web page posted by the Austrian Philatelic Society, Gmünd was the site of a World War I refugee camp. “In September of 1914, Gmünd was designated as the site of a refugee camp for Ruthenian (Ukrainian) evacuees from the eastern Austrian crownlands.” This camp at one point contained over 30,000 people, some of whom came by rail, while others traveled many miles on foot. Although most of the refugees were Ukrainians, there were also Slovenians, Italians, and Croats.

The vastness of this camp amazes me. There were houses, a fire station, bakeries, religious facilities, schools and much more. There were choirs and operatic performances. Occasionally there were ethnic conflicts, but overall life at the camp seems to have been not at all harsh.

Please visit this site for the wealth of information there and also for the images, which are many and wondrous. I cannot help but share just one via this post, which is a group of women of a singing group dressed in folk costumes. When I think of my Joseph leaving Austria for Galicia and  a century later of all those refugees leaving Galicia for Austria, I have renewed respect for the human survival instinct and sadness for all those who could not survive. Thank you to the authors of this article, Ingert Kuzych, Roman Dubyniak and Peter Cybaniak!

I do not know yet if Joseph really did come from here, but I feel a closeness to it already. Now to see if the microfilms will contain any more clues!

 

Researching Galician ancestors using newspapers

Sorry it has been so long, but  during this cold season I seem to have become a prime target. Hopefully the viruses have all departed! Tonight I would like to discuss using historic newspapers to track down ancestors.

Everybody knows that Chicago was a popular destination for Poles, but many people from Galicia also went to New Jersey and New York to work in the factories there. Many people from Bialy Kamien immigrated to the Newark NJ area and to Amsterdam, NY, while it seems people from Przeciszow and Biecz went to New York City and New Jersey’s Hudson County  as well as Buffalo NY and its surrounding towns. These people went to work in jewelry factories, carpet mills and steel mills.

If you are searching for ancestors in New York State, there is an online resource not to be missed! It is called  www.fultonhistory.com. One man has taken it upon himself to digitize as many microfilmed newspapers as he can find and place them online for free. More items are being added all the time, and the site is such a treasure trove for genealogists.

While searching on the Fulton History site I have found obituaries for many relatives, stories about their military service, vacation trips, visitors, 50th anniversary parties, political doings and much more! These are just the kinds of stories that make these folks I never knew so much more real to me. The dates you encounter in the newspapers can also help you track down those important  vital records.

When you go to Fulton History, click on the Enter/Press Here prompt and you will come upon an admittedly strange looking page. Ignore practically everything you see and head for that search box at the upper left hand corner. There are some searching tools you can use, but it is pretty easy to just type in keywords and check your results.

I was surprised to come upon this little item, because I did not know that there would be any downstate news:

New York Times, February 28,1915.

Sterling Drake has sold for Elizabeth

A. Lefevre of New Paltz to

Thaddeus and Carrie Kosowski the

‘old homestead’ on John Street, Port

Richmond, on a plot 50 by 100. This

property has been in the family for

three generations, or ever since 1869

until this sale.

And look at the detail in this obituary:

EVENING RECORDER, AMSTERDAM, NY, MONDAY, JULY 14,1958

Funeral of Ludwik Czosnykowski

The funeral of Ludwik Czosnykowskl

was held Saturday morning

at 8:30 at the Iwanski Brothers

funeral home where the Rt.

Rev. Msgr. Stanislaus M. Gospodarek

held a prayer service and

at 9 at St. Stanislaus Church

where Msgr. Gospodarek was the

celebrant of requiem mass with

Anthony Grzegorzewski at the organ.

Interment was in St. Stanislaus’

Cemetery where Msgr. Gospodarek

officiated at the committal

service. The bearers were John

Gieza, a grandson, Joseph and

John Olander and Walter Bubnowski,

nephews, Edward Bubnowski,

grand-nephew,, and Cyprian

Komarzenski. 

Attending the funeral from out

of-town were Stanlslaw Bubhowskl,

Mrs. Edward BubnowskL Mr.

and Mrs. Walter BubnowskL Joseph

Czosnykowskl and Mr. arid

Mrs. Theodore Bubnowski, Union,

N.J.; Mrs. Marion Paskiewicz,

Newark, N.J.; Mr. and Mrs. Henry

Smero, Mr. and Mrs. John

Prusak and daughter, Irvlngton,

N.J., and Mrs. Mary Czupryk,

Broadalbin.

Friday evening, Msgr. Gospodarek

visited the funeral home.

 Ludwig Czosnykowski

I encourage you to try Fulton History if your wanderings lead  to New York State. And if you have other favorite newspaper sites you would like to share, please let me know.

A tale of two villages, or what a difference the LDS makes

Today I upload a new page devoted to my ancestors from the other (western) side of Galicia: the Prusaks and Jareks from Przeciszow and Kwiatonowice respectively.

I have been searching for these ancestors for many years, and with one village I have been able to find records going back to the late 1700s while my wheels are spinning in the mud with the other. What made the difference to me was the fact that one of the villages was microfilmed by the LDS and one was not. So with one side of the family I have many relationships charted and facts verified.

That would be Kwiatonowice, with parish records at Biecz going back quite far. Not to say has it has been easy — it is only by looking at every page and discovering a notation at the end of one year that I discovered that one great-grandparent had later married another, and that 3 children of one first marriage married 3 children of another! Maybe more on that another time…

With Przeciszow, there is not one place I can document that has the originals, much less the microfilms! Letters to the parish church and to various archives over the years have not made a dent in this gap of knowledge. And so I have been left with researching the existing records in the U.S. and trying to piece the truth together. I have learned a lot about the families in the U.S., but before 1901 the trail goes cold.

As a librarian, I know how poorly funded libraries and archives can be, but it would be nice to receive one follow up letter once in a while. Do I keep trying, or not?

And I also know that Przeciszow is only a couple of miles away from Oswiecim/Auschwitz, and there are so many who senselessly lost their lives there and so many people who cannot know the fate of loved ones. My quest to find relatives does not seem so important, but how can I learn if I have relatives who perished there during World War II? What did the Nazis do with the local populace who were not Jews? Were my unknown relatives “righteous”? collaborators? resisters? or just swept along in a flood of human misery? Who survived? What happened to the records of their lives?

Who were they and who am I?

The sounds of their voices

Recently two items have crossed my desk. One was a column from the New York Times by Verlyn Klinkenborg on how the sounds of our voices are so easily lost to time, and the other was a BBC Archives collection of oral history stories by survivors of the Titanic. This got me to thinking about how we as genealogists have a unique opportunity to preserve the sounds of those we love with the ease of today’s recording devices.

Can you remember the voice of a loved one who died 40 or 50 years ago? All I have is the sound of a trumpet on an old polka band recording to remind me of my father. No voice messages, no home movies, just trumpet notes and my fading memories. And I have noticed that I use my mother’s sayings as a way of keeping her memory alive. Wouldn’t it be a thrill to hear our grandparents’ voices?

If you have an elderly, or even not so elderly, relative, maybe you should be recording their words for the next generation. And maybe we should be recording our own voices, too. Sing a lullaby to a generation as yet unborn. Read a family letter. Share the instructions for a favorite family recipe. Retell stories of the old country. Talk about your childhood. Describe the anxieties and joys of living in the year 2013. Personal Story Corps-type recordings can be fun and revelatory. Can you offer any tips on how to achieve this? What are the best tools and techniques?

Are your ancestors from “my town”?

Well, Christmas 2012 and the 2012 pierogi platter are now in the memory files. I was blessed to be given some old family pictures that I did not know existed! Hope you had a happy holiday!

I’ve been trying to find more about the people who left Bialy Kamien at the turn of the last century. Here is a list of surnames I have found so far on the Hamburg passenger lists. Are any of them names you are looking for? Archjmovicz…

Please note the wide variety of spellings!

It is interesting to compare my list with the one at the Jewish Records Indexing project – Poland. The people in this project do amazing work and are an inspiration to me.

Favorite maps of Galicia: part 1

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Maps

If you are new to this area of research, the very first thing you will discover is that the term “Galicia” is used for two very different areas of Europe. When you search for Galicia, ustedes no quieren la región de España! In other words, we are not talking about the region in the northwest of Spain!

Here is the brief description as found on Wikipedia: “Galicia or Halizia (Ukrainian: Галичина (Halychyna), Polish: Galicja, Romanian: Galitia/Halici, German: Galizien; Russian: Галиция (Galitsyia)/Russian: Галичина (Galichina), Czech: Halič, Slovak: Halič, Yiddish: גאליציע (Galitsie), Hungarian: Kaliz/Gácsország/Halics) is an historical region in Central Europe that presently straddles the border between Poland and Ukraine. The area, which is named after the medieval city of Halych, was first mentioned in Hungarian historic chronicles in the year 1206 as Galiciæ. In the 18th century the Galician region was enlarged with territories now found within the modern Polish provinces of Małopolskie Voivodeship and Podkarpackie Voivodeship.”

There are some beautiful historic maps of the area, many of which can be found on the Polish Genealogy Project page.  My personal favorites are the Austro-Hungarian Empire 1:200,000 Topographic Maps. Go to the index map and click on a dotted town to see the incredible detail offered in these maps. Very few small villages are not on these maps. This was one of the first maps I saw that showed Bialykamien (on the Brodi section), but I found it in an actual atlas at the Minneapolis Minnesota public library years ago. How wonderful that so many beautiful maps are now online! Maps and gazetteers are your friends!

Genealogy in the “old days”

Anybody else remember the 1970s? That’s when I first got hooked on family history. We did have genealogy societies for Poles, and people of all ethnicities were beginning to trace their roots. And many of us knew next to nothing about where our families came from.

We knew that all the grandparents came over on big boats because life was just too hard in the old country. I grew up near Ellis Island (in the days before it was restored) and so I knew just where they landed. Every time I saw the Statue of Liberty I tried to imagine seeing it for the first time from a huge, crowded steamship. What did they think of America? How did they ever manage keeping children safe and in line on such boats?  How busy New York Harbor must have been!  Would I have dared to take such a journey?

Why did genealogy become so popular just AFTER the first generation of immigrants had died? We lost the real experts and were left with tantalizing clues and crossed signals. And in the days before computers and the Internet, we had to rely on the mail to bring and pick up the painstakingly filled out  forms of various official offices. If we tried to write to the Old Country often the mail came back with censor stamps. People were just beginning to create volumes of surnames and researchers with contact information.

And yet, we had the bug, we were bitten and just kept on going. The potential rewards were too great. Identity was just around the corner!

Searching serendipity!

Today I would like to thank Mundia for their fascinating site. Thanks to them I now have a new distant relative to share information with! It is so cool to find someone who met my grandfather — in 1947!!!

Mundia is kind of an offshoot of ancestry.com that allows people to mount trees and multimedia files. So good to see so many other folks so willing to share information. If you haven’t checked it out, take a bit of time to do so.