Ancestral Tourism in Poland

Name: Ancestral Tourism in Poland
Address: Ulica św. Mikołaja 12/9, Białystok, 15-419, PL
Telephone: +48787691607
Rating: 5

Strona główna
Polska
Białystok
Ancestral Tourism in Poland

Daniel Paczkowski. Tour guidance and genealogical services. Details: https://ancestral-tourism.com Tour guidance services, genealogy services
(1)

02/12/2024

In May 2020, so 4.5 years ago, I was commissioned to go to the parish cemetery in Niedzbórz and find all the tombstones with the surname Pokrzywnicki, and also leave a note with information from my client on them. I found 4 such tombstones. Last weekend I received a phone call in reference to the flier left on the tombstone below, and everything indicates that it was from my client's relatives. I have never had to wait so long for contact after leaving a note on a tombstone, and I have visited many cemeteries to leave my message. I keep my fingers crossed for a fruitful contact between my client and the newly acknowledged person.

28/11/2024

It happens during my research that I come across parish registers that come from a completely different church, are not recorded anywhere or are recorded incorrectly, but apart from people like me, who accidentally ended up in them, no one else knows about their existence. Such a situation happened to me last week. Here is my private list of registers that exist in completely different places than they should or that are described incorrectly:

1) Baptism records of the Roman Catholic parish of Wirów (Archdiocese of Drohiczyn) from 1826.

2) Baptism records of the Roman Catholic parish in Jałówka (Podlaskie Voivodeship, formerly Wołkowysk district), 1699-1717.

3) Baptism records of the Roman Catholic parish in Jałówka (Podlaskie Voivodeship, formerly Wołkowysk District), 1776-1801.

19/11/2024

Here is a document that was found during one of the last genealogical queries in the Filipów parish in the Suwałki region. My task was to discover the genealogy of the Orłowski family as far back in time as possible. This document dates back to 1821 and is the first part of the marriage certificate I was looking for, Michał Kuprewicz to Katarzyna Zawadzka. However, anyone who thinks they will find such a marriage record in Geneteka in 1821 would be mistaken, even though the marriage records from Filipów from that year are indexed. In Geneteka, this record was indexed as the marriage of Michał Szułpa to Katarzyna Zawadzka. Only after reading the original document does it become clear that the groom was Michał Szułpa, formerly Kuprewicz. Interestingly, the first daughter of this marriage was registered under the surname Szułpińska, and the subsequent children under the surname Kuprewicz. Among the civil registry records from Filipów, you can find annexes to marriage certificates, which are very interesting documents. The marriage certificate of Michał Szułpa, formerly Kuprewicz, with Katarzyna Zawadzka included copies of Michał's birth certificate and the death certificate of his father Andrzej. Michał Szułpa was born in the Raczki parish in 1792. The copy of his birth certificate from Raczki is a unique document, as no civil registry books have survived from the Raczki parish, apart from a few years in the mid-19th century. Michał was recorded in the birth certificate under the surname Szułpa, but his father was recorded in the death certificate from 1812 from the Krasnybór parish under the surname Kuprewicz. I have no idea why two surnames were used in this family, although this is not the first or second time in my life that I have encountered such a situation. This example shows how vigilant you need to be when conducting genealogical research.

12/11/2024

Sometimes I hear, read in emails or on forums information/complaints from Jewish descendants of former residents of the Białystok area that few archival materials have survived. This is not entirely true. The first photo shows the first page of the will of Aron Łuński from 1938, who owned a factory in Gródek near Białystok. This will lists the names and surnames of all his living children, including those whose birth, marriage and death certificates I have not found, who lived outside Białystok. The second document is the founding act of the Zylber family quilt factory, which came to Białystok around 1906 and left before World War II.

03/11/2024

During the last genealogical trip with clients, although it was not preceded by genealogical research, we managed to find living relatives in Łęg (Łęg parish) and in Jaskółów in Nasielsk parish.

20/10/2024

Last week, we started our genealogical trip in the village of Sławęcin, where my client's family visited their Polish side of the family 40 years ago. It turned out that this family still lives there. We had two successful meetings with them. But the biggest surprise happened on the second day in the village of Brudzyno, where we found the family of the grandson of my client's grandfather's brother, whom the American family had not seen for 120 years. It turned out that there was correspondence by letter, as evidenced by a photo of my client's grandfather, taken in America, found among family photos in Brudzyno. A photo that the American family did not know. We also visited parish cemeteries in Szreńsk, Góra and Rogotwórsk, where we had the opportunity to find a few tombstones of relatives, as well as an interesting museum in the former castle of the Mazovian princes in Ciechanów.

11/10/2024

On the last genealogical tour I traveled around the parish of Bargłów Kościelny with clients. In the cemeteries in Wólka Karwowska, Augustów and Bargłów Kościelny we found family graves. We also had family meetings in Ełk, Augustów, Wólka Karwowska and Dreństwo. However, the biggest surprise took place in the archdiocesan archive in Łomża, when we found birth, marriage and death certificates of ancestors. Here I would like to mention that the person who emigrated to the USA was Onufry Popko, born in 1875. His grandson came to Poland. And so, when we found in the Łomża archive the death certificate of Wojciech Popko, Onufry's great-grandfather, who died in 1826, I asked Wojciech's great-great-great-grandson if he knew what the cause of Wojciech's death was. - He was crushed by a tree. It turned out that this was really the cause of death. It turned out that the memory of this event survived all these years in the USA until 2024. The only thing that Wojciech Popko's great-great-great-grandson didn't know was which of his ancestors met such an end.

05/10/2024

Recently, one trip follows another. The trip to the Kashubian Switzerland region had barely ended when a genealogical trip began with a tourist whose ancestors came from the area between Pomerania and Mazovia (between Brodnica and Mława). This trip was supposed to take place in 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was postponed, as it turned out, for 4 years. We were supposed to visit parishes (parish churches and cemeteries) in the towns where tourist's direct ancestors came from - Bogurzyn, Dąbrowa, Lekowo, Brzozie, Jastrzębie, Grążawy. We were there and as it turned out we were unable to find the relatives' families. But we took one more step. After 1850, part of the family moved from the Jastrzębie parish to the Szrańsk parish. We went to Szreńsk to see a charming old Gothic church and cemetery. In the cemetery we found three tombstones of people with the surname we were interested in. Thanks to Geneteka we were able to confirm that these are tombstones of close relatives. So we went to the village of Proszkowo, where the three people found in the cemetery came from, and there we had a family meeting. After more than 100 years, two branches of the family separated by the Atlantic Ocean had the opportunity to meet.

30/09/2024

Field report: Sometimes, the continuation of an order occurs completely by accident. Two years ago, I found the marriage certificate of Władysław Ruta and Sabina Witkowska from 1926 in Bałowieża. This certificate was sought, among other things, to establish the names of the parents of the newlyweds and their place of origin. The names and surnames of the parents were on the marriage certificate, but the place of origin was established using records indexed in Geneteka. Thanks to this, it was possible to establish that Władysław Ruta came from the parish of Mińsk Mazowiecki. Unfortunately, nothing could be established regarding Sabina's parents. Józef Witkowski and Agnieszka Sikorska were not included in any index data.

This year, while in Białowieża on January 13th in connection with the celebration of Julian New Year's Eve, I visited the cemetery and found the tombstone of Szczepan Witkowski from 1932. I thought it might be worth finding his death certificate. When I visited Białowieża for the second time in June this year, I bought a book in the Orthodox parish with a list of all the tombstones from the Białowieża cemetery (a cemetery shared by Catholics and Orthodox Christians). It turned out that there were more tombstones of people with the surname Witkowski. I checked all of these people and it turned out that among them there was only one tombstone associated with Sabina's family - the tombstone of her father Józef from 1941. However, thanks to the help of the Civil Registry Office in Białowieża, it was possible to find the marriage records of Sabina's three siblings. It seems that the family came from Białowieża and that checking the records from the parish in Szereszewo (today on the Belarusian side), where Białowieża belonged before 1908, should be pursued.

27/09/2024

During the last trip I led with the descendants of Lutherans from the Bytów, Kartuzy and Kościerzyna counties, we visited all the towns where our ancestors had come from since the beginning of the 19th century, i.e. Chojnice, Kościerzyna, Kartuzy, Kamienica Szlachecka, Kobysewo, Stężyca, Mydlita, Jasień, Sulężyno. We visited existing Lutheran cemeteries and places of non-existent cemeteries, museums (including the Kurpie open-air museum in Wdzydze), churches, as well as state archives in Gdańsk and Słupsk, where, while reviewing cadastral and military records and lists of residents, we found many documents containing previously unknown information about the family. However, the greatest discovery awaited us in the museum in Kościerzyna. There was a map of Kościerzyna from 1848 hanging on the wall, with plots and the names of the owners marked. We managed to find the Doering family plot on the map and then visit the place in Kościerzyna where it could have been located.

18/09/2024

It was an extraordinary trip. 5 families gathered for a joint tour, the aim of which was to visit the towns where their ancestors lived (around Kutno). We had two raisins on the cake - a meeting with the family in Toruń, found thanks to research before the trip, and an overnight stays in a hotel in Sójki, in the same building where in 1910 there was a manor house, where our ancestors worked as farm workers.

11/09/2024

Archive's report: During last visit to the Diocesan Archive in Drohiczyn, I conducted research in the parish registers of Czerwonka Grochowska. One of the points of the query was the one concerning the birth certificate of Mikołaj Osiński in the village of Długie Pole in the year around 1830. And although the birth register for this parish from the years 1787-1850 has been preserved, there are practically no records from the turn of 1820/1830. Few people know that at that time, the parishioners of the church in Czerwonka Grochowska were assigned to two neighboring parishes: in Sokołów and Rozbity Kamień. So the actual birth certificate of Mikołaj was found in the parish of Rozbity Kamień.

09/09/2024

Field report: Originally, it was supposed to be a genealogical trip to the parishes of Szczuczyn, Grabowo, Lachowo and Wąsosz, where 4 of my guest's grandparents came from. We even had an appointment with one of the branches in Wojsławy, the parish of Wąsosz. But we managed to find cousins in the parishes of Kolno and Rydzewo as well. The first ones had knowledge passed down through the family about family visits from the USA in 1934 and 1968!

04/09/2024

Archival report: Have you heard about the land consolidation reform that took place in Poland in the years 1923-1939? The Land Consolidation Act of 1923 defined that fragmented and checkerboard lands and excessively narrowed lands were subject to consolidation by transformation into areas that meet the requirements of proper management through the exchange of land between owners. Fragmented and checkerboard lands were considered to be plots of land owned by one owner separated from each other by plots of land owned by other owners. Excessively narrowed lands were considered to be plots whose length exceeded the width by more than 15 times. The Act provided for a number of detailed provisions, exclusions, etc., but their discussion is beyond the scope of this post.

A few years ago, I was convinced that land consolidation documents are an excellent source for genealogical research. First of all, they contain lists of all landowners in a given village. Additionally, they contain various types of letters, petitions from individual farmers describing the history of land division, naming family members. They may also contain notarial deeds from the partition period, which often helps to find additional information about the family you are looking for. This time I was in the archive in Pułtusk and was looking through land consolidation documents for the village of Długie. Until the 1890s, the village of Długie belonged to the parish in Myszyniec in Kurpie. Myszyniec parish was unlucky when it came to archival sources. The parish registers in Myszyniec from before 1895 were burned down during the war. One marriage certificate of the Więckowski family from the village of Długie was found in the parish of Brodowe Łąki. We knew that this family had left for the USA after the wedding. The question was, did anyone stay? We managed to find information that of Andrzej Więckowski, whose son and daughter-in-law left for the US, there was a mysterious heiress, Marianna Więckowska. Perhaps further research will allow us to determine who this person was and how she was related.

26/08/2024

It all started with a chance meeting in the Białystok archive. Later, I received a photo of a copy of the birth certificate of Apolonia Szemiel, daughter of Jan and Konstancja née Korsak from 1905 from the Plusy parish, in my mailbox. The copy was from 1923, it was badly damaged, and my task was to try to find the marriage certificate of the above-mentioned couple. The Plusy parish records are located in the archives in Vilnius (older) and in the archives in Minsk (newer). Search proved that the wedding took place in 1902. Imagine my surprise when the marriage certificate showed the name Jakins instead of Jan. It was also repeated in Apolonia's birth certificate in 1905. I admit that this is the first time I have encountered such a version of the name Jan in Catholic records.

21/08/2024

Field report: I have already written here about using revision lists (revizskie skazki) in cases where no vital records have survived. This is the case of the Greek Catholic parish in Dołhinów in the Wilejka district, for which vital records have survived only since 1860 and partially for the 1830s. I had already managed to locate the families I was looking for in the towns of Żary and Zamosze in revision lists from 1795, 1850 and 1858. I was convinced of the importance of a comprehensive review of revision lists during my last query in the archives in Vilnius. This time I reviewed revision lists from 1811, 1816 and 1834. In the latter, I found information about Kondrat Szczebiet as having died in 1827. Of course, this is incorrect information. In 1836, Kondrat's son Ivan was born, and the revision list of 1850 states that he died in 1848. In addition, the revision lists provide a lot of useful information about the date of death, age, reason for leaving the village (for example, due to military service) or information about moving to another village.

18/08/2024

The genealogical tour with the descendants of Ignacy and Antonina Dobrzeniecki in the vicinity of Płock (parishes of Gozdowo, Kurowo, Jeżewo, Mochowo and several others) was aimed at meeting living relatives, with whose ancestors, Ignacy's son, Bolesław, kept up correspondence even after World War II, although he emigrated to the USA at the beginning of the 20th century. We managed to meet two branches of the family thanks to the search for living relatives pursued two months before the trip. Although Ignacy and Antonina came from the minor gentry, they were day laborers without their own home. They lived where they found employment on farms. They changed their place of residence very often and today their descendants are scattered around various towns.

09/08/2024

Recently I had a very interesting topic related to confirming or rejecting a family legend. According to it, Charles Lewin (born 1879, emigrated from Prussia to US in 1883 with parents and siblings, died in 1939 in Chicago), son of Louis Lewin and Hanna (Anna) was supposed to come from Golub, a town located on the Drwęca River near Toruń. Golub - place of origin - this was a family legend. Neither Charles nor Louis and Hanna are Jewish names. So I suspected that they were changed after emigration to the United States. Naturalization documents were not found, but they would not have contributed much to the case anyway. Louis was naturalized long before 1906, when these documents indicated his place of birth. It was possible to find the gravestones of Louis and Hanna (died in 1923 and 1925) in the same cemetery where Charles is buried and in close proximity to the son's gravestone. In addition, thanks to Louis's obituary from 1923, it was possible to establish that his wife's first name was Johana, and her maiden name was Neumann.

The next step was to find the ship manifest. This is where things got complicated. Louis and his wife Johe (this is how it was spelled) gave their last place of residence as Berlin, not Golub. Very far away to it. The names of the children more or less matched, but the son who traveled with his parents and was born in the same year as Charles was named Saly.

Among the civil birth records from Golub, it was possible to find this family. Louis did indeed have this name in Prussia, his wife had the same name as recorded in Louis' obituary from 1923. Saly (later Charles) on the other hand was born as Sally Wolff and was born in 1877 in Golub. The family legend from almost 150 years ago has been confirmed in the documents!

Adres

Ulica św. Mikołaja 12/9
Białystok
15-419

Telefon

+48787691607

Strona Internetowa

http://ancestral-tourism.com/

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My Story

I provide genealogical research and tour guidance services in Poland. Taking into account my place of residence, which is Białystok, I do research in northern, eastern and central Poland mostly, but do not constrict my services to any areas in Poland. I provide help in genealogical research in neighbouring countries: Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine. Records found are translated into english on your demand.

My genealogical research is not limited only to archival documents. I provide research in the old newspapers, notarial documents and any sources, which can be useful, search of the gravestones at the cemeteries, photography of villages and cities, your ancestors came from. Every source of usable information is checked.

I provide also search service of living members of your family, your ancestors or relatives lost the contact with.

In every case I provide detailed plan of research to be accepted by you, before start of the work. Every next step, not agreed initially, is consulted, so you have real control on what is going on.