Ancestral Tourism in Poland

17/01/2025

My latest query in the Archive in Pułtusk is a good example showing that not finding information can lead to a very good conclusion. I was looking for information about the mysterious Marianna Więckowska from the village of Długie in the parish of Czarnia. In 1932, her name and surname appeared in the land consolidation documents in the village of Długie, as the heir of Andrzej Więckowski. Since Andrzej Więckowski's son Józef, his wife and children, left for America at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, we wanted to find out who Marianna Więckowska was. We suspected that she was Andrzej's sister. The problem is that there are no Więckowski tombstones in the cemetery in Czarnia, no Więckowskis lived in the village today and no one remembers such a surname in Długie village. There are no descendants of Andrzej in the indexed parish registers of Czarnia parish. The Czarnia parish separated from the Myszyniec parish at the end of the 19th century, and the parish registers from the 19th century from Myszyniec have not survived. My plan was as follows: 1) try to determine whether Marianna Więckowska died in the Czarnia parish after 1940 (until 1940 the indexes are in Geneteka). It turned out that there was no such person in the death registers until 1980. 2) Check the post-war notary registers in the archives in Pułtusk. A great many American citizens of Polish origin settled property matters in Poland at that time. But the Więckowskis were not among the checked records. 3) Check the post-war registration registers from the village of Długie. There was no Marianna Więckowska in them either, nor any other Więckowskis. 4) DNA testing came to the rescue. It turned out that a descendant of Andrzej Więckowski has a very close connection with a descendant of Jan Więckowski and Marianna Samsel from the same parish. It seems that Jan was Andrzej's son. Jan Więckowski died in Długie in 1923, leaving behind his wife Marianna. However, Geneteka does not have a death certificate for Marianna Więckowska. But there is a death index for Marianna Samsel. Someone incorrectly indexed her death certificate, because the original death certificate clearly states the death of Marianna Więckowska, widow. And that in 1934 in Długie, 2 years after Marianna appeared in the land consolidation records. So it seems that it was this Marianna who inherited the land in Długie after her deceased husband Jan, and Jan had previously been Andrzej's heir.

14/01/2025

Today's post shows the extraordinary conditions in genealogists work from time to time. In December, I was working on an assignment that required work at the State Archives in Malbork. As it turned out, the archive is located in the largest existing castle in the world, built by the Teutonic Order.

11/01/2025

I am posting a post by Matthew Boxt, a descendant of the Jewish Sapoczkowski family from Białystok. His great-grandfather Icko Sapoczkowski worked as a manager at the Nowik's factory in Białystok. His grandfather Jacob Sapoczkowski emigrated to America before 1910. For years, the entire family in America thought that those who stayed in Białystok did not survive the Holocaust. However, it turned out that Nison Sapoczkowski, Moses' son (Moses was Jacob's brother) emigrated to Argentina in 1936. Late last year, there was a big family reunion in Buenos Aires, and Matthew wrote a report on the occasion.

https://ancestral-tourism.com/reunification-of-the-family-in-argentina-s6121-n473

21/12/2024

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!