The Social Network Experiment

The last time I did a survey of “genetic marker” families in search of female Eliasz and was modestly successful. That article on affinity had some data and one approach. This time I want to look at 1878-1884 in Pacanow using another approach I have watched Police use on Mobsters or the military use on terrorists — I call this technique, the “Social Network” (SN).  In fact, there is some theory behind this. What I am proposing is called formally, “Social Network Analysis”. (SNA)

My goal was to “prove” if some ELIJASZOW in Pacanow were siblings of my great-grandfather or not. My problem is that I have incomplete information so I cannot prove anything conclusively. But I have  a few theories that I want to test. Whatever I find, I will use to test against archive data in Poland and see if my theory pans out or not. Can this technique predict familial relationships or not?

Here are the S.N. Experiment Parameters:

1. Birth Data in Pacanow parish
2. Years: 1878-1884 [that is all I have to work with]. That is seven years.
3. Even with ONLY seven years, I cannot read every record. There on average 190 births per year and all records are in Russian (Cyrillic character set), old style (pre-1918 reform) characters in abundance, and there are handwriting/paper/image/mistakes issues in the priest’s  writings to deal with.
4. Index Issues. My favorite is the inaccurate index (missing data or wrong name or wrong record #).
5. Select some family names that have an affinity with ELIJASZ and chase just those records.
6. Prove a connection to the children of Marcin Elijasz & his wife Anna Zasucha ( at present I KNOW of Jozef, Martin, Katarzyna and Jan).
7. My candidates are Ludwik and Franciszek and Petronella  Elijasz. Are they siblings of the KNOWN children?

My focus is on ELIJASZ and ZASUCHA, but I decided to include other family names that connect through wives or husbands that marry into ELIJASZ family of this era. As my study proceeded, I added/subtracted some families as I collected data (or didn’t as the case may have been). Give me a week to collect data and build a chart showing the social network connections (and re-arrange the chart a time or two).

My data points will be considerably less, but I envision an SNA diagram like this:

Social Network Analysis Diagram

Ecclesiastical Archive for: Biechow, Ksiaznice, Zborowek … and Pacanow?

Stanczyk said a week ago he would show a series fonds in the Catholic Church Archive in Kielce, Poland. These fonds are microfilmed church books of the various parishes in the Kielce Diocese. Sadly, the church does not publish a library catalog of its holdings. Let’s review these images which I collected a long time ago and do not seem to be available any more upon the Internet. I also hope to beseech my readers (in Poland — I know there are a few of you tanks to my Flag Counter), to help me acquire at least Pacanow and I also hope for Swiniary too. Please email Stanczyk if you can help me locate Kielce Diocessan Holdings for: Pacanow and Swiniary parishes (parafii). I can accept a text file of the details or even an image (JPG, GIF, TIF, BMP, PNG) or even a PDF document.

Now lets take a look at what I have (and what I am seeking) …

Biechow Holdings in Kielce

 

Biechow Parish Holdings

These birth/baptismal , marriage/marriage banns, and death church records have been microfilmed by the LDS (aka Mormons).

The LDS also have three microfilm covering the years 1875-1884 which are church records written in Russian that do not appear in this image of their holdings. Now to be fair the image is a few years old and perhaps the Diocessan Archives has been updated since this was taken.

A careful comparison seems to indicate that the LDS microfilm are missing some things that Diocese has and that the Diocese may be missing some things that the LDS have. If this is true then it would appear this is not the source of the LDS microfilm.

You can find the LDS microfilm for my Biechow parish here  and also here too .

If anyone knows if the Diocessan Church Archives in Kielce has microfilm for Biechow from the years 1861-1910, please email me (see above for my email link),  so I can do complete research plans.

I also hope someone out there in the Internet can answer why there is not alegata listed in the Kielce Diocessan Church Archives. Poland’s  State Archives (PRADZIAD) has alegata mcirofilm. Why would the Kielce Diocessan Church Archive be lacking in this manner? I hope this present somewhere in their holdings. I have had excellent success with alegata records giving me missing data.

Finally, my last question is, does the Church Archive also have physical books or only microfilm? If the books exist, can you take photographs of the books themselves?

Now lets look at Ksiaznice. Most people are not aware that Ksiaznice was ever a parish or possibly they were not aware that microfilm existed for Ksiaznice separate from other parishes. I think people just think that Ksiaznice’s church records were added to either Zborowek or Pacanow.

Ksiaznice Holdings in Kielce

Ksiaznice Parish Holdings

The LDS does not have any microfilm of my Ksiaznice which is from the area around Pacanow. Now I did notice some scant records in the Pacanow(Zborowek?) microfilm for Ksiaznice. But look at all that Diocese’s Archive has in Kielce !

I will have to spend a lot of time here to figure out if any of my missing records are here or not. But the holdings looks very complete indeed  — very few gaps !

There is no LDS microfilm for my Ksiaznice, so I have no link to post for you. Clearly, LDS does not get their microfilm from the Diocessan Church Archive. I guess its microfilm  comes directly from the parish books. Again this is probably why people never think of Ksiaznice as a parish separate and apart from Zborowek. Yet look at all of the data they have.

Back at the beginning of July, I talked about this book I used about Biechow parish, from the SwietoKrzyskie Digital Library, in the book,
“Historical Description of Churches, Cities, Monuments, & Memorials of Stopnica“, written by Jan Wisniewska in 1929. This book describes all of these parishes in today’s posting too, plus more. That is how I knew about Ksiaznice.

And now lets review the third parish that I have, Zborowek.

Zborowek

The LDS does have microfilm for Zborowek. To be precise, they have one microfilm covering the years  1878-1884 for birth, marriage and death church records.

The Zborowek LDS microfilm can be found here. But look at the holdings in the Diocessan Archives ! Their records span the years 1736-1887 ! That is again a lot more than you can get from your local Family History Center which has only 6 years I spoke of above.

Again, Stanczyk has his work cut out for him to review the records in Zborowek. I can only dream about the possibilities.

So now gentle reader you know why I am seeking the holdings for Pacanow and Swiniary in the Kielce Diocessan Archives. The potential to close the holes in my family tree and answer all questions back to just before the three partitions of Poland for my Elijasz, Leszczynski, Wlecialowski, and Kedzierski lines is almost more than I can bare. You see I am hoping to plan the search beforehand, so I am prepared for a rather lengthy visit to the Church Archives.

Zborowek Parish

 

Pacanów – The Church and A Tip.

St. Martin - Pacanów Church about 1918

Stanczyk, writes about Pacanów and Biechów … a lot! These are my ancestral villages. I have never been there, but they are in my very bones.

Today’s picture is from the World War I era of Pacanow and its church area. Today Sw. Marcin is now a minor basilica. The church is such a part of Poland and its history. It is also a major part of its families’ histories. Without the Church, there would be very little in the way of genealogy. As you can see the image is from Poland’s National Digital Archive (NAC). Remember I wrote about these archives, right?

I write about these two parishes, each of which has many villages that comprise their individual parishes. My reason is simple. I am always in search of others whose family history is also from these two parishes.

I have had some success in seeking out these people. For example, I met a good friend Jacek (from Krakow) at a Polish Genealogy website: genealodzy.pl  . I also met the wonderful, Elzbiety (Heliasz nee) Kapusta. She spoke no English and I am NOT fluent in Polish, but armed with Google Translator and some determination, I made my way to NaszaKlasa.pl (a Polish Facebook social network website = “Our Classes/Classmates”). This wonderful woman was born in the Biechow parish where my grandparents(dziadkowie) were married ! She took it upon herslef to get the church record of their marriage and even a copy of the civil record too and mail these documents to me. Bless Her Always for that kindness — which I did not even ask her to do!

But that was an active search and it also led me to find a second cousin (whom I have never met face-to-face, who was born in Pacanow and now lives in TX). So active searches of Polish websites are a must, if you cannot actually visit Poland and its churches and/or archives. But this BLOG is an overt attempt to draw (i.e. a passive search) others related to me  or connected to these parishes to seek me out. So this is an inverted search process. Hence, all of the material on names of people or places in hopes that someone someday Googles my blog and contacts me. So that is my latest tip to Polish Genealogists — write a blog and post items on your family so distant cousins far and wide can reach you.

Coming Up …

In the next week or two, I will be writing about other research that I have collected on these two parishes including:

Historical Census of the Pacanow deaconate, Census of the Jewish Population in this area,  Church Archive holdings of Biechow / Ksizanice / Zborowek

Please join me. Blessings For Your Sunday!

–Stanczyk