From Pacanow Poland to Birchgrove, New South Wales, Australia — #Genealogy, #Polish, #Immigration

Stanczyk always loves finding something unusual or unexpected. I guess that is just my eternal boyish wonder of finding/unearthing a treasure. Immigration or the diaspora of Polish citizens about the globe holds a fascination for me. It is a difficult puzzle to solve for your own ancestors. So if I unexpectedly find something else in an unexpected place for another Polish genealogist then I feel compelled to post it in my blog.

Dateline – 22 September, 1954 – Birchgrove, New South Wales, Australia. As a fluke while researching some cholera pandemics, I decided to see if there was any news in this Historical Australian Newspaper website from the Biechow/Pacanow area. To my wonder, I spied a hidden jewel in these far away shores. Up popped, an “advertisement”. Shoot, I was hoping for something historical, not something mercantile. Oh well, lets just see what these Aussies have about Pacanow, shall we?

What did I find? No it was not for me (although it is an affiliated family, so who knows). Click on the image if you wish to follow along … (transcription follows):

I, JOZEF PIOTROWSKI, born in Pacanow, Poland, resident 5 years in Australia, now residing at 39 Wharf Rd. Birchgrove. N.S.W.. Intend to apply for Naturalisation under the Nationality and Citzenship[sic] Act, 1948-1953.

Well, Well, an affiliated family member from my ancestral village (Pacanow) declaring his intention to become a citizen of Australia (NSW=New South Wales state) post World War II.

Source: Trove Digitised Newspapers – The Sydney Morning Herald (22 September 1954)

A Church Register Novelty in Koprzywnica — #Genealogy, #Polish

In another case of finding something interesting whilst researching something else, I found a type of Church Register Index that I have not seen before in any other parish. So today’s blog is about that novel index I found. See the Church Register in the picture (see below).

Dateline Koprzywnica parish, 1810 – In what was after the 3rd partition was Austrian-Hungarian territory (Austrian-Poland in green), has now been annexed by Napoleon in 1809 into the Duchy of Warsaw and in another five years will be Congress Poland (Vistulaland, Russian-Poland). But in 1810 we are speaking of Koprzywnica in the powiat of Staszow and the Departement of Radom. No, that is not wojewodztwo — it is the French, Departement that is the highest level of administration in the Duchy of Warsaw. The map shows that a huge swath of green from the  Austrian-Poland partition (zabior) was annexed into the Duchy in 1809. Stanczyk’s own ancestors once again switched Empires from Austria to France. So too did the citizens of Koprzywnica (and a great many cities, towns, and villages). Poof, now the records go from Latin, in the perfunctory Latin Box (Table) Format to the lingua franca of Polish paragraph with French-style two witnesses.

So Koprzywnica, like Stanczyk’s own ancestral Villages (Biechów and Pacanów) was briefly Austrian, then French (very briefly), then Russian until 1917-1918 whence it became just Poland again. We can find Koprzywnica in the gazetteer, Skorowidz Miejscowoscy Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej as being in the powiat Sandomierz, wojewowdztwo Kielce (circa 1920′s/1930′s).

Indexes are so very helpful. It is always a let down when a parish book or a year within the book lacks any kind of index. That means I will have to look at each and every record to see if any are related to me / my research. Early Latin paragraph form church records often do not have any index  – they barely denote the year change. So that means you have to read each and every badly handwritten paragraph of Latin — very rare to find a priest with good Latin handwriting. That is why the Latin Box Format was more welcome. At least I could find the pieces of info and the handwriting was less of an issue. But the Latin Box format did not have indexes either.

So it was helpful when Napoleon implemented the Codex Napoleon in the Duchy of Warsaw. So by 1810 you see the records written in Polish (lingua franca) in a paragraph form that is specified by the Codex Napoleon. And these new records have indexes!

OK, the indexes initially are by letter: A, B, C, …, Z. So you have just under 26 pages of indexes. It is an improvement. Quickly the church realizes it can save paper by running the index all together with all letters on a single (or a few) page(s) in order alphabetically. Very efficient to scan these indexes for your families. And it was also easy to spot when a priest added a late addition to the index at the back after all other names (even though it was evidently in the wrong spot lexicographically speaking).

OK 1868-1918, we find Russian / Cyrillic indexes. In addition to priests not knowing Russian well and ordering names phonetically before later on,  we find the index in Cyrillic proper lexical order you will have to scan carefully. Cyrillic kind of forces that to those of us weaned on a Latin alphabet. But you sometimes find the Russian indexes sorted in Cyrillic lexical order … by the first name ??? That is not very useful. Sometimes the index is in chronological order (akt # / record # order) making it barely more useful then scanning every record.

But when we find a well formed index (or a not so good index) it is always for one event: Birth/Christening, Marriage / Marriage Banns, Death Records. One index for Births, one for Marriages and one for Deaths … assuming none are missing, 3 indexes. That is what makes the following index so very interesting …

The Index (Skorowidz)

This was supposed to be a Marriage Index !! But it was five scanned pages! This would have to be an extraordinarily large city to have that many marriages! What are all of those columns ?? That is what I asked myself.

Let’s see what those columns are:  Record # (Akt #), Village Name, Person Name(s), Births (Urodzin), Deaths (Zeyscie), Banns (Zapowiedz), and finally Marriages(Malzenstwa) Kart # (you can safely ignore). This index is an all event index. Births-Deaths-Banns-Marriages all interleaved. In fact, when I look at each event (B/M/D) I see the same 99 event-record pages and the same five index pages. It appears that all events are in the same register! This is rather unique — as I said previously I have not seen this before in other parish registers I have seen.

So in this “combo style” index (which needs a proper name) you cannot have a single name  for marriage record, so marriage records have two names (as usual), but this requires two lines in this style of index — since we are multi-columnar. We also see that Banns are indicated ‘I‘ or ‘II‘ — the third bann being the actual marriage itself. The Roman numeral written above the word Zapowiedz. So since the index is in Akt# order, it is a chronological order too. It could be interesting from a demographic perspective (what time of year do most marriages occur or  do a higher concentration of deaths occur in winter months). If this style index had occurred during an epidemic year, then we could have seen all of the deaths occurring in a great streak without interruption by other events. 1810 in Koprzywnica was not such an epidemic year.

There is one more fascinating aspect to this index. In the Napoleonic era (1807 thru 1829) we find that Catholic priest acts as the civil administrator and that Jewish/Evangelic/Orthodox vital records are written in the Catholic register. How is this noted in the index — which again I have not seen elsewhere? Look at the scanned register image for this blog. Pay attention to Records #’s:

85, 86, and 91.

It so happens that each of these records is a Marriage Banns event type. But, notice that each begins ‘Zyda‘.  Żyd = Jew, hence Żyda is plural for Jews. Żydów = Jewish. This indicates that this is a Jewish civil record being recorded.  Now I know that Jewish vital records are recorded in the Napoleonic era Catholic registers. But it is unusual that it is indicated in the index (as opposed to being in the record itself).

So this was a very fascinating find after all. I was actually looking for a particular Leszczyński but I found a novel index and indeed a novel parish register overall.

Related Posts

The Fourth Partition (23 January 2013) – A Discussion of the Duchy of Warsaw, with a map

Historical Eras of Poland (21 January 2013) – A set of Stanczyk defined eras of Poland of particular use to genealogists. An historical definition of Poland’s eras (1569-present) based upon history’s impact on genealogical research.

 

Post Scriptum

The index from this column was found in the Polish website: genealodzy.pl (PTG) of which I written many times before. Their METRYK project of scanned church books is where I found the 1810 Koprzywnica Index.

Just Another Mt. Olivet Map, Section 15N — #Genealogy, #Cemetery, #Maps

Stanczyk has previously published a map (or two) of Mt. Olivet, Detroit cemetery showing the various sections. Today, I am continuing the Mount Olivet meme to publish all of the section maps I have.

• Search of Mt Olivet is a part of the Mt Elliott cemetery association.
• Macomb County Death Searches
• Macomb County Obituary Search
• Seeking MI (Death Records 1897-1920)
• Interment.net
• Find A Grave
• Billion Graves

Section 15  (North part)

Sampling of Names:

332 – Buczkowski

443 – Orzel

553 – Rozanski

595 – Katolski – Koswicki

623 – Wroblewski

724 – Morawska

Let me hasten to add that Stanczyk is NOT related to the above name samples. You need to follow the link to Mt Elliott cemetery association for more info.

Just Another Mt. Olivet Map – Detroit Cemetery — #Genealogy, #Cemetery, #Maps

Stanczyk has previously published a map of Mt. Olivet, (Mount Olivet) Detroit cemetery showing the various sections. Today, I am continuing a meme to publish all of the section maps of Mount Olivet, that I have. Eventually, I will build a database of the names for searching.

• Search of Mt Olivet is a part of the Mt Elliott cemetery association.
• Macomb County Death Searches
• Macomb County Obituary Search
• Seeking MI (Death Records 1897-1920)

Section 15 (South-part)

Mount Olivet (Detroit) – Section 15 (South)

Sampling of Names:

1547 – Jazdzyk

1544 – Gayeski

1267 – Zwicki

1263 – Warczak, Jablonski, Brzozowski

1208 – PRUSINSKI

846 – Kedrowski

Let me hasten to add that Stanczyk is NOT related to the above name samples (except I may now have to look at the PRUSINSKI in 1208). You need to follow the link to Mt Elliott cemetery association for more info.

Next:  15 North

Holocaust Remembrance Days

Reblogged from HeiressMommy™:

• 

Born post Holocaust - in the 1950's meant for me and other Jewish children an almost etched in DNA early knowledge of the Holocaust. Parents and teachers anxiously compelled to both inform and protect our youthful minds. No escaping the REAL facts that just a few years before our births there were those determined to annihilate our kind. So even today - as a Mother, Aunt and a friend to others children, I ask "

Read more… 1,074 more words

Yom HaShoah - Holocaust Remembrance Day 2013 starts this evening. Tonight Nisan 27th arrives at sundown. Yesterday, I wrote a blog on this topic from this jester's Catholic perspective of reflective respect . But I wanted to be able to embody a Jewish perspective for today. So I thought, "Why not have my wife 'guest-blog' for Stanczyk?" Therefore, I give you my wife and her blog (re-blogged from HeiressMommy.wordpress.com). Please enjoy. You can reach her blog from my blog-roll!

Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) — #Genealogy, #Jewish, #Polish

Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) 2013 begins in the evening of: Sunday, April 7
and ends in the evening of: Monday, April 8. In the Hebrew Calendar is 27 Nisan (see Stephen Morse’s Jewish Calendar Conversion tool) is Yom HaShoah and varies in the Gregorian calendar across the Months of April/May.

To honor my wife Teréza and our children let me add a Jewish Genealogy blog post. It is for a Polish village in the AP Grodzisk (Warsaw, Blonie) and is called: Góra Kalwaria. Góra Kalwaria can be found in PRADZIAD database. What is great about this news is that there is yet another project beyond the ones I have previously written about (SzukachwArchiwum.pl and Metryk in PTG). This village and its images can be found in: Metryki.GenBaza.pl (AP Gordzisk) for :

• Góra_Kalwaria_moj_1402

This is just one of many congregations (Catholic & Jewish) that they have scanned. There appear to be about 110 villages in total so far this Polish National Archive in Grodzisk (a branch office of Warsaw).  I picked this village because it is all about the Jewish congregation (that I provided the Pradziad link for). The records run from 1826 – 1910 inclusive and there no missing years. This is a remarkably complete/intact record of a Jewish congregation in Poland. The scanned records from 1826-1867 are written in Polish and then starting in 1868 the records are written in Russian all the way through 1910.

So for the Jewish-Polish genealogists who read this blog, here is a treasure trove to research. In actuality, many of the 110 villages have Jewish records. Look for the abbreviation ‘moj’ (short for mojżeszowe). So I hope this is a joyful news for the remembrance of this solemn occasion.

Good genealogy to all my readers!

–Stanczyk

.

AP Kielce, An Inventory of the National Archive in Kielce, Poland — #Genealogy, #Polish, #Archive

From a forum at genealodzy.pl  Stanczyk saw a PDF document mentioned. When I looked at it, I saw it was an inventory (in progress) of the holdings of  the National Archive in Kielce (AP w Kielcach). So I have produced a condensed version of their work-in-progress. Yes, most of these are related to Stanczyk’s family tree. For their complete inventory list (which was 424 items), see the link (URL) at the bottom of this table.

Now I mention this particular AP (National Archive) because it is the archive that covers the Russian-Poland partition that my ancestors were from. There may be other inventories for other archives.

AP KIELCE

#	Nr zespołu – # Rec. Group	Stan na dzień (as of) 2013-02-01 Nazwa	daty skrajne – date range	księgi – books	metry	ilość sfotografowanych ksiąg – number of books photographed	ilość zrobionych zdjęć – number of photos taken	Braki – deficiencies
1	388	Beszowa	1875-1911	54	71	58	3770	oddział Sandomierz
2	341	Biechów	1875-1908	55	0.83	55	2 538
3	146	Kazimierza Wielka		112	1.03
4	353	Oleśnica	1875-1911	61	0.97	69	3 506
5	812	Opatów	1825,1890-1906	14	0.39	11	2369	oddział Sandomierz
6	152	Opatów		120	1.31
7	658	Opatów-gr	1834-1836	4	0.04	4	36	oddział Sandomierz
8	44	Opatów-moj	1831-1910	46	0.95	47	6860	oddział Sandomierz
9	814	Opatów-pr	1896-1915	19	0.23	20	573	oddział Sandomierz
10	871	Ożarów	1890-1910	3	0.06	4	445	oddział Sandomierz
11	45	Ożarów-moj	1826-1909	43	0.61	43	3419	oddział Sandomierz
12	355	Pacanów	1875-1908	62	0.91	64	3 703
13	373	Pacanów moj		51	0.76
14	245	Połaniec	1810-1910	106	2.05	106	12507	oddział Sandomierz
15	252	Połaniec-moj	1826-1910	88	0.99	92	3425	oddział Sandomierz
16	246	Staszów	1810-1910	103	1.65	103	10146	oddział Sandomierz
17	253	Staszów-moj	1826-1910	84	1.33	86	6236	oddział Sandomierz
18	362	Stopnica		48	0.88
19	374	Stopnica moj		46	1.29
20	582	Stopnica pr		3	0.02
21	97	Tumlin		189	1.67
22	370	Zborówek	1875-1908	58	0.66	65	2 295

Source: http://s6.genealodzy.pl/pliki/asc/apkielce.pdf

I tried to provide a reasonable translation (using Google Translator with some hand-tweaks) of the Polish Column Headings in English.

LEGEND (3rd Column):

A suffix of moj or -moj indicates Jewish records.

pr – Orthodox Catholic

ew – Evangelical

gr – Greek Orthodox

The rest (or any with  rk) would indicate Roman Catholic.

I believe the Column Heading METRY indicates the actual shelf space of storage this record group physically occupies. I believe the units would be in Meters (m). Remember Europe uses ‘,’ where America uses a decimal point. Some appear to be missing the decimal point. In most cases, it appears that Excel has translated the comma to decimal point, but if you look at the source document, you should be aware of this cultural difference.

Archiwum Państwowe w Suwałkach in Szukajwarchiwach.PL — #Genealogy, #Polish

Over the last few weeks we have been discussing about Szukajwarchiwach.pl, the Polish website for “searching in archives” of the 2.4 Million Archive Images of historical vital records. So today we will look at the Suwalki Archive (Archive #63,  http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/63#tabZasoby), in particular the WIZAJNY parish in which this jester has previously plumbed (for NARKIEWICZ / SZCZESNY).

First off, please take note of the two red circles in the image. The first red circle around the drop down menu is set to ’15′ by default. I usually choose the drop down value ’100′. This drop down menu controls how many ‘Units’ are displayed on each page.  So in order to minimize the number of pages and to maximize the number of items on each page, I routinely pick the ’100′ from the drop down on each page.

Second, I was searching for WIZAJNY parish, But what I got/found was WIZAJNACH. You need to learn to recognize the root of the proper names/nouns in Polish. Fred Hoffman/Jonathan Shea call this applying the “chopping block” to get to the root of a word. So in the second red circle we find Wizajnach. That is the unit we wish to search.

Now notice the last column shows ’5124′ (on 3 April 2013). This number is the number of “sheets” that have been scanned. So you should think images. The concept to take away is that if you see a ZERO, then there is nothing scanned; Try again later.  But in our case we should expect 5,124 images were scanned across the year range:  1808-1905.

If you want to follow along, I picked the year 1822 which 86 scanned images and selected ’100′ scanned images from the drop down which effectively shows all 86 scans one page. These 86 images are actually “thumbnail” images that you click on to see …

At the bottom of the image are two circles/icons. The ‘Z’ circle gives you a kind of magnifying glass for seeing a small part of the image, zoomed-in.

It is the other icon that we wish to click on (the square with the arrows at each corner, left of the ‘Z’). This icon left of the ‘Z’ pops up a window of the image more full sized. This full-sized image can be interacted with, zooming or panning or dragging the image around the viewing window. Please, note that at the bottom of this pop-up viewer window is a link you can click on to ‘Download‘ the scanned image to your hard-drive. So when you find your ancestor, you can download his/her scanned vital record.

Before I bring this post to a close. I wanted to point out how you can find the indexes (usually after the last record). This era of the 1820′s, the indexes are usually alphabetical with one letter per index page. So these kind of indexes look as shown below. You need to find the ‘Akt #’ in the index and then go to the scan that has the image of this Akt. The Akt #’s are on the outside of each image. They are on the left for the left-hand page and on the right for the right-hand page in the image scans.

As I mentioned in a prior blog article, the Wizajny parish is amazingly complete. It was also interesting because its records switch over in mid-year 1868. So you can see the records in Polish in early 1868, then in Russian starting in mid 1868. There are no Wizajny or even Suwalki records in genealodzy.pl (Metryk or Geneszukach) databases.

JEWISH GENEALOGISTS

Please note that in the Napoleonic era (about 1807-1829), the Catholic parishes in Poland  were required to record the vital records for all faiths. So you will find Jewish birth / marriage / death records in the Catholic parishes books, if there were Jewish families in that area. For example, Akt #39 appears to be a Jewish birth record. Usually that is indicated in the text, but I did not see in Akt #39, BUT … if you look to the right of the record at the image on the left  (you will see a ‘Zydow’ column with a ’1′ in it) …

Prior Related Stanczyk Articles …

A Guide for Using Szukajwarchiwach.PL Poradnik

Polish State Archives – Numbers

Russian Poland 1867-1875

Wordless Wednesday … Polish Historical Calendar — #April, #Polish, #Historical, #Calendar

• 3 April/Kwiecień 2013 Dateline Philadelphia - Stanczyk,

Kalendarz Historyczny Polski (Kwiecień)

April 1st – Death of Zygmunt I (King), 2nd – Death of Andrzej Leszczynski (Archbishop of Gniezno).

Hmmm, the month starts ominously. This jester likes that on the 20th- Krakow Cathedral (Church Blessing/Consecration, at founding?). A Good Day Indeed!

Jan III Sobieski … — Things I Find Whilst Looking Up Other Things

Jan III Sobieski – Victorius at Chocim 1673

Stanczyk ,

is a big fan of Jan III Sobieski. Today’s meme, a continuing meme in this blog came about because Valerie Warunek had posted about Digital Library of Polish and Poland Related News Pamplets.  That mention of a new library launched me on another research adventure. When I was looking up other things in Leszno, for Hyam Salomon, I found a Latin text related to Jan Sobieski. This jester loves Jan Sobieski’s letters, particularly those to his beloved wife. This document recounted his victory of 1673 of the Battle of Chocim and was a missive to the pope. This would be a pattern for  King Jan III ‘s future battles — letters before and after battle. After the battle, a missive was sent to the pope. King Jan III was a good Catholic monarch.

He claimed the Triumphant Crown in the Name of Poland and the Polish Eagle.

My Latin is not sufficient to render the phrase to the left (I see Polish Eagle = Aquila Polona). But it was signed the Dragon.

Hmmm. Interesting.  I know the Transylvanians aided Jan III Sobieski. But I am supposing this is a reference to the Order of the Dragon, a monarchic chivalric order meant to defend Europe’s Christians (from the Ottoman Empire). This battle is a good 100 years after Vlad Tepes (“The Impaler”) aka known as Dracula, son of the Dragon (Vlad II). Vlad II was a member of the Order of the Dragon, but his son Vlad Tepes was not a member of the order. So my thesis is that Jan III Sobieski was a member of the monarchic Order or the Dragon. Note that Wladyslaw II (Jagiellonian dynasty — possible Columbus grandfather) was also a member. So perhaps there was a strong connection of this chivalric order to the kings of Poland.

So here are a list of (source: Wikipedia) …

Monarchic Chivalric Orders:

• Late medieval monarchical orders (14th & 15th centuries attached to a monarch):

Order of Saint George, founded by Charles I of Hungary in 1325

Order of the Band, founded by Alfonso XI of Castile in ca. 1330

Order of the Garter, founded by Edward III of England in 1348

Order of the Star, founded by John II of France in 1351

Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, founded by Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy in 1362.

Order of the Ermine, founded by John V, Duke of Brittany in 1381: 1st order to accept Women.

Order of the Dragon, founded by Sigismund of Hungary in 1408.

Order of the Golden Fleece, founded by Philip III, Duke of Burgundy in 1430

Order of St Michel, founded by Louis XI of France in 1469

• Post-medieval foundations of chivalric orders:

Order of Saint Stephen (1561)

Order of the Holy Spirit (1578)

Blood of Jesus Christ (military order) (1608)

Order of the Thistle (1687)

Order of Saint Louis (1694)

Order of Saint Stephen of Hungary (1764)

Order of St. Patrick (1783)

Order of Saint Joseph (1807)

• Monarchical orders whose monarch no longer reigns but continues to bestow the order:

Order of the Golden Fleece (Austrian branch)

Order of the Holy Spirit

Order of Prince Danilo I (Montenegro)

Order of Saint Peter (Cetinje)

Royal Order of Saint George for the Defense of the Immaculate Conception (Bavaria)

Order of the Crown (Romania)

Order of Carol I (Romania)

Order of the Immaculate Conception of Vila Viçosa (Portugal)

Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George (Two Sicilies)

Order of the Eagle of Georgia (Georgia)

World Backup Day

1 April 2013 – Dateline Philadelphia –

Yes, this jester knows its April Fool’s day; But who better than a jester to speak truth to the people (uh … genealogists, librarians, archivists, & researchers) on this day? The first of April has become the impetus for backup and preservation.

You need only look at today’s world of crazy dictators or Mali terrorists to see that cultural/historical artifacts can disappear in an instant. Cyberwarfare can claim your harddisk. The cloud could crash or hurricane Sandy can happen (please donate to Ellis island Foundation to help in that restoration effort). Libraries and Archives need to safeguard your artifacts too! Are you motivated yet? Good!

There are backup solutions, including some free options to the “cloud”. Apple even provides a free 5GB iCloud. So save your GEDCOM file. If you still have free space then backup pictures or scans that are CRITICAL. You can save/backup to media: CDs, USB thumb drives, etc. But be aware that backup to electronic media needs to be refreshed yearly to avoid stranding your backups on outmoded technology (i.e. 8Track tapes or even floppy disks).

Be careful out there and have a Happy April Fool’s Day!

Mailbag … A New Missive — #Genealogy Email

From the Post Office Department

I was going though the mailbag and I received the following missive:

therealbetty commented on A Guide for Using Szukajwarchiwach.PL Poradnik — #Polish, #Archive, #Guide, #Poradnik

Thanks for all your work on this! I tried to check your list of towns and I would like records from the Przeciszow and Oswiecim area in Malopolskie. Am I out of luck this time around as I could not find them? I am assuming that area is in the Krakow archives.

Well therealbetty, thanks for writing again! That is a very good question. I went back and looked at the NAC’s PDF document that listed Archives/Parishes being put online:

http://nac.gov.pl/files/D’ASC1_02_2013v.3.pdf

I did not see Oswiecim (aka Auschwitz) listed. To be sure it was a parish, I looked it up in a Gazetteer [Słownik Geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i Innych Krajów Słowiańskich (The Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland & Other Slavic Countries)  -- see my Gazetteer page]:

It says the Roman Catholic (r) is in Oswiecim (i.e. “loco”), the Greek Catholic/Orthodox is in Krakow and the Evangelical parish is in Biala. This is the Oswiecim you mentioned as you can see it is in Wojewodztwo (old woj.) Krakow, Powiat Biala, Gmina Oswiecim. (2nd-4th columns).

So, unfortunately, the short answer to your question is, “No, Oswiecim and Przeciszow are not in this release of online records.”

Przeciszow was in Wojewodztwo (old woj.) Krakow, Powiat Wadowice, Gmina Przeciszow and it is a parish too, as you probably knew.

–Stanczyk

A Guide for Using Szukajwarchiwach.PL Poradnik — #Polish, #Archive, #Guide, #Poradnik

Stanczyk has been writing for a while about Polish National Archives announcing via their National Digital Archive (NAC) that Poland would be putting 2.4 Million digital images of church / synagogue metric images from their regional archives online. So today’s blog post is a guide (poradnik) about how to use szukajwarchiwach.pl to view these images.

It is easiest if you know the regional archive you are interested in, but you do not need to know it really. I will demonstrate with the RZESZOW regional archive. This archive was in Austrian-Poland partition, so its records should be for those locales to Rzeszow. Recall from my post, Polish State Archives – Numbers (13 March 2013) where I listed the archive numbers, that Rzeszow = 59.

Œ Œ

Step By Step

Step One

            Go to the archive of interest - http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/59#tabInformacje

You should see the web site with the information for the Rzeszow regional Archive.

Notice the two links: Poprzednie archiwum  and Następne archiwum . With these two links you go through the list of regional archives. The list of archives only includes those archives for which they are presently loading images. If you hover over my two links above you will see ‘Previous Archive’ and ‘Next Archive’.

Step Two

            Click on ‘Resource’ [see 2 in red circle] –  which brings you to the list of collections at Rzeszow. http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/59#tabZasoby

You should see …

Step Three

 Click on Collection Number ‘59/20/0‘ for the civil records from the Roman Catholic parish of Błażowej - http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/59/20/0#tabZespol

You should see …

Step Four

Click on ‘Units 20/20‘ in red circle - http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/59/20/0#tabJednostki

You should see …

Step Five

Click on ‘Reference Code 59/20/0/-/1‘ in red circle - http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/59/20/0/-/1#tabJednostka

You should see …

Step Six

Click on ‘Digital Copies 107‘ to see a table of 107 scanned images - http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/59/20/0/-/1#tabSkany

You should now see the scanned images …

There are 107 images [currently] and the data looks like it is in the Latin Box format. Since there is no index, you will have visit each image in turn and look at each row of boxes to see if that birth/baptism is for one of your ancestors.

So that is a visual guide for how you navigate the  szukajwarchiwach.pl website to get to the scanned images. Obviously, you will need to focus on the villages/parishes for your ancestor. That may be another Archive (besides Rzeszow) or if it is in the Rzeszow archive then you need to pay closer attention to the parishes in the Rzeszow collections and finally, you will need to select Birth/Marriage/Death (Urodziny/Małżeństwo/Zgony) for the year of interest to you.

You will still need to be able to deal with Latin or Polish or Russian or German language in the records to understand what you see in the scanned images. You will also need to be able to read the handwriting. But you can do this!

Good Luck!

Cristobal Colon (Discoverer Formerly Known as Columbus) … Polish-Lithuanian & Italian Noble — #Genealogy, #Polish, #Lithuanian

Stanczyk loves this story. That the discoverer formerly known as Christopher Columbus (who really should be known by his Portuguese name: Cristobal Colon) may be Polish-Lithuanian royalty.

Stanczyk has written a few times on this Columbus / Wladyslaw III genealogy-genetics-history riddle. The Don Quixote of this tale is Manuel Rosa (an an information technology analyst and amateur historian). Mr. Rosa’s claims of the Polish (or more properly Lithuanian, as in Jagiellonian) Wladyslaw III lineage date back to November 2010.

Prior Stanczyk Polish Columbus stories …

1. 02-December-2010 – Christopher Columbus Discovers … He Is POLISH!

2. 27-December-2010 – Wladislaw III – Father of Columbus

Plus a few mentions: 2011, & 2012 at the start of Polish Heritage Month (each October).

Well here is the latest update, from “the Lithuania Tribune“. You can read the lengthy article which is most informative.

Factual Claims:

• Rosa has published two books (one in Spanish and one in Polish). NO English version yet.
• Columbus married Filipa Moniz Perestrelo. Filipa was not only daughter of a high noble and Captain of the Portuguese Island of Porto Santo, but a member of the elite Portuguese Military Order of Santiago
• Cristobal Colon’s noble wife: Filipa Moniz was one of the twelve elite “donnas” of the Portuguese Military Order of Santiago.
• Colon was descended from legendary Roman General Colonius (not listed in wikipedia List of Roman Generals )
• Columbus never wrote in Italian or Genoese [not even to his brothers]
• Columbus’ writings were: rough Castilian punctuated by noteworthy and frequent Portuguese words
• Prof. José Lorente’s DNA studies prove that the discoverer Cristóbal Colón’s DNA did not match any of 477 Colombo families from the Genoa area.
• Colón was a royal prince, son of a Portuguese noblewoman from the Italian Colonna family and a man named Henrique Alemão (Henry the German) resident on the Portuguese island of Madeira
• Henrique Alemão (Henry the German) = false moniker of Wladyslaw III used for hiding on Madiera Island (presumably from the Ottomans)
• 1498 Will and later Genoese documents proved to be forgeries/fakes
• Prince Georges Paleologue de Bissipat, an exiled Byzantine nobleman living in France nicknamed “Colombo the Younger”, said to be a relative of Christopher Columbus was also a relative of King Wladyslaw III

The author laments (“… it is lamentable that, up until now, there is little or no debate in America or Lithuania to either accept or contradict”) that only Portuguese and Polish academics have currently debated this topic. Well then Rosa needs to have published/translated the book in Lithuanian and English if he wishes for further debate.

Are there any historians out there? Can anyone refute or supply proof of the above factual claims? Columbus letters and their language should be easy to establish. What about these other people named: General[Roman] Colonius, Portuguese nobles related to Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, or Prince Georges Paleologue de Bissipat ? Come on European Historians help out this poor jester with some factual links or books/documents — so much is online these days.

The next Manuel Rosa appearance is: April 6, 2013, where Manuel Rosa will present a lecture at Boalsburg’s Columbus Chapel, (http://www.boalmuseum.com/columbus-lecture.html) where more evidence will be presented, in Boalsburg, PA which is North-West of Harrisburg (contact: contact 814-466-9266 or office@boalmuseum.com).

I’d love to have this story proven true or false. It is time for the sensationalism to end. Did National Geo ever televise this story as reported earlier? This jester never saw it. What happened with the Colon DNA being compared to Wladyslaw III descendants? So far we only have that he is not related to Colombos who are Genoese. But since he had Roman heritage, I presume he has some Italian DNA. What about the Slavic DNA? Those pesky Slavic DNA markers are pretty different from Italian DNA markers. I am hoping we have Y-Chromosome DNA testing which should show Slavic markers and MT DNA testing which should show Italian/Portuguese markers.

I accept that Cristobal Colon must have had royal blood to marry a noble woman and have such access to European courts. I also accept that a noble man would have had the education that a peasant wool-worker could never have had. I am uncertain about the heraldic symbols. The rest I am unqualified to judge — hence the plea for help.

A BANAS marriage record from the METRYK project …

This bit of blog is for Michelle Ann Kratts.

банас =  BANAS . The first set of characters(банас) is the RUSSIAN written in CYRILLIC characters.  Look at the name in the RED Boxes in the image. This is a marriage record (#9 from 1869 in STASZOW powiat of old wojewodztwo Kielce/Kieleckie):

http://metryki.genealodzy.pl/metryka.php?ar=7&zs=0246d&sy=161&kt=2&plik=08-09.jpg

From the METRYK project on the PTG website (genealodzy.pl). You need to know how BANAS/банас looks in Indexes so that you can find your family records. Archaic Russian Cyrillic handwriting is difficult to read. The Russians reformed the CYRLLIC character set in 1918, so they no longer write Russian like you see in these church records — so Russian Language experts may struggle a bit. I taught myself to read Russian from the Hoffman/Shea book, I am far from fluent in Russian, but I have mastered enough Russian to read genealogy records (with their limited vocabulary). You can too!

I wanted to mention that you see Janem Banasiem (Latin for the Polish name Jan Banas ) following the Russian version of that name. That and the ‘Maryanna Glibowna’ are the only little bits written in the Latin alphabet, the rest are written in Russian, using the CYRILLIC character set.

As you may or may not know the ‘-owna’ ending on Maryanna’s name indicates she is an unmarried maiden. So her name is really Maryanna GLIB (not GLIBOWNA). The ‘owna’ ending is a grammatical construct. OWNA (single woman) – OWA (married woman) -KICH or -OW (family name plural).

In my family:

ELIJASZ (a man), ELIJASZOWNA (an umarried woman), ELIJASZOWA (a married woman), ELIJASZOW (the ELIJASZ family).  I record the name as ELIJASZ in the family tree. Actually, my family name has evolved a bit so I find it as: ELIASZ or ELIJASZ or ELJASZ or HELIASZ . Sometimes a priest will leave off the ‘Z’.

I do not think the BANAS name will show such variation, but you never know. I could imagine finding a BANAC  or BANASZ too. In practice, I have always seen your name written as:

BANAS/банас

–Stanczyk

Gazetteers, Maps, and Genealogy — #Polish, #Genealogy, #Maps, #Gazetteer

tanczyk, has been busy revisiting the Metryk (metrical, vital records) images from genealodzy.pl of the various parishes/synagogues [hereafter I just use 'parish' as shorthand for 'parish/synagogue']. As my blog, Waiting For Polish Archives 2.4 M Scans (March 18th, 2013), indicated, I have been exhausting the possibilities for Biechow & Zborowek parishes in the Buski (Busko-Zdroj) powiat. The images are clearer, so I am replacing my existing images with these much better images. In some cases, I have found that the images of the Polish paragraph format provide me with additional details over what may have been available via only a Latin Box format copy that I might have previously had. At the very least, I have corrected a few mistakes of translation due to unreadable portions from prior microfilm I have read from/taken pictures of. So I strongly encourage others to make this effort.

I have been using the Metryk database and looking at the images/scans. Sometimes you have to look at dozens of images because there is NO index. But most of the collection (post 1812) have indexes. If you see SKU (that means index/skorowidz of births/urodziny), likewise  for SKM (for marriage), and SKZ (for death) indexes. Sometimes indexes spread across multiple pages, so you may see SK1, SKa (names begining with the letter ‘A’) or SKU1, etc. SO use these indexes to look for your family names, then just load up the scan of the akt (record) number for your ancestor — no need to search  through a multitude of images.

I have also used Geneszukacz as another kind of index to search for family names. These indexes are nice because I can catch ancestors getting married (or dying or giving birth) in another parish that I might not have known to check. If this previously unknown parish is one that has scans, then I go directly to the year/event for that parish and go to the akt specified in Geneszukacz!

So that is all great and I exhort you to do this.

But these new, previously unknown parishes. Where are they? How far away from the ancestral village are they? That is when I need a gazetteer (check out Stanczyk’s Gazetter page) or a map. If you have not been to the Polish War Map Archive (Archiwum Map Wojskowego), then today’s blog is your reason to do so. I have a map on my wall of my ancestral villages. The map’s name is: STOPNICA_PAS47_SLUP32. In fact, I use their MAP INDEX, 1:100,000 scale map tiled in squares (http://igrek.amzp.pl/mapindex.php?cat=WIG100). Please NOTE these map images are from about 4MB to 7MB in size. Make sure you are at a Free WiFi cafe where you can use a high-speed and the large band-width for the map images you download.

When you see, PAS think ROW and when you see SLUP think COLUMN. This is a big Cartesian Grid (or computer types can think 2d-array). It turns out that STOPNICA_PAS47_SLUP32 has: Biechow, Pacanow, Ksiaznice, Zborowek, Swiniary, Szczucin, Beszowa, Olesnica, and STOPNICA. In fact, that one map has many more parishes than those that I enumerated. I have a small snippet of the Map Index below (you can click on the image and it will take you to the actual map index):

So I found an ELIJASZ ancestor in Koniemloty parish getting married, who was from PACANOW parish. Now from the Metryk web app, I knew Koniemloty was in STASZOW powiat. So I go to the Map Index and look at the grid near STOPNICA (P47_S32) and voila, STASZOW is the box due north of STOPNICA in PAS46_SLUP32. If you cannot locate you powiat that way, then you must drop back to MAPA.SZUKACZ.pl (an interactive map that I have raved about before) and look for KONIEMLOTY (do not need to use diacriticals) to get the relative feel that it is north or east (or north-east). So any way, STASZOW_PAS46_SLUP32 is the map for KONIEMLOTY parish. Notice PAS46 is one row less than PAS47 (of STOPNICA). PAS decreasing is going north, PAS increasing is going south. Going east from STASZOW, we see the SLUP increases to SLUP33  (SANDOMIERZ) or going west the SLUP decreases to SLUP31 (PINCZOW). So now you can now work  with the Map Index using the cardinal directions by adding/subtracting to/from the rows/columns.

P.S. Since this is the Passover (Pesach) / Easter (Wielkanoc) season, let me honor my wife (Tereza) by pointing out that her paternal grandfather, Benjamin Solomon, had as a birth village, Proskuriw (aka PŁOSKIRÓW, Хмельницький/Khmelnitski – now in Modern Ukraine). This village is shown in the lower right-hand corner of my map snippet (PAS51_SLUP44).

RootsTech 2013 … — #Genealogy, #RootsTech, #Technology

iGoogle as customized for Stanczyk

Today is the start of RootsTech 2013. So in honor of the conference I will blog today about  Genealogy, and Technology.

Last year Google announced it was getting rid of iGoogle and now this week it said it was getting rid of its RSS Reader (hence probably why they announced iGoogle was going away). So I have decided how I will replace these two tools in my portable genealogy toolbox. My Solution … the FlipBoard app.

FlipBoard

The screenshot above (at the top) shows a portion of my iGoogle (still available until July). As you can surmise, I used it as a newspaper dashboard for keeping me abreast of the genealogy news in my focus areas. You may have noticed it is quite TEXTUAL. As such, it lacks appeal and ease of scanability. This is where Flipboard app comes in.  Now Stanczyk was not using Google’s Reader … that is directly. I think iGoogle probably was a tool that used its own Reader (RSS feeds). It gave me the ability to have a genealogy dashboard (or portal as we used to say). Flipboard will however import your Google Reader. There are other alternatives like Pulse or even WordPress that can import your RSS subscriptions for you. But this jester likes FlipBoard.

As you see, Flipboard is visually appealing and easily, quickly scanable. What you may not realize that these Flipboard “blocks” are the same feeds I had in the iGoogle tool. However, now my Eastman Online Genealogy and my GenealogyBlog are visual. Notice I was able to also get my Ancestry Member Connect Activity feed too! So I have everything I had before in a kind of retro “Life Magazine” visually appealing way  updated for the Internet age ! I actually think of Flipboard as my Internet Magazine that is finely attuned to MY interests. But as you see, you can use it as your genealogy dashboard of what is going on currently in genealogy (or any topic you are interested in).

You may not have noticed in the Flipboard image, I have my own blog in the lower left corner. When you click on that “block” it takes to my “section”. Where my own blog posts are very attractively displayed in the Flipboard magazine style. Very nice!

Flipboard runs on your smartphone or your tablet. I really like how it looks on the tablet (iPad in my case). Seeing my blog in Flipboard changed my style of writing a blog. I wanted my blog posts to look good and be visually appealing in Flipboard. So now I take some extra measures to make sure it will  look good, but I have to admit that Flipboard does most of the work and it does make your blog look good.

Flipboard can take your Twitter feed, or Facebook or Blog or even a custom RSS Feed like my Ancestry Member Connect Activity. It even takes Flickr or LinkedIn or just about anything you may use in your social networking / media creation world.

So I am no longer sad that iGoogle or the underlying Google Reader are going away. I have evolved and I am using Flipboard and I am much happier. I can keep tabs and I can keep informed and I am frequently entertained too. What a great app!

Hey add “Stanczyk Internet Muse” to your Flipboard. Enjoy RootsTech 2013 too!

Polish State Archives – Numbers — #Genealogy, #Polish, #Archives

The Polish State Archives via the National Digital Archives (NAC) recently announced the plans to release 2.4 Million scans of metrical book records online. In order to use this database (http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/) you will need to know the Archive’s number of the Regional State Archive that you are interested in (i.e. the Archive that has the data/scans of your ancestral village).

Stanczyk could not locate such a list. So this jester created one. Knowing that the IZA had a drop down menu of Archives,  I went there. Sure enough it had the archives … and the archive’s number. But it was a drop down menu and I could not copy/paste from the drop down menu. How could I get the data?

I put on my propeller beanie and it occurred to me that the HTML of the web page would have that data for the menu. So I looked at the page source and voila. After some editing to remove HTML tags I built the required list for all of to use with the new 2.4 Million records in http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/.

The list is below. One note, I notice that the list is out of date in the sense that there are regional archives that no longer exist. For example, I know to my own pain, that the Kielce regional state archive (Kielce Panstowe) office (oddzial) in Pinczow  (#23 in the list) was closed and the records moved to Kielce (the main office, #21). So please take note of this, as I am sure it happened to other offices as well.

Here is the PDF of the listed parishes/synagogues being scanned (for March):

http://nac.gov.pl/files/D’ASC1_02_2013v.3.pdf

Archive Number List

1 Archiwum Glówne Akt Dawnych (1)
2 Archiwum Akt Nowych (2)
4 Archiwum Panstwowe w Bialymstoku (4)
5 Archiwum Panstwowe w Bialymstoku Oddzial w Lomzy (5)
6 Archiwum Panstwowe w Bydgoszczy (6)
8 Archiwum Panstwowe w Czestochowie (8)
9 Archiwum Panstwowe w Elblagu z siedziba w Malborku (9)
10 Archiwum Panstwowe w Gdansku (10)
11 Archiwum Panstwowe w Kaliszu (11)
12 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach (12)
13 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach Oddzial w Bielsku-Bialej (13)
14 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach Oddzial w Cieszynie (14)
15 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach Oddzial w Gliwicach (15)
16 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach Oddzial w Oswiecimiu (16)
17 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach Oddzial w Pszczynie (17)
18 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach Oddzial w Raciborzu (18)
20 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach Oddzial w Zywcu (20)
21 Archiwum Panstwowe w Kielcach (21)
22 AP w Kielcach Oddzial w Jedrzejowie – Oddzial zlikwidowany, akta przeniesione do AP K… (22)
23 AP w Kielcach Oddzial w Pinczowie – Oddzial zlikwidowany, akta przeniesione do AP Kie… (23)
24 Archiwum Panstwowe w Kielcach Oddzial w Sandomierzu (24)
25 AP w Kielcach Oddzial w Starachowicach – Oddzial zlikwidowany, akta przeniesione do A… (25)
26 Archiwum Panstwowe w Koszalinie (26)
27 Archiwum Panstwowe w Koszalinie Oddzial w Slupsku (27)
28 Archiwum Panstwowe w Koszalinie Oddzial w Szczecinku (28)
29 Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie (29)
30 Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie Oddzial w Bochni (30)
31 Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie Oddzial w Nowym Saczu (31)
33 Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie Oddzial w Tarnowie (33)
34 Archiwum Panstwowe w Lesznie (34)
39 Archiwum Panstwowe w Lodzi (39)
41 Archiwum Panstwowe w Lodzi Oddzial w Sieradzu (41)
42 Archiwum Panstwowe w Olsztynie (42)
45 Archiwum Panstwowe w Opolu (45)
48 Archiwum Panstwowe w Piotrkowie Trybunalskim (48)
49 Archiwum Panstwowe w Piotrkowie Trybunalskim Oddzial w Tomaszowie Mazowieckim (49)
50 Archiwum Panstwowe w Plocku (50)
51 Archiwum Panstwowe w Plocku Oddzial w Kutnie (51)
52 Archiwum Panstwowe w Plocku Oddzial w Leczycy (52)
56 Archiwum Panstwowe w Przemyslu (56)
58 Archiwum Panstwowe w Radomiu (58)
59 Archiwum Panstwowe w Rzeszowie (59)
60 Archiwum Panstwowe w Rzeszowie Oddzial w Sanoku (60)
61 AP w Rzeszowie Oddzial w Skolyszynie – Oddz. zlikwidowany, akta przeniesione do AP Rz… (61)
62 Archiwum Panstwowe w Siedlcach (62)
63 Archiwum Panstwowe w Suwalkach (63)
64 Archiwum Panstwowe w Suwalkach Oddzial w Elku (64)
65 Archiwum Panstwowe w Szczecinie (65)
66 Archiwum Panstwowe w Gorzowie Wielkopolskim (66)
67 Archiwum Panstwowe w Szczecinie Oddzial w Miedzyzdrojach (67)
68 Archiwum Panstwowe w Szczecinie Oddzial w Stargardzie Szczecinskim (68)
69 Archiwum Panstwowe w Toruniu (69)
71 Archiwum Panstwowe w Toruniu Oddzial we Wloclawku (71)
72 Archiwum Panstwowe m.st. Warszawy (72)
73 Archiwum Panstwowe m.st. Warszawy Oddzial w Grodzisku Mazowieckim (73)
75 Archiwum Panstwowe m.st. Warszawy Oddzial w Lowiczu (75)
76 Archiwum Panstwowe m.st. Warszawy Oddzial w Mlawie (76)
78 Archiwum Panstwowe m.st. Warszawy Oddzial w Otwocku (78)
79 Archiwum Panstwowe m.st. Warszawy Oddzial w Pultusku (79)
82 Archiwum Panstwowe we Wroclawiu (82)
83 Archiwum Panstwowe we Wroclawiu Oddzial w Jeleniej Górze (83)
84 Archiwum Panstwowe we Wroclawiu Oddzial w Kamiencu Zabkowickim (84)
85 Archiwum Panstwowe we Wroclawiu Oddzial w Legnicy (85)
86 Archiwum Panstwowe we Wroclawiu Oddzial w Lubaniu (86)
88 Archiwum Panstwowe w Zamosciu (88)
89 Archiwum Panstwowe w Zielonej Górze z siedziba w Starym Kisielinie (89)
90 Archiwum Panstwowe w Zielonej Górze Oddzial w Wilkowie (90)
91 Archiwum Panstwowe w Zielonej Górze Oddzial w Zarach (91)
93 Archiwum Panstwowe w Gdansku Oddzial w Gdyni (93)
307 Muzeum Pierwszych Piastów na Lednicy (307)
309 Archiwum Uniwersytetu Mikolaja Kopernika w Toruniu (309)
324 Stowarzyszenie Archiwum Solidarnosci (324)
325 Zarzad Oddzialu Zwiazku Sybiraków w Lodzi (325)
327 Glówna Biblioteka Lekarska im. Stanislawa Konopki (327)
701 Instytut Józefa Pilsudskiego w Ameryce (701)
702 Polski Instytut Naukowy w Nowym Jorku. Biblioteka i Archiwum im. A. Jurzykowskiego (702)