Wordless Wednesday — #Genealogy , #Polish

Gminy Pisar — which I am translating as Secretary of Gminas.

One witness was the Gmina (singular) Mayor. Politically connected?

Oh this is the 28-October-1882 birth record of Pelagia Maria Kędzierska who will grow up to marry my grand-uncle Jan Elijasz.

St. John Paul II & St John XXIII — #Religion, #Saints

 

Today this Jester was overjoyed, tearfully so,  at the Mass of Canonization for Saint John Paul II & Saint John XXIII. The Mass just completed was beautiful ! Bless His Holiness, Pope Francis and all others whose preparation and works made today such a moving mass. I felt like I was a part of History.

 

Two Popes canonized on the same day! Also we had a Pope (Francis) and a Pope Emeritus (Benedikt) in presence at the ceremony.  Divine Mercy. A moving and special day indeed.

#2014Review

Today is Part Three – This is where Stanczyk wanted to write about Karol Józef Wojtyła‘s genealogical lineage. Blessed be those whose long lineage gave us this magnificent man.

Pope John XXIII was special to my wife and her father. SO may both Saints John Paul II & John XXIII bless my wife & our children.

Related Post on St John Paul II in this blog …

30 Apr 2011  – Santo Subito (Part 1)

1 May 2011 –  Santo Subito (Part 2)

1890 Kielce Gubernia Commemorative Book — #Genealogy, #Polish

On Easter Sunday, Stanczyk wrote about Logan Kleinwak / Genealogy Indexer. In the article, I used as an example of the database searches (sources) that genealogy indexer searches through as the: 1890 Kielce Gubernia Commemorative Book (Памятная книжка Келецкой губернии). That was a bit foreshadowing of today’s blog.   This blog is dominated by Genealogy, by Polish Genealogy, by Russian-Poland partition Genealogy, in particular the Kielce Gubernia (Wojewodztwo). Most of the time I write about topics that centers upon post-Napoleonic era (1815-ish to about 1918) which overlaps the era of the three partitions and the era of the Great Migration to the USA. One of the reasons for such a focus to connect with distant cousins on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. So today’s topic is to further understand the administrative structures of my ancestral villages in 1890 Kielce Gubernia. Where the red square is on today’s map-graphic is the geographic area we are speaking of. It is important to understand the administrative structures to trace your genealogy. So today we will be examining the hierarchy described by their Russian names as: Gubernia composed of Uyezds or Powiats which were composed of Gminas  (aka Wojewodztwo->Powiats->Gminas). There is also a religious hierarchy: Diocese-Deaconate-Parish. These hierarchies change over time as borders are drawn and redrawn. So Stanczyk pulled images of some these administrative structures and other data to put this research in a context of 1890 (roku) from the above title book which is written in Russian/Cyrillic. I am hopeful that seeing the Cyrillic from the book along with the English translation will aid other genealogists in their searches and research. There are a number of images and descriptions so this will be a long read if you are “up for it”.

Happy 450th Birthday William #Shakespeare – #Bard #Birthday

Happy 450th Birthday William #Shakespeare – #Bard #Birthday

That is the question.

This jester wanted to wish the Bard a Happy 450th Birthday today! You have inspired more than 1 of my blog articles and entertained me and certainly been a part of my education too.  Finally, your affinity for employing Jesters in your stories deserves my admiration.

 

#Shakespeare – technically nobody knows your birthday. We know you were baptized on 26-April-1564 and that you died on 23-April-1616

[just wanted to get that genealogical factoid in play]

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Baptismal Register – 1564

[notice the triple ‘XXX’ entry …

 

 

Related Posts …

8 Dec 2011 — Recipe For Disaster … #Literary, #Politics, #Humor

14 Jan 2012 — Poland 1794, The Tempest, & Catherine The Great – #Polish, #Genealogy, #History

30 Dec 2012 —  Auld Lang Syne – #2012

 

 

 

Genealogy Indexer – Logan Kleinwak — #Genealogy, #Historical, #Directories

Recently, while Stanczyk was on Twitter, I saw that  Logan Kleinwak (Genealogy Indexer / @gindexer) was again busy,  very busy.  Perhaps you do not remember that his website: http://genealogyindexer.org , publishes Historical Directories, Yizkor Books, Military Lists, etc.

What I noticed besides he was very busy indexing things and putting them online for searches is two things:

1. In my 1st thought I noticed, “Collections” (each a menu to a page of resource links)
2. My 2nd thought was Logan added a Latin-to-Cyrillic feature

I do not mention his excellent little piece of code to implement a keyboard for implementing whatever language’s special characters that are a might difficult to type on American keyboards. That I posted about before.

The Collection  I searched was “Directories”  and I saw:

• 1890 Kielce Gubernia Commemorative Book {d1031} Памятная книжка Келецкой губернии

Obviously this is the Gubernia of my paternal ancestors. So I was excited and I knew it was in Russian (i.e. Cyrillic characters) — a challenge.  AH, … now we see the need for the 2nd thoughtful feature, ‘Add Latin->Cyrillic’. This feature automatically adds the equivalent Cyrillic characters to the Latin characters you are searching for, in order to locate the equivalent, transliterated string in the Russian Directories. That is well thought out! Indeed Genius!

So my thanks to Logan for his fine piece of programming and history/genealogy indexing that he has done. If you have not done so, you owe it to yourself and your research to check out Genealogy Indexer. Add it to your social network (Facebook and Twitter) and bookmark the website in your browser.

 

 

Related Blog Articles …

03-May-2012 — Genealogy Indexer – Logan Kleinwak 

28 Feb 2012 — Dying for Diacriticals – Beyond ASCII

15 Jun 2011 —  Polish Genealogy – Useful Websites …

 

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In Iceland, You Need An App … #Genealogy, #Icelandic

Stanczyk was Reading Eastman’s Online Newsletter. Today he informed me that there is an app for “that”.  Now it is becoming a running joke — so I laughed when I read that Icelanders needed an app to know if they were dating a cousin or not (already available for Android and this jester asked about an app for iPhone/iOS  − will update later when a reply is received).

Now this jester has known for some time that if you want to research closed genealogical populations, particularly for DNA, you study the American Amish and you study Iceland. According to the CIA Factbook (for Iceland), there will be a projected population of slightly over 317,000 this July. A common settlement date of 874 C.E. is accepted to be earliest time, but there is new evidence that Iceland may have been settled even a bit earlier than that. Almost everyone dates from the original settlers (Iceland has a very low  immigration population).

In a previous article about this,  back in 2007 (which I see was updated January 2014). The website islendingabok.is (online database), which hosts the online registry Íslendingabók (“The Book of Icelanders”). Íslendingabók is the product of a cooperation between Icelandic company deCODE Genetics and Fridrik Skúlason.

Genealogists in Iceland say all Icelanders are descendants of the bishop Jón Arason and according to islendingabok.is. Arason and his partner, Helga Sigurdardóttir, had at least nine children who were all quite fertile, while many of the other members of the then 65,000 population weren’t. So experts argue all Icelanders alive today probably derive from the good bishop. On the website of the University in Iceland this argument is supported by their mathematical formula.

#STEM

 

Haller’s Army – Returning Vets … A New Ship Is Discovered — #Polish #Genealogy

Dateline 06-April-2014  — Stanczyk has found many of my great-grandfather’s grandsons came to the USA. Tomasz Leszczynski was good for this country. More of his children (sons & daughters) came to the USA and more grandsons came to the USA than I had previously known. You see my great-grandfather, Tomasz Leszczynski had 16 children by two wives from the years 1857 … 1902, across 45 years his two wives bore him 16 children. Even more amazing, only three of my great-grandfather’s children had perished before my grandmother herself was born (the eldest child of the second wife). It should be noted that routinely 25%-50% of the children in that locale, in those years died before puberty. Sometimes the ratio was higher still such as in times epidemics (i.e. cholera). Even more amazing, all of my great-grandfather’s children with his second wife, Aniela Major Leszczynska, survived including my grandmother – whose grandson pens these family stories and recalls these times from before the US Civil War until the present. God had certainly blessed Tomasz Leszczynski and Tomasz’s years were numbered to 104 years of age. All agree in the USA as to the length of his lifespan across the many families descended from this one man. Alas, the great lifespan has been a hinderance to me (his great-grandson) who tries to write the family history and I have not yet found the year of his birth, the year/place of his first marriage (to Julianna Kordos Leszczynska) and I have not found his death date/place either. The 104 year span covered from about 1832-1945 — yes, yes, I know that span is 113 years. But you see I do not know which 104 year span in that range is the life span of Tomasz Leszczynski. I hope to visit Poland and gather his death certificate and put certainty to the end of his lifespan and put  an anchor in the estimate of the year of his birth. I now have a very good timeline of info about my great-grandfather’s life and the whereabouts of his children and most of his grandchildren too.

That over long pre-amble is to note that GenBaza with their online database: metryki.genbaza.pl that I have written so often of in 2014 has been a great source for my family heritage and I owe a debt of gratitude to genebaza.pl and genealodzy.pl too. It is from this database that I have located many of my great-grandfather’s children getting married and having children of their own! It is from this and my meticulous recording of these facts in my family tree on Ancestry.com that I have located new records in the USA of my great-grandfather’s descendants. I had no idea. I assume that my Polish-American heritage is similar to the vast majority of Polish-Americans. My family arrived, mostly at Ellis Island, and they originally put down roots for their American families in the Great-Lake States of the USA: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio,  Michigan dominate, although I have seen bits and pieces in Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota too! Now a days the family has migrated further in the USA and I will not attempt to enumerate all of the states — suffice it to say that we stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Now we approach the point of this blog article. I have been busy with the Immigration records in Ancestry.com after recording the new finds from GenBaza.pl and was surprised by how many of my great-grandfather’s line had left Poland. This surprise led to a lot of scanning ship manifests for the the somewhat common name: Leszczynski.

Well I landed on a ship manifest of a French Ship landing in New York City. The year was 1919 and I did not giver any particular credence to the year other than I could expect more details in the ship manifests (than say those ship manifests from 1906 and earlier). So as I was reading for a possible ancestor, I noted that a good many men had fought in the Polish Army (or the French Army) and that the majority were Polish names. So it is my assertion that I have discovered a new ship with only a scattering of returning Haller’s Army personnel (listed as both Polish Army and/or French Army). Only a handful of pages, although I am sure there were a good bit more manifests with only one or two soldiers listed among the 30 passengers per page. But below you will find four pages that were almost all or mostly all returning soldiers from WWI.

The late date is not unusual for Polish veterans as many in Haller’s Army stayed past the end of WWI and continued the fight against the Bolsheviks  of Russia in the aftermath of WWI. I also learned something new. I had known that the Polish-Americans who signed up to fight in French-Army under General Jozef Haller had trained in Canada. But I had never considered that a good many French-Canadians had trained in Canada too to fight in the French Army. There are a sprinkling of these French-Canadians mixed in too. These French-Canadian soldiers are “In Transit” as they are continuing on to Canada.

Here are the brief details of this new ship delivering Haller’s Army and possibly a few just French Army who may or may not have served under Jozef Haller:

 

SS: La Tourane            Port: La Havre     Arrival Date: 25-APRIL-1919

URLS [require Ancestry.com access]:

List 2 (image 346 of 827) 

List 3

List 4

List 5

 

Previously Blogs, I Have Written About Haller’s Army:

24 Mar 2014 – Newspapers.com – #Genealogy, #Polish, #HistoricalNewspapers

25 Apr 2013 – The Last Pandemic … 1918 — #Genealogy, #Polish, #War

11 May 2012 – Kedzierski/Kendzierski TimeLine — #Polish, #Genealogy, #Timeline

13, 14, 17 Aug 2011 –  [3 parts series on Haller’s Army & the Transport Ships] – Returning Soldiers

NOTE: In the three part series, I have posted the link to middle article which had the other transport ships previously known. You can go forward/backward from the middle article to see the other two articles in series.