Pacanów Pomoc – #Genealogy, #Polish

Stanczyk has been a bit busy this past week with Oracle 12c (database) !   So forgive me if I play a bit of catch-up on my genealogy.

I have analyzed the data from GENEALODZY.PL in their GENESZUKACZ database for Pacanów Births (1875-1908). So now I need some help (pomoc). In my notes column I have noted the ELIASZ that I have in my family  -or- my guess. The empty notes fields are ELIASZ that I need help with. If you are a genealogist with these people in your family tree then please email me your info and if possible any images of church records or family photos.

#	Year / Rok	Rec# / Akt	Imię	Nazwisko	NOTES
1	1875	110	Wacław	Eliasz	in my tree; son of Wojciech Eliasz & Agnieszka Pyszkow; [image]
2	1876	109	Marianna	Eliasz	daughter of Ludwik & Elz. Miklaszewski
3	1878	59	Katarzyna	Eliasz
4	1879	20	Roman	Eliasz	son of Ludwik & Elz. Miklaszewski
5	1880	52	Jan	Eliasz	son of Jozef Eliasz & Petronella Zwolski
6	1880	160	Jan	Eliasz	My grand-uncle Jan; son of Jozef Eliasz & Marianna Paluch
7	1881	28	Jan	Eliasz	Martin Eliasz’s  (& Julianna Odomski) son
8	1881	30	Julianna	Eliasz
9	1881	130	Tomasz	Eliasz	son of Ludwik & Elz. Miklaszewski
10	1882	128	Wincenty	Eliasz	son of Jozef Eliasz & Petronella Zwolski
11	1882	157	Marianna	Eliasz	Martin’s  (Julianna Odomski) daughter
12	1882	185	Katarzyna	Eliasz	A Grand-Aunt
13	1883	25	Roman	Eliasz
14	1884	33	Apolonia	Eliasz	Martin’s daughter
15	1884	71	Marianna	Eliasz
16	1885	46	Józef	Eliasz	My Grandfather; Have Birth Record
17	1885	125	Marianna	Eliasz
18	1886	189	Jan	Eliasz
19	1886	238	Szczepan	Eliasz
20	1888	104	Julianna	Eliasz	A Grand-Aunt
21	1888	123	Teofila	Eliasz
22	1889	71	Józefa	Eliasz
23	1889	109	Antoni	Eliasz	??possibly son of Ludwik & Elzbieta  M.
24	1890	24	Katarzyna	Eliasz
25	1890	149	Marianna	Eliasz
26	1890	181	Stanisław	Eliasz	Martin’s son, dies in Detroit (Stanislaw Elyasz in October 1923)
27	1891	186	Stanisław	Eliasz
28	1891	190	Franciszka	Eliasz
29	1892	68	Wincenty	Eliasz
30	1892	83	Władysław	Eliasz	My Grand-Uncle
31	1892	206	Marianna	Eliasz
32	1893	143	Anna	Eliasz
33	1893	237	Marianna	Eliasz
34	1893	261	Agnieszka	Eliasz	??? Agnieszka Marianna E. that marries S. Hajek (Cleveland) ???
35	1895	30	Marianna	Eliasz
36	1895	230	Tomasz	Eliasz	My Grand-Uncle (Dorota’s grandfather); Have birth record
37	1896	164	Wacław	Eliasz
38	1897	8	Julianna	Eliasz
39	1897	236	Julianna	Eliasz	A Grand-Aunt
40	1898	103	Anna	Eliasz
41	1899	63	Balbina	Eliasz
42	1899	79	Zygmunt	Eliasz	??? Zygmunt Elijasz son Jozef E. & Theresa Siwiec??? PROBABLY not since Zygmunt was born in Biechow in 1898 (April 19)
43	1899	185	Aleksander	Eliasz
44	1900	163	Julianna	Eliasz
45	1901	84	Marcin	Eliasz
46	1901	100	Anna	Eliasz
47	1901	161	Marianna	Eliasz
48	1901	164	Martin	Eliasz
49	1903	95	Stanisława	Eliasz	one of these three is Emilja daughter of Jan/Pelagia
50	1903	112	Helena	Eliasz	one of these three is Emilja daughter of Jan/Pelagia
51	1903	175	Janina	Eliasz	one of these three is Emilja daughter of Jan/Pelagia
52	1905	96	Julianna	Eliasz
53	1906	71	Wojciech	Eliasz
54	1906	77	Stanisław	Eliasz
55	1906	141	Edward,Jan	Eliasz	son of Jan Eliasz  & Pelagia z Kedzierski ?
56	1907	11	Julian	Eliasz
57	1908	67	Kazimiera	Eliasz
58	1908	124	Michalina	Eliasz

A Bit of Blog Bigos … #Genealogy, #Polish

Stanczyk has been a bit busy since the 4th of July! So forgive me if I play a bit of catch-up on my blog.

A bit of bigos (recipe) !!

Let me point out that in June the Polish Archive completed their latest update on: ♥ http://szukajwarchiwach.pl/ .

Unfortunately, it did not include anything from the old wojewodztwo: Kielce (now in SwietoKrzyskie). See the image of the drop down menu below (not full listing but to give you an idea on what is in and how that is somewhat limited for researchers like Stanczyk. I hope another phase will commence soon!

 

Meanwhile on:

♥  genealodzy.pl - They added the death records from 1875-1908 for Pacanow parish to their Geneszukach database. Previously they had added the Birth and Marriage records. These are transcription / indexes, not actual church record images such as you find in their Metryki database.

Still I have found dozens of Eliasz (and … Gawlik, Gronek, Hajek, Kedzierski, Leszczynski, Major, Paluch, Wlecial, Zasucha, etc.) that I was previously unaware of. Now I will need to get the actual images in order to make sense of these indexes and the new people in order to add them to the family tree.

Enjoy the bigos. Smaczne (delicious)!

Koziolek Matolek 80 Years ! — #Polish, #Culture, #Pacanow

Happy Birthday  Matolek, sto lat. Koziolek Matolek (Matolek the Billy-goat) was born in 1933. You might say he put Pacanow “on the map”. You see Matolek wanted to go to Pacanow because he heard that you could get good (goat) shoes in Pacanow.

Now this charming character has always had a special place in Stanczyk’s heart, because my great-grandfather, Tomasz Leszczynski was a shoe-maker (szewc) / inn keeper. So perhaps Matolek would have bought his shoes from my great-grandfather. Did he ever find Pacanow? I do not know.

Koziolek Matolek (Matolek the Billy-goat) was the creation of  Kornel Makuszyński (story) and Marian Walentynowicz (art).

Well, it is now 80 years later and Pacanow is celebrating this cult-favorite May 31st – June 2 this year! Their program can be found here . Like Matolek, I too have been trying to get to Pacanow.

Pacanow Eliasz — #Wordless #Wednesday, #Genealogy

Now I have 36 more Eliasz / Elijasz to factor into this tree:

Birth Year  Birth Akt#           FULL NAME

1885	125	Marianna	Eliasz
1886	189	Jan	Eliasz
1886	238	Szczepan	Eliasz
1888	123	Teofila	Eliasz
1889	71	Józefa	Eliasz
1890	24	Katarzyna	Eliasz
1890	149	Marianna	Eliasz
1891	186	Stanisław	Eliasz
1891	190	Franciszka	Eliasz
1892	68	Wincenty	Eliasz
1892	206	Marianna	Eliasz
1893	143	Anna	Eliasz
1893	237	Marianna	Eliasz
1893	261	Agnieszka	Eliasz
1895	30	Marianna	Eliasz
1896	164	Wacław	Eliasz
1897	8	Julianna	Eliasz
1898	103	Anna	Eliasz
1899	63	Balbina	Eliasz
1899	79	Zygmunt	Eliasz
1899	185	Aleksander	Eliasz
1900	163	Julianna	Eliasz
1901	84	Marcin	Eliasz
1901	100	Anna	Eliasz
1901	161	Marianna	Eliasz
1901	164	Martin	Eliasz
1903	95	Stanisława	Eliasz
1903	112	Helena	Eliasz
1903	175	Janina	Eliasz
1905	96	Julianna	Eliasz
1906	71	Wojciech	Eliasz
1906	77	Stanisław	Eliasz
1906	141	Edward,Jan	Eliasz
1907	11	Julian	Eliasz
1908	67	Kazimiera	Eliasz
1908	124	Michalina	Eliasz

Are one of these your grandfather / grandmother ? Email me.

Pacanow 1875-1908 Index

St. Martin – Pacanow Church about 1918

Stanczyk, has been sifting through the Index created on genealodzy.pl in their Geneszukacz database. Alright, only the Births Index, so far.

I see they have a total of nearly 7,300 people from those years (1875-1908) in their Birth Index. From Adam … Żyp . There were 58 ELIASZ in their index.Notice they used ELIASZ and not ELIJASZ. I found that interesting. They removed ‘J’ when they produced the index. Was that an error? Or was the indexer an expert? Because, in my heart of hearts, I believe the name (at least back to 1690) was ELIASZ.

It was only since 1869 when the Russian Empire forced Poland to keep records in Russian (Cyrillic) that the ‘J’ appeared from the Russian character ‘я’ (Ya) that ELIASZ became элияшъ .  элияшъ is transliterated in a Latin alphabet as ‘Elijasz’.

I only wanted to mention this as while I believe the translated properly produced the index with respect to ELIASZ; You will need to realize that finding the record in Russian/Cyrillic, you will need to look for a different translation (i.e. ELIJASZ/элияшъ) in the indexes and the actual church records.

So now I have an index of ELIASZ born in Pacanow in the years 1875-1908. Now what? I compared the list of 58 with what I already had/knew. I saw an overlap of 22 people. So I have 36 new ELIASZ to resolve and add into the family tree. My options are:

1. Write to Pacanow parish and request specific records (since I have year, Akt#),  
2. Write to Polish National Archive (again with detailed info),
3. Hire a genealogist in Poland,
4. Go on a genealogical tour to Poland.

The year range 1875-1908 is not completely in LDS microfilm. Although 1875-1884 is in LDS MF #’s:

1192351 Item 10,    1192352 Items 1-2,   1807621 Items 8-11,    1807622 Items 1-3

So doing research in a local Family History Center or at the Family History Library (Salt Lake) is not an option for the remaining 36. So I now have better options for remote research.

My List of 58 ELIASZ.

Genealodzy.pl – Geneszukacz Database, Pacanow 1875-1908 — #Polish, #Genealogy, #Pacanow

On http://genealodzy.pl/  Stanczyk  saw that they have an updated GENESZUKACZ database.

My ancestral village, PACANOW, was indexed for BIRTHS (1875-1908). I was able to verify it was correct with my grandfather (whose Birth Record I have) and a few others. I also found some I did not know about !!!   I only wish they had the images (like in METRYKI database). Thank you: Wojciech Liśkiewicz (who I think was the indexer)!

Later in the day they(he) also added MARRIAGES(1875-1908) too.

BIRTHS

Eliasz Births

MARRIAGES

Eliasz Marriages

See Also:

Domagala, Hajek, Kedzierski, Odomski, Paluch, Poniewierski, Siwiec, Wlecial, Wojtys, Zasucha, Zdziebko, Zwolski

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 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

The Many [Mis]Spellings of Pacanow … — #Genealogy, #Slavic, #Pacanow

One of the difficulties of locating records or data on a Polish (or Czech, Russian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, etc.) ancestor is the many ways a name can be spelled, misspelled, mistranscribed, indexed, etc. in a database. This is why you have to be creative when trying to locate your data.

Here is an example (from my paternal grandfather’s birthplace): Pacanow. That is the English rendering. In Poland it would be written as Pacanów. Now diacriticals aside, how many possible ways can I find Pacanow in Ellis Island (probably similarly for Ancestry.com as well)? OK, you asked …

Bacanow	Pacanszka
Pacanam	Pacanu
Pacanan	Pacauow
Pacananska	Pacona
Pacanaw	Paconon
Pacanciv	Paconow
Pacani	Pacunow
Pacanica	Paczanow
Pacanin	Pacznow
Pacannon	Paeanow
Pacanoer	Paezanov
Pacanon	Paezanov
Pacanoro	Paezanow
Pacanoska	Pasanov
Pacanou	Pasanow
Pacanov	Pasonaw
Pacanow	Pazanoz
Pacanowa	Pocanaer
Pacanowe	Pocaniz
Pacanowic	Pocanoa
Pacanowka	Pocanor
Pacanowka	Pocanow
Pacanowki	Preanon
Pacanowo

Those are the ones I have found so far. That is 47 combinations! Now admittedly reading the handwriting from those ship manifests is difficult even when I am pretty sure what is being written;  So I can feel for the transcribers / indexers who harvest the data and do the data entry into some database.

Now, no searching by American Soundex,  Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex, or even Beider-Morse phonetic matching or even using wild-card searches, not even if you had regular-expression searches (like Oracle databases have) would I have found all of those. I do not know what to tell you to do. Be creative and persistent. Look at adjacent letters on a keyboard (for mis-typings) as data is entered. Look for letters that are swapped (i.e.  Eliasz vs. Elaisz) — mistyped or dyslexic. Just keep looking. I found ‘Bacanow’, because I said what might an handwritten letter ‘P’ look like to somebody? Of course, ‘R’ and ‘B’ suggested themselves to  my mind. No ‘Racanow’, but sure enough out popped a ‘Bacanow’. So you never know.

Now Stanczyk mentioned Pacanow, because I thought I was being slick and said, “What if I cannot think of all the ways a NAME can be misspelled?”. My answer was, “I know, I’ll just search on everybody coming over from the village of P-A-C-A-N-O-W.” Of course, as you might have guessed now I had a meta-problem because now I had to come up with all of the ways that Pacanow could appear. Well like the riddle, “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie-Pop?”, I have an arbitrary answer … 47.

P.S.

I now have two spreadsheets. My first spreadsheet is my work-in-progress on the ZASUCHA of Niagara Falls SNA. The second spreadsheet I have is a rather large spreadsheet of all of the names from Pacanow (and truth be told Biechow, Piestrzec, Wojcza, …) and all of the surrounding villages that came through Ellis Island that I have found so far [plus a few mis-matches].

Zasucha in Niagara Falls, Pacanow, Albion and Elsewhere — #Genealogy, #Polish

Two days ago, Stanczyk wrote about SNA/Cluster Genealogy and FultonHistory.com. So today I wanted to wrap-up some loose (odds and) ends. Its all about the Zasucha and that is my focus. But I must digress for one minute …

Historic Newspapers

I mentioned Tom Tryniski, the owner of FultonHistory.com whose Herculean efforts provides us with 21.8 Million pages to search through. Today, I wanted to extend to Tom, the offer to correspond (click on the Post Missive picture on this blog page). I have been an Historical Newspaper fan ever since I found my grandparents and the birth of my uncle mentioned in Dziennik Polski (Detroit). So I am hoping for a discussion on what Roots Tech he uses to maintain his website. Stanczyk after all is a STEM worker and loves IT (that is Information Technology, not ‘it’). That is my offer –  an interchange of ideas and perhaps a blog article. Tom, if you are looking for ideas on Newspapers to scan (in the NY region), how about the Buffalo area newspaper:  Dziennik dla Wszystkich (= Everybody’s Daily). Come on help this Polish jester out! Just a reminder, the Library of Congress ‘s Chronicling America projects lists about 220 Polish language, Historical Newspapers  [Polskie Gazety językowe]   (that it has holdings of?).

Zasucha

The last blog post listed four ZASUCHA families:

Martin (father of Andrew in the above death notice) – Andrew(the deceased), Roman, and Jan

Adam – Michal, John, Karol, Marya, and Feliks

Josef – Benedykt (son of Josef), Feliks (a 2nd much-younger Feliks, son of Benedykt)

Jan – Roman (a 2nd Roman), Teofil, Josef, and Pawel

Those were Niagara Falls Zasuchas. When I queried Ancestry Public Family Trees, I found another Zasucha family in the USA for the same timeframe:

Wojciech (aka Albert in USA, husband of Urszula) – Tomasz (aka Toma) and Tekla

These were Albion (Calhoun County, Michigan) Zasucha. If the owner of Brubaker and Zasucha Family Tree (silverandsienna) would like to compare notes on these Zasucha and/or Pacanow, then please by all means email me or comment on this blog post.

All of the above Zasucha are of interest to me because:

• They all came from Pacanow (where my grandfather was born)
• My great-great-grandmother was Anna Zasucha, wife of Martin Eliasz (of Pacanow)
• Karol & Feliks sons of Adam lived at 235 11th Street in Niagara Falls
• My grand-aunt Mary and grand-uncle John lived at 235 11th street in Niagara Falls

Now besides the Zasucha, I also found the following affiliated families living at 235 11th Street:

Adam Ziglicki,  Josef Ziglicki,  and (Filip Kulczyki brother-in-law of Adam Ziglicki).

The Ziglickich are intermarried to Eliaszow/Elijaszow in Pacanow (hence an affiliated family).

Finally, there was a Rozalia Zasucha last residence Samsonow, coming from her mother,  J. Zasucha living in Komorow to her brother-in-law Wawrz. Berusad(sp?) at 239 11th street in Niagara Falls on 7/1/1913 (SS Gothland). Now Komorow is a village in Pacanow parish. Samsonow is also related to my family tree as a residence for some Kedzierski related to my grand-uncle John’s wife, Pelagia. There is also a Feliks Zasucha at 239 11th street (who was son of Adam, going to brother Michal) at 239 11th street. So I am thinking I am going to add Rozalia to the Adam children [Michal, John, Karol, Marya, and Feliks] which are very connected to my ELIASZ family.

I am now guessing that Wawrz. (short for Wawrzeniec = Lawrence = Lawrenty) perhaps married Marya Zasucha (a theory I will need to test and verify).

So … any Zasucha out there? Particularly, the children of Adam [Michal, John, Karol, Marya, Feliks and now Rozalia] Zasucha. Let’s trade missives. The Social Network Analysis is trending towards a deeply connected family tree.

 

One very final aside …

Two other ELIASZ surfaced in this SNA research. Tomasz Eliasz (b. 6 September 1881 in Pacanow) son of Ludwik Elijasz. There was also a Stanley Eliasz (I believe a theater owner in Buffalo) who I believe was a cousin to my grandfather, but not the cousin that came to Detroit (aka Stanley Elyasz) who was the son a Martin Elijasz and Julianna Odomski. Tomasz was a 1st cousin twice removed and is in the family tree. I am aware of Stanley Eliasz (Buffalo theater owner) and his family, but as yet I have not been able to connect him to my tree. I think Stanley is also fairly closely related to our Detroit/Pacanow Eliasz family. It was interesting to see him turn up in the SNA (via City Directories).

SNA seems to find some very interesting and unknown familial relationships. At the very least it provides the fodder for future research to break through those genealogical “brick walls”. Please drop me a missive and let me know if you are using this technique and what successes you have had.

Niagara Falls Gazette – 1937 — #Genealogy, #Newspaper

Today’s blog is an intersection of some prior Social Network Analysis (aka Cluster Genealogy) and  EOGN‘s mention of FultonHistory.com (the website of Historic Newspapers). Stanczyk, waaay back discovered FultonHistory.com – An Historical Newspaper  (mostly NY) website. I was not aware that the owner (Tom Tryniski) was still adding content and that the content had grown to about 21.8 million pages, rivaling the Library of Congress’s efforts of digitized newspapers.  Each scan is a single page PDF document that is zoomable.

So  the idea presented itself, why not see if any ZASUCHA in Niagara Falls can be located in those 21.8 million scanned pages. I am happy to report a very good success. Take a look at the image. It is from Tuesday, January 19th, 1937 edition of the Niagara Falls Gazette. [You will need to click to read death notices - Jacobs, Geraud, Kochan, Laydon, Mahoney, Morrison and ZASUCHA].

Now I said this was a part of a long standing (i.e. “incomplete”) SNA project of mine. I am trying to do ELIASZ/ELIJASZ research by analyzing the affiliated families in the ELIASZ Social Network in Biechow/Pacanow (Poland) and Detroit/Toledo/Cleveland/Buffalo/Niagara Falls/Syracuse (USA).  My thesis is that all of these people are closely inter-related from Poland and they continued/extended their villages in the USA.

So by following these “genetic markers” (literally) of my family tree, the affiliated families, that I would be led to new facts about my direct lineage and possibly artifacts (pictures, etc.) of my ancestors. I was also hoping to lure my distant 2nd/3rd/4th cousins to me via this blog and my research in hopes of a second bump beyond my circumstantial info of the SNA. You see they would see their family names and realize the connection and we would be able to do that genealogy swapping of intelligence and/or pictures and documents.

First, an aside [skip ahead to next paragraph if you are not a ZASUCHA], the death notice transcription:

ZASUCHA – Died in Mount St Mary’s hospital, January 19, 1937, Andrew Zasucha, beloved husband of Catherine, father of Helen and Joseph, son of Martin in Poland; brother of Roman of this city. Funeral services at 9:30 Thursday, January 21, from his home, 423 Eighteenth street and 10 o’clock in Holy Trinity church. Burial at Holy Trinity cemetery.

That is some excellent genealogy info there for Andrew Zasucha of Niagara Falls who was born in Pacanow, [old wojewodztwo Kielce], Poland !

Now I am spending many hours in Ancestry/Ellis Island ship manifests, Ancestry city directories, censuses, WWI draft registrations,  etc. and now historic NY newspaper scans. I am matching people up (my nodes in the picture) and drawing lines connecting the people(nodes) to other people. I have to take some care to get the nodes right in order to draw inferences, so I tend to a conservative approach of keeping nodes separate until I have a high degree of certainty they are the same node. I use spreadsheets to collect a timeline of data and then match up people before drawing the picture. This is my SNA methodology.

I did this current project because I noticed that my grand-aunt Mary arrived to my grand-uncle John Eliasz and were in Niagara Falls (not Buffalo/Depew like most and not Detroit). I was always puzzled about why Niagara Falls. Who or What drew them there (Niagara Falls) before their sojourn to Detroit? Now grand-aunt Mary came from Ksiaznice in Pacanow parish from her brother-in-law Jan Leszczynski to her brother Jan Eliasz in Niagara Falls in 1910. All of these facts matched my family tree (except for the Niagara Falls which nobody alive had any memory of anyone living there). None the less, I slavishly recorded the address: 235 11th Street, Niagara Falls, NY.

Now let me digress. This is why I want the PLAC tag in GEDCOM to be elevated to a Level 1 tag. I want to do these analyses in my family tree. I want to find people who shared the same/similar places for family events and see if there is any connection that I am not aware of — i.e. SNA (aka Cluster Genealogy). I need it in the genealogy file and I need reports to allow me to search on place and to conform these places into a hiearchy for analysis.

Fortunately, Stanczyk still has a good memory. I was gathering data about: Zasucha, Zdziebko, Zwolski, Hajek, Leszczynski, Eliasz/Elijasz, etc. These are all families found in Pacanow parish who came to the USA and settled in: Buffalo/Depew, Niagara Falls, Syracuse, some moving onward to Cleveland, Toledo and my grandparents moving onward further from Toledo to Detroit. When I was recording addresses from the city directories, I noticed a few Zasucha being at the 235 11th street address. That address rang a bell in my memory and I went back through my family’s ship manifests to see who had been at that same address. That is when I saw that my grand-aunt and my grand-uncle had been there. So now I had a thesis that any ZASUCHA at 235 11th street the surrounding environs, would close family to my grand-aunt/grand-uncle and be direct ancestors of ANNA ZASUCHA, my great-great-grandmother, wife of MARTIN ELIASZ of Pacanow. In fact, I am pretty certain now that I have gotten this far in my SNA, that ANNA ZASUCHA had a brother(s) who had sons:   Martin,   Adam,    Josef,    Jan.  These four men had children as follows who came to Niagara Falls:

Martin (father of Andrew in the above death notice) – Andrew(the deceased), Roman, and Jan

Adam – Michal, John, Karol, Marya, and Feliks

Josef – Benedykt (son of Josef), Feliks (a 2nd much-younger Feliks, son of Benedykt)

Jan – Roman (a 2nd Roman), Teofil, Josef, and Pawel

Now the ones of greatest interest to me are the children of Adam. This is because Karol and his brother Feliks lived at 235 11th street, the same address that my ELIASZ ancestors had lived at, in the same year! That shows a pretty strong family connection in my family tree (I cannot say for your tree or not) whenever I find it happening. Of course, the other ZASUCHA of Niagara Falls are also of some interest to me as they ALL came from Pacanow. I can be pretty sure that everyone from Pacanow (or Biechow) parish is likely to share a distant (non-linear) family relationship as determined by connecting family trees.

So I owe some thanks to FultonHistory.com - An Historical Newspaper  (mostly NY) website and its creator  Tom Tryniski. Tom’s efforts have provided my the above death notice. I also found an Emil C. Mrozek (a physician) from Erie County, NY and his exploits of winning a bronze star in WWII. I also found an article of a Richard (aka Ryszard) Kryszewski who died tragically at the age of 18 in a car-train crash in Depew, NY. Now I had Richard’s cause of death from the newspaper article. So some articles are uplifting and some are tragic, but I collect them all for my ancestors.

Some people mock my genealogical research as chasing down dead people. My wife, Teréza, takes the learned Jewish position that I am doing a good deed (mitzvah) in keeping these ancestral memories alive. Tereza likes to call me the “Soul Keeper”. This blog of my musings is filled with my genealogical / family stories. Besides being a “cousin magnet”, this blog is my effort to record these stories.

 

PLACes: Biechow, Pacanow [in Poland],  Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo/Depew, Niagara Falls, Syracuse

NAMEs: ELIASZ/Elijasz, Kedzierski/Kendzierski, Leszczynski, Sobieszczanski, Fras(s), Mylek, Hajek, Mrozek, Kryszewski

Wordless Wednesday: Tomasz Leszczynski (de Biechow) — #Genealogy, #Meme

Wordless (or nearly so) Wednesday – Tomasz Leszczynski died at age 104

Affiliated Families:

Kordos

Major

Ozarowicz

Mizdrak

Elijasz

Fortuna

Pawelec

Kalucki

Fras{s}

The above are from Poland.

The Fras / Frass family was found recently by doing some SNA in Depew / Toledo to infer familial relationship to this LESZCZYNSKICH .

Ancestral Villages:

Biechow, Pacanow, Stopnica, Zborowek

NOTE:

For a timeline, please see the ‘ Tomasz Leszczynski ‘  tab at the top of this blog.

Social Network Analysis – A Genealogical Tool — #Genealogy, #RootsTech

Social Network Analysis has worked again!

This is a broad, umbrella-like, semantically overloaded term. In fact, this term is even known by aliases. GeneaBlogger, Thomas MacEntee, calls it “Cluster Genealogy“. Stanczyk calls it by a more modern term that immediately identifies and places this tool in a perfect context — Social Network Analysis (SNA for short). Both terms are defined by wikipedia pages — follow both links and decide for yourself what to call it, but whatever you call it, start using it in your genealogical research now!

Stanczyk has successfully used this technique three times now.

• Used to determine siblings for my great-grandfather Jozef Elijasz of Pacanow
• Inadvertent use in locating another line from  great-grandfather Tomasz Leszczynski
• Whimsical Use on an Affiliated Family Name that exploded in multiple dimensions

This article and the next article where I elaborate the steps for the last one in the list is my third success.

The first two list items are from two earlier blog posts:

1. Jozef Elijasz - Inferring unknown siblings from known siblings. A series of 3 articles.
2. Jozef Fras – Son of Agnes Leszczynski. Proving this Leszczynski family was mine.

Happenstance Scenario

The third research opportunity was a happenstance fluke. To test my connection to Ancestry, I did an Immigration search on ‘ZWOLSKI’. This is one of the affiliated names from Poland for our Elijasz family branch. I also knew that some Zwolski came to America and were related to my great-grandfather’s sister, Pelagia. So I did an Immigration search and clicked on the Passenger List Ship Manifest for Jan Zwolski. A mere random selection of Zwolskich. He arrived in 1910 on the Lapland. Jan was not from Pacanow or as far as I could tell any nearby village of my ancestors. Finally, he was going to Jamaica, NY, also not a locale known for members of my family tree. So I figured that my Ancestry was working since I could see the ship manifest, but this random person was not a candidate  for entry into the family tree.

Now the real genealogy began. I looked down the ship manifest to see if anyone else with Jan was from a nearby ancestral village. Looking down the page I found plenty, so I decided to focus on those affiliated family names that I had researched before in my Pacanow Social Network Analysis (#1 on the list). I started with the first Pacanow resident, Francisek [sic] Luszcz. He was going to  a Teofil Zasucha at 1319 Falls street in Niagara Falls, NY. Now I got interested Zasucha is a big SNA family name and it is the maiden name of my 2nd great-grandmother, Anna Zasucha Elijasz. The location also tugged at a memory from my research. I had a great-aunt (Mary Elijasz) who arrived in the USA in 1910 to her brother Jan Elijasz from a brother-in-law, named Jan Leszczynski in Zborowek and she went to her brother who lived in Niagara Falls. Looking further down the page, I even found a Jan Eliasz from Zborowek (not my great-uncle, but surely deserves a place somewhere in my tree, though his branch is yet missing) and Jan was going to Syracuse (where some distant Elijasz resided and also another Elijasz affiliated family, the Kedzierski, one of whom did marry my great-uncle Jan Elijasz). Alas this Jan came from a wife Maryanna, not a Pelagia.

So I thought to check Ancestry’s City Directories for Teofil Zasucha in Niagara Falls and up popped a 1915 address. Teofil was now at 163 13th street in Niagara Falls (as are all addresses today). I thought to look-up my great aunt’s address from her ship manifest, she was going to her brother at 235  11th street. No match … except the city directory showed two other Zasucha living at 235  11th street in 1915. OK, I was now officially beginning a new SNA and recording my data (a necessary step in SNA).

One final note, further down the page in the city directory of ‘Z’ names was an Albert Zdziebko. Now Zdziebko are quite rare, but they too are from the Pacanow area (and they are related to the great genealogist, Ceil Wendt-Jensen, the current PARI director). So this was becoming a full fledged SNA project. My Pacanow SNA project had just moved across the Atlantic to  Niagara Falls, NY.

Summary

This article and the next one on SNA are about my third use of SNA in my genealogical research. SNA (or Cluster Genealogy) are techniques described in Wikipedia pages (see links above) or another article in my Post Scriptum below. The first two projects were wildly successful with limited data. I had other follow-on successes as a result because I had done those two SNA studies — for example at RootsTech 2012, I found an 1876 marriage record of  Walenty Paluch to Magdalena Major. Neither of these two people were in my family tree when I read their record in Russian (so you know I was committing time/effort on a whim). The Paluch and Major were affiliated names from my 1st SNA project so I decided on that basis alone to read the 1876 marriage record. What did I find? I found that the two people getting married were each a sibling of  two of my paternal great-grandparents in my tree! So I added this married couple to my family tree. SNA is a technique to increase your confidence level in your research to take a guess/hunch/assumption from that level of statistical probability (which is what 10-25% ??) to a level well above 50% maybe as high as 99%. While this may or may not pass muster for a Genealogical proof,  it is actually good enough for civil court (where you just have to prove just 51%, not the 100% required in criminal court). It may open up new lines of research you were unaware of,  that come back to help with your existing ”brick-walls”.

Next

The next article will be the details of my SNA research and the results.

P.S. – Another post scriptum. Though I prefer the term Social Network Analysis, thus demonstrating my computer education/bias — I found a very early reference to the term Cluster Genealogy from March 1st, 1994 by a CG, named Connie Lenzen who published this article in National Geological Society Quarterly. Her goal was to develop a higher level of confidence in proving a female ancestor’s lineage when there is no certain paper trail to follow, but only indirect leads. You may want to read her article too. SNA has wide applicability in uncertain circumstances.

Ohio – Cuyahoga County – Cleveland 1884 — #Genealogy, #Marriage, #Elijasz, #Budka

Stanczyk is still trying to puzzle out these Cleveland, Ohio ELIJASZ. So I am hoping either a Budka or an Elijasz (aka ELIASZ) will see today’s blog and respond via an email.

Today’s image is from Ancestry.com on a dangling leaf in my tree. On the 22nd-September-1884, one Father Kolaszewski of Cleveland (Cuyahoga County, Ohio) recorded a marriage between Elizabeth Elijasz and Paul Budka. That is pretty much it for useful genealogical info on the image (see above).

If you have access to ancestry it is here .

Many of these Elijasz came from Pacanów (Russian-Poland partition). Some Cleveland Elijasz also came from across the Vistula (Wisła) River (rzeka) in the Austrian-Poland partition. I am hoping a Cleveland genealogist researching Elijasz or Budka who can look-up a few things for me:

1. What Catholic Church did Father Kolaszewski represent in 1884?
2. Can someone get access to Cleveland Catholic diocesan records for September 1884 and get a copy of the church record of this marriage?
3. I am seeking the parents’ names of Elizabeth (possibly Elzbieta) Elijasz and where she was born (Pacanów, Poland or some other village), and her birth date.

My thanks for reading today’s blog (plea).  If all you can answer is just the first question, that is still VERY helpful. So please do not feel you need to answer all of the questions.

Genealogy and Social Media — #Genealogy, #Facebook

There are 901 Million active Facebook users as of March 2012, according to HowManyAreThere.org  (http://www.howmanyarethere.org/how-many-facebook-users-are-there-2012/). Facebook is estimated to break one Billion users before 2012 ends (Mashable source:  http://mashable.com/2012/01/12/facebook-1-billion-users/). According to Gregory Lyons, a senior analyst at iCrossing, Facebook will reach the milestone in August [2012].

Do I have your attention genealogists? One seventh of the world’s population is on Facebook – perhaps your 2^nd and 3^rd cousins are there waiting for you to engage them in some family history. Skype has nearly 107 Million “Real Users” and recently hit 41.5 Million concurrent users !

So being social can help you reach more people who may have a piece to your family history. I have searched Facebook with modest success for the ‘ELIASZ’ or ‘ELIJASZ’ family name. Not everyone will friend you anymore.  I have had success in SKYPE finding an ‘ELIJASZ’ family member in my grandfather’s ancestral village of Pacanow in Poland. I once had a very lucky success with a social network in Poland, named nasza-klasa.pl (now more easily found at http://nk.pl/ ). Now this jester is minimally conversant in Polish and my “cousin” in Poland was zero conversant in English. But, I was able to use Google’s Translator (English to Polish and vice versa) with success although it did generate some laughter at times. The final result was a letter from Poland with a copy of my grandparents’ marriage record from the actual church book in Biechow, Poland! Nasza-Klasa also yielded two 2^nd cousins who were born in Poland (one since moved to the US) and we keep in touch via Facebook.

How else can you use social media to aid your genealogy? Write a genealogy blog (like this blog for example). I went to a recent Polish/Slavic genealogy seminar this year and spoke to a fellow blogger, Donna Pointkouski, who writes the genealogy blog, “What’s Past Is Prologue”. Donna called genealogy blogs, “2^nd Cousin Bait” . She said by writing about your genealogy searches, successes and family members, your blog can lure these more distant family tree members to you. It works because search engines like Google or Bing find your blog posts and index key words (tags/categories) and proper nouns in their databases and out they pop when 2^nd/3^rd cousins are trying to Google their family trees. Stanczyk has personally located two 2^nd cousins and one 3rd cousin via the blog. One 2^nd cousin even gave me a picture of a previously unknown grand-aunt from before 1910  — jackpot! I was then able to locate that grand-aunt in microfilm from the LDS Family History Library for her children’s birth records in Poland.

A couple more blog tips –  Sprinkle your blog posts with the lingua franca of your ethnic lineage to lure readers from your ancestral home. Finally on your blog software (WordPress,  Blogger,  Tumblr, etc.) – get the widget(s) to share your blog posts on your other social media accounts: Facebook,  Twitter,  LinkedIn,  Google+, etc.  Make sure you get the widest exposure possible to lure your family from all over. Ask family and friends to add your blog/tweets to their Flipboard and possibly ‘star’ the better posts for you to up your Klout.

Lastly, you may want to put your family tree online. Some of my greatest finds have come from collaborating with other genealogists on Ancestry.com. It is the largest collection of genealogists and paid genealogy subscribers — serious genealogists. These people found me and my family who as it turned out were a part of their family tree too. I cannot count the number of family members I have met from Ancestry.com. Let me tell you that my greatest finds were from a woman whose family I and my father thought were only friends from the “old country” whose families renewed their friendship here in the US. From this woman (Kim), who I helped out by reading her grandparents’ marriage record from a Polish church in Detroit. What do the two of us discover, but her great-grandmother was an ELIJASZ from Pacanow. As it turned out, her great-grandmother was my great-grandfather’s sister and that the two of us shared a great-great-grandfather — we were 3rd cousins! So we were blood relatives not just family friends as our parents had thought. I found out my father was her father’s best man — neither of us knew that beforehand. Her grandmother (Rose Wlecialowski) was a best friend of my grandmother. I thought I had never met this third cousin … wrong!  She had photos of me in her family pictures. We were so young neither had memories of the other. She had pictures of me as a 3 year old child that I did not have, with my young father on her grandmother’s farm. She had a picture of my young grandmother from the 1930′s with her grandmother!  This was a B-O-N-A-N-Z-A!

I found her great-grandparents’ marriage record from Pacanow and had it copied from the church book. I translated it from Russian for her (and for my records too). It confirmed that we were indeed 3rd cousins and shared great-great-grandparents (Martin Elijasz & Anna Zasucha). I also eventually found the birth record from the first child that my paternal grandparents had together over in Poland and little Wladyslaw Jozef Elijasz had Rose Wlecialowski for his god-mother. Her grandmother was a god-mother to one of my “uncles”. Poor little Wladyslaw died in infancy and never made the trip to America with my grandparents and my aunt Alice. My father and the rest of my aunts and uncles were born here in the US.

So you see, your family is out there. You just don’t know it yet. Use the social networks, USA and overseas versions. Write a blog to lure your cousins. By all means join Ancestry.com too and upload your family tree to Ancestry.com. These will grow your family tree more completely than you could if you eschewed not to use the Internet. Make your family tree mobile — load it to your iPhone and start collaborating in the Cloud. You will thank me later!

–Stanczyk

Post Office Department – Stanczyk’s Mailbag — #Polish, #Genealogy, Kuc, Kucz, Swiniary

From the Post Office Department

From Stanczyk’s Mail Bag …

Email From:   Barbara

I have been trying to do research in Pacanow but have not been very successful.  My Grandmother — Maryanna Kuc(z) is from Oblekon.  I wrote to the parish there — Parafia p.w. Najswietszej Maryi Panny Krolowej Swiata but never received a reply.  Perhaps they just couldn’t find any information.

My Grandmother:      Maryanna Kuc(z)

Born:                        March 15, 1886

Baptized                   March  25, 1887

Immigrated to USA:    September 1912

Father:                      Benedict Ku(z)

Mother’s first name:    Marianna

She had a sister Eva (born 1895)

 & a brother Jozef  (born 1893) both came to America.

I think she had other siblings but have not been able to find any records from Poland at all i.e. Marriage of parents, birth or baptisms or death of her parents.  I know her father was alive in 1912 when she came to America.

If you can help or shed any light on how I could obtain the information I am seeking, I would be extremely grateful.

Keep up the excellent work on your blog.

Thank you for any information in can provide and Thank you for your blog,  I learn a lot from it.

Barbara

I had told Barbara that I would search the Swiniary indexes that I have pictures of to see if I could find anything for her. When I searched my indexes, I found that her family name is spelled most as she had it: Kucz, but I did find one example where the priest wrote Kuć. There was also another family Kuzon, but I do NOT feel like they are the same family as her Kucz/ Kuć. Since this was from the era 1829-1852 the records were in Polish. I found one marriage index in the Swiniary parish:

1836 Franciszek Kuć marries Maryanna Duponką   [this is not your great-grandparents, but probably related]. 1836 was the only year that I had a marriage index picture.

1830-1840 no Kucz/ Kuć births in the indexes.

1841 Jozef Kucz birth record #23

1842 Maciej Kucz birth record #21

1843-1845 no Kucz/ Kuć births in the indexes.

1846-1849 I had no indexes (or pictures thereof)

1850 no Kucz/ Kuć births in the indexes.

1851 I had no indexes (or pictures thereof)

1852 Stanislaw Kucz birth record #28

I think I have seen Kuc in the surrounding parishes (Biechow & Pacanow).

First off, I checked the LDS website (FamilySearch.org). I wanted to see what microfilm they had. Your birthdates: 1886, 1893, 1895 are rather late (most LDS microfilm stop around 1884). Here is their inventory for Swiniary (you want “Akta urodzeń“, for births):

Family History Library Catalog (Place Search): Swiniary

Akta urodzeń 1686-1811 — małżeństw 1668-1863 — zgonów 1686-1811 -  INTL Film [ 939952 ]
Akta urodzeń 1797-1811, 1826-1865 -  INTL Film [ 939951 ]
Akta urodzeń, małżeństw, zgonów 1812-1816, 1818-1825 -  INTL Film [ 939949 ]
Akta urodzeń, małżeństw, zgonów 1878-1884 -  INTL Film [ 1808854 Items 9-15 ]

Akta zgonów 1797-1839 -  INTL Film [ 939950 ]

–

That is all the LDS (aka Mormons) have in their Family History Library that you can rent microfilm from. Next I checked the Polish National Archives via PRADZIAD . They did have books/microfilm for the date range you are seeking. Here is the contact info for the archive that has the data you seek. You would need to write them in Polish and they will write you back with their findings and instructions for wiring their bank the money they require (all in Polish).

PRADZIAD:

http://baza.archiwa.gov.pl/sezam/pradziad.php?l=en&mode=showopis&id=14781&miejscowosc=swiniary

Archive:

Archiwum Państwowe w Kielcach Oddział w Pińczowie – akta przeniesione do AP w Kielcach
28-400 Pińczów, ul. Batalionów Chłopskich 32
tel: (41) 357-20-02
fax: 357-20-02
email: pinczow@kielce.ap.gov.pl

I hope this helps you out!

–Stanczyk

Elijasz born (ur.) in Kiev, Raised in Pacanow ??? #Polish, #Ukrainian, #Genealogy

16-May-2012

Dear Diary,

I have been meaning to write for so long … Wish you were here! Diary, my blog today is about an interesting story that I am trying to chronicle. I do not know the beginning, or the end, nor much in the middle either — but that will not stop me from starting my story.

Diary, as you may recall, I wrote previously about the “Polish Declaration of Admiration and Friendship for the United States”, a set of 111 volumes produced by the newly re-created Republic of Poland in 1926. They wished to honor the USA on its 150th Birthday (in recognition of their friendship and support by Casimir Pulaski & Taduesz Kosciuszko in our Revolutionary War). So, 1926 was 1776+ 150 (sesquicentenial). In an amazing national effort, the government officials and schools all across Poland signed their autographs in a huge multi-volume, “Happy Birthday” wish to the USA.  111 Volumes of people signing this emblem of goodwill.

This jester knows of two places on the Internet where you can peruse the images of these books (volumes). One is the USA in the Library of Congress, in their European Reading Room.

In Poland, there is the Genealogical Society of Poland (aka genealodzy.pl) that has the images and a searchable database of the names that have been transcribed (a work in progress).

Aaah, I see that they still have not added my contributions.  But if you go to Volume (Tom) 13, Page (Strony) 419 and also page 420. You will see the signatures of the children and their school teachers.

So I noticed that page 419 was a young man named Czeslaw Elijasz. Ok I knew that was NOT my own father, but I wondered at who this child was that in 1926 signed his signature just a bit before my father Czeslaw Eliasz would be born. Fortunately, I thought to turn the page, because on page 420 were two Elijaszow:  Zygmunt Elijasz and Irena Elajszowna [sic]. Now Irena’s signature caught my eye because it appears she is dyslexic and transposed the ‘a’ and ‘j’ in her last name. This marked her as a close relative to my grandfather, who also would occasionally also transpose letters (ex. the ‘s’ and ‘z’) when signing his name. So we see there were three near relatives from a Pacanow school (see stamp image from page 420,  below).

Well I once (23-April-2011) wrote that I was seeking anyone related to one of those three children. Well yesterday, a granddaughter of Czeslaw Elijasz wrote to me (alright, emailed me — these modern times) !  Let me quote the lovely Paulina …

Dear Sir,

While looking for the information about my family I have found the page

http://mikeeliasz.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/1926-polish-declarations-of-admiration-and-friendship-for-the-united-states/

and your question: Does anyone from Pacanow know of Zygmunt or Czeslaw or Irena Eljasz|Elijasz|Eliasz who would have been a school child in 1926?

Well, my grandfather (the father of my mother) name was Czesław Eliasz (born in 1915 in Kiev) but lived and grow up in Pacanów. Than he married and moved to Nowy Korczyn and run there his own bakery.
Is he the person you are maybe looking for?

Best regards,
Paulina Sieczak

Volume 13, Page 419, Czeslaw Elijasz

Oh, how surreal, a letter-within-another-letter — very literary indeed. So dear diary, this is  where I will end today’s entry. I shared my genealogy with Paulina in hopes that she can make  a match between her family and mine. I’ll write you again soon dear diary.

Dear diary, please note that Czeslaw is on 8th line from top (on far right, above Kazimiera Glowniak)

Pacanowie, okregu Stopnickiego (on page 420)

Martha Stewart … Are We Related ?

Stanczyk, took note of when my friend and noted professional genealogist Ceil Wendt Jensen did an article for Ancestry.com magazine(2009, #3) on Martha Stewart’s ancestry. For a long time, I knew her maiden name was Kostyra. So when I noticed that Ceil had done an article and detailed much of Martha’s family tree, I asked her is she from Pacanow too?  [Now you may not know that both Stanczyk and his friend Ceil have ancestors from Pacanow]. I had asked because, I had Kostyra in my family tree. Ceil told me, ‘No.’

So when I noticed that 5/6/2012 episode on Finding Your Roots,  was going to have a segment on Martha Stewart, I watched again. It was interesting that Martha’s roots (and DNA) include Tartars and again they mentioned Kostyra and a few village names, but not Pacanow.

Now I read a column by the famous genealogist Megan Smolenyak (at Huffington Post??) on, “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Martha Stewart’s Family Tree – Huffington Post” on Martha Stewart. What caught my eye was …

If you have any of the following surnames in your family tree, you could be a cousin of Ms. Stewart’s: Adamczyk, Albiniak, Baran, Ciman, Flis, Grab, Grosiewicz, Grysztar Kak, Kielar, Kisielinska, Kiszka, Kostyra, Krol, Krukar, Krulicka, Kulpa, Lach, Lazinska, Litwin, Macuga, Misiak, Okon, Oleszko, Orzeł, Penar, Rajchel, Ruszkowski, Rygiel, Rzad, Siwy, Skubik, Strzalinska, Tomczyk, Wasi, Wojtan, Wolyniec and Zukowsa.

Now if you notice, I BOLDED, some of the above family names (many of the others I am not certain of) in the list of possible cousins. I cannot speak to the commonness of those names, but each one is from my paternal grandparent’s (Eliasz/Leszczynski) parishes and some of those are actually in my family tree.

By all means go read Megan’s article. It is another interesting piece on Martha Stewart (aka Jadwiga Kostyra).

So Martha perhaps we are cousins (albeit very distant ones). Any Eliasz/Elijasz, Leszczynski, Ozarow, Major, Wlecial, Kedzierski in your tree (Martha)?

How about you readers? Any of you have those names in your tree? Do you research in Biechow or Pacanow (villages in the old Kielce wojewodztwo)? Email me!