Recently I wrote about making new headway into my Polish ancestry, through the Poznan Project, an online database of 19th-century marriage records from the Poznan region of Poland. It’s where my Polish family came from. But I’ve always known that saying they’re from Poznan was like saying I live in the Midwest.
So, as I found records I started to learn more place names: Markowice, Ostrowo, Chelmce, Ludzisko, etc. Still though, it was a bit gibberish, as my geographic understanding of Poland is limited and just googling a place name like Markowice or Ostrowo reveals there are several such places. After all, how many US states have a Lincoln or Bloomington?
This is where some triangulation comes in to play.
At about the same time as learning of this online database, I also found an American marriage record for my GG-Aunt, Anna Maciejczak, who claimed to be from Inowroclaw. Inowroclaw is, it turns out, a city and the name of the county (sort of like New York) but it’s located in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship which is where some of those other places are also located.
A voivodeship is a Polish province. The Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship is also known as Cuiavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship or simply Kujawsko-Pomorskie, or Kujawy-Pomerania Province. (See? Clear as mud.) So sometimes tracking down what’s where in Poland has been challenging. As for my specific family history, it’s also important to know that this voivodeship didn’t have this name until 1999. My family left there in the 1880s, but at least I’ve put a perimeter around the home villages.
Fortunately, my family is Catholic, or in this case, katolicki. I looked up the diocese for Inowroclaw, learning it was the Gniezno diocese, and knowing that churches have lots of records (and were a source for some of the Poznan Project) I then went looking for the diocese online. To my surprise, I found they had a website that referenced information available for genealogists! A few emails back and forth, and I suddenly had a Polish researcher pulling information for me on both lines of my Polish immigrant families.
I shelled out some money for a couple of hours of research time and a whole bunch of documents they found, and I’ve fleshed out a whole new generation and the lives of some of the family.
So, where were my ancestors born, baptized, or married, or otherwise called home? Well, for the Maciejczak family, it includes:
Ludzisko
Markowice
Niemojewsko
Inowroclaw
Bydgoszcz
According to Google maps, you can drive from A to B to C and back to A in about 20 minutes. Three small villages, separated by nothing but farmland.
Ludzisko is where my great-grandfather, Stanislaw (Charlie) Maciejczak was born, in 1881.
Markowice is where his parents, Jan Maciejczak and Emilie Thomaszewski were married, in 1878.
Niemojewko (aka Niemojewsko) is where Emilie (nee Tomaszewski) Maciejczak died, in 1886.
The following year, Jan remarried and moved with his new wife and two children to Pennsylvania.
Also, this is St. Nicholas Catholic Church, built in 1865 in Ludsizko, where my grandfather and his siblings were baptized.
If you want to explore the other three corners in this one-intersection village, you can see it here.
As for Poznan? Well, Poznan was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia, and it existed from 1848 to 1919, during which my family left. It included all the villages noted above.
The yellow area represents the Polish-speaking area.
Beyond the locations, the other thing I learned from this adventure was the real name of my g-g-grandmother. I had information that told me her name was Anna Kwiatkowski, but I was never able to find her. Several years ago I learned from my g-grandfather’s social security application that her name might’ve been Amilia, which I thought might’ve been a misspelling of Aniella, hence Anna. But these records clarified that and confirmed her name was Emilie Tomaszewski, daughter of Anton Tomaszewski and Magdelena Mieszynka. I think the confusion was likely over my g-grandfather’s stepmother’s name, which was Anna. After all, Emilie died when Charlie was only 5, and Anna became his step-mother a year later.
I’ve many more documents to go through to unravel the Wisniewski line, the family into which Stanislaw (Charlie) married. Turns out, they weren’t far away!