CategoriesPolishSlownik Geograficzny TranslationZalewski

Slownik Geograficzny Translations

One of the things you need to do once you track down the origin of your Polish ancestors, is to search for an entry for the location in the S?ownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów s?owiaÅ„skich (or Geographic Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and Other Slavic Countries.)

According to a description of it on the “Genealogy of Halychyna/Eastern Galicia” website:

This massive collection took over 20 years to publish all 15 volumes. [15 volumes. 1880-1902.]  The gazetteer was published when officially there was no Poland in existence. From 1772 to 1918, Poland was dominated by three empires: Austria (later known as Austria-Hungary), Russia and Prussia. The gazetteer contains a great wealth of information on cities, towns, and villages, as well as mountains, rivers, and other geographic points of interest in the lands that were once a part of the old Kingdom of Poland.

When I searched for the location that I was pretty positive was the origin location of my ZALEWSKI and LINDNER ancestors, Gottschalk or Gocza?ki, there were a few entries. But, after some searching I think I narrowed it down to one entry. The entry is located in Volume 2, Page 755 under Gocza?kowo. You can use the online search engine to find an entry, though you do need to install a document viewer plugin, but it works nicely.

The book gives amazingly detailed descriptions of even the smallest towns.

CategoriesFollow FridayGermanPolish

Follow Friday: Polish

Since I’ve done a lot of Polish/Prussian research this week, I’m going to point at some helpful resources and blogs.

Al’s Polish-American Genealogy by Al Wierzba

This one has been on my blogroll for awhile, since Al posts useful Polish information and interesting tidbits on his blog. It doesn’t hurt that he’s also researching mainly in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. I visit it frequently. I actually just went there to copy the URL and got lost in some other posts. Keep up the good work, Al.

Steve’s Genealogy Blog by Stephen Danko

This one has also been on my blogroll for awhile. Steve mostly posts original family documents, but a lot (or maybe all of them) are Polish and he usually also posts translations and other useful information. It’s interesting to browse the documents and learn about the different areas and records.

Kartenmeister

Kartenmeister is a must bookmark for anyone with German/Polish/Prussian roots. According to its front page it’s “the most comprehensive database of its kind in the world. It contains 88,334 locations with over 38,691 name changes once, and 5,500 twice and more.” Using the site, you are able to search place names by German version or Polish version, get much information about the location and even other researchers looking for ancestors in these places. This is how I found the (hopefully) current location of my ZALEWSKI ancestors using the German name of “Gottschalk.” There is no equal.

Free Research Courses at FamilySearch

There are more than just Polish research classes here, but I really enjoyed the “Intro to Polish Research” course I watched the other day. It was very informative, easy to follow, and it helped me try some new things. I am currently watching the next video, “Advanced Polish Research.”  The presenter of the class, Ceil Wendt Jensen, was very well-versed in the subject matter and easy to listen to.

Germans to America (1850-1897) search tool by Steve Morse

While this search tool is helpful by itself, it’s much more powerful if you have access to Ancestry’s passenger lists. You can search by name, origin, destination and then use those results to find the corresponding passenger list image. I found my great-great-grandfather Frank Zalewski’s brother’s passenger list this way. There are also many other useful search tools on his main site, stevemorse.org.

CategoriesBig NewsPolishTechnologyTips & Tricks

Gottschalk!

I’ve been on a roll this week finding information in unexpected places. Earlier it was the cemetery website and newspaper archives.

Tonight, I went to the FamilySearch website to see what records they may have on Gocza?ki or Gottschalk, the area of Poland that I’m targeting in my latest research according to a recent post. I actually never got to finding the records since I was sidetracked by a link they had labeled “Free Classes.” I assumed these were classes at the local Family History Library and thought that they may be interesting. It would both get me to one of the libraries and also maybe learn more about how to use them. Instead, these are online classes. The one I picked was Introduction to Polish Research, which was about 53 minutes long. I paid attention for about 23 minutes when she was talking about ship manifests and origin locations. She recommended searching the passenger lists by origin location instead of by name. This way you could find other families that came from the same area. She also mentioned the amazing genealogy search website setup by Steve Morse at stevemorse.org.

I’ve used his site previously to find updated streets and addresses for Milwaukee and also converting the 1930 Census occupation codes. It’s not the prettiest site, but neither is Google. I never really got into the other search tools that he created, so I just started going down each of his passenger list tools pasting Gottschalk into the “Place of Origin” box. Not much luck. I did find Orlowski and Sobieski families, but I don’t have those names in my family tree. Then I got towards the bottom, beyond the Ancestry.com tools, and into a very basic looking one called Germans to America (1850-1897). It sounded too broad, but let’s try it. It came back with four people from Gottschalk, but one caught my eye, Jakob Salewski. The information didn’t give a port of arrival, but it did give an arrival date of 17 Sep 1891 and a ship name, the Rhynland. 1891 was the year of immigration listed on most of Jacob ZALEWSKI’s records. His age is also listed as 28, which calculates to about 1863, which also matches my Jacob.

I searched Ancestry’s immigration database for the keyword “Rhynland” and found one arriving in New York on 17 Sep 1891. Fortunately for me, Ancestry has a lot of New York passenger lists. What is interesting is that I’ve searched over and over for Zalewski, Salewski, and all other variations. I also tried all forms of Jacob and 1891 trying to find him. So, next, I browsed the New York records manually, picking 1891, then September, and then 17. As I had hoped, there was a “Rhynland” entry. I started browsing it manually page-by-page and found Jakob Salewski on page 16 of 19 and it did say he was from Gottschalk. This matches all of the other information I’ve been leaning towards. Interestingly, he is also traveling with two other men from Gottschalk, but they don’t ring a bell and who knows if they went to Milwaukee, also.

Jakob Salewski
17 Sep 1891, Rhynland - Click for larger.

So, my next step (out of many other steps) is to see what records I can get for Gocza?ki and start digging. What a week.

CategoriesFamily TreePolishZalewski

To the Motherland

Thanks to a higher amount of Polish records online and the help of some of the usual friendly genealogists (Thanks, Al and Rita!) I have traced a few of my Polish ancestors back to Poland.

I now have the baptism location of my 3rd-great-grandparents, Ignatz Peter SZULTA and Nepomuncena SYLDATK. Ignatz was born in Bukowa Góra in the SulÄ™czyno Parish of Kartuzy County, Pomorskie, Poland. Nepomuncena was born nearby at Gowidlino in the Sierakowice Parish. Their first three children, including my great-great grandmother Clara SZULTA, were all born in SulÄ™czyno before the family emigrated to America. I also found Ignatz’s parents, who are Anton SZULTA and Marianna MALSZYCKI and also Nepomuncena’s parents, who are Jacob SYLDATK and Tecla KREFFT.

Rita also found information that my great-great-grandfather, Joseph TROKA, was probably from Lipusz which is a village in KoÅ›cierzyna County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. The one family that still eludes me is my ZALEWSKI family. I have not yet been able to trace them back to Poland/Prussia. All I have is that Frank and Anna ZALEWSKI were married in the Poznan Province, but I have no source information on that besides it being listed on a family tree I have. I also know that they immigrated from the Port of Bremen, Germany, but that doesn’t really help pinpoint anything. I’ve checked the Poznan Project website and haven’t run across anything, but hopefully someone indexes their records at some point.

Breaking down these brick walls piece by piece, while aggravating at times, is really very fun. Plus, I am meeting some great people. Hopefully we will help each other more along the way.

CategoriesFunMilwaukeePolish

Fat Tuesday

Fat Tuesday around here in Milwaukee, home to a large Polish heritage, is celebrated as PÄ…czki Day. The most popular local bakery in the area, National Bakery and Deli, expects to sell 45,000 of them.

A pÄ…czki is a deep-fried piece of dough shaped into a flattened sphere and filled with confiture or other sweet filling. I bet you’re like, “Wait! Isn’t this just a donut?” According to Wikipedia, although they look like bismarcks or jelly doughnuts, pÄ…czki are made from especially rich dough containing eggs, fats, sugar and sometimes milk.

Sadly, I didn’t get one today. No one brought any in to the office and I didn’t think driving that far for one was worth it. Though, I am always for any sort of ethnic celebration that includes eating lots of donut-like foods.

CategoriesMilwaukeePolishTell Me Thursday

Tell Me Thursday: Joe & Clara Troka

Wordless Wednesday
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This is a photo of my great-great-grandparents, Joe & Clara (SZULTA) TROKA on their 50th wedding anniversary. The date of this photo would be somewhere around 29 Jan 1944 since they were married in 1894. They were married at St. Hedwig’s Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There is a very nice writeup and history for St. Hedwig’s at Wikipedia. Here is a closer photo from the “Polsih Churches of Milwaukee” website.

CategoriesFamily TreeFeaturedPolishSingle ViewZalewski

Single View: Frank J Zalewski, Sr

This is the first of my “Single View” posts. These will be entries on a specific individual (or possibly family.) I will put out as much detail as I have in hopes to find someone who may have more information. Not only will this help me get the info online, but it will also help me dig through the data again and maybe find something I missed originally. I welcome any research tips.

This entry is about Frank J ZALEWSKI, Sr. Frank is my great-great-grandfather and the oldest Zalewski entry in my family tree. As with most people, I’d like to dig deeper into my paternal (surname) line as far as I can. Unfortunately, this is probably the shortest line I have.

CategoriesFamily TreeGermanMilwaukeePolishTell Me ThursdayZalewski

Tell Me Thursday: Zalewski

Click for larger image
Click for larger image

According to the note for this photo, this is a picture of my grandfather, Richard Zalewski (middle), with his sister Irene to his left and Eugene Nowiski to his right. I don’t know off-hand who Eugene Nowiski is, but it does look like he’s ready to change someone’s oil. Multiple people have said that my grandfather looks a bit like me in this photo when I was a kid. I can see it. I assume the photo was taken in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as Richard lived there most of his life.

CategoriesDutchFamily TreePolishWeekly HistoryZalewski

Weekly History

Family History for the week of March 15 to March 21.

March 17

1960 – Died – Angeline R (ZALEWSKI) PIERZCHALSKI – Also known as Amelia, she was my great-great-aunt on my father’s side. She was born 6 Jul 1887 in Poland (noted as German Poland.)

March 18

1678 – Married – Francois CHEVREFILS and Marie LAUNY – Francois and Marie are my 9th-great-grandparents on my mother’s side. They were married in St. Ours, Richelieu, Quebec. I am related to them through their son Louis CHEVREFILS-BELISLE.

March 19

1788 – Born – Marie-Francoise GRANGIERMarie-Francoise is my 5th-great-grandmother on my mother’s side. She was born in Menoux, Département de Haute-Saône (Franche-Comté), France and married Pierre-Jean QUINET in 1811 in the same location. They finally immigrated to Fredonia, Ozaukee Co., Wisconsin where they lived for the rest of their lives.

1728 – Died – Helena WAGEMANS – Helena is my 9th-great-grandmother on my mother’s side. She was born 8 Oct 1651 in Kuringen, Belgium. She married Nicolaes van CRAYBECK in 1646 and passed away in Kuringen, Belgium.

CategoriesCemeteriesPolishTombstone Tuesday

Tombstone Tuesday: Ignatius Szulta

Today’s headstone is that of my 3rd great-grandfather, Ignatius SZULTA. If you think his name is unique, you should see his wife’s name, Nepomuncema SYLDAKT. Talk about a mouthful. My polish isn’t very good, but I’m pretty sure his surname is pronounced like “Schulta.” I don’t even know where to start with his wife’s surname.

Ignatius (or Ignatz) was born 1 Feb 1849 in Poland (or Poland Austria as listed in the census.) He married Nepomuncema in 1875 back in Europe. Their first daughter, my great-great grandmother was born there, also. They immigrated to America in about 1882 and landed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where they finished their lives. Ignatius died 25 May 1922 and was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Milwaukee.

Click for larger image
Click for larger image

[ Find-a-Grave Entry | Cemetery Entry ]

CategoriesDutchFamily TreeGermanPolishThielkeZalewski

Names, Places & Most Wanted Faces

Getting the idea from Julie at GenBlog, here is my list of most wanted names, places and faces.

NamesPlaces
ZalewskiMilwaukee, Wisconsin
Poznan, Poland
ThielkeOzaukee Co., Wisconsin
Württemberg/Mecklenburg, Germany
LastOzaukee Co., Wisconsin
Doeringshagen, Pommerania
FirmenichAshland Co., Wisconsin
Granville, Milwaukee Co., Wisconsin
Cologne, Germany
DeBrouxLanglade Co., Wisconsin
Brussels, Belgium
TrokaMilwaukee Co., Wisconsin
Poland

Most Wanted Faces

Been searching for almost ten years to find any relatives (parents/siblings) for Frank J ZALEWSKI, so that I can trace my line to other ZALEWSKI lines. Right now, it’s a little family island.

Peter THIELKE information back into Germany. THIELKE is a somewhat popular name there, so hoping to connect to other researchers.

Peter FIRMENICH family information. Records inidicate they lived in Granville, Milwaukee Co., Wisconsin, which is only a few miles from here. Wondering if some of them are buried close by or where they lived. Can’t find info in the early 1800s census.