The village of Gzy is significant in my family history because Gzy was the parish for the village of Borze, the location in Poland in which many of my Burski ancestors lived.
Austrian Military Map of the Gzy Area – 1910
SOURCE: Third Military Mapping Survey of Austria-Hungary, Sheet 39-53, Ostrolecka. Online http://lazarus.elte.hu/hun/digkonyv/topo/200e/39-53.jpg; downloaded 06 May 2010.
Słownik Geograficzny Entry for Gzy
Source: Sulimierski, Filip, Bronisław Chlebowski, and Władysław Walewski, eds., Słownik Geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i Innych Krajów Słowiańskich (Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and other Slavonic Countries) – Warsaw 1881, Volume II, page 927.
Click on the link for a PDF copy of the Słownik Geograficzny entry for Gzy. Translated from the Polish, the entry reads:
Gzy,a village and grange [a large manorial farmstead] in the Pułtusk Powiat, Kozłowo Gmina, and Gzy Parish. There is a wooden parish church here, reportedly erected in the year 1377 together with the parish. In the year 1827 there were 12 homes and 117 residents here. The parish of Gzy in the Pułtusk Deanery serves 1800 souls. The Gzy Grange and the village of Gzy contribute an area of 610 morgs [in the Russian partition 1 morg = 1.388 acres] including 351 morgs of arable land and gardens, 56 morgs of forests, 17 morgs of pastures, 145 morgs of water, and 13 morgs of unused land and town squares. There is 1 stone building, 10 wooden buildings, and a windmill. The settled village of Gzy occupies 15 morgs, and with its land it occupies 85 morgs.
The maps of the Third Military Mapping Survey of Austria-Hungary and the entries in the Słownik Geograficzny were prepared at about the same time and make a good pair for studying places in and around the Congress Kingdom of Poland at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, a time period when the Eastern European ancestors of present-day Americans left their homelands for the United States.
Copyright © 2010 by Stephen J. Danko
