The Polish Village of Podoś

The village of Podoś is significant in my family history because Podoś was the parish for the village of Chodkowo, the location in Poland in which many of my Chodkowski ancestors lived. The church in Podoś is very small and, as a parish, has since been replaced by that in Płoniawy.

Austrian Military Map of the Podoś 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 07 May 2010.

Słownik Geograficzny Entry for Podoś

Source:  Chlebowski, Bronisław, Władysław Walewski, and Filip Sulimierski, eds., Słownik Geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i Innych Krajów Słowiańskich (Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and other Slavonic Countries) – Warsaw 1887, Volume VIII, page 463.

Click on the link for a PDF copy of the Słownik Geograficzny entry for Podoś. Translated from the Polish, the entry reads:

Podoś, a village and grange [large manorial farmstead] on the Orzyc River in the Maków Powiat, Płoniawy Gmina and Parish, about 11 versts [0.66 miles per verst] from Maków; located there is a pitch burner with three stoves and a sawmill. In the year 1827 there were 27 homes and 188 residents. It is the old “nest’ of the Podoski family, mentioned in documents from the year 1440 (Gloger, Łomża Ziemia). In the year 1606 the owner of Podoś was Petronela Podoska; she made a very significant endowment to the Bernardines in Przasnysz. In the year 1885 the Podoś grange, with the villages of Podoś and Gołoniwy, had a wide domain with 1978 morgs [in the Russian partition 1 morg = 1.388 acres]: 777 morgs of arable land and gardens, 177 morgs of meadows, 50 morgs of pastures, 877 morgs of forests, and 97 morgs of unused land; there were 3 stone buildings and 23 wooden buildings; the forest is unsettled. The village of Podoś has 40 residents with 94 morgs of land; the village of Gołoniwy has 11 residents and 220 morgs of land . Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Bronisław Chlebowski

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