The village of Wężewo is significant in my family history because it was the location where the spouses of some distant Chodkowski relatives lived.
Austrian Military Map of the Wężewo 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 20 May 2010.
Słownik Geograficzny Entry for Wężewo
Source: Chlebowski, Bronisław, Filip Sulimierski, and Władysław Walewski, eds., Słownik Geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i Innych Krajów Słowiańskich (Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and other Slavonic Countries) – Warsaw 1893, Volume XIII, page 113.
Click on the link for a PDF copy of the Słownik Geograficzny entry for Wężewo. Translated from the Polish, the entry reads:
Wężewo, a village in Ciechanów Powiat, Zalesie Gmina, and Bogate Parish, 25 versts [0.66 miles per verst] from Ciechanów. It has 21 homes, 184 residents, and 453 morgs morgs [in the Russian partition 1 morg = 1.388 acres] of land (9 morgs of wastelands); a clearcut settlement belonging to the property of Augustów. In the year 1567, the village of Wężewo in the Bogate Parish consisted of 4 parts, having from 2 ½ to 3 ½ włóki [1 włóka = 16.8 hectares] (Pawiński, Mazowsze, 347). In the year 1827 there were 12 homes and 112 residents. It belonged to the Krasne Parish.
The reference to Pawiński, Mazowsze, 347 refers to:
Pawiński, Adolf. 1892. Mazowsze. Polska XVI wieku pod względem geograficzno-statystycznym, t. 5. Warszawa: skł. gł. w Księgarni Gebethnera i Wolffa.
This publication is available online at the Digital Library of Wielkopolska.
Note that the village of Wężewo belonged to the Krasne Parish in 1827, but belonged to the Bogate Parish in 1567. The Słownik Geograficzny entry inplies that Wężewo belonged to the Bogate Parish at the time the Słownik was written (1893), but a search of Internet resources show that, today, Wężewo belongs to the Krasne Parish.
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
