Steve's Genealogy Blog

I’m pleased to host the Eleventh Edition of the Carnival of Eastern European Genealogy this month.

The topic for this edition is First (Given) Names: Did any of your ancestors have an unusual given name? Have you discovered the meanings behind the given names of your ancestors? Did your ancestors use any naming patterns for their children? Are there any given names that are particularly common in your family history? Did any of your ancestors have given names that you particularly like or dislike? Does your family celebrate “Name Days”? Did your immigrant ancestors change their given names after they arrived in America? Tell us about the first (given) names in your family. You can concentrate on one name, a few names, or you can go wild and write about the first names of all your ancestors!

Jessica Oswalt of Jessica’s Genejournal describes how many of her German ancestors had more than one given name. Most genealogists have struggled with trying to find their ancestors when the records used creative spellings of their names, but some of Jessica’s ancestors present another problem when they used any one of their multiple given names in different documents. Read about Jessica’s adventures with multiple given names and given names that were unusual for Germans in My German Ancestors: Naming Patterns and Odd Names … Thanks for an interesting look at unusual challenges with given names, Jessica!

Schelly Talalay Dardashti of Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog writes about her family’s practice of naming children after their relatives. This practice results in an interesting conundrum when all the children in a single family decided to name one of their sons after the child’s grandfather. And so, today, anyone with the name Leib Talalay, wherever he may live, is probably a cousin. Read all the details at Here’s a Leib, there’s a Leib! While you’re at it, you’ll find out why Schelly’s daughter loves her given name and initials, and why Schelly was once known as Shirley! Thanks for a great article, Schelly. It’s a fascinating read!

Lisa of 100 Years in America tells us about the wonderful Hungarian and Croatian given names in her family tree. She’s partial to her ancestors’ original given names, even though many of them changed their names to something more American after they immigrated to the United States. Who can blame her? The names Ilona and Etelka sing of her family’s rich cultural traditions and history. But, sometimes, finding the names of your ancestors in immigrant passenger lists involves more than just looking for creative spellings! Find out how Lisa discovered the real names of Cisto Toth and Ujlaki Ferenczné by reading ídí¡m to Zsuzsanna: Hungarian & Croatian given names in the family tree. What a wonderful look at given names and their variants, Lisa!

Julie Cahill Tarr at GenBlog details the naming patterns in her father’s family where maiden names were used as middle names. Julie goes on to tell us about her ancestors’ given names, both those that were frequently used and those that are unique, such as Marcella (one of her favorites) and Dorcas (one of my favorites). And why does Julie want to give her children names that begin with the letter “J”? Read My Family’s Given Names to find out! Thanks for an interesting and well-sourced article, Julie! (I’m sure you’ve plucked footnoteMaven‘s heartstrings with your source citations, too!)

The title of Donna Pointkouski’s carnival contribution, Call Me Ishmael, is likely to grab the reader’s attention, especially if you’re of a literary bent. Donna’s family tree is full of Joes and Marys, but a number of her ancestors were given first names that will attract attention as readily as the name Ishmael . Donna’s Bavarian ancestors sported such names as Dionys, Kresensz, Wolfgang, and Walburga, and her Polish ancestors bore the names Wawrzyniec, Wacława, Hilary, and Teofila. Read the full article on Donna’s blog What’s Past is Prologue to learn the meanings behind these names. Thanks so much for a fascinating article, Donna!

When many of your Polish ancestors are named Jan or Marianna, how do you sort out one from the other? Jasia of Creative Gene tells us about the various nicknames used to distinguish cousins with the same given name. And what about naming patterns? Jasia describes the Galician practice of naming children after specific relatives and the practice of naming children after the saint on whose feast day the child was born . What would Jasia have been named if her parents had followed one of these practices? The title of Jasia’s post gives away part of the answer, but to find out the rest of the story, you’ll have to read Polish First Names (I should be Sophie). Thanks for contributing to the Carnival of Eastern European Genealogy, Jasia. After reading your article, I’m even more convinced that we must have been separated at birth!

Al of Al’s Polish-American Genealogy Research writes that his ancestors from the Lipusz parish in Poland started a naming tradition that has continued on with their descendants in America for 200 years. Some of Al’s Wierzba ancestors were given unique names such as Wojciech, Bartlomiej, and Kazimierz, but many distant cousins, even those with little contact with the rest of the family have provided their children with the same given names. Read his article Given Names: A Submission for the Carnival of Eastern European Genealogy to learn more about the common and uncommon names in Al’s family tree. Thanks for telling us about the given names in your family history, Al!

The last entry in this month’s Carnival of Eastern European Genealogy is my own at Steve’s Genealogy Blog. My earliest known Niedziałkowski ancestors tended to name their children for a saint whose feast day was near, but not necessarily on the day of the child’s birth or baptism. This practice meant that given names were seldom reused unless a child died at a young age, at which time the name of the deceased child would be given to the next born child of the same sex. Prior to the time when my grandfather immigrated to America, most of my Niedziałkowski relatives bore a single given name. There are some exceptions, however, including one cousin who was given what is probably my favorite name: Faustina Apolonia Obidzieńska. You can read the entire article, Given Names in the Niedziałkowski Family.

And so ends this Eleventh Edition of the Carnival of Eastern European Genealogy. Thanks so much, Jessica, for allowing me to host the Carnival this month, and many, many thanks to all the bloggers who contributed. I really enjoyed putting this together!

Copyright © 2008 by Stephen J. Danko

In some Polish families, given names are reused, with children being named for other relatives. Not so in mine. In fact, the only times that names were deliberately reused was when a child died at a young age and the same name was used for another child born to the same parents.

With my earliest known Niedziałkowski ancestors, children were given the names of saints whose feast days were celebrated at about the time of the children’s births. The feast day of the saint for whom a child was named became his or her Name Day, or Imieniny.

My 6th great grandparents, Krzysztof Niedziałkowski and Kostancja Żaboklicka, named their children as follows:

• Barbara, baptized 31 Dec 1713, name day 04 Dec
• Ignace, baptized 13 Feb 1718, name day 01 Feb
• Kazimierz, born 27 Feb 1722, name day 04 Mar
• Marianna, baptized 14 Aug 1725, name day 15 Aug
• Klara, baptized 15 Aug 1727, name day 12 Aug
• Katarzyna, baptized 08 May 1729, name day 30 Apr
• Szymon, baptized 14 Oct 1731, name day 28 Oct
• Katarzyna, baptized 21 Mar 1734, name day 22 Mar

The name days usually were not the same as the date of birth or baptism, but were fairly close to those dates. Later generations did not seem to hold so closely to choosing a given name based on a name day that was close to the date of birth.

In general, my ancestors gave their children only one name, a common practice in Poland. Some children, however, received two names:

• Martina Anna Niedziałkowska (daughter of Ignace Niedziałkowski and Zofia Szamińska) 
• Faustina Apolonia Obidzieńska (daughter of Józef Obidzieński and Katarzyna Niedziałkowska)
• Jan Wojciech Niedziałkowski (son of Tomasz Niedziałkowski and Cecylia Chotkowska)

Faustina Apolonia Obidzieńska, my first cousin six times removed, was given a name that I find particularly interesting. She was baptized on 28 Feb 1762, and her name days are 15 Feb (Faustina) and 09 Feb (Apolonia). I don’t know anything about the Saint Faustina for whom she was named, but it was surely not the well-known Saint Faustina who lived in the 20th century. Saint Apolonia was a martyr for the faith whose teeth were knocked out by anti-Christian persecutors. She died in the year 249 and is the patron saint of dentists.

Written for the Carnival of Eastern European Genealogy.

Copyright © 2008 by Stephen J. Danko

I attended four lectures on this second and final day of the annual conference of the Polish Genealogical Society of America.

Pommerania, Pommern or Pomorze

Orvill Paller from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City presented a lecture on Pomerania, known in German as Pommern and in Polish as Pomorze.

The northern European area known as the Province of Pomerania was created by the Congress of Vienna and existed as a province of the Prussian Empire from 1815 until 1871 when it joined the newly formed German Empire.

After World War II, the Oder Neisse Line divided Pomerania in half, leaving West Pomerania in Germany and East Pomerania in Poland.

To find villages, parishes, and civil registration locations in Pomerania, a number of gazetteers are helpful. These include: Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs, Gemeindelexikon fí¼r das Königreich Preussen, Mí¼llers Verzeichnis der jenseits der Oder-NeiíŸe gelegenen, unter fremder Verwaltung stehenden Ortschaften, Amtliches Gemeinde- und Ortsnamenverzeichnis der deutschen Ostgebiete unter fremder Verwaltung, Spis miejscowości Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej, and http://www.kartenmeister.com/ .

Sources for maps of Pomerania include Landkarten von Pommern, Karte des Deutchen Reiches, Mapa topograficzna z serii Messtischblí¤tter, and the Duke Philipp II Map of the Duchy of Pomerania-Stettin (1619).

Inventories of church records in Pomerania may be found in Die Kirchenbí¼cher in Pommern, Atlas der Kirchenprovinz Pommern 1931, Das Evanfelische Pommern, and Verzeichnis Pommerscher Kirchenbí¼cher in Polen.

Vital Records of Galicia

Matthew Bielawa presented a lecture on finding, reading, and understanding the vital records of Galicia.

Vital records in Galicia may have been microfilmed, not microfilmed but in a church or archive, or lost to disaster.

Today, records could be located at any of a number of archives in Poland and Ukraine. There are several places to search for records, and the records may be located at one, several, or none of those places. In Poland, these places include the State Archives, the Zabużański Collection, Archdiocesan/Diocesan Archives, the Department of Civil Records, or the Parish Church. In Ukraine, these places include the Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine, the Provincial Archives, the Civil Status Registry Office, and the Parish Church.

Galician records were most often maintained in a columnar format and were usually written in Latin. For a certain period of time, two copies of Galician records were maintained.

Understanding Polish & Russian Documents

Jonathan Shea presented a lecture on the Polish and Russian languages, two important languages in the genealogical records of Poland. He stressed that one must learn to pronounce Polish words correctly and that, unlike English, each Polish letter has a single sound.

Like Latin, both Polish and Russian are inflected languages. Nouns and adjectives have case endings attached to each word. These case endings tell the reader the part of speech to which each noun (and adjective) belongs. Verbs also have endings that identify number, gender, and tense.

Polish names are also accompanied by endings. Surnames ending in -ski are treated like adjectives; surnames ending in -wicz are treated like nouns.

Polish documents were written in either a columnar or paragraph form. In addition, vital registration certificates were issued that were forms into which information from the original records was transcribed. Other records that may be available include population registers (recording when people moved), coroner’s reports, premarital examination records, court records (probate, guardianship), military records, guild records, and Easter Duty registers.

In general, alphabetization of records in indexes will follow the Polish alphabet (where letters with diacritical marks follow those without) or the Russian alphabet (which differs considerably from the Latin alphabet).

The Holdings of American Roman Catholic Archives

Jonathan Shea’s final talk of the conference was on Roman Catholic Church records in America.

To find the churches of Polish ancestors in America, researchers need to identify the ethnic parish to which ancestors belonged. Catholic churches have registers of sacramental events in either pre-printed books or plain, lined ledgers. These records were maintained in Latin until 1964.

In addition to records of Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation, and Marriage, other records were kept by Roman Catholic parishes.

Parishes sometimes had to prove there were enough people to support an ethno-centric parish and a parish census for the locality may still exist . 

Sick call records, burial and interment records, premarital examination records, dues books, records of those who kept their Easter duty, Jubilee books, dispensation books, and records of clubs and church societies may have been maintained.

No bishop’s copies of records were made in the United States. Some records have been microfilmed and are available at the Family History Library.

Copyright © 2008 by Stephen J. Danko

Today was the first day of the annual conference of the Polish Genealogical Society of America.

In the morning I attended two lectures by Jonathan Shea, and in the afternoon I attended two lectures by Matthew Bielawa.

Beginner’s Workshop

The two lectures by Jonathan Shea were devoted to a Beginner’s Workshop. Despite the title, the lectures were useful for genealogists at any level researching Polish ancestry.

Jonathan stressed that to research one’s ancestry in Poland, a researcher must know the ancestor’s names in their native language and must know the exact location of the vital events.

Polish names were often anglicized, and researchers must learn to convert the anglicized names back to the original spelling. Often, this process requires that the researcher know how to properly pronounce the letters in the Polish language.

Genealogists in the United States should begin Polish research with American records: Birth, Marriage, and Death records using civil records and church records; obituaries; city directories; cemetery records; probate records; parish histories; fraternal societies; labor union records; consular records; census records (both federal and state); passenger lists; naturalization records; draft cards from World War I and World War II; U.S. passport applications; and alien registration records.

For the most part, immigrants from the Prussian partition of Poland settled in the midwest, those from the Russian partition settled in the northeast, and those from the Austrian partition settled in both areas.

To find the village of your ancestors, gazetteers specific for the partition in which one’s Polish ancestors lived are invaluable to find the locations of the parishes and civil registration offices for the village.

Records in Poland may be found in the parishes, the diocesan archives, the civil registry, or the state archives. Frequently, only one set of records was maintained, but the common assumption that the records were destroyed is usually incorrect.

Gazetteers

Matthew Bielawa’s first lecture was on gazetteers.

He described the Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów slowiańskich, the Genealogical Gazeteer of Galicia, the Gemeindelexikon der im Reichsrate vertretenen Königreiche und Lí¤nder, Gemeindelexikon fur das Konigreich Preussen, Meyers Orts und Verkehrs – Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs, http://www.kartenmeister.com/, Spiski naselennyh mest Rossiiskoi imperii, Skorowidz miejscowosci rzecrypospolitej polskiej, Spis Miejscowosci Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej, among others.

Galicia: A Historical and Cultural Perspective

Matthew’s second lecture was an overview of the history, politics, and religious culture of Poland with an emphasis on Galicia.

Galicia itself was an invention of the Austrian Empire (note: the Austrian Empire was more properly known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen) and was created as a result of the partition of Poland. The area of Galicia included those who considered themselves Polish, Ukrainian, and Jewish (among others) with Catholics belonging to either the Roman Catholic Church or the Greek Catholic Church.

In general, western Galicia was mainly populated by Polish Roman Catholics, and eastern Galicia was mainly populated by Ukrainian Greek Catholics.

Politically, life was better for Poles in the Austrian partition than in other partitions. In fact, after the Russian crackdown in the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia became a center of “Polishness”.

Matthew also provided insight into certain aspects of Polish peasant life using examples from Stauter-Halsted, Keely. 2001. The nation in the village: the genesis of peasant national identity in Austrian Poland, 1848-1914. Ithaca [N.Y.]: Cornell University Press.

Sales of alcohol sales were frequently designated to the Jewish population. Peasants were required to purchase a minimum amount of alcohol (whether or not they actually wanted it) from that produced by the manors.

In 1848, the Spring of Nations provided emancipation of the Polish peasants but resulted in few real changes. Before the Spring of Nations, peasants worked in servitude on common lands. After emancipation, peasants were unable to pay new imperial taxes and so had to work on manorial estates.

World War I resulted in the creation of the Second Polish Republic and World War II resulted in massive border changes and ethnic cleansings that forced many to leave behind their homes and move to new ones within the restructured borders.

Copyright © 2008 by Stephen J. Danko