Steve's Genealogy Blog

Just about everyone who visits Kraków stops at the Mariacki Church near Cloth Hall .  Every hour, in tribute to a trumpeter who was sounding the Hejnal from one of the church towers warning of the invading Tatars, the Hejnal is played from the taller of the two towers of the church .  According to legend, the trumpeter’s warning call was cut short when he was struck in the throat by a Tatar arrow .  Today, the Hejnal is played on the hour four times, once from each side of the tower, and ends abruptly on the same note the legendary trumpeter’s call .  The story is fictionalized in Eric P. Kelly’s children book The Trumpeter of Krakow, a book that won the Newbery Medal in 1929.

 

During much of the time of the partitions of Poland, Kraków existed as the Free City of Kraków, separate from the occupying powers of Russia, Prussia, and Austria .  After an uprising in Kraków in 1846, the Free City was annexed by Austria and closely associated with the Austrian partition, known as Galicia .  Records of births/baptisms, marriages, and deaths in Galicia were kept by the Roman Catholic Church, and people of all faiths were required to register births, marriages, and deaths with the local parish .  For that reason, all Catholic Church records indicated whether the subject of the record was “Catholic” or “Other”.

The marriage record for my great great grandparents, Pawel Dańko and Zofia Szymańska, is typical of marriage records in this part of Poland .  The record was recorded by the parish priest in a pre-printed record book in which the information was recorded in columns .  Most of the record was recorded in Latin, although annotations were often made in Polish.

The column headings were:

• Mensis – Month
• Nrus Domus -House Number
• Sponsus – Groom
• Sponsa – Bride
• Testes – Witnesses
• Nomen, Nomina – Name (masculine or feminine)
• Religio (Catholica, Aut alia) – Religion (Catholic, Other)
• AEtas – Age
• Caelebs – Unmarried
• Viduus – Widowed
• Sponsa – Bride
• Conditio – Status

The Marriage Record for Pawel Dańko and Zofia Szymańska indicates that:

• The couple was from Nienadowa
• The couple was married on November 20, 1825
• The groom was Pawel Dańko
• Pawel was the son of Adalbert and Rozalia, a lawfully married couple, farmers
• Pawel lived under house number 160
• Pawel was unmarried, 22 years old, and Catholic
• The bride was Zofia Szymańska
• Zofia was the daughter of Andrzej and Anna, a lawfully married couple, farmers
• Zofia was unmarried, 17 years old, and Catholic
• The witnesses were Andrzej Bińlioski, farmer, and Maciej Charescicki, farmer
• Because Zofia was only 17, her father had to sign the record, indicating he had given his permission
• The marriage was blessed by Father Ignatius, who also signed the document
• Zofia’s father and the witnesses signed the document with an X inside a circle

If you look carefully at the first column where the day is written, you’ll notice that the entry reads “20. 9bris” indicating the 20th of November .  The period after the twenty changes the cardinal number twenty to the ordinal number twentieth .  The notation 9bris refers to the ancient Roman calendar, which originally had ten months, not twelve .  In ancient times September was the seventh month, October was the eighth, November was the ninth, and December was the tenth month, so 9bris means “of the ninth month” or “of November” .  This notation was redundant, since the priest wrote “November” in the heading under Mensis.

Genealogical Trivia

On this day in history:

• May 18, 1631 – John Winthrop took the oath of office as the first governor of Massachusetts
• May 18, 1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte became the Emperor of France
• May 18, 1976 – Wyatt Earp was appointed assistant city marshal in Dodge City, Kansas
• May 18, 1897 – Bram Stoker published his novel Dracula
• May 18, 1910 – The earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet
• May 18, 1920 – Pope John Paul II born
• May 18, 1933 – Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed legislation to form The Tennessee Valley Authority
• May 18, 1944 – The Soviet Union deported the Crimean Tatars
• May 18, 1969 – Apollo 10 launched
• May 18, 1974 – India detonated its first nuclear weapon
• May 18, 1980 – Mount St. Helens erupted in Washington
• May 18, 1995 – Alexander Godunov, Russian ballet dancer, died

Copyright © 2006 by Stephen J. Danko

In the year 2000, I visited Poland with two friends .  We flew into Kraków where we spent a few days sightseeing .  Then we drove to Tarnów where we stayed two nights and toured the Castle at Łańcut . Â During our stay in Łańcut, we drove down to Dubiecko and Nienadowa, the village where my Dańko ancestors lived .  I previously described the Church in Dubiecko, and what I found there .  In short, I found the record for my great grandfather’s second marriage to Zofia Głowacz, but that was all .  Because time was short, we had to leave Dubiecko and Nienadowa, knowing that there were a large number of church records we didn’t have the time to examine .  We drove to the village of Kazimierz Dolny and then to Warszawa .  The trip was exciting and beautiful, and I look forward to the opportunity to return one day.

Wawel Castle in Kraków

Not long after my trip to Poland, I hired a professional genealogist in Poland to go to the church in Dubiecko and search for more records about my family .  He spent a week there, and was able to take digital pictures of about 50 baptismal, marriage, and death records for my ancestors.

The church records in the former Galicia used a set of preprinted pages where the information was entered in columns, many records to a page .  In general, there were separate books for baptisms, marriages, and deaths, and within any given book, the records for a single village within the parish were grouped together .  The entries for a particular village were made sequentially during the year and are written in Latin, although annotations are sometimes made in Polish.

The birth and baptismal records include the following information:

• The year
• Nrus serialis – Sequential number
• Mensis – Month
• Natus – (Day of) birth
• Baptisatus – (Day of) baptism
• Numerus domus – House number
• Nomen Infantis – Given name of the Infant
• Religio – Religion
• Sexus (Puer, Puella) – Sex (Boy, Girl)
• Thori (Legitimi, Illegitimi) – Bed (Legitimate, Illegitimate)
• Parentes – Parents
• Patris (ac parentum suorem nomen, cognomen et conditio ejus) – Father (and also the given name, surname and status of the parent)
• Matris (ac parentum suorem nomen, cognomen et conditio) – Mother (and also the given name, surname and status of the parent)
• Patrini (eorum Nomen et Conditio) – Godparents (their Name and Status)

In order to display the birth and baptismal records for my ancestors, I cut the appropriate parts of the page and pasted the header and the relevant record into a new document .  I then converted the record into a PDF file .  The birth and baptismal record for Michał Dańko, my paternal grandfather, provides the following information:

• He was born on September 22, 1877 and was baptized on September 23, 1877.
• His birth was the 48th birth in Nienadowa for the year 1877
• His family lived in house number 196
• His name was Michał [the document gives the names in Latin]
• He was a Catholic boy and his birth was legitimate
• His father was Jakub Dańko, a farmer whose parents were the married couple Pawel Dańko and Zofia Szymańska
• His mother was Agnieszka Sowa, the daughter of the married couple Maciej Sowa and Katarzyna Jach
• His Godparents were Andrzej Giergont, a farmer, and Marianna, the widow of Kazimierz [Funali?]
• He was baptised by Father [Arkanakielski?]
• The midwife was Agnieszka Pilch

Genealogical Trivia

Ellis Island operated from 1892 to 1954, during which time nearly twelve million immigrants arrived at Ellis Island, seeking a new life in America.

Copyright © 2006 by Stephen J. Danko