Polish surnames
Some hint for those who have problems with finding ancestral town of ancestors. Let us have an exampe. You know that grandfather X and grandmother Y were from the same town and got married either in Poland or abroad. However you do not know the name of their ancestral town. The help might come from this website:
First you type the surname of grandfather X and copy to excel all towns where the surname is. Then you do the same with grandmother Y. Then you arrange the towns in alphabetical order and compare the towns. Your ancestral town should be the one where you see surname X and surname Y
Names of children
I would like to share my observations after many years of genealogy work regarding giving names to children at the baptism. There were four main ways of choosing the Patron Saint. Yes, in 19th century the most important was giving the name of the Saint who was popular in Poland or in the area.
1. If a child was born around 4th of October they would be named Francis because 4th of October is St Francis memorial. Children born around December 24th would have names Adam or Eve etc.
2. Very often people were giving the names of Patron Saint of the parish. E.g. in St Stanislaw parish lots of boys would have the name Stanislaw.
3. There was a general not written rule that children had names of their grandparents
4. Children very often had names of their Godparents
Of course many parents were choosing the name they liked and it was not always connected with any of the above mentioned rules.
Field Sketches
Let me say about very useful documents that operats contain – so called field sketches. (Operats are documents accompanying cadastral maps)
Field sketches has got names of land owners written in the sketch and also house numbers. I had a case this year with the town Raczkowa where field sketches allowed me to locate ancestral house. Raczkowa operats did not have alphabetical house and land owners that allow you to locate the house. Alphabetical house and land owners have got building plot numbers that are written in cadastral map. Lots of people believe the cadastral maps have got house numbers and this is not true. They have only building plot numbers where the house was located.
Polish Last names
Many people are puzzled by Polish last names. Especially they cannot find out why female’s surnames have a different spelling from male’s surnames. The situtation is simple when we have surnames finished with -ski. Then female last name will be -ska. Kowalski – Kowalska. However the situation is more difficult when we have different kinds of surnames. Some time ago I was researching records from 1700’s from town called Jasionka in Podkarpackie province. The last name I was researching was Szczurek. Female counterpart was written in five different ways: Szczurkowa, Szczurkowna, Szczurczanka, Szczurcząka, Szczurczonka.
Quadruplets
Some time ago I came accross the birth of quadruplets. Also this time they lived a few minutes and one of them a girl was stillborn. Their names Joseph, Francis and Marianna children of Jan Durak and Anna Szumny. They were born in Wołostków in parish Sądowa Wisznia in 1870. It is now in Ukraine and in 19th century in Galicia (Poland before 1st partition) in Austro Hungarian Empire
