After waking up early in the Platan Hotel in the Rynek of Chrzanów, Poland, I met with my Piwczyk relatives for breakfast and then we headed out for some sightseeing. I enjoy all the old churches here in Poland and we went to the Monastery of the White Friars (Discalced Carmelites) which...
After spending a fantastic weekend with the Ciuk family in Sosnowiec, it was on to visit with my grandmother's Piwczykrelatives living in Chrzanów, Poland.I met my father's first cousin Bronek Piwczyk & his wife Zofia with their son Radek after the short drive from Sosnowiec. A delicious meal was ready and...
St. Nicolas parish in Żarnów. My trip to Poland last year allowed me to learn more about my relatives in addition to the touring & client research I did. I have only a few more blog posts to complete the documentation of my travels. I visited Żarnów & Opoczno, which are places...
Św. Mikołaja (St. Nicholas) church in KońskieWhen I was researching my own family, thousands of hours were spent building the family tree while going through rolls of microfilm from a number of churches. My Firkowski family is scattered all over Poland & sometimes I did not know where other family was...
After the time spent in the church office, it was time to pay a visit to the cemetery. I had a photo of one grave and was hoping to findit. I know that graves most often are "recycled" so I knew I may not find the grave I was looking for....
I will be speaking at the Annual Seminar for the Polish Genealogical Society of Michiganat the American Polish Cultural Center in Troy, MI, October 15th! I will be giving two presentations:"Finding the Family: Problems, Successes and Rewards" - This presentation will explore researching for family from Poland explaining the process used to locate over...
A Typical Polish BreakfastThe day began with what you may find as a typical breakfast, which consisted of coffee or tea, sliced meats & cheese, bread & butter, tomatoes, a vegetable salad,and some eggs (in the photo they are deviled eggs with a dill filling). Normally they will make an open...
I was visiting my cousin Adam in Wroclaw at the end of August during my stay in Poland this summer. Adam took me to the Wroclaw Community Cemetery to show me graves of some family members. Adam prepared ahead of time by calling the cemetery office and found out the location of the graves we were interested in. A smart move!
The person in the office surprised both of us with some information we were not expecting. There were two children that had the family name, but neither of us were aware of these children.
The Community Cemetery in Wrocław is VERY Beautiful, and also very large. This is not a cemetery that you want to just wander through to locate graves of your ancestors.
I had to go to Szewna, Poland to do some research for a client. The project is filled with many mysteries. I had a short time to at least go through the cemetery before I had to continue my journey to the southeast part of Poland.
There was one mystery that kept bothering me. The name of the parish is św. Mikołaj (St. Nicolas) but the name św. Roch (St. Roch) was remembered by a family member. I was unable to find a parish with this name that was nearby and I was left puzzled.
I finally learned that the parish had two patron saints, those two being St. Nicolas and St. Roch. St. Nicolas is the most known name for this parish.
It may sound like a small thing if you know you have the right church, but since it has been difficult finding records, St. Roch may have been another church where the family records I needed were. That did not turn out to be the case but at least I finally solved that small puzzle.
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