Thursday, August 14
Today we drove north to check out the Ulezelski towns. Matthew called ahead to the two parishes. I had my great-great-grandfather’s birth date from his children’s marriage records. But I did not have an image of the baptismal record from a church. I was told that records over a hundred years old are to be sent to the central archdiocese archive, but I got images of marriage records from St. Wojciech in Margonin.
The countryside along the drive was mostly farms growing corn (for livestock feed) and hay. We saw very few cows, which seemed odd. We did see storks, with large nests on the top of poles.
Below: Aerial drone view of Margonin
The priest was very nice, and while he did not have any old records, he made some phone calls to old-timers in the town to see if they recognized the Ulezelski name. From talking to Polish geneaologists, that name no longer exists in Poland. From my research I determined that Antoni had several siblings. He and two of them came to America around 1867 but there were three more. One died at age four. I had birth records for two more, and I was hoping to find out what became of them. But no one had any additional information. Here is a link to that part of the Ulezelski tree.
We got lunch in a small cafe in Margonin. A popular meal here (based on the number of places offering it) is “kabobs.” In American we think of kabobs as meat and veggies grilled on a stick. Here in Poland it was a pile of grilled meat in a pile. It was OK, but different than what I expected. The beer was good. We also visited a small museum and the public library in Margonin.
After the visit to Margonin, we continued to St. Anna’s in Jaktorowo. It’s a very small town. This is the parish that responded to my messages a year or so ago. The woman who was the parish clerk took photos of their marriage records. We got to meet her and the pastor, and they were very happy to meet us. They even had cake and coffee ready for us, as our guide called ahead yesterday to arrange the visit. But they had no further info for my research – but this was the church that my great-great-grandfather was baptized and was married. That alone is amazing. I asked if they had many visitors from America. He said I was their first. Wow.
Below: Drone video of Jaktorowo
After the visit to St. Anna’s, we drove around to the small villages where Antoni’s daughter, Floryanna, was born (Jeziorki) and baptized (Chojna). These are all small but picturesque farming villages as the drone video of Chojna shows.
We had a quiet hour-plus drive back to Poznan and later had dinner. We tried one of the restaurants on the main plaza and I decided to try a simple pasta dish. It turned out to be mostly spaghetti noodles in oil with a little grated cheese sprinkled on top. It was okay, but I was not impressed.
