A Return to Our Ancestral Towns

 

Back in 2011, two clans of the D*****k, also D*****k, family traveled to Poland to meet with family members still living in our ancestral town of Stara Jastrząbka. (The spelling of our last name has varied throughout the centuries.) We are related on my father’s side. That original group consisted of 9 who were related to the others and one spouse. We retold so many stories about that trip that other cousins asked me to organize another visit. As a group of 12 from two clans (different lines of descent), 8 were related with 4 additional travelers. Within our group we were 1st cousins, 1st cousins once removed, 2nd cousins, 3rd cousins, and 3rd cousins once removed. Except for me, this was their first trip to Poland.

Our selected tour company for this trip was PolishOrigins. It was a much better choice instead of again using a commercial tour with a “personalized” side tour. Our tour coordinator was Aleksander Zawilski. His meticulous attention to detail took care of every concern, from dietary needs to timing for airport transfers to attraction tickets. We were very fortunate to have Wojtek Młotkowski assigned as our tour director. He was with us the entire trip. His input and background research enhanced the family experience.

PolishOrigins covered everything. We had three separate arrivals from the United States into Krakow. All were met by transfer drivers who brought us to our hotel. We stayed in very comfortable hotels that were conveniently close to dining and attractions. All of the local tour guides were knowledgeable and English-speaking.

And the food!! Besides breakfast served as part of our package at every hotel, we had a meal included every day. It worked out that we mostly had a mid-day meal. The meals were so filling and so smaczna (tasty) that an evening meal was not necessary. There was a wide variety of entrees. The restaurants chosen by PolishOrigins were, quite simply, marvelous.

The itinerary created by PolishOrigins was tailored to our requests. Aleksander was in constant contact during the planning phase. We shared numerous emails and Zoom calls to discuss our options and how to make it all fit. The result was an itinerary that blended the experiences of being in Poland with time spent in our ancestral towns.

Our tour began in Krakow where we all met up from our different departure points in the U.S. We then proceeded to the Wieliczka Salt Mine, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, Zakopane, and rafting the Dunajec River. After going to our ancestral towns, we finished with a stop at the Jasna Góra monastery in Częstochowa and a tour of Warsaw.

Our transportation was a new Mercedes Benz 20-passenger van. It was very comfortable with plenty of room for passengers and luggage. We could not have had a better driver than Jakub. He was very cheerful and very professional with his driving. We were extremely comfortable having him as our driver.

Now for the family heritage portion, which was the main focus of the trip. One of our stops was in Nowy Sącz. The town was included on the itinerary so we could explore the Sadecki Ethnographic Park. This is an open-air museum with original rural architecture from the 18th and 19th centuries. We were able to visualize what our ancestors endured and, ultimately, what led some of them to emigrate to the U.S.

Being in Nowy Sącz made it possible to seek out a location that is special for me on my mother’s side. Her father has been my brick wall for the 30+ years that I have been working on genealogy. I do have a picture of him that was taken at the Janina Photo Studio in Nowy Sącz. Surprisingly, there remains the sign for the studio at the same location where he had the picture taken. I was able to be at the spot he visited before coming to America more than 100 years ago. I held the photograph (which was on my phone) while I stood outside the door to the studio. Many thanks to our tour director Wojtek for that find. He had a few more surprises for us later.

The next day took us to the town of Nagoszyn, the ancestral town of the grandmother of four of us and the great-grandmother of two. Prior to visiting the town, very little of her life there was known by us. She and her brothers were orphaned as young children, and, according to lore passed down to us, their property was “confiscated” and the children had to fend for themselves. Eventually, they scraped together enough money to send my grandmother to the U.S., where she managed to bring her brothers over one by one. It took a lot of years to do so. That was about all that we knew of her life in Poland. We did not know of any relatives still in Nagoszyn. And it was in Nagoszyn where our tour director Wojtek surprised us again.

Nagoszyn is a very small town. The church is very new, built in the early 1920s. As we approached the church, we saw that a funeral mass was being held so we instead visited the cemetery. We found graves that had names that were in the family line but I could not connect them to anyone in my research, except for one that fit the time frame. It is a common practice to reuse burial ground so most of the graves in the cemetery were recent.

We returned to the church as the funeral was ending. Wojtek made inquiries of the people working in the church to give us some historical information. We learned the church was built after my grandmother left Nagoszyn. Wojtek informed us that the church was built on the former cemetery, which would be where our ancestors were buried. That further explained why we were not able to find older graves.

Wojtek’s real magic was just beginning. Parish records from my grandmother’s time included house numbers. House numbers are very important for genealogical research. I had the house number from my grandmother’s and her brothers’ baptismal records. We drove through the town where we located a house with that number. It was too new to be from my grandmother’s time. Wojtek noticed there was a woman tending her flowers. He approached her and asked about her house number. I was then brought into the conversation. I had some of my research with me so we were able to put things together.

The woman said that her father purchased the house number and applied it to the current house. The circumstances of the purchase as she explained fit with our story about the confiscated property. Whatever or however our family lost the property was then legally transferred to her family. She explained the original property was abandoned and left to decay. The two stories were consistent. Wojtek had helped us fill in that hole in our history.

The next day was dedicated to being with our relatives still living in our ancestral town of Stara Jastrząbka. This tiny town is where our fourth great-grandparents Tomasz and Anna Smagacz D*****k were married in 1795. Our lineage there goes back much further. However, documents prior to the late 1790s have been lost. Eight members of our group are direct descendents of Tomasz and Anna. We left the hotel in Tarnow in the morning to get us to Stara Jastrząbka for Sunday mass at Sts. Peter and Paul Church, which has been our family’s spiritual home for hundreds of years. After a brief visit to the church’s graveyard, where we located the graves of several ancestors, we met our relatives for mass. Aleksander of PolishOrigins had arranged to have our family as the mass intention.

Our next stop was the home of the matriarch of the Stara Jastrząbka family. Maria lives in the house she inherited from her father, who is the brother of the grandfather of four of our group and the great grand uncle of two. Wojtek helped us overcome our language barrier, allowing us to learn more about the family’s history. We already heard of the family’s experiences during the Second World War. The Germans and Russians were involved in heavy fighting all around them. Maria pointed out a bomb crater and told the story how the family had to lay in the furrows in the fields to avoid bullets. Wojtek translated for us the story that Maria’s father was deeded the property after the war because they had helped a Jewish family that was in hiding during the German occupation. We shared stories of the American side of the family, again with Wojtek’s help.

With typical Polish hospitality, we enjoyed fresh pastries and beverages (including the adult-type) before most of the group headed to Tarnow. Aleksander arranged reservations for about 25 at a restaurant there. The choice of the restaurant was again keeping with the quality of all of our other meals. We were able to spend a few more hours with our Polish family (and nobody had to cook or wash dishes!) It was a fantastic day, to say the least. Our choice of PolishOrigins to organize and lead us on our tour was a very smart decision. It is doubtful that we could have received the amount of personalized attention from any of the commercial tour operators as was provided to us by PolishOrigins. We highly recommend PolishOrigins if you want to visit Poland and get back to your heritage.

Gerard D.