Zenon met us at Krakow airport loaded up our luggage in his auto and we were on our way to find my ancestors. He’d found a very nice upstairs small apartment to stay that was near the church where we were going to look for records.
The roads in Poland are fine, but someone who is familiar with S Poland is a necessity. We zipped around to the various churches and if the records were not what he (we) were looking for, we didn’t waste any time looking at the wrong place.
We visited 7 parishes and were able to look through the books of 3. Unless you are fluent in Polish, do not even attempt this. On Saturday and Sunday we walked an Open Air museum, a nature museum in the Carpathian Mts (very interesting to me) and a castle, also very interesting. Also visited an old Greek Catholic church (wooden) and best of all got to go to Mass at St Mary Magdalene Church in Samokleski
on Sunday where we were to find was the church that my grandparents, great grandparents and great-great grandparents were parishioners.
When we were finally able to make an appointment and visit a reluctant priest in Samokleski, Zenon was able to talk him into being an enthusiastic researcher. Once he found my grandparents birth records, he was able to trace birth records back to 1795.
We found the birth records on the last day of our stay so were unable to look for living relatives (we know of at least one family in the area with the Szeredy name.
Although we really had only 3 days to look at church records, Zenon was able to find where my grandparents lived.
He was an excellent guide, whom I would recommend highly.
Paul and Jaye Shereda
USA
Jaye and Paul Shareda – two years later (Genealogy Tour)
Pawel and Zenon were excellent. All the other guides were very good, but the lady at Sanok Skansen was special as was Mateusz at Bialowieza National Park. Both Pawel and Zenon were very knowledgeable about the history of the area we were at and Poland in general. Pawel was a walking encyclopedia.
Zenon was able to find all that I had hoped to learn about my ancestors. We also went to the Samokleski church cemetery and found several gravestones with my surname on them. We met a distant relative which was very nice.
We really appreciate your going out of your way to have music in two of the dinners. On both tours it was nice to see how Poland has recovered after the war and communism.