Genealogy / Family coat of arms - Franczyk [5]

well, if you are really interested in your family's coat of arms, the internet websites which do searches on this are just the starting point.

they don't have everything on them. the Polish zlachty was actually quite numerous compared with the gentry in other countries. and there's a lot of detailed history about their use of coats of arms which has not been assimilated by the websites which deal with this subject.

there are extremely lengthy, detailed tomes on the subject of polish heraldry by authors such as Zarnickiego which may have information about your ancestor's use of coats of arms which you simply won't find on an internet site.

if you want to be sure of getting the right answer, i recommend you somehow get in touch with a polish researcher who can go back to these kinds of original sources for you...

Love / A flying Dutchmen..deep in the Polish forest..... [34]

i must say, this is an interesting thread.

i would never choose to live out in the woods like that. i feel alive when i am in touch with the rhythm of a city.

but it is possible to live a quite solitary existence in a big city. you can go for long periods of time without really talking to anybody in any substantive way...

but i understand what it is to move to another country for love. i did it, and ended up living in stockholm. which is where i am still.

but you sound like an interesting person. i do get down to poland now and again, for various reasons. and i always go up to warsaw when i do, because i really enjoy it. i'd enjoy it even if i did NOT have some rather ancient family connections to the land.

next time i am there, perhaps you would like to come into town and have dinner and chat?

Love / Dating/friends sites to find Polish girls [44]

my mother was raised in a polish american family, her grandparents having emigrated from polish prussia in the 1800s, like so many others.

when she talks about her old neighborhood, which was an ethnic neighborhood filled with other poles...she will sometimes say, oh, such and such family were "strict".

"strict" meant that they did not mix with non-poles, would not allow their children to get involved with non-poles, and would only marry with other poles.

Websites for Meeting Polish Girls

Perhaps someone who visits this website might know of some good virtual meeting places for socializing on line with girls and women in Poland.

Most Europeanc countries have a version of match.com. And there are a number of russian run websites which seem to have separate sections for Polish women.

But I am interested in any other sort of possibility which is more, well, Polish!

Love / Seeking advice - I get a feeling she is seeing other guys [25]

well, you need to know, first, whether you are the suspicious type. have you been in other relationships where you were suspicious of the girl. if that's so, then it's your issue.

but if not, if you're not the sort of guy who worries about the girl being honest ordinarily...

then my opinion is...if there is enough happening that you have been provoked to worry about it, then you have a problem.

and you should expect the problem to get worse, not better.

we all have our faults. and we all tend to be consistent with those faults. that's just what people do.

so, if this girl deals with situations by being dishonest about them, you should expect that to continue. that's what she does when she doesn't know what to do.

if you really think she's terrific, like she could be the love of your life, it might be worth one or two conversations with her about it. if these conversations go well, there might be hope. it could be a sign either that you were mistaken, or that this is not one of those faults which is a trademark of hers.

but if one or two conversations do not end the problem for all time, then it WILL be a problem for all time.

that, too, is not necessarily a deal breaker.

some people do not consider lying, or infidelity even, a reason for ending a relationship. there are married couples which function for DECADES with one partner cheating and the other suspecting it and just living with it.

Genealogy / When did Poles adopt surnames? [27]

well, i don't know about suffixes like ski and wiecz...

but when it comes to "czyk" it is clear that names ending with this suffix were names of noble families.

this came about during the reign of Kazimierz IV, one of the Jagiellonian kinds of Poland who acceded to the throne in about 1447, I believe. It was Kazimierz who responded to the appeal of people living along the Baltic who were unhappy with the Knights of the Teutonic Order, the overlords in that area. In response, Kazimierz declared Prussia to be a part of the Polish domain, and a 13 year war ensued. In the absence of a standing army, Kazimierz had to do a LOT of haggling with local nobility and others, particularly in the western region of Poland, to raise sufficient officers and troops to conduct the war.

This was a period when the nobility succeeded in securing fairly important rights and privileges, in return for their support for this war effort.

At any rate, it was a peculiarity of this royal dynasty that, at about this time, they began to use the suffix "czyk" at the end of their name, as in Kazimierz Jagiellonczyk.

This practice was then imitated by members of the royal entourage, and it then spread to supporters of the king among the nobility.

So Polish family names ending in "czyk" ultimately date back to this period, when the adoption of the suffix "czyk" signified a noble family which was loyal to the king...

Life / What makes you proud to be Polish? [150]

i do not believe in national pride or ethnic pride, because to me it is the flip side of racism and national hatred. in the last five hundred years or so, more people have been massacred, murder, incinerated, slice and diced for nationalistic or ethnic reasons than for any other cause. so, to me, when people start going on about how great THEIR country or people is, compared to others, i am not impressed.

what is beautiful in the polish tradition, though, is the commitment to freedom and, in a certain measure, equality...from beginning to end of the national story.

during the century and a half after the partitions, the slogan of the polish revolutionaries was "for our freedom, and for yours" (or maybe it was the other way around!).

that is a beautiful message, because freedom is a universal value. and ultimately, all men have less freedom when SOME have less freedom.

also, from fairly early on, the polish kingdom became democratic, with an elected king. and one of the weaknesses of the sejm, the assembly of the nobility, was that it depended so much on unanimous votes, such that a very few people could block any decision. but this defect was, ultimately, a defect of an excess of democracy.

also, among the polish nobility there was much less in the way of a formal hierarchy with different grades of nobility. there were, in reality, some noble families which were more wealthy and powerful than others. but the ranks of the nobility themselves were not distinguished into counts, and dukes, and earls etc. the way they were in other countries.

so, poland had a kind of farmer/gentleman's democracy operating when most other european countries wouldn't even consider such an idea...

these are things which one might be proud of, if you believe in national pride...

yuschenko doesn't have a strong personality.

tymoshenko does.

she is the only hope for the ukraine.

Life / Most famous, respected Polish last names? [46]

jagiellonian. that was the name of the most powerful polish royal dynasty!

Genealogy / pawlaczyk, zielinski, dembek, rybicki, lasecki, klatt, ke(n)zierski [11]

dear jessica,

i would be happy to get in touch with you and share information more directly. the board says i have to post four "useful" messages before i can do that.

so, i hope this counts as one.

about the pawlaczyks. i am told that all pawlaczyks are related to each other, as this is a fairly small clan. the polish census of 1990 showed there to be about 3, 000 poles living in poland with this last name. the highest concentrations of them were in the area around poznan, which was originally the family seat.

the pawlaczyk family line was known as early as 1650, and may well date from the 1450s when the King of Poland ennobled many families who took part in a major war which he waged against the Teutonic Knights in the region which is now northwestern Poland (the area along the Baltic sea around Gdansk) but which was referred to Prussia for many years.

the family seat of the pawlaczyks was at Wrzesnia, a little town about 80 kilometers south east of the city of Poznan.

we have two coats of arms.

etc. etc.

i will try to email you after posting a few more messages. but you can reach me at this address (if this form allows it to be printed publicly): ctafrance@hotmail

Genealogy / pawlaczyk, zielinski, dembek, rybicki, lasecki, klatt, ke(n)zierski [11]

John Pawlaczyk, b. 1855? - d. ?
Mary (?),

parents of John A. Paval (Pawlaczyk) who married Pauline Zielinski, daughter of...

John J. Zielinski, b. May 17, 1867 - d- Dec. 18, 1938
Maryanna Kedzierksi b. Dec. 24, 1869 - d. June 27, 1940

*****

Albert Rybicki, b. April 11, 1855 - d. Dec. 27, 1943 (spoke Kashub)
Maryann Lasecki, Jan. 13, 1855 - d- Jan 8, 1940

parents of Anthony Rybicki who married Rosalia Klatt, daughter of...

Anthony Klatt, b. Jan 13, 1860 - d. Feb. 28, 1945
Elisabeth Dembeck, b. July 29, 1867 - June 3, 1950

**********

John A. Paval and Pauline Zielinski had a son, George, who was my father.

Anthony Rybicki and Rose Klatt had a daughter, Helen, who is my mother.

I have census information, children, addresses for the Zielinski household, on Forest Ave. in Detroit, just down the block, in fact, from Sweetest Heart of Mary Church, which was at the heart of the old polish neighborhood in Detroit.

And about the Klatt household, on Willis, just around the corner from St. Albertus Church, which was the oldest polish catholic church in detroit. And their old house is still there...

And I have information about the Rybicki household. I still have a few aunts and uncles on that side of our family who actually remember visiting their grandparents, my great grandparents, Albert and Maryanna Rybicki.

What I do not have is information about the roots of these three families back in Poland. They are known, in the family, to have simply come from Poznan, which, as you know, is as much a region as a town, so that doesn't necessarily help find their roots. They all died in the U.S., in Detroit. But I do not have their social security numbers, or even the social security numbers of their children. But I have a feeling all you'd find on the social security applications of their children is the same info, namely, that they came from Poznan or Posen in German or Prussian Poland.

And, most importantly, I have very little clear information about the Pawlaczyks, which is my father's father's family. John Pawlaczyk, my great grandfather, served in the Prussian cavalry before immigrating to the U.S. in the late 1800s, and after founding a family in and around Detroit, he returned to Europe during the First World War and did not come back to Detroit afterwards. I have a distant cousin in Poland helping with research on him, but the information I get from him is maddeningly sketchy and intriguing. He tracked down info about a couple of John Pawlaczyks who were officers in the Prussian cavalry in the 1800s, most notably a John Pawlaczyck in a particular cavalry regiment near Olesnica. He also got confirmation from SOME administrative contact (the guy is a police officer in Puck) that there are confidential military files on a John Pawlaczyk who moved back to Poland in 1917-1918 from Wayne County, Michigan, and that would have been my great grandfather. But I cannot get out of the guy what was in those military files, nor confirm that the same John Pawlaczyk who went back in 1917 was the John Pawlaczyk in the Prussian cavalry at Olesnica in the late 1800s...