Are any Polish people here related to anyone with the surname Kameczura? Looking for distant relatives, and need more info. I've searched ancestry.com and other sites, but cannot find info past when my family immigrated. Also, is there anything interesting behind the surname?
According to this site, there are only 78 people named Kameczura in Poland. Twenty-nine of them live in Kraków. I'm afraid , I haven't found any information about the meaning of the name.
Men who were so-named couldn't convince enough women to have babies with them?
To my non-native ears, it doesn't sound very Polish though I don't know what it could be I tried some romanianish and hungarianish spellings in google and hit nothing.
Wild guess: scrambling of kocsma ura (hungarian versions of karczma and pan)
I agree with mafketis. It might be of some foreign origin but with a Polonised spelling like Szulc comes from German Schultz or Czamer comes from Scottish Chalmers. Or it was originally spelled in a different alphabet like the cyrilic.
You may try looking for the name on Facebook or Linkedin and message people with this name. Perhaps they know the origin of the name.
Here is the info I have on places my family's from that might help in some way: Brzesko, Dobczyce, Myślenice, Krakow, and Torun. I found a record and I don't know if it's accurate or not, seeing as it's user-submitted on Ancestry.com that shows birth records in Galicia. That doesn't tell me much. All it has is Galicia & the year of birth.
As for the Polish genealogy website, I haven't received an answer from anyone.
There's a doctor called Kameczura in Kraków. Not sure if I can give his name here. Try googling. You should get some results. Perhaps a family of yours.
Most of the places you named are in Lesser Poland.
Kameczura is very specific for the city of Kraków. Only 78 people in Poland have that name, and you can assume that this is a surname that is unique to a single family, all sharing a rather common ancestor who probably lived and adopted the name in the early-to-mid 1800s. Names like this are worth gold in genealogy because you can tell exactly where they originated and can assume that everyone with that name is related to you.
There was probably no "name change" involved. This was the time period when many Poles first started using surnames. Until the early 1800s, many Poles did not use surnames at all.
Ah. Ok. That makes sense. That would make back tracking ancestors harder, then. What is a way I can dig up ancestors from that time, and before to make a family tree?
There is probably no way, as written records from before that time are quite sparse indeed, especially for people of lower social strata, who are the ones who were latest in adopting surnames. There are no records at all for most individuals who died in Poland before 1812. Most people lived and died without leaving a paper trail behind.
What would be a reason for a name change? Maybe they could have been hiding something?
The alternation in Kamyczura/Kameczura is a typical one. Before the WW2 where people and clerks were less literate than now, such a replacement could easily occur. For example, this had happened with my mother's (born in the 1930s) maiden name where she got the E, whereas her father had Y in that position of the surname. The spelling is different, but the pronounciation would be very close to one another. An official in Austria-Hungary may have easily written down Kamyczura rather than Kameczura or the other way round. No wonder, I myself have seen a birth certicicate issued in Galicia of Austria-Hungary stating the birthdate of the person as 31 November.
I still keep up my suggestion that 'Kamyczura' originated from the word 'kamyk' on the same language pattern as in szlachcic --> szlachciura.
Kamyczura is less common than Kameczura, with only 58 individuals, mostly in Myślenica and the city of Kraków. It appears to be an alternate spelling of the same name.
An official in Austria-Hungary may have easily written down Kamyczura rather than Kameczura or the other way round.
That's interesting. In Prussia/ the eastern provinces of the German Empire, the spelling of surnames was fixed after the introduction of the civil registration offices in 1874. Rarely any name variations. Seems that Austria introduced civil registration only in 1939
but cannot find info past when my family immigrated
The 1930 United States Census states that a John Kameczura (*1882) immigrated to the US in 1906. He and his wife Kattie (*1889) had a son named Alexs, who was born in Illinois in 1918. Assuming that these people are your ancestors: have you tried to get hold of the long form birth certificate of Alexs? The document should list the exact birth dates and places of John and Kattie Kameczura, which should then give you the necessary data to continue your research in Poland.
I could see an error in spelling back then. People are only human. I know of all my relatives in the US, and the last 2 generations on my grandfather's maternal side and paternal side(He and his parents were from Poland) and left in the 1930s. Their extended family had visited off and on before officially moving. They loved the US. My great grandparents took my grandfather to the US with them when he was 10. I wanted to see if I could go back in Polish records, but I guess I can only go back so far.
If you have the birth and/or marriage dates of your great grandparents, then that's something to work with. There are certainly many documents which have survived the war. You have to contact Polish state archives and dig through some of their web sites to find the information you're looking for.
So I've recently found more information on my great grandmother. There's a document that has to do with the immigration on my grandfather, and it states that she was born in Trzemesna. I think the town name was somehow misspelled. I'm thinking it's Trzemesnia. I also recently got my DNA tested and it said 13 percent Eastern European and 9 percent Baltic. So i'm thinking the Baltic comes from her side.
