Searching for Winskowski genealogy

My grandfather was a Edward Herman Winskowski. The story goes as his father Julius Carl Winskowski born 1856, and his wife Wanda Martha Shultz Winskowski came to the USA in the 1889, with some of their children. There were supposed to have been 12 children. The 1910 US Census showed they had been married in 1880, and 6 children living. I saw the question above from another Elizabeth, asking if the Winskowski family could have been known by another name. I've wondered that myself since it's been so hard to find connections. Any help as to where they were from or any connections would be much appreciated.

It's just a very, very rare surname, with only about two dozen people in Poland bearing that name. On the good side, it belongs to only a single family, so anyone with that surname is related to you within four or five generations at the most. Also, it almost certainly originated in a single concrete place near Ruda Ślaska in southern Poland. People with that surname still live there today, and finding the parish where records on the family are kept will be easy.

There's a Julius Winskowski (b. January 1857 in Germany), his wife Wanda (b. December 1860 in Germany), and their 5 kids listed in the 1900 census of Precinct 8, Baltimore City Ward 19, MD. Are those your folks? If yes, you should probably also take the names Winkowski (Winkowsky, Wittkowski) and Schultz into consideration.

Also, there is a high probability that all living and recently living Winskowski's are direct descendants of Julius, and a good probability that he was the first person to use that surname with that spelling, which is almost certainly a Germanified spelling of the far more common Polish surname Więckowski.

If not, then there is an extremely high probability that they are direct descendants of Julius's father, and a high probability that he was the first to use that surname.

If not, then it is an extremely high probability that they are direct descendants of Julius's grandfather, and that he was the first to use that surname.

Also, some may have emigrated to Germany, especially after the war. There is a Henrik Winskowski that worked on the Russian rocket team after the war, and his nationality is listed as German on this site:

astronautix.com/w/winskowski.html

Chances are he was a grandson or grandnephew of Julius. Chances are that he was forcibly deported to Russia after the war to work on the rocket team, like so many others. Chances are also, unfortunately, high that he disappeared off the face of the earth without a trace, again, like so may others like him. There is a chance, however, that he might have been repatriated to Poland or East Germany, or that he might have settled in Russia.

According to moikrewni.pl (a site that gives an estimate number of people using a given surname living in a given country) there are more Winskowskis in Germany (122) than in Poland (14). One of them apparently works at university in Kraków. You may try contacting him but it's hard to say if he knows anything.

According to stankiewicze.pl the surname is derived from Wins/Winsch/Windsch meaning Slavic or Lusatian.
My guess (and it's just a guess) is that they were either ethnic Germans living in (partitioned) Poland or a family of mixed Polish-German origins perhaps Silesians.

I was just reading all the responses. Thank you all for your information. I had wondered if there were other variations of the name. I cannot find any record of them immigrating to the USA. So that makes it even more a mystery.