Genealogy News
6-Dec-03
Pete Gwozdz pete2g@comcast.net
I
registered the name “gwozdz.org” as a web site. I uploaded several of my old genealogy documents, as well as the
new documents mentioned in this newsletter.
Help yourself. This newsletter
is there, too.
The
Gwozdz page at MyFamily.com has our family tree. Mary typed it in a few years ago. This year, I updated it twice with all my most recent
findings. You need a password for
access.
The
data that I submitted back in 1999 has been publicly available for a little
over a year now, at the LDS site, www.familysearch.org. This year, it was published by LDS as part
of CD #35. You can download a copy of
that 1999 data from Gwozdz.org, but you need a genealogy program to read this
PAF data base.
Among
the documents available at my new Gwozdz site are copies of the family tree
charts from the back of my genealogy book;
you can click to those charts from the home page. If you do not have web access, please do not
hesitate to ask me to mail you paper copies of family trees.
I
spent a lot of time this year on the Gwozdz branch. Lots of findings. Page 2
of this newsletter is all Gwozdz genealogy news.
No
news this year
One
new name this year. 1880 census. Mother of Nina Ripley: Josephine, 3-great grandmother of
Holly. This is name 31 of 32 names
needed for that column in the family tree.
Linda
Kocisak spotted my data on the web and emailed me. From her family information, I determined that we are 3rd
cousins. Her great grandfather,
Marcelli Parzych, is the uncle of my grandmother Rozalia Pisiewski. My mother and uncles remember Marcelli as a
grocer in Greenfield; Linda mailed me a
copy of his picture.
Bessie
Baird is a grandmother of my wife Barbara.
Bessie’s father is Jerome. The
list of Jerome’s descendants was given to me by Barb’s family some years ago,
so you probably saw it in my genealogy book.
I had no information on Jerome’s ancestors.
Andrea
Autrey Marshall contacted me by email this May. She saw my Baird information on the web. Marshall is a 3rd cousin of my
grandchildren. I suppose we saw each
other years ago when I visited her parents, although neither of us
remember. Andrea had lots of
information on Jerome Baird ancestors, which she shared with me.
Andrea
introduced me by email to other distant relatives of my wife who shared more
genealogy details: Ruth Edwards and
Leonard McCown.
I
put together a document of all the information that they gave me; it’s on the web:
http://www.gwozdz.org/Baird.doc
The
Baird line is now documented all the way back to a John Baird born 1665 in
Scotland, along with a tentative identification of his parents and
grandparents. John settled in New
Jersey.
Here
is a gem: Ezekiel Baird, grandson of John,
moved to NC. In 1790, Ezekiel build a
nice house, which today is a bed and breakfast. Barb and I will definitely try to stay there some day:
I
scanned many of the West / Baird / Shields photos from the collection of Barb’s
mother Ruby. I emailed them to
Andrea. Andrea did a great job of
retouching them as needed, and posting them on her web site:
http://www.dementedmind.com/westbairdphotos/index.html
http://www.gwozdz.org/name.html
I
wrote that web document as an expansion of the Gwozdz Notes section of
my genealogy book. I included
everything I have - all you want to know about the name Gwozdz and then
some. It’s huge, and boring toward the
end, so I tried to put all the interesting stuff on the first several
pages. Enjoy.
Maryanna
Kmiec, who married Maciej Gwozdz, is the mother of my grandfather Piotr. Many years ago I found all 4 of Maryanna’s
grandparents in the microfilm records.
In 2001, I found the 1803 2nd marriage of her grandfather Jozef Kmiec,
but I could not find any Kmiec records before 1803. This year I had a breakthrough:
I
noticed 2 other Kmiec marriages, which mentioned that the groom was from
Luszowice. Luszowice is a parish only
20 km SW of our Gwozdz ancestral parish of Wadowice Gorne. I hopefully rented the Luszowice microfilms
and quickly found my man Joe, along with his first wife and first child. His parents are new names added to our
family genealogy this year: Wojciech
Kmiec and Jadwiga Bielat.
The
Luszowice records start in 1686!
Unfortunately, parents are not named at marriage, so I could not put the
families together into trees. My notes
are available as a huge document, http://www.gwozdz.org/Luszowice.doc,
on the Kmiec clan of Luszowice.
Unfortunately, there are too many Kmiec people in Luszowice. I could not figure out which ones are the
brothers and parents of our ancestor Wojciech Kmiec.
It’s
a heart breaker! The grandfather of
Wojciech Kmiec is probably named in my notes.
There are 10 possibilities - grooms and fathers around 1700. One of them is named Wojciech, and one of them is named Jozef, but there is
no evidence to connect them to our family.
An ID would have been the first name in my “column 7” of our Gwozdz
family tree - a Kmiec 7-great grandfather of my children.
Same
with Bielat. I could not figure out the
parents of Jadwiga.
I
proved this year that Carl Rapa is our 6th cousin. Sixth cousins share a pair of 5-great
grandparents. We each have a 4-great
grandfather named Ogorzalek. My ancestor
is Mateusz Ogorzalek. His is Kasper
Ogorzalek. I figure they are brothers.
I
mentioned Carl in my 2001 Xmas update.
His Gwozdz ancestors are also from Wadowice Gorne. I worked out his ancestral tree. Our Gwozdz branches do not connect.
I
wrote a detailed report:
http://www.gwozdz.org/Carl
Rapa.doc
I
also proved this year that Carol King is our 6th cousin. Our common
ancestor is Blazej 1 Gula, born about 1722.
He is our common 5-great grandfather.
Blazej 1, grandfather of Blazej 2 Gula, is one of the names I added to
our family tree last year. Joe Armata
connected me with Carol King, with an email 21 July this year.
I
wrote a detailed report:
http://www.gwozdz.org/Carol
King.doc
In
last year’s newsletter, I was uncertain about Agata Strycharz. This year, I verified her name, and also
identified her parents: Andrzej
Strycharz and Agnieszka Wach.
I
had been unable to identify the parents of Maciej Sypek. Unfortunately, there are 3 individuals born
1795 to 1801 named Maciej Sypek. I
spent a lot of time on that this year.
I was able to put together indirect evidence eliminating 2 of them, plus
circumstantial evidence identifying the 3rd as our ancestor. With that ID, I can name his father, Jan
Sypek. Maciej’s mother is Katarzyna
Strycharz. Strycharz, common in
that parish, is a duplicate name in our family tree.
With
Maciej’s parents, that completes the list of all 16 great-great grandparents of
my grandfather Piotr Gwozdz. I found
Maciej’s grandparents: Andrzej &
Ewa Sypek.
This
year, that’s a total of four 5-great grandparents and four 6-great grandparents
added to the Gwozdz family tree.