The Story of Paulina (Raczkiewicz) Dubiel

While Paulina (Raczkiewicz) Dubiel (my great aunt) worked with her husband on their farm, she was also a herbalist/healer. As a practitioner of folk medicine, she would have had knowledge of how to use herbs for healing. The Polish Museum of America, a museum in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., contains many artifacts from Poland, Polish Americans and from the Polish Pavilion for the 1939 World’s Fair. I took a picture of an example of the cases of herbs that were used for medicine. It now makes me think of Paulina. ***** Paulina died on January 15, 1968, which was 55 years ago. Memories of her may be harder to find because this was long ago but we managed to find a few. Paulina was 67 years old when she died in Rogozno, Poland. Her husband Jan Dubiel died 17 years earlier at age 62. Paulina and Jan had six children, 17 grandchildren, more than 30 great-grandchildren, and many great-great-grandchildren. ***** Paulina was the seventh of the nine children born to the Raczkiewicz family in Sabaudia, Poland. The older children were ages two to thirteen when she was born. Paulina Raczkiewicz was born June 12 1901 at 5:00 in the afternoon. Her parents were Jan, 37 years old and a peasant, and Katarzyna (nee Kaszucki), 30 years old, from a family of furriers from Tomaszow. They lived in the village of Sabaudia. The witnesses at her baptism on June 18th were both peasants – Marcin Matej, age 30 from Sabaudia and Andrzej Luj, age 28, from Podhorce. Her Godparents were Marcin Matej and Jozefa Kedrowa. Everyone present at her baptism was illiterate (at least in Russian), so the priest read the record out loud to them and was the only one who signed it. ***** Paulina married Jan Dubiel on Wednesday, June 15, 1921 in Tomaszow at 4:00 in the afternoon. Michal Mandziak, 27, and Michal Muczek, 23, farmers from Rogóźno, were the witnesses. Paulina was 20 years old and living with her mother in Sabaudia. Her father had died six years earlier. Her siblings Piotr, Mary, Franciszek and Boleslaw also still lived at home. Jan was a 32 year old bachelor farming in Rogóźno. His parents, Wojciech Dubiel and Agnieszka Mandziak, were deceased. ***** According to their grandson Andrzej Dubiel, “After marriage, Paulina moved to Rogozno. Their whole life they were peasants - -they had some land and lived there until their death.” They had six children: Leokadia (1922), Bronislawa (1923), Jan (1926), Jozefa (1930), Edward (1933), and Halina (1940). ***** Eugene Raczkiewicz (Paulina’s nephew) talked to Paulina’s daughter Jozefa (Dubiel) Malec in November of 2020 (before she died in February of 2021) and asked her what his grandmother Katarzyna (Kaszucka) looked like. Jozefa told him that Katarzyna looked like Jozefa’s mother Paulina. And Jozefa looked like her mother Paulina. So looking at Jozefa would show Eugene what his grandmother looked like. What I learned is that Paulina looked like her mother, was very small in stature and had very red blushes on her face. She was also very clever. Her grandchildren described her as an "amazingly good person. " She enjoyed visiting with her family after church and going with her siblings to pick apples and pears in their orchard.