The Story of Franciszek Golebiowski

When looking at genealogical records, the same last name may appear in lots of variations. Some of it is a spelling or handwriting alteration such as c and s in Raczkiewicz and Raszkiewicz. Many times it is because of Polish grammar. Polish grammar is very challenging for me! The nuns at St. Adalbert's had my class diagramming sentences so we grew up knowing English pretty well. Polish children must do something similar. Nouns may change for gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter) for number (singular and plural) and for case (direct object, indirect object, possession, interrogatives, prepositional, and vocative--addressing people in special situations.) ***** The death record for Fracniszek Golebiewski makes me think about all the different ways a last name may be spelled. When looking for records, there were ones with spelling differences: Gołeb versus Gołąb, but the most fascinating variations have to do with the declination of the word: Gołębiów, Gołębiówski, Gołębiów, Gołębia, Gołębiewski, etc. ***** By the way, it also turns out that the word “Gołąb” means pigeon. I wonder what occupation or reason there originally was for “Pigeon” being used as a last name. ***** -------------------------------------------- Franciszek Golebioski (my 5x great-grandfather) was a peasant farmer in Majdan Górny, a village that was important to several parts of the family tree. During the time period that they lived in Majdan Górny, there were 133 houses and 776 inhabitants. https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majdan_G%C3%B3rny Currently, it has a population of 1,300. It is four miles east of the city of Tomaszów Lubelski. The village of Majdan Górny was founded at the beginning of the 18th century and takes its name from Górno, ***** Franciszek and his wife Katarzyna nee Chmiel had three children (that I could find, maybe more) who continued farming in Majdan Gorny: Michal (born approximately 1763-1778), Apolonia (born approximately 1792), and Paweł (approximately 1787-1800). Apolonia (my 4x great grandmother) married Jan Raczkiewicz and Pawel married Elżbieta Przybysz from Tomaszów, whose family were peasant farmers. ***** Their son Michal had the most complicated story of the siblings. It looks like Michal wasn’t quite as lucky as his siblings and was married three, maybe four times. The translator that helped thought it might be four, maybe five times. His first wife was Jagnieszka and according to several trees on “Ancestry,” she and Michal had a son Szymon in Zgrzbeiny but that is very far away and I have been unable to verify if that is true The name Michal Golebiowski was a common name like the name “John Smith is in the United States. Therefore, there is a likelihood that there was a different Michal married to a different Jagnieszka that are being confused. ***** Jagnieszka died November 30, 1811 in house #96 in Majdan Gorny. Michal’s second wife was Rozalia Gorbula, His first wife Agnes died about two months earlier. The first bann was announced January 19 and the second one was three days before the wedding. Because they were hurrying to marry, it is possible that he had young children that needed care. Rozalia presented an Act of Knowing from the Tomaszów Court of Peace stating her age and her parents weren’t present or mentioned so they may have been deceased. ***** When Michal married his fourth wife on February 7, 1825, the marriage record referred to his third wife’s funeral record but it didn’t name her. Did they mean his second wife?. For this marriage, Michal was a 58 year old widower and the bride was 41 year old Marianna (Sawiak) Dzierowa. She also was widowed and her former husband, a peasant farmer in Majdan Górny, had died 17 years before. ***** Wife 1: Agnieszka or Jagnieszka Wife 2: Rozalia Gorbula Wife 3: Unknown or was it Rozalia? Wife 4: Marianna (Sawiak) Dzierowa ***** Franciszek died on February 13, 1813, at 10:00 in the morning. He died at home (number 20) in Majdan Gorny. He was sixty years old when he died so he was born in approximately the year 1753. The birth year is assumed from the age in the wedding and death records. One declarant reporting his death was his son Michal, a 40-year old peasant farmer residing in Gurnia, who had married two weeks earlier. The other declarant was Jan Raszkiewicz, age 38, and a neighbor. Figuring out which “Jan Raszkiewicz” it likely was, is a process of determining what makes sense. The record doesn’t say this but Jan was likely one of my 4th great grandparents who was married to Franciszek’s daughter Apolonia. ***** Katarzyna also died in February, seven years later. She died at 6:00 in the evening on February 20, 1813 in house number 30 in Gorno. She was 80 years old and a widow. She had seen her son Michal married at least four times, her daughter Apolonia married to Jan Raczkiewicz with nine children. Her son Paweł had married the year before Katarzyna’s death. He was 35 years old when he went with Jan Raszkiewicz (his brother-in-law), the 36 year old husband of his sister Apolonia to report his mother’s death. They left Górny two days after her death and went into Tomaszów Lubelski and reported to the authorities at 10:00 in the morning.