The Story of Franciszek Gołębiowski & Katarzyna Chmiel

The death record for Fracniszek Golebiewski (my 5x great grandfather) makes me think about all the different ways a last name may be spelled. When looking at genealogical records, the same last name may appear in lots of variations. Some of it occurs because of a spelling alteration such as “c” and " s" in Raczkiewicz and Raszkiewicz. Apparently, spelling wasn’t as big of an issue back then as it is today. I believe I was told that “-wicz” means “son of –”, similar to my sister’s last name which is Peterson. Handwriting might be another reason a name is written as “Gołęb” versus “Gołąb,” for instance. It can be hard to tell a cursive “e” from a cursive “a”. It is fascinating to have variations such as Gołębiów, Gołębiówski, Gołębiów, Gołębia, Gołębiewski, etc. In Polish, nouns may change for gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter). Gołębiowski is male and Gołębiowska is female. Some surnames also used to have endings that can also indicate if the woman is married or unmarried: -iowa for married and -iowna for unmarried. Endings of other words change for lots of other reasons such as number (singular and plural) and for case (direct object, indirect object, possession, interrogatives, prepositional, and vocative – addressing people in special situations.) So when addressing someone and using they name in the vocative case, the nickname Tomek would become Tomku. My understanding of all of the rules in the Polish language is that I do not understand all of the rules! Some records are written in Latin so the name needs to be translated into the Polish version. For instance, Hedwiga would be Jadwiga. Hieronymus is the Latin equivalent of the name Hieronim (the name of Franciszek’s father.) ***** Another interesting thing about the names of relatives is that some of the surnames of my direct ancestors seem to translate into words. Just like in English where common names like “Smith” at one time referred to blacksmith. I THINK these family surnames can be translated to common words – maybe referring to occupations or natural features: Golab (pigeon) Kowol (blacksmith) Kukielka (puppet) Kwiatkowski (kwiat=flower) Plebanski (presbytery or parsonage) Kozyra (kozy=goats) Krawczyk (tailor) Grabek (rakes) Chmiel (hops--used to make beer) ***** Szymon Marzuk, the young genealogist who has grandparents who live in Tomaszów Lubelski, explained that his “7th great-grandparents were Franciszek Gołąb vel Gołębiowski and Katarzyna Chmiel vel Chmielowska, born in Majdan Górny, Lubelskie, Poland.” ***** Katarzyna’s father’s last name was Chmiel and hers was Chmielowska. “As for his surname, his daughter at some point in her life decided to change her name to resemble a higher status.” Szymon shared information from Wikipedia about the addition of -ski/ska to a surname: "Over time, surnames ending in -ski also began to spread among lower classes like burghers and peasants. In the first half of the 17th century, surnames with this ending were given to self-proclaimed nobles from the land of Cracow. This phenomenon was met with protest from the nobility, who considered surnames with a ski as one of the nobility's privileges. In 1638, Wladyslaw Stanislaw Jeżowski (a nobleman!), in a booklet written in verse and dedicated to the economy and charms of landed life, noted with indignation: " ... Noble names They are often used by craftsmen as well, It is good for a craftsman to have a surname ending in, for example, wicz, Not na ski, noble it..." Thus, in order to avoid the complete similarity of plebeian surnames to noble surnames ending in -ski, an orthographic trick was used and they were written in the form oski reserving the form with the letter "w" at the beginning." —---- Franciszek was born around 1753, I am not sure why the family of Franciszek had the name of “Golab” or “Goleb”, except that maybe at some time, they were known for raising pigeons. He was a peasant farmer in Majdan Górny, a village that was important to several parts of the family tree. The village of Majdan Górny was founded at the beginning of the 18th century and takes its name from Górno. Franciszek married his wife Katarzyna nee Chmielewska. Since “chmiel” means “hops”,their name could either refer to a grower of hops or to one of the many places in Poland with this word in their name. Her father was Hieronim Chmiel, born around 1715, and her mother’s name is unknown. ***** Franciszek and Katarzyna had seven children: Michał 1768 approx - 1832), Zofia (abt. 1770 -1840), Marianna 1784 – 1795), Wojciech (1787 – 1788), Apolonia (1789 – 1844), Anna (1792 – 1795), Paweł (1795 – 1847), and Anna 1798 – ?) Three children – Marianna, Wojciech and Anastasia – died in early childhood. ***** Zofia married Maciej Jakubus in July of 1797 and he died in July of 1798. Their daughter Anastasia was born five months later. Zofia remarried Wawrzyniec Turek and they had fifteen children – including three sets of twins! Apolonia (my 4x great grandmother) married Jan Raczkiewicz in 1804. In 1812, Paweł married Elżbieta Przybysz from Tomaszów, whose family were peasant farmers. When Anna married Jozef Grzegorz Kita in 1813, both of their fathers were deceased. ***** Their son Michał had the most complicated story of all the children. It looks like Michał wasn’t quite as lucky as his siblings and was married several times. Some trees on Ancestry have his first wife as Jagnieszka and a son Szymon in Zgrzbeiny but that is very far away and unverified if that is true The name Michał 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 Michał married to a different Jagnieszka that is being confused. I think that his first wife was Elzbieta (Helena) Łach, who he married in 1792. She died March 1, 1806, and less than two months later, Michał married his second wife Agnieszka Dominik. Her father was Andrzej but the connection to other Dominik relatives in the Dominik family has not yet been made. She died December 2, 1811, and Michał again married less than two months later, this time to Rozalia Gorbula. She presented an Act of Knowing from the Tomaszów Court of Peace stating her age and that her parents weren’t present or mentioned so they may have been deceased. After Rozalia died November 16, 1824, Michał remarried for the fourth time to Marianna (Sawiak) Dzier. This marriage occurred less than three months later. Michał was a 58-year-old widower and Marianna was a 41-year old widow of a peasant farmer from Majdan Górny, who had died 17 years earlier. ***** 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. One declarant reporting his death was his son Michał, 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 married to Franciszek’s daughter Apolonia (my 4x great grandparents.) ***** Katarzyna also died in February, seven years later. She died at 6:00 in the evening on February 20, 1820 in house number 30 in Gorno. She was 80 years old and a widow. She had seen her son Michał 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. ***** After reading this story on February 13, 2023, Eugeniusz Raczkiewicz sent the following message: “Gdyby mój Stryj Antoni nie wyjechał do USA i nie miał wnuczki Paulette nie znalibyśmy tak ciekawej historii naszych przodków. Z tej historii wynika, że wiele nazwisk wymienionych w drzewie genealogicznym to nasi dalecy kuzyni.” “If my Uncle Antoni had not left for the USA and had no granddaughter Paulette, we would not know such an interesting history of our ancestors. From this story, many of the names listed in the family tree are our distant cousins.” ***** References: Chmiel family history. Chmiel Name Meaning & Chmiel Family History at Ancestry.com®. (n.d.). https://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=chmiel Dzieje Miejscowosci Gminy Tomaszów Lubelski.” Dzieje Gmin Zamojszczyzny, 2011. Retreived July 11, 2023 from https://dzieje_gminy_tomaszow_lubelski_-_calosc_z_okladka.pdf (tomaszowlubelski.pl Wikimedia Foundation. (2022b, November 24). Majdan Górny. Wikipedia. https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majdan_G%C3%B3rny Franciszek’s death: Skan - Szukaj W Archiwach. Przejdź do Szukaj w Archiwach. (n.d.-b). https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/skan/-/skan/f9dd411dac30d20455deb2c60574151df33301870119a5e77c1cc405c8ca198b Katarzyna’s death: Skan - Szukaj W Archiwach. Przejdź do Szukaj w Archiwach. (n.d.-b). https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/skan/-/skan/f29ea7f73d11e1491865adb629832cceb20cc2ab06c32d379cd43dc1dae07f58