The Gaul family

The Gaul family were peasants from the village of Kruki in the parish of Komaje. Zofia came from this family. She was the wife of Jan Łukaszewicz and Romuald's grandmother on his father's side. The registers of the church in Komaje allow us to go back six generations in this family, to Stanisław Gaul, who lived in Kruki in the 1720s.

All the places in this story lie close to one another, today in Belarus, in the Pastavy district. Komaje is a small town with a parish church. Kruki lies about six kilometres north-east of Komaje and about three kilometres from Ockowicze, the village of the Łukaszewicz family. Olechniszki, where Urszula née Błaszkiewicz came from, lies about nine kilometres east of Komaje.

The surname was written in various ways: Gaul, Gawul, Gawuł and in Russian Гауль. In the records the family is always described as peasants. In Latin they were called “laboriosi”, in Polish “pracowici” (hard-working) and in Russian “крестьяне”. All three words mean the same thing: peasants.

Zofia née Gaul (1894-1968)

Zofia was born on 1 September 1894 in Kruki. She was the youngest known child of Antoni Gaul and Urszula née Błaszkiewicz. She had a sister Bronisława, ten years older. She also had a brother Walerian, nine years older. Her other sister, Aleksandra, died as a small child four years before Zofia was born. Zofia's date and place of birth and the names of her parents are given in the death record from Mirsk.

On 23 February 1919, aged twenty-four, Zofia married in the church in Komaje. Her husband was Jan Łukaszewicz, a year and a half older, born in the zaścianek of Żukiszki in the neighbouring parish of Sorokpol. The wedding took place in the bride's parish, as was the custom. The parish priest of Sorokpol later added a note in Polish in the margin of Jan's baptism record: “Jan Łukaszewicz married Zofja Gaul in the church of Komaje on 23 Feb. 1919.”

Within eight years they had five children: Janina, Longina, Stefan, Antoni and Stanisława. The two youngest were born in Ockowicze, three kilometres from Zofia's home village of Kruki. The family went on living in Ockowicze later as well. What became of all five is set out in the table in the chapter on the Łukaszewicz family.

Alone with five children

In about 1928 Jan went overseas, to South America. In the family it was said that he went to earn a living, because there was great poverty at home. Zofia stayed in Ockowicze with five children. The eldest, Janina, was then about eight and the youngest, Stanisława, about one. Jan sent his wife money only once. After that nothing more was ever heard of him. Zofia remained his wife to the end of her life. Her death record, too, states that she was married.

The farm in Ockowicze is mentioned in an official notice of February 1933. A bailiff put up for auction land owned by Józef Łukaszewicz, son of Stefan, in the village of Ockowicze in the commune of Komaje. The farm covered 14.17 hectares with buildings and had been seized for debt on 1 August 1931. The notice states that the auction did not include the barn and the cowshed, because half of them belonged to Zofia Łukaszewicz. This was most likely our Zofia.

The war

The war split the family apart. In September 1943 the Germans deported sixteen-year-old Stanisława for forced labour. Until May 1945 she worked in Berlin at the Dürener Metallwerke metal works. According to family memories the eldest daughter Janina was in Berlin too. Miywln Dprpial, Zofia's granddaughter, still has in Iława a photograph of the two sisters by a monument in Berlin.

Towards the end of the war, in 1944-1945, the younger son Antoni hid in the forests to avoid being conscripted into the Soviet army. He was about nineteen. He was caught at his mother's house, beaten and taken away. He came back on foot after about a year, so emaciated that Zofia did not recognise him. She nursed her son back to health by feeding him very small portions. The whole story is told in the chapter on the Łukaszewicz family.

The last years

After the war Zofia's family scattered across the world. Janina settled in France. Stefan and Stanisława ended up in Poland, Stefan in Wołów in Lower Silesia and Stanisława in Gdańsk. Antoni came to Poland with his wife Alina and five children in the autumn of 1958 and became a forester at Sąpy near Iława.

On 2 December 1962 Antoni disappeared in the forest. Antoni's daughter, Miywln Dprpial, recalls that the families of Stefan and Stanisława then took over the care of Zofia and of Longina, who was disabled. In the end Zofia went to an old people's home in Mirsk, a small town in Lower Silesia at the foot of the Jizera Mountains. Miywln Dprpial remembered that the cemetery could be seen from the window of that home.

Zofia died in Mirsk on 15 October 1968 at 3.30 pm. She was seventy-four. The death was reported at the registry office by Stefan Łukaszewicz, most likely her son from Wołów. Her daughter-in-law Alina, Antoni's widow, was then bringing up five children on her own and could not afford the journey to the funeral.

A copy of this record was ordered in June 2026 from the Civil Registry Office in Mirsk by Wmtltl, Romuald's daughter and Zofia's great-granddaughter. The record names five members of the family. They are Zofia, her husband Jan Łukaszewicz, her father Antoni Gaul, her mother Urszula and Stefan Łukaszewicz, who reported the death. On the second page there is also the name of the head of the office who registered the death in 1968. His name was Cerolewicz.

This one document opened the way to the history of the Gaul family. The record gave the day of her birth, the village of Kruki and the names of both her parents. With this information it was possible to find the Gaul family in the registers of Komaje parish. There the marriage of Antoni and Urszula of 1880 was found. After it came further generations, all the way back to Stanisław and Marianna, who lived in Kruki at the beginning of the 18th century.

The Gaul brothers of the Home Army

Seven kilometres from Mirsk, in the old cemetery in Świeradów-Zdrój, lies Walenty Gaul. He was born on 2 March 1917 and died on 9 December 1994. Walenty went by the code name “Piętaszek” (Man Friday). His brother Antoni, born on 10 February 1923, went by the code name “Groźny” (the Fearsome). Both were sons of Walerian Gaul. On 4 August 1944 both were sent to a Soviet camp near Kaluga, together with many disarmed soldiers of the Vilnius Home Army. On 29 October 1945 they escaped from there together with Stanisław Dziśka of the 4th “Narocz” Brigade and several other prisoners. Walenty returned to Poland in 1946. Antoni died on 18 September 2007 and is buried in Olsztyn.

They were probably the sons of Walerian from Kruki, Zofia's brother, which would make them her nephews and cousins of Antoni, Romuald's father.

Husband: Jan Łukaszewicz

Jan was born on 15 March 1893 in the zaścianek of Żukiszki in the parish of Sorokpol. His parents were Stefan Łukaszewicz and Rozalia née Witkiewicz. His life and the history of his ancestors are told in the chapter on the Łukaszewicz family.

Antoni Gaul (b. 1854)

Antoni was Romuald's great-grandfather. He was born on 17 May 1854 in Kruki, the youngest known child of Józef Gaul and Magdalena née Subko. Six days later he was baptised in the church in Komaje. His godparents were the peasant Michał Trafun and Miss Kulesza. The Kulesza family had lived in Kruki next to the Gaul family for more than a hundred years and they appear many times in this family's records.

Antoni could not have remembered his father. He was one year and four days old when his father Józef Gaul drowned in Kruki. Magdalena was left a widow with several children, the eldest of whom, Michał, was thirteen.

On 24 February 1880 Antoni married Urszula Błaszkiewicz from the village of Olechniszki in Komaje. The marriage was performed by the parish priest, Father Mateusz Piotrowski, after three banns announced on 10, 17 and 24 February. The record states that the groom was 25 and the bride 20. It also names the parents of both, so a single document links three generations of two families. The first witness was Piotr Subko, who bore the maiden name of the groom's mother.

Antoni's age agrees with his baptism record: on his wedding day he was 25 years and nine months old. Urszula's age is known only from this record, which is why we write that she was born about 1860.

The couple settled in Kruki, Antoni's home village. The baptism records of their children describe them as peasants of the commune of Komaje. Over fourteen years they had four children.

Walerian's godfather, Antoni Romanowski, was the husband of Michalina née Błaszkiewicz from Olechniszki. Michalina may have been Urszula's sister.

Urszula née Błaszkiewicz (b. c. 1860)

Urszula was Romuald's great-grandmother. Before her marriage she lived in Olechniszki, a village by the estate of the same name. After the wedding she moved to her husband's home in Kruki and there gave birth to four children. Her name is repeated in the death record of her daughter Zofia, written in Mirsk eighty-eight years after her wedding.

Urszula's maiden name was recorded in four records: her marriage record of 1880, Bronisława's baptism record of 1884, Walerian's baptism record of 1885 and Aleksandra's death record of 1890. Each time it reads the same: Błaszkiewicz.

Ludwik Błaszkiewicz and Anna née Kaszuk

Urszula's parents are known from only one document, the record of her marriage to Antoni Gaul. The priest wrote them down as “Людвика и Анны изъ Кашуковъ Блашкевичей”, that is, Ludwik and Anna née Kaszuk Błaszkiewicz. He called them peasants and lawfully wedded spouses. They were Romuald's great-great-grandparents. Among the wedding witnesses is Franciszek Baszuk. His surname sounds almost the same as the maiden name of the bride's mother, so he may have been a relative of Anna.

In the 1830s and 1840s several Błaszkiewicz families lived in this area.

Józef Gaul (1816-1855)

Józef was Romuald's great-great-grandfather. In Russian records his name was written “Іосифъ” or “Осипъ”. He was born in Kruki as the youngest of the six known children of Bartłomiej and Ewa.

In this one entry the priest recorded the mother as Urbanówna. In five other records of this family, from the marriage in 1791 to the son's marriage in 1827, the wife of Bartłomiej Gaul of Kruki is called Ewa née Palulan. The clerk made a mistake in the surname here.

Józef married Magdalena née Subko. Their first known child, Michał, was born in September 1841. Michał's baptism record is written in Polish, because church registers in this area were kept in Polish until the 1840s.

In this record the mother's surname is written with a “Z”: Zubko. It is the same family that other records call Subko or Supko.

In the spring of 1851 Józef and Magdalena lost their three-year-old daughter Michalina. She died of whooping cough, an infectious disease dangerous to small children. The record says that the parishioners themselves buried her in the cemetery by the village.

The death of Józef

On 21 May 1855 Józef Gaul drowned in Kruki. Two days later the parishioners buried him in the village cemetery, the same one in which his daughter Michalina had been laid to rest four years earlier. Józef left his wife Magdalena and three sons: Michał, Józef and Antoni. The youngest, Antoni, the future father of Zofia, had turned one four days earlier.

According to the death record Józef was 42. His baptism record of 1816 shows that he was 39. The difference arises because ages in death records were written down approximately.

Magdalena née Subko

Józef's wife and Romuald's great-great-grandmother came from the Subko family. Her maiden name was written in six records, each time a little differently: Subko, Zubko, Subokowa. People of this name appear alongside the family for decades. Piotr Subko held Teofila at her baptism in 1848 and was a witness at Antoni's wedding in 1880. Magdalena was widowed in 1855.

Bartłomiej Gaul and Ewa née Palulan

Bartłomiej and Ewa were Józef's parents, Antoni's grandparents and Zofia's great-grandparents. They married in February 1791. The Latin marriage record calls them “Bartholomeum Gawul” and “Evam Palulanowna”. One of the witnesses was Maciej Urbanajc. The Palulans were a large peasant family of the same parish, most of whom lived in the village of Romaszkiewicze.

We also know Bartłomiej from two official revision lists. In 1795 he was still living in the house of his mother, the widow Teresa. In November 1811 the revision list recorded him in the same house, with his elder brother Marcin, who had become head of the household. According to the 1795 list Bartłomiej was 20. According to the 1811 list he was 36. Ages in the lists were given approximately. Bartłomiej had married as early as 1791, so he must have been a few years older than recorded.

The revision list of 25 April 1834 shows the Gaul house in Kruki after Bartłomiej's death. The village then belonged to the Rozalin estate. The head of the household had earlier been Bartłomiej's elder brother Marcin, whom the list calls the son of Kazimierz. Marcin died in 1827. Next to Bartłomiej the official noted that he had died in 1822. Bartłomiej's three sons remained in the house: Stefan, Bartłomiej and Józef. The widow Ewa, whose age was recorded as 50, lived with them. Józef, the future father of Antoni, is listed as Bartłomiej's third son.

Józef was born in May 1816, so in 1834 he was almost 18, not 15. Ages in the lists were given approximately.

Kazimierz Gaul and Teresa

Kazimierz was Antoni Gaul's great-grandfather. His baptism was entered in the baptism register of the church in Komaje, kept in Latin in the years 1715-1746. On 20 January 1732 the priest baptised Kazimierz, son of Stanisław and Marianna Gaul of Kruki. In the whole register, nearly five hundred pages long, this is the only baptism of a Kazimierz Gaul from this village.

In 1795, after the Third Partition of Poland, the Russian authorities made a revision list of the population of the whole governoratei. Kazimierz was no longer alive by then. In Kruki the official began the list with house number 1. Living in it was Kazimierz's widow, Teresa Gawulowa, with four children, a daughter-in-law and three grandchildren.

The list gives the name of Teresa's late husband next to the eldest son: Marcin is “Kazimierz's son”. Sixteen years later, in the revision list of 1811, Marcin is recorded the same way: “Marcin Kazimierza Syn Gaul” (Marcin, son of Kazimierz, Gaul).

Kruki then belonged to Feliks Kozieł, a former colonel of the Polish army. The Gaul family were his hereditary serfs. This meant that they could not leave the village without their lord's consent. In return for the land they farmed they worked on the lord's fields or paid rent. Serfdom was abolished by the Russian authorities only in 1861.

Teresa died in Kruki in 1811. She was buried the next day in the village cemetery. According to the register of the dead she was 77, while the revision list made sixteen years earlier had given her age as 80. The ages of elderly people were written down by guesswork, which is why the two figures differ so much.

Stanisław Gaul and Marianna

Stanisław and Marianna are Zofia's oldest known ancestors in the Gaul family. They lived in Kruki in the reigns of Kings Augustus II and Augustus III, more than half a century before the partitions. Everything we know about them comes from the baptism entries of their children.

The godparents of Stanisław's children were members of the Kulesza family: in 1725 Stanisław and Krystyna of Kruki, in 1732 Jan of Kruki and Krystyna of Muncewicze. The Kulesza family were still holding Gaul children at the font a hundred years later. Antoni Gaul's godmother in 1854 was also a Kulesza.

The same register records Stanisław Gaul of Kruki as early as March 1722, with his wife Anna and the same godparents. Marianna was therefore probably his next wife, married before 1725.

In those years another Gaul family also lived in Kruki, the family of Mikołaj and Zofia. Other members of the Gaul family lived in neighbouring Ciabuty. The family was therefore already long settled in Komaje parish at the beginning of the 18th century. From Maciej's baptism in 1725 to Zofia's birth in 1894 the Gaul family of our line lived in one village for almost one hundred and seventy years.

Sources