The Witkiewicz and Misiun families

This is the family of Rozalia née Witkiewicz, wife of Stefan Łukaszewicz and Romuald's great-grandmother. The Witkiewicz family were peasants from Zułów, a village by the manor in which Józef Piłsudski was born in 1867. The Misiun family, the family of Rozalia's mother, were peasants from the zaścianek of Tartak in the neighbouring parish of Strunojcie.

Rozalia née Witkiewicz (b. 1857)

Rozalia was born in Zułów as the youngest known child of Kazimierz and Anna. Her mother was then about forty. Rozalia's eldest sister was nineteen years older than her. Four days after the birth her parents took her to be baptised at the church in Sorokpol, eight kilometres west of Zułów. The place with this church is called Powiewiórka today.

The priest wrote the mother's maiden name in Russian as “Masiunowna” and the surname of the godmother's husband as “Masiun”. This is the Russian spelling of the surname Misiun. Rozalia's mother was recorded in the same way, with the surname Misiun, in her parents' marriage record of 1837, in Rozalia's own marriage record of 1881 and in her mother's death record of 1897. The godfather was called Jakub Żejmo, the same name as the husband of Helena, the sister of Rozalia's father. The godmother was Marcela, wife of Jerzy Misiun.

Rozalia was not yet five when her father died of fever on 15 May 1862. The death record names the three children he left: a son Ansgary and daughters Marianna and Rozalia. Rozalia was therefore brought up by her widowed mother, who outlived her husband by thirty-five years and lived in Zułów until her death.

Rozalia's childhood and youth fell in the years when the Piłsudski family lived in the manor at Zułów. She was ten when Józef Piłsudski was born there. She was seventeen when the manor burned down in 1874 and its owners left. A separate part of this chapter tells the story of Zułów.

On 18 October 1881, in the church in Sorokpol, Rozalia married. Her husband was Stefan Łukaszewicz, son of Jakub and Tekla née Czepułkowski, a peasant from the zaścianek of Żukiszki. Żukiszki lies a kilometre and a half east of Zułów. The marriage record says that the groom was 25 and the bride 24. The banns were read in church three times: on 20 September, 27 September and 4 October. The wedding was conducted by Father Józefowicz. The witnesses were Józef Łukaszewicz and Adam Żejmo. The record names the parents of both bride and groom. It gives Rozalia's parents as Kazimierz and Aniela née Misiun. In all other documents her mother's name is Anna. The marriage record is shown in the chapter on the Łukaszewicz family.

After the wedding Rozalia went to live with her husband in Żukiszki. There, over eleven years, she gave birth to seven children. All of them were baptised in the church at Sorokpol.

When Zofia married in America in 1915, she gave the official her parents' names: Stefan and Rozalia née Witkiewicz. The last document that mentions Rozalia as living is the death record of her mother from March 1897. Rozalia was 39 at the time. In the parish census of 1909 the family of Stefan and Rozalia is no longer in Żukiszki.

Other girls named Rozalia Witkiewicz

There were a great many Witkiewiczes in Zułów and the neighbouring villages. The name Rozalia was often given. The same registers contain three more girls named Rozalia Witkiewicz who do not belong to our family. The first was born in Zułów in 1819, the daughter of Justyn and Agata. The second was born in Zułów on 31 August 1856, less than a year before our Rozalia. The father of this second Rozalia was Antoni Witkiewicz, a soldier discharged from service. Her mother was Justyna. The third was born in 1863 in the village of Bałule, the daughter of another Kazimierz Witkiewicz. We recognise our Rozalia by the names of her parents. They were Kazimierz and Anna née Misiun. We also recognise her by her date of birth, 10 July 1857.

Stefan Łukaszewicz, Rozalia's husband

Stefan was born on 20 September 1855 in Żukiszki, the son of Jakub and Tekla née Czepułkowski. His life and his ancestors are described in the chapter on the Łukaszewicz family.

Kazimierz Witkiewicz (c. 1810-1862)

Kazimierz was born in Wojtkuny, a village belonging to the Zułów estate. His family was not free. The Witkiewiczes were serfs, that is peasants bound to the estate, who worked the landowner's land and could not move away without his permission. The revision list of 1811 recorded Kazimierz as a boy of one in the house of his uncle Jerzy, together with his father Józef and his eight-year-old brother Stanisław. At that time the estate belonged to Prince Antoni Giedroyć. The next revision list, from 1816, gives Kazimierz's age as six and says that his brother Stanisław died in 1813.

Around 1835 the family moved from Wojtkuny to Zułów. Two documents tell us so. In the record of the pre-marriage interview that the priest at Strunojcie held with the engaged couple in November 1837, Kazimierz stated that he was born in Wojtkuny and had lived in Zułów for two years. The marriage record of his sister Helena from 1843 states that she was born in Wojtkuny and had lived in Zułów for seven years. Old documents write the name of the village as Woyckuny or Woyszkuny. It is the same Wojtkuny where Dominik Markowicz, Alina's father, was born in 1897.

On 14 November 1837 Kazimierz married Anna Misiun in the church at Strunojcie. According to the record the groom was 25 and the bride 21. The wedding took place in the bride's parish, sixteen kilometres north-east of Zułów. On the same day in the same church another bachelor from Zułów was married, Stanisław Witkiewicz, son of Jakub and Agata. The word “industrious”, which the priest used in the record for both families, meant a peasant in the registers of that time.

The young couple settled on the Zułów estate. They lived sometimes in Lutów and sometimes in Zułów. These are two neighbouring villages of the same estate. Their first child, Anna, was born in September 1838 in Lutów. The parish census of 20 March 1843 also recorded this household in Lutów. Living in it were Kazimierz Witkiewicz, who was 32, his wife Anna, his sister Gertruda, who was 18, two servants from the Żejmo family, little Franciszek Kulewicz and a twelve-year-old servant girl, Julianna Żejmo. Three days before the census their son Ansgary was born. His baptism record gives the village of Zułów as his place of birth. The twins Marianna and Petronela came into the world in 1847 in Lutów. Aniela in 1849 and Rozalia in 1857 were born in Zułów.

In Ansgary's record the priest wrote the surname of the mother and of the godfather as Misiewicz. These are the same people whom the record of 1838 calls Misiun.

At the baptism of the twins in October 1847 the priest added the word “twins” in the margin. Among the godparents were Marcjanna and Franciszek Łukaszewicz. So the Witkiewiczes of Zułów and the Łukaszewicz family from nearby Żukiszki knew each other long before Rozalia and Stefan married. The mother's brother, Jerzy Misiun from Tartak, was godfather to three of the children of Kazimierz and Anna: in 1838, 1843 and 1847.

In January 1855 scarlet fever swept through Zułów. Within a few weeks several children in the village died, among them, on 23 January, ten-year-old Józef, the son of Kazimierz and Anna.

Kazimierz died on 15 May 1862 in Zułów. The priest wrote that the cause of death was fever and that the deceased was 56. Priests gave the ages of the dead only approximately. The revision lists of 1811 and 1816 and the marriage record show that Kazimierz was about 51 when he died. He was buried three days later in the parish cemetery at Sorokpol.

Father Tomasz Woliński, who buried Kazimierz, baptised Józef Piłsudski in the same church five years later.

Anna née Misiun (d. 1897)

Anna came from Tartak, a zaścianek in Strunojcie parish. In the record of the pre-marriage interview of 1837 she stated that she was born in Tartak and had lived there since birth. After the wedding she moved to her husband's home and spent the rest of her life, sixty years, on the Zułów estate.

In most documents her name is Anna. Only in her daughter's marriage record of 1881 did the priest write her down as Aniela. Her maiden name was also written in various ways: Misiunówna, in Russian Masiunowna and in two records from 1843 and 1855 Misiewiczówna. It is always the same woman, the wife of Kazimierz from Zułów.

Anna was widowed in 1862, when she was about 48. She was left with three children, the youngest of whom, Rozalia, was not yet five. She never remarried. In January 1863, when Anna had been a widow for eight months, the first unit of the 1863 uprising in the district of Święciany gathered in Zułów.

Anna died on 27 March 1897 in Zułów. The death record gives her age as 85. At her wedding in 1837 she was recorded as 21, so at her death she was more likely about 81. She was buried by the parishioners themselves, without a priest, in the village cemetery in Zułów. The record names two living children: her son Ansgary and her daughter Rozalia. It also gives the name of her father Mateusz and the name of Józef, her husband's father. A single document thus confirms three generations of the family.

Dates in the records of those years were given according to the calendar used in Russia, which in the 19th century was twelve days behind ours. By today's calendar Anna died on 8 April 1897.

Józef Witkiewicz and Anna née Żejmo

Józef is Rozalia's grandfather. The revision list of 1811 recorded him in Wojtkuny, in the first household of the village, among the serfs of Prince Antoni Giedroyć. The head of the household was his elder brother Jerzy, who was then 52. Józef was 40 at the time and had two sons: eight-year-old Stanisław and one-year-old Kazimierz. Those lists recorded only men, which is why Józef's wife does not appear in them. In the list of 1816 the brothers are still farming together. Jerzy is 57 in it, Józef is 45. Next to Stanisław the official added that the boy died in 1813.

The revision list of 9 April 1834 shows this household together with the women for the first time. By then the Zułów estate belonged to Wiktor Michałowski. Jerzy was still head of the household. Józef lived with him together with his wife Anna, who was recorded as 56. Józef's son Kazimierz was 23. Józef's daughters were seventeen-year-old Rozalia, twelve-year-old Helena and nine-year-old Gertruda. Three years later Kazimierz married Anna Misiun.

We know the first name of Józef's wife from Kazimierz's marriage record of 1837 and her maiden name from two other documents. The record of Kazimierz's pre-marriage interview calls him the son of “Józef and Anna née Żejmo Witkiewicz”. Helena's marriage record of 17 January 1843 calls her the daughter of “Józef and Anna née Żejmo Witkiewicz”. Alongside the Witkiewiczes, the Żejmo family was the other large peasant family of Zułów. Helena, too, married a Żejmo, twenty-one-year-old Jakub. At Helena's wedding her father Józef was one of the witnesses. He was then about 72.

On 14 September 1855 an eighty-five-year-old widow, Anna Witkiewicz, died in Zułów, leaving a son Kazimierz and daughters Marcjanna, Helena and Gertruda. We believe she was Józef's wife, Rozalia's grandmother.

Józef's elder brother Jerzy lived to a great age in Zułów. He died on 9 November 1848. The priest recorded his age as 90. This age agrees with the revision lists to within one year.

Krzysztof Witkiewicz (b. c. 1730-1740)

Krzysztof is the earliest ancestor of Rozalia whom we know by name. He was a serf of the Zułów estate and lived in Wojtkuny. His name is given by two revision lists, of 1811 and 1816. He himself appears in the baptism register of Święciany parish. The list of 1811 recorded the head of the first household in Wojtkuny as “Jerzy Krzysztofa syn Wietkiewicz” (Jerzy Wietkiewicz, son of Krzysztof). Below him it added “Jenego Brat Józef”, that is his brother Józef. Since Jerzy and Józef were brothers, Krzysztof was the father of both. Jerzy was born about 1759, so Krzysztof himself came into the world about 1740 at the latest.

The baptism register of Święciany parish records children of Krzysztof and his wife Krystyna in Wojtkuny in the years 1768-1772. On the family tree chart Krystyna stands next to Krzysztof with a question mark, because the register gives this family under two surnames: up to April 1770 as Jurgielanis and after that as Witkiewicz.

The Witkiewiczes were already living in Zułów in Krzysztof's childhood. The earliest record of them dates from 13 January 1743. On that day, in the church at Korkożyszki, Anna Witkiewicz of Zułów married Gabriel Rynkiewicz. The witness was Maciej Żejmo of Zułów. In the years 1757-1770 about twenty baptisms of Witkiewicz children from Zułów were entered in the registers of that church.

Mateusz Misiun and Marianna née Szut

Mateusz and Marianna are Rozalia's grandparents on her mother's side. They lived in Tartak, a zaścianek in Strunojcie parish. The church at Strunojcie lies sixteen kilometres north-east of Zułów. The Misiun family were peasants. The priest who baptised their daughter Marcjanna in 1821 described the parents with the words “prostey kondycyi”, that is of peasant status.

Mateusz and Marianna married on 18 November 1806. The marriage register of the church in Strunojcie recorded them under the village of Masliszki, where Mateusz came from. The marriage was performed by the parish priest Tadeusz Godlewski. The witnesses were Jerzy Bołtrun and Józef Grybłowski. Five couples were married in that church on the same day.

The entry for Marcjanna's baptism matters because it gives Marianna's maiden name. It records the parents as „Mateusz Missiun, Maryanna Szutowna” and the godfather as „Maciey Szut”. So the name Szut appears twice: with the mother and with the godfather, who was probably her relative. The same name is repeated in the marriage record of their son Jerzy of 5 November 1834 and in the record of Anna's pre-marriage interview of 1837. The Szut family lived in the same parish, in the village of Szuty.

Jerzy, the son of Mateusz and Marianna, married Franciszka Kociet in Strunojcie in 1834 and stayed in Tartak. It was Jerzy who was a witness at his sister Anna's wedding in 1837 and godfather to three of her children. The Misiun family were still living in Tartak in the 1890s.

Mateusz died before 1847. In May of that year Marianna Misiun appears in the Strunojcie register as a widow. The revision list of 1795 recorded, in the same parish in the village of Masliszki, a seventeen-year-old Mateusz Misiun, son of the late Szymon Misiun and of Zofia. This is our Mateusz. Two later revision lists, of 1816 and 1834, confirm it: they call him „Mateusz, son of Szymon” and state that he moved to a zaścianek from the village of Masliszki. In 1834 Mateusz was 56, his wife Marianna was 46. Living in the house were their son Jerzy and their daughters Anna, Marcjanna and Ewa. Szymon and Zofia are therefore Rozalia's great-grandparents. Mateusz had six brothers and sisters: Marcin, Marianna, Maciej, Ewa, Jan and Krzysztof.

Zułów: the village, the manor and our family

Zułów lies in the Vilnius region on the river Mera, about thirteen kilometres east of Podbrodzie and eight kilometres east of Powiewiórka. Today it is in Lithuania and the village is called Zalavas in Lithuanian. In Rozalia's time Zułów had two parts. The first was the manor with its outbuildings, where the owners of the estate lived. The second was the village, where the peasants who worked the manor's land lived. The estate also included neighbouring villages, among them Lutów, Wojtkuny and Bałule.

What links our family with Zułów

This is what the registers and lists say about our family's ties with Zułów.

• The Witkiewicz family had lived in Zułów for generations. The oldest record of them dates from 1743. Rozalia's ancestors were serfs of the estate at least from the time of Krzysztof, born c. 1730-1740.
• Rozalia was born in the village of Zułów on 10 July 1857 and lived there until her marriage in 1881, that is, through all the years when the Piłsudski family lived in the manor.
• Her mother, Anna née Misiun, lived in Zułów until her death in 1897 and is buried in the village cemetery there.
• Zofia Walentynowicz, Alina's grandmother, was born on 7 August 1863 in the manor itself. By April 1871 her family was already living in Wojtkuny. The chapter on the Walentynowicz family tells her story.
• Members of the Billewicz family were godparents to the Markowicz family. In 1862 Antoni Markowicz, brother of Bolesław Markowicz, Romuald's great-grandfather, was held at the font by the landowner Antoni Billewicz and Miss Maria Billewicz. They were most probably the owner of Zułów and her father. We show the record in the chapter on the Markowicz family.
• The Piłsudskis were godparents to the Walentynowicz family twice. In 1865 Józef, the brother of Zofia Walentynowicz, was held at the font by Józef Wincenty Piłsudski, the Marshal's father, together with his sister Julia. In 1877 Anna, Zofia's youngest sister, was held at the font by eight-year-old Adam Piłsudski, the Marshal's younger brother. Both records are shown in the chapter on the Walentynowicz family.
• Józef Piłsudski and Rozalia's children were recorded in the same register of the same parish. The baptism record of Józef Piłsudski is in the baptism register of the church in Sorokpol. The same volume of that register holds the baptism records of Rozalia's two eldest children, Stefan of 1882 and Judyta of 1883.
• Our family was baptised in the same church as Józef Piłsudski. Rozalia, all her children and, in 1956, Romuald too were baptised in the church in Powiewiórka.

The family holds it as certain that one of our people played with little Józef Piłsudski as a child. The story was passed on by Miywln Dprpial, Alina's daughter. Aoz rtrk daenzurz tokda mk rkrr dal zyaerassrwz Rzwispdy.

Who could have played with little Piłsudski

The story gives no name. The church registers do show, however, who among our people was a child at Zułów or close by at the time. Józef Piłsudski was born in December 1867 and lived at Zułów until the manor burned down in 1874, that is, until he was seven. In those years four children from our family lived within the circle of the manor.

• Zofia Walentynowicz, Alina's grandmother. She was born on 7 August 1863 in the manor at Zułów itself, so she was four years older than Józef. Her parents later lived in Bojaryszki and in Wojtkuny, a village which according to the list of 1816 belonged to the Zułów estate. Her younger sister Stefania was born in 1868 and was almost the same age as Józef.
• Józef Walentynowicz, Zofia's brother. He was born on 3 April 1865 at Zułów, two and a half years before Józef Piłsudski. He was held at the font by the Marshal's father Józef Wincenty Piłsudski together with his sister Julia, the Marshal's aunt.
• Antoni Markowicz, Bolesław's brother. He was born on 14 March 1862 in Obkorty and was five years older than Józef. He was held at the font by Miss Maria Billewicz, most probably the future mother of Józef Piłsudski. So Antoni was most probably her godson.
• Rozalia née Witkiewicz, Antoni Łukaszewicz's grandmother. She was born on 10 July 1857 in the village of Zułów and lived there until her marriage in 1881. She was ten years older than Józef.

The story came to us from Alina's side, that is, from the Markowicz family. Zofia Walentynowicz fits it best. Zofia was born in the manor, in 1884 she married Bolesław Markowicz and her son was Dominik, Leokadia's husband. Leokadia was therefore Zofia's daughter-in-law. The second child the story fits is Antoni Markowicz, Zofia's brother-in-law.

The Piłsudski family were the owners of the estate and members of the nobility, while the Witkiewicz family were peasants from the village beside the manor. What linked them was the closeness of manor and village, not kinship.

The church in Powiewiórka

The parish church for Zułów stands in Powiewiórka. In the old registers the place and the parish are called Sorokpol. The church is made of wood. Inside hangs a plaque recalling that Józef Piłsudski was baptised here. For our family this is the church where children were baptised and couples married for more than a hundred years: from Jakub Łukaszewicz, baptised in 1816, du Sirsupm, Tulnmyo'm rtkenuk, ztwzeknt ei 7578.

Zułów: the owners of the estate and the Piłsudski family

The successive owners of Zułów are named in the revision lists. The list of 1811 names Prince Antoni Giedrojć as the owner. The list of 1821-1833 recorded that the Zułów estate had formerly belonged to Prince Giedrojć and now belonged to the landowner Joachim Michałowski. The parish census of 1843 names Wiktor Michałowski, Joachim's son, then aged 36, at the manor.

The information boards that stand in Zułów today say more. They state that in the second half of the 18th century Zułów belonged to Wojna-Jasieniecki, then to the princes Ogiński, the princes Giedrojć, the Michałowski family and finally the Billewicz family. According to the boards, on 7 April 1856 Maria Billewicz became the owner. The estate then had 8000 desyatinasi of land and 151 male peasants. On 22 April 1863, in Tenenie in Samogitia, Maria married Józef Wincenty Piłsudski and brought him Zułów as her dowry. From then on the estate was the property of the Piłsudski family.

So Rozalia was born in Zułów fifteen months after Maria Billewicz, the future mother of the Marshal, took over the estate.

The Piłsudski family in Zułów

The Piłsudski family lived in the manor at Zułów from their marriage in 1863. The registers of the church in Sorokpol record the baptisms of their children: Helena in 1864, Bronisław in 1866, Józef in 1867, Adam in 1869, Kazimierz in 1871, Maria in 1874 and Jan in 1876. Bronisław later became a well-known researcher of the Ainu people on Sakhalin. Józef was the future Marshal of Poland. He was born in the manor on 23 November 1867 according to the calendar then used in Russia, that is, on 5 December according to ours. The priest Tomasz Woliński baptised him on 3 December according to the calendar then used in Russia.

The children of the manor and the children of the village were baptised in the same church and recorded in the same registers.

In 1874 the manor at Zułów burned down. The Piłsudski family moved to Vilnius and the manor was never rebuilt. In 1937 a memorial site was created where the house had stood. President Ignacy Mościcki planted an oak there. The boards in Zułów state that after 1939 the ruins of the manor farmi were taken apart for kolkhoz buildings and that only this oak survived of the old manor.

Sources

All the registers and lists named below are held by the Lithuanian State Historical Archives in Vilnius.

Three sources come from outside this archive. They are the parish census of Sorokpol of 20 March 1843 (a transcript on the website podbrodzie.info.pl), the information boards in Zułów photographed on 4 August 2026 and the article by J. Szulski on the 1863 uprising in the Święciany district, „Niepodległość i Pamięć” 2014.