The Bobkowski family and related families

The Bobkowski family were Kashubian farmers from Mirachowo near Kartuzy, recorded in that village without a break since 1779. Alojzy Bobkowski, Mariola's father, came from this family. In this chapter we describe him and all his ancestors: the Bobkowski, Kamiński, Konkel, Stankowski, Gronda, Block, Bach, Uzdrowski and Hirsch families.

How to read documents from Kashubia

From 1772 to 1920 Kashubia belonged to Prussia and then to Germany. The previous chapter tells that story. This part explains what the documents of Mariola's ancestors from those times look like and how to read them. At home they spoke Kashubian, in church they prayed in Polish and Latin and at the office they had to deal with matters in German.

The oldest church registers in this area were kept by the priest in Latin, in full sentences. In the 1820s and 1830s the Prussian authorities introduced printed tables with German headings in the parishes. From then on one baptism or marriage is one row of the table, often stretched across two facing pages of the register. These tables have one drawback: at a marriage they do not give the couple's parents. Here we learn the parents from baptism records and death records.

From 1 October 1874 every birth, marriage and death also had to be reported at the state civil registry office, in German the Standesamti. The official filled in a printed form by hand, read it out to the person reporting and gave it to them to sign. Thanks to this we know which of the ancestors could sign their name. The registry records are very precise and give even the hour of birth or death. Every German and Latin record quoted here has a Polish translation beneath it.

The German officials wrote the names of villages and surnames in their own way. So the same village has two names in the records and the same surname has several spellings.

A few German words also recur in the records, telling us who someone was. „Bauer” is a farmer. „Besitzer” and „Eigentümer” mean the owner of a farm. „Arbeiter” is a labourer without land of his own. „Altsitzer” is an old farmer in retirement: he had handed his land over to a son or son-in-law and in return had a room, fuel and food with him until he died. „Abbau” is an outlying farm, that is, a farmstead built out in the fields away from the main village.

Alojzy Bobkowski (1933-1994)

Alojzy was Mariola's father. He was born on 19 September 1933 in Otalżyno, the eldest of the five children of Władysław and Helena. After him came Władysława, Rajmund, Irena and the much younger Eugeniusz. All of them were born in Otalżyno, already in independent Poland.

Alojzy's childhood fell in the war years. In 1950, within ten weeks, he lost his grandfather and his mother. Jan Bach, Helena's father, died in Otalżyno on 11 August 1950 and Helena herself died on 22 October of the same year. Alojzy was seventeen at the time and the youngest of his siblings, Eugeniusz, was four. Alojzy's father, Władysław, outlived his wife by almost sixteen years.

About 1956 Alojzy married Teresa Rompa from Przodkowo, a year younger than him. They married in the church at Przodkowo, the same church where successive generations of Teresa's family had married since 1855. In 1958 their daughter Mariola was born kso ps 5972 sllky oyl Rltmisme. In 1978 Mariola married in the same church at Przodkowo and her husband was Romuald Łukaszewicz.

Mariola's baptism

Mariola Teresa was born on 23 April 1958 in Kartuzy. A month later, on 25 May 1958, she was baptised in the parish church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Kartuzy. The baptism register recorded her under number 95. Her parents were living in Kartuzy at the time and Alojzy worked as an electrician.

The church where Mariola was baptised is the former church of the Carthusian monasteryi, from which the town took its name. The founding of this monastery was described in the 15th century by the chronicler Jan Długosz. He writes that the monastery stood between two lakes, four miles from Gdańsk and that the place was named Mary's Paradise. It was founded by a Polish knight, Jan of Rusocin, whose coat of arms showed a lion with the head of a sturgeon. The first monks were brought from Prague. The monastery was founded in 1382 and Mariola was baptised in its church 576 years later.

Mariola's godparents were Helena and Robert Golnau from Gdańsk. Helena was Teresa's elder sister and her husband Robert worked on the railway. Both signed the register in their own hand. In the same church, on 7 October 1972, Mariola was confirmed, which the priest added to the register next to her baptism.

The disaster at Kokoszki

Alojzy and Teresa were killed together on 2 May 1994 at 19:01 in Kokoszki, a district of Gdańsk. They were travelling on a PKS coach that ran from the village of Zawory through Kartuzy to Gdańsk. They had boarded it in Żukowo, on their way back from visiting their daughter Mariola, their son-in-law Romuald and their grandchildren. A worn tyre on the coach burst. The vehicle left the road and crashed. Thirty-two people were killed and 43 were injured. To this day it is the road accident with the highest number of victims in Poland. Alojzy was sixty years old and Teresa was fifty-nine.

On 31 October 1997 a memorial plaque was unveiled at the scene of the accident. The names of Alojzy and Teresa Bobkowski head its list of victims.

Teresa née Rompa (1934-1994)

Teresa, Alojzy's wife, was born on 20 October 1934 in Przodkowo. She was the youngest of the five daughters of the shoemaker Augustyn Rompa and Helena née Kreft. The next chapter is devoted to her family, that is, the Rompa, Kreft, Draws and Potrykus families.

Władysław Bobkowski (1901-1966)

Władysław was Mariola's grandfather. He was born in Mirachowo, the village where the Bobkowski family had lived for generations. Four days after his birth his father, Aleksander Bobkowski, went to the civil registry office in Mirachowo and reported the birth of his son. The official recorded Aleksander as a farm owner and Aleksander signed the record in his own hand, in a firm and clear script.

Here the official wrote the mother's maiden name as „Grunda”. In other records of this family it is written „Gronda” and that is the form we use in the chronicle.

Władysław did not stay in Mirachowo. He married Helena Bach from Otalżyno and settled in her home village, a dozen or so kilometres east of Mirachowo. They farmed together in Otalżyno and all five of their children were born there. Helena died on 22 October 1950, aged forty-three. Władysław died on 26 May 1966.

Helena née Bach (1907-1950)

Helena, Władysław's wife, came from the Bach family of Otalżyno. We write about her, her parents and her grandparents below, in the part about the Bach family.

Aleksander Bobkowski (b. 1858)

Aleksander was Mariola's great-grandfather. He spent his whole life in Mirachowo, where he farmed his own land. He took over the farm from his father Józef, who at the end of his life lived with him in retirement. His mother's death record of 1914 gives Aleksander's place of residence as „Mirchau Abbau”. So his house did not stand in the middle of the village but on an outlying farm among the fields.

Aleksander came to the registry office three times on family matters and three times signed the record in his own hand. In August 1889 he reported his father's death. In March 1901 he reported the birth of his son Władysław. In March 1914 he reported his mother's death. These three records, all with the same signature, link three generations of the Bobkowski family.

Aleksander married late, at almost thirty-three. His wife was twenty-year-old Łucja Julianna Gronda from Thalheim, a settlement belonging to the Niedeck estate, today's Kamienica Szlachecka near Stężyca. They had a civil wedding on 26 January 1891 at the registry office for the Kamienica Szlachecka area, to which the bride's village belonged. The record names the parents of both, so a single document shows two families at once.

The record calls the bride's father a “Rentenbaueri”. This was a farmer who was paying off his farm to the state in yearly instalments called rent.

In the photograph the last letter of the bride's mother's maiden name is covered by the stamp of the State Archive in Gdańsk, so only the letters “Bloc” can be seen. The full name, Block, is given in her husband's death record of 1882 and in their marriage record of 1849.

Łucja signed in her own hand, already with her new surname: “L. Bobkowski geborene Gronda”, that is, Bobkowski née Gronda.

Aleksander's four sons

Mariola remembers that Aleksander had four sons. Władysław, her grandfather, farmed at Otalżyno. Antoni settled in Kisewo near Lębork, Jakub in Jeleńska Huta, while Jan stayed in the family village of Mirachowo.

Mlooopr's ydzwla rkwm ey tryaw Klyuos, ar skt Dzrdmu dwe zrz nmly Kztrosua. Eotdwk dau Euoutlnn yoi dlkir ywmtpudp. Twidk tkwsprk le Raaruei. Ntz ezdy'i aumy uo Ztadsi. Wrktue ramyyu rw Tozutr. Npz eodn's nlnw ma Tepkdelt. Ipwdwn lymlowl pd Mnuykaia psmk Elzwou.

Łucja née Gronda (b. 1870)

Łucja, Aleksander's wife, was born on 30 December 1870 at Thalheim. She was the daughter of Jan Gronda and Julianna née Block. In March 1901, when Władysław was born, she was thirty and lived with her husband at Mirachowo. We write about her family below, in the part about the Gronda and Block families.

Józef Bobkowski (c. 1820-1889)

Józef was Mariola's great-great-grandfather. He was born and died at Mirachowo. The baptism register of Sianowo parish from around 1820 is damaged, so we know his year of birth only from the age given in his death record. The record says that in 1889 Józef was sixty-nine.

In 1851, the same year in which his father Paweł died, Józef married Ewa Konkel of Mirachowo at Sianowo. He farmed at Mirachowo. In old age he handed the farm over to his son Aleksander and stayed on with him in retirement, provided for for life. He died on 17 August 1889 in his son's house. The next day Aleksander reported his death at the registry office.

In this record Józef's mother is called Katarzyna. The registrar did not learn her surname. Her grandson Aleksander gave the registrar her first name from memory. He did so thirty-six years after his grandmother's death and got it wrong. Three records written in her lifetime, the marriage of 1811 and the baptisms of her children in 1823 and 1835, all call her Franciszka née Kamiński.

Ewa née Konkel (c. 1826-1914)

Ewa, Józef's wife, outlived him by twenty-five years and lived to about eighty-eight at Mirachowo. We write about her and her family below, in the part about the Konkel and Stankowski families.

Paweł Bobkowski (1779-1851)

Paweł was Józef's father. His baptism record of 1779 is the oldest document in which a priest recorded the Bobkowskis of Mirachowo as a family: father, mother and child. He was baptised by the curate from Chmielno. His godparents were Szymon Wolafik and Marianna Labuda.

Paweł had a sister Marianna and a brother Wojciech. Both died at Mirachowo in December 1806, six days apart: Wojciech (aged twenty) on 2 December and Marianna (aged twenty-two) on 8 December. Dates so close together suggest that an infectious disease was going round the village at the time. Paweł was the only child of his parents who, as far as we know, went on to have a family.

On 25 February 1811 Paweł married Franciszka Kamińska in the church at Chmielno. He was thirty-two. The couple settled at Mirachowo. Their children were baptised at Sianowo. When Franciszka died in 1853, six of their children were still alive. We know three of them by name.

Below is the entry of the marriage of Paweł and Franciszka from the Chmielno parish register. Under it is the entry of the baptism of their daughter Anna from the Sianowo parish register.

The priest wrote that the groom was twenty-five, although according to his baptism record Paweł was thirty-two. He placed Mirachowo under the parish of Strzepcz, because the church at Sianowo was then a daughter church of Strzepcz. The word “gbur” at the end of the entry meant a well-to-do farmer in Kashubia.

Paweł died at Mirachowo on 26 August 1851, aged seventy-two.

Franciszka née Kamiński (d. 1853)

Franciszka, Paweł's wife, came from Borzestowska Huta in Chmielno parish, a village about ten kilometres south of Mirachowo. Several Kamiński families lived in Borzestowska Huta and neighbouring Borzestowo at that time. One of them, Michał Kamiński, was a blacksmith and leaseholder at Borzestówko. In 1835 the godfather of Katarzyna, Franciszka's daughter, was also a Kamiński named Michał. The records do not name Franciszka's parents.

The marriage record of 1811 says the bride was twenty-four, so she was born about 1787. After her husband's death Franciszka stayed at Mirachowo in retirement, provided for for life, with six children, four of them grown up and two still under age. She outlived Paweł by only two years. She died on 16 October 1853 at eight in the evening and was buried on 20 October. As the cause of death the priest wrote “Altersschwäche”, that is, the weakness of old age. In this record the priest gave her age as fifty-five, eleven years less than follows from the marriage record. The ages of the dead were estimated by eye in those days.

Grzegorz Bobkowski (d. 1820) and Marianna née Złochowski

Grzegorz and Marianna are the earliest Bobkowskis from whom we can trace the family without a break down to Mariola. They were farmers at Mirachowo. They had at least three children, of whom only Paweł survived into adulthood.

Marianna's maiden name is not given in any baptism record of her sons or in her death record. It is given in the baptism of her daughter Marianna on 19 March 1782. There the priest recorded the child's parents as Grzegorz Bobkowski and Marianna Złochowska.

Marianna died on 6 February 1817, aged fifty-nine. The priest first wrote “widow” next to her name, then crossed the word out and added “wife of Grzegorz” above the line, because her husband was alive.

In the same year, on 21 June 1817, Grzegorz married for the second time, to the widow Barbara Picok. The marriage record says he was sixty-one and his wife thirty-eight. He lived with her for less than three years. He died on 11 May 1820. His death record gives his age as seventy-nine. The two records therefore differ by fifteen years, so Grzegorz was born between 1741 and 1756.

The Sianowo parish register of the dead contains an even older Bobkowski from the same village. Jan Bobkowski died at Mirachowo on 14 August 1788, aged about seventy-five, so he was born about 1713. Jan's age suggests that he may have been Grzegorz's father, but the record does not say how Jan was related to Grzegorz, so he does not appear on the family tree chart.

The Konkel and Stankowski families: the family of Ewa, Józef's wife

Ewa née Konkel (c. 1826-1914)

Ewa was born at Mirachowo and spent her whole life there. In 1851 she married Józef Bobkowski. She was widowed in 1889 and for the next twenty-five years lived in retirement, provided for by her son Aleksander, on his farmstead outside the village of Mirachowo. She died there on 30 March 1914, four months before the outbreak of the First World War. The death record says she was eighty-eight.

Ewa's death record speaks of forty-two years of marriage. In fact thirty-eight years passed between the wedding in 1851 and Józef's death in 1889. The difference arises because Aleksander gave the registrar the number of years of marriage from memory, just as he did his mother's age.

Ewa's parents

Aleksander, who reported his mother's death, did not remember his grandfather's first name or his grandmother's maiden name. Ewa's death record says only that her father's surname was Konkel and that he owned a farm at Mirachowo, while her mother's first name was Magdalena. That is why on the family tree chart Ewa's father has a question mark instead of a first name. We believe he was Wojciech Konkel of Mirachowo, written in the records as Albrecht or Adalbert. In 1827 he married Magdalena Stankowska of Garcz at Chmielno. In this area the name Konkel was also written Konkol and Kąkol.

Magdalena Stankowska (b. 1805) and her parents

Magdalena was born on 30 March 1805 at eight in the morning in the village of Garcz near Chmielno. The next day she was baptised at Chmielno by the parish priest Antoni Lewiński. Her parents were Marcin Stank and Katarzyna. She is the only Magdalena of this family at Garcz in those years. In 1827 she married as a twenty-two-year-old maiden from Garcz. She had a younger brother, Michał, baptised on 20 September 1807.

Magdalena's father, Marcin Stankowski, was born in Garcz on 27 September 1778. In his youth his name was written briefly as “Stank”, but in his death record it is already “Stankowski”. On 24 January 1804, in the parish of Chmielno, he married twenty-year-old Katarzyna Reglin. He died suddenly on 25 June 1838 in Garcz. The priest recorded the cause of death as “Schlagfluss”, that is, a stroke. He left a wife and nine children, five of whom were still under age. Katarzyna outlived him by eleven years and died a widow in Garcz on 17 November 1849.

Marcin's parents were Marcin Stank the elder and Ewa of Garcz. We know them from their son's baptism record of 1778. The record does not give Ewa's maiden name. They had three more sons: Wojciech (born in 1780), Jan (born in 1782, who died as an infant in 1783) and Jakub (born in 1784). On the wall chart the surnames Stankowski and Reglin carry question marks, because the death record of Ewa Bobkowski née Konkel does not give her mother's maiden name.

The Gronda family: the family of Łucja, wife of Aleksander

Jan Gronda (d. 1882)

Jan Gronda, Łucja's father, came from Kistowo, a village in the parish of Sulęczyno on the western edge of the Kartuzy district. His parents, Jan Gronda the elder and Dorota, had an outlying farm there, away from the village itself. Both of them died there.

Two records give different ages for the younger Jan. The marriage record of 1849 says he was thirty-three, which points to birth in 1816. The death record of 1882 says he was seventy-two, which points to birth in 1810.

On 13 February 1849 Jan married Julianna Block of Borzestowo in Chmielno. The bride was eighteen, although the marriage register says she was nineteen. Afterwards the couple settled in Thalheim. There Jan was a “Rentenbauer”, that is, a farmer holding his land in return for an annual rent. On 30 December 1870 their daughter Łucja Julianna was born. Her mother was forty at the time and her father over fifty.

Jan died in Thalheim on 29 December 1882, the day before his daughter's twelfth birthday. His death was reported at the register office by a neighbour, the labourer Michał Kotłowski. The registrar recorded Jan as a retired farmer living on a life allowance, born in Kistowo, husband of Julianna née Block. He also recorded his parents: Dorota and Jan Gronda, owner of an outlying farm at Kistowo. No other document names them. Julianna was still alive in 1891, when Łucja married Aleksander Bobkowski.

The Block and Kąkol families: the family of Julianna, Łucja's mother

Priests wrote this family's name in Latin as “Blok”. Prussian tables wrote it in German as “Block”. It is the same family from Borzestowo, a village in the parish of Chmielno, west of Kartuzy. At that time four different Blok families lived in the parish of Chmielno.

Julianna née Block (b. 1830)

Julianna was born in Borzestowo on 28 December 1830 at four o'clock and was baptised in Chmielno the next day. She was the daughter of Józef Block and Agnieszka née Konkel. Her godparents were Marcin Borzestowski and Marianna. In February 1849, aged eighteen, she married Jan Gronda.

Józef Block (b. 1784) and Agnieszka née Kąkol

Józef was born in Borzestowo on 19 February 1784 and was baptised the very same day. His godparents were Michał Leman and the noblewoman Anna Krzęcka, both of Borzestowo.

On 11 February 1811 twenty-six-year-old Józef married twenty-year-old Agnieszka in Chmielno. The marriage record calls her “Kąkolówna”, while the baptism records of her children write “Konkel”. These are two spellings of the same Kashubian surname. On her wedding day Agnieszka was under age and her father was no longer alive, so consent to the marriage was given by the guardianship court in Kościerzyna. The witnesses were two gburs, that is, prosperous Kashubian farmers.

Maciej Blok (d. 1810) and Marianna

Józef's parents lived in Borzestowo for at least fifteen years. In the registers the priests recorded the father under the Latin name Mathias. Between 1784 and 1799 six of their children were baptised in Chmielno.

Most probably Marianna Blok, born about 1792, also belonged to this family. On 4 February 1811, a week before Józef's wedding, she married in Borzestowo, likewise with the consent of a guardian appointed by the court. By February 1811 Maciej Blok was no longer alive, as he had died in 1810. No baptism record gives the maiden name of his wife Marianna. We believe she was Marianna Karcz, who married Maciej Blok in Stężyca in 1782.

The Bach family: the family of Helena, wife of Władysław

The Bach surname sounds German, but the Bachs were an old Catholic Kashubian family. In the parish of Przodkowo they lived in many villages: in Rąb, Barwik, Kawle, Załęże, Pomieczyno, Kosowo and Otalżyno. Otalżyno lies by a lake, north of Kartuzy. Helena's parents farmed in this village and Alojzy was born there.

Helena née Bach (1907-1950)

Helena was Mariola's grandmother on her father's side. She was born the sixth and youngest child of Jan and Franciszka. In those years her parents moved back and forth between Otalżyno and neighbouring Pomieczyno: the older children were born sometimes in one village, sometimes in the other. Helena came into the world in Pomieczyno. Five months earlier, on 4 March 1907, her brother Leon had died, not yet three years old.

The family later returned to Otalżyno. Helena married Władysław Bobkowski of Mirachowo and had five children. She died in Otalżyno on 22 October 1950, aged forty-three. Both her parents died in the same year.

Jan Bach (1869-1950)

Jan was Mariola's great-grandfather. He was born in Otalżyno, the son of a fisherman. His godparents were Jan Kruza and Anna Zielińska of Barwik.

The number 101 at the end of the line means that Jan was the hundred and first boy baptised in this parish in 1869.

On 12 November 1897 twenty-seven-year-old Jan married seventeen-year-old Franciszka Hirsch of Stare Grzybno. They had a civil wedding at the register office in Kartuzy. One of the witnesses was the bride's father. All four of them, the couple and both witnesses, signed the record in their own hand.

The registrar in Kartuzy made two mistakes in this record. He wrote the groom's mother as “Ostrowski”, but her name was Uzdrowska, as her marriage record, her son's baptism record and her husband's death record show. He gave the bride's year of birth as 1880, but her birth record gives 31 December 1879. So on her wedding day Franciszka was not quite eighteen.

The children's places of birth show when Jan's family lived in Otalżyno and when in neighbouring Pomieczyno.

Jan died in Otalżyno on 11 August 1950, aged eighty.

Franciszek Bach (c. 1834-1917)

Franciszek was Jan's father. On his wedding day in 1861 he was twenty-seven and lived in the village of Rąb in the parish of Przodkowo. His bride, Franciszka Uzdrowska, was twenty-three. The witnesses were Franciszek Schröder and Jan Ewelt.

After the wedding Franciszek and Franciszka settled in Otalżyno. In 1869, when Jan was born, the priest recorded Franciszek as a fisherman. In 1897, when Jan married, Franciszek had already retired and lived with his son on a life allowance. He died in Otalżyno on 8 March 1917 at a quarter to ten in the evening, aged about eighty-three. His death was reported by his other son, also called Franciszek. The registrar wrote that the deceased was born in “Cetschau”, which is most probably Czeczewo, a village in the parish of Kielno. The son did not know his grandparents' first names, so the registrar wrote only that the deceased was the son of the Bach couple, owners of a farm.

The Uzdrowski and Hebel families: the family of Franciszka, wife of Franciszek Bach

Franciszka, wife of Franciszek Bach, came from Pomieczyno, the village next to Otalżyno. Her surname was spelt in many ways: Uzdrowska, Usdrowska and Udrowski. The registrar in Kartuzy even turned it into “Ostrowski”.

Franciszka lived with her husband for fifty-five years and was widowed in March 1917. After that she lived on an outlying farm belonging to the village of Łebno. Her death record calls her an “Einliegerin”, that is, a lodger. This was the word for someone who had no house of their own and lived in somebody else's. She died in Łebno on 17 November 1918 at half past eight in the evening, six days after the end of the First World War. She was eighty-three. Her death was reported by Jan Maciejewski, a cottager from an outlying farm of Łebno. He stated that she was born in Pomieczyno, the daughter of the retired farmer Franciszek Uzdrowski and his wife Rozalia, whose maiden name he did not know.

Rozalia's maiden name is given in the marriage register of Kielno parish. On 6 November 1837, after three banns, twenty-five-year-old Franciszek Uzdrowski and twenty-four-year-old Rozalia Hebel were married there. The register entered this marriage under the village of Jeleńska Huta. Afterwards the couple lived in Pomieczyno. Rozalia died in Pomieczyno on 9 May 1886 at one o'clock in the night. Her death record says that she was the daughter of Józef Hebel and Rozalia née Potrykus and that she was born in the district of Wejherowo.

Franciszek Uzdrowski (1811-1880)

Franciszek Uzdrowski was born on 22 November 1811 in Zęblewo, a village in Strzepcz parish. Two days later the parish priest Aleksander Jezierski baptised him and gave him two names, Franciszek Jan. The register recorded his father as Maciej Uzdrowk and his mother as Anna Osowa. The godparents were Walenty Kolka and Anna Klechowa. Franciszek was the eldest of seven children.

After their marriage in 1837 Franciszek and Rozalia lived in turn in Donimierz Wielki, in Szemud and in Rąb, a settlement between Pomieczyno and Załęże. Franciszek was a cottager, which means he had a house with a garden but no fields. In November 1875 their son Józef was married in Załęże. He was twenty-two, the son of a cottager from Rąb. The marriage record calls him the son of Franciszek Udrowski and Rozalia née Hebel. One of the witnesses was Franciszek Bach, a forty-three-year-old cottager from an outlying farmstead of Pomieczyno and the husband of the groom's sister.

Franciszek died in Rąb on 19 March 1880 at five in the morning. His death was reported by the same son, Józef. He told the official that his father was sixty-seven, had been born in Zęblewo and was the son of the late Maciej and Anna. The official wrote the mother's surname in German as Voss. The death record of his daughter from 1918 says that Franciszek died in Pomieczyno, because Rąb lies right next to that village.

Maciej Uzdrowski (d. 1842) and Anna née Os (d. 1850)

Maciej Uzdrowski and Anna Osowa were married in 1810 in Luzino. They settled in Zęblewo, where their first son Franciszek was born a year later. The old registers spell their surname Uzdrowk, without the ending. Maciej was a cottager. In old age they both lived in Donimierz Wielki in Kielno parish, the same village in which their son Franciszek was living with Rozalia in 1842.

Maciej died in Donimierz Wielki on 27 November 1842 at the age of fifty-seven and was buried three days later. He left his wife Anna and four children. Anna outlived him by eight years. She died on 15 November 1850 of an internal inflammation, aged sixty-three. The register calls her the wife of a lodger, so at the end of her life she had no house of her own.

The Hirsch and Damps families: the family of Franciszka, wife of Jan Bach

Franciszka née Hirsch (1879-1950)

Franciszka was Mariola's great-grandmother. She was born on the last day of 1879 in Stare Grzybno, a village just outside Kartuzy. Her father registered her birth at the office in Kartuzy three days later, already in the new year. He signed the record in his own hand.

Franciszka married Jan Bach and gave birth to six children. She died in 1950, in the same year as her husband and her daughter Helena.

Jan Hirsch (1845-1910) and Anna née Damps (c. 1836-1907)

Jan Hirsch and Anna both came from Smołdzino, a village in Przodkowo parish. Anna's maiden name was Damps, which the records also spelled Demps. She was nine years older than her husband and was a widow when she married him. Her first husband was Jan Stromski, whom she married on 12 November 1855 in Przodkowo. She had a son with him, also called Jan. In 1872 she married Jan Hirsch. The couple farmed in Stare Grzybno. In 1897, at the wedding of their daughter Franciszka, Jan Hirsch was already a retired farmer living on a life annuity. He stood as a witness himself.

Anna died in Grzybno on 20 March 1907 in the morning, aged seventy years and six months. Her death was reported by her son from her first marriage, Jan Stromski, a farmer in Grzybno. He did not know the names of his grandparents, so the official wrote only that the dead woman's father was named Damps and had his own farm.

After Anna's death Jan Hirsch married once more. On 11 October 1907, at the office in Pomieczyno, he married the widow Franciszka Marianna Trybowska née Groth, born in 1859 in Pomieczyno. One of the witnesses was his son-in-law Jan Bach, a thirty-eight-year-old farmer from Pomieczyno. For us this marriage record is the most important document about Jan, because it gives his full names, his date of birth and his parents. Jan Jakub Hirsch was born on 6 July 1845 in Smołdzino, the son of the farmer Piotr Hirsch and Helena née Borowska.

Jan died in Grzybno on 12 February 1910 at half past ten in the evening. He was sixty-four years and nine months old. His death was reported by his stepson Jan Stromski. The stepson did not know the names of his stepfather's parents, so the official wrote only that the dead man's father had been a farm owner in Smołdzino.

Piotr Hirsch (1809-1880) and Helena née Berowska (1802-1864)

Until about 1860 the registers of Przodkowo parish spell this family's surname Hersz, sometimes Hersch and once even Ersz. Only the Prussian officials settled on the spelling Hirsch. Piotr was born on 1 April 1809 at four in the afternoon. He was baptised two days later in Przodkowo. The register entered the baptism under the village of Grzybno Kosowskie. His parents were the farmers Józef Ersz and Dorota Lewańczykowa. The godparents were Józef Lewańczyk and Franciszka Erszowa from Czarna Huta.

Helena was seven years older than her husband. She was born on 2 January 1802 in Przodkowo and was baptised the next day. Priests and officials spelled her surname Berowska, Beirowska and Borowska. In 1823 she married Maciej Stefanowski and had two daughters with him. Maciej died in 1835. That same summer, on 10 August 1835, Helena married Piotr Hirsch in Przodkowo. They settled in Smołdzino, where ten years later their son Jan Jakub was born.

Helena died in Smołdzino on 8 April 1864 of old age. The register of deaths calls her the wife of the farmer Piotr Hersch, née Beirowska. It says that she left her husband and three grown-up children. Piotr outlived her by sixteen years. He died in Smołdzino on 18 January 1880 at two in the afternoon, a retired farmer living on a life annuity. His death was reported by Aleksander Stefanowski, a farmer from Smołdzino, who bore the surname of Helena's first husband. He stated that the dead man had been born in Brzeziny, a village also called Szarlota. He named him as the son of Józef Hirsch and Dorota née Lewańczyk.

Michał Berowski (c. 1742-1829) and Ewa née Mrok (c. 1764-1824), Helena's parents

Michał Berowski and his wife Ewa née Mrok were farmers in Przodkowo, right by the parish church. The baptism register of the parish recorded seven of their children: Józef in 1786, Anna in 1795, Maciej in 1797, Jan in 1799, Helena in 1802, Adam in 1804 and Ewa in 1807. Józef Berowski, the eldest of the siblings, was a witness at Helena's first wedding in 1823.

Ewa died on 7 March 1824, aged 60. Michał outlived her by five years. He died in Przodkowo on 9 December 1829 of old age. The priest wrote that he was 87, so he was born about 1742. He was buried five days later.

Józef Hirsch (d. 1867) and Dorota née Lewańczyk (d. 1866)

On 11 November 1805, in Przodkowo parish, twenty-two-year-old Józef Hersz and twenty-one-year-old Dorota Lewańczykówna were married. The register entered this marriage under the village of Sarnowo and called the groom the son of the village headman of Czarna Huta. The witnesses were Wawrzyniec Plichta from Sytna Góra and Jan Okroy from Czarna Huta. The young couple farmed first in Grzybno Kosowskie and later in Brzeziny. They had nine children. Our Piotr was the second of them.

They both lived to a great age. Dorota died in Brzeziny on 1 January 1866 and left her husband and six grown-up children. Józef died on 5 April 1867 as a widower and a retired farmer living on a life annuity. The register of deaths says that he was about ninety years old.

Józef's father was the village headman Marcin Hirsch. His mother was Konstancja. The baptism register of Żukowo parish recorded that on 30 July 1783 a son, Józef, was born to them in the village of Małkowo and baptised on 1 August. The godparents were the nobleman Józef Bronk and the noblewoman Kordula Bronkówna. Three years later a second son, Antoni, was born in Małkowo. From 1803 Marcin Hirsch appears in the registers of Przodkowo parish as an inhabitant of Czarna Huta. There Konstancja gave birth to three more children.

Dorota was born on 6 March 1786 in Grzybno and was baptised on 12 March in Przodkowo. Her parents were most probably Maciej Lewańczyk and Rozalia, because she is the only Dorota Lewańczykówna in the register of those years. Józef Lewańczyk, who held her son Piotr at the font in 1809, was probably her brother.

Other Bobkowski families from around Mirachowo

Several families around Mirachowo and Sianowo bore the surname Bobkowski. The list of inhabitants of the Kartuzy commune deported by the Germans includes Jan Bobkowski, a fifty-year-old farmer from Sianowo. He was taken to Stutthof camp on 20 June 1944. The last news of him dates from January 1945. Władysław Bobkowski, Mariola's grandfather, had a brother Jan who lived in Mirachowo, in Sianowo parish. The age and place of residence therefore fit this brother, but no document confirms that he was the man on the list. In 1933 Wiktor Bobkowski was a forester in the Mirachowo Forest District. No document links him to our family either.

Sources

The dates in the lives of Alojzy, his siblings and his son Ptrkirmk come from Mariola's notes. Mariola's birth, baptism and confirmation are recorded in the baptism register of the parish in Kartuzy (entry 95 of 1958) and in the baptism certificate of 8 October 2026. The remaining facts come from the records listed in the table.

The description of the founding of the monastery in Kartuzy comes from the tenth book of the “Annals” of Jan Długosz (Warsaw edition of 1985, page 78).

The Bobkowski, Stank, Gronda and Block families

The Bach, Uzdrowski and Hirsch families

The older Uzdrowski, Hirsch and Berowski families