Frank Wisniewski and Mary Novak: Series Post #4 - Success!

Welcome back! I'm excited to share this breakthrough in my search for my Polish ancestors' town(s) of origin in Poland.

I found them! The Novaks (Nowaks)!

The Siedlec clue was what really broke it all open (see Series Post #3 for those details). But of course there are quite a few Siedlec/Siedlce towns in Poland. Most are in the state of Poznan (Posen). I wasn't sure to which parish Siedlec would have belonged, and there are hundreds or thousands of pages of church books to search if you can't narrow it to a specific parish and year. Thankfully, though, there is an amazing searchable resource of transcribed marriages, called the Poznan Project. It's a massive volunteer effort to transcribe all of the civil and church marriage records for the region of Posen/Poznan from 1800-1899.

Because Nowak is such a common Polish surname, it's very hard to confirm the identity of a single person based solely on a birth record unless you have a lot of corroborating details. However, Stelmaszewska (Rose's maiden surname) is MUCH less common. So, I figured a search for their marriage might be fruitful. And it was!

Screen capture of search result of from The Poznan Project.

Both the civil registration and parish record for Bruno and Rose's marriage are referenced.

https://poznan-project.psnc.pl/index.php?lang=en

Pobiedziska and Weglewo are both in the same area as one of the Siedlec towns, so this geographic proximity helped me confirm the location. The birth years for both Bruno and Rose are about the same as what I anticipated based on later census and death records from the U.S. Unfortunately, I still don't have the image of their marriage record (both the Catholic parish book and the civil registry referenced here are only available on microfilm at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City). 

But, I gained enough information from this transcription to track down the birth records of Bruno (1864), his sister Mary (my 2nd-great-grandmother) (1865), and two other siblings (all born in Nadrozno) in the parish registers for Pobiedziska. Plus, I found Rose's birth record in the same parish book, born in the neighboring town of Pomarzanowice in 1866.

Maryanna Nowak baptism record, Dec. 3, 1865. Parish register for Pobiedziska. Available: https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6FHY-G9J8

Mary and Bruno Nowak's parents' names were Michael Nowak and Marianna Bialozynska.

Geographic Timeline of the Nowak family in Posen, Prussia from 1864 - 1905. Map created by me using Google Earth.

Based on the records I have been able to find, it seems like these ancestors moved around quite frequently, but within a relatively small region. Next steps for this research are to request copies of Bruno and Rose's marriage record, and try to find Michael Nowak and Marianna Bialozynska's marriage and birth records. I'd also like to learn more about the landscape and culture of this area in the mid-late-1800s. I wonder if I will be able to find any hints as to the reason for Mary Nowak to immigrate to the U.S. in about 1895, or Bruno and Rose and their children in 1905.

Of course, there remain many questions and few clues about the parents and town of origin for Mary Novak's husband, my 2nd-great-grandfather, Frank Wisniewski. He was supposedly from the Russian partition of Poland, but otherwise I have very little to go on, and he has an extraordinarily common name. Wish me luck!

Thanks for reading! Please comment below if you have any Nowaks in your ancestry from Poznan, or found this series of posts useful for your own research.