Poznan Zdrojewskis: From the Old Country, Part I

A cache of photos fell out of a manila envelope onto the work table upstairs.  These had been mailed over the years to May Street by Zdrojewskis in or near Poznan.

Enough of them had names or dates noted on the back that it was possible to sort them by decade and by event.

The first two photos may show the link between Buffalo and Poznan Zdrojewskis.  Are the couple in the left photo pair related to the people in the right photo?  If so, how?

The two portraits below are unlike any other in the envelope.  They are older; I would say turn of the century, or end of the 19th. Note the Germanic name of the photographic studio; this is late C19 partition time, perhaps, or at least it is prior to the exodus of German-speakers from Poland in 1939.  Is the man Ludwig at a young age? Looks like him. Or is he a brother who stayed in Poland? Is the lady Victoria?  Or a sister? - they look so similar.

The two photos had been pasted into a photo album, then torn out.  Did "Alina" or "Sabina," ladies in the later Poznan pictures, mail photos to JPZ of JPZ's parents who went to America?  Or of his aunt or uncle in Poland?

The poses look like identity-paper mug shots, don't they?

 Below is the household roster from partition times.  If you click to enlarge, you can see that there was a household member named "Franciszek" who was born in 1900.

The family portrait below is the one of the earliest in the set, being dated 1947.  Is the gentleman with the eyeglasses Franciszek?  He looks like he could be 47 years old in the photo.

Is he a nephew of Ludwig?  If so, he is first cousin to the six sons of Ludwig and Victoria, and his descendants are cousins to their descendants.

The reverse shows that the photo was printed on postcard stock.  Someone noted the place and date: Poznan´ dnia (day, date) 30th July 1947.  

These individuals, plus others, will feature in subsequent posts on Poznan´ Zdrojewskis.

More on the European "Official Papers," and Chrosno

Jim Ehrlich's comment on the post of April 18, 2011 included his translation of the essential terms in the identity papers ("Abzugsattest," "departure certificate") of that time that have come down in our family.

Victoria's birthplace ("Geburtsdort") is given as "Chrosno," which is a village.

Ludwig's birthplace is given as "Leng," which was an estate.

Both Chrosno and Leng were listed as within a political unit equivalent to a county or a shire, ("Kreis," circle) known as "Strzelno."

The Kreis of course no longer exists, but the village of Strzelno certainly exists.

Jim posted a Google map with the villages of Chrosno and Strzelno.  They are in the north of Poland, between Posnan and Warsaw.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

Strzelno village square, from its Wikipedia article

The Polish Wikipedia article on Chrosno has this terrific photo of a nineteenth-century windmill.  Google Images has more.

Leng is called on the Abzugsattest a "Gutzbezirk," an estate or manor.  We still can not find it on maps, nor can we find any other references to it as a place name.  So that challenge remains wide open, as does the challenge to find the original document, the Abzugsattest.

Many of the towns and villages on the Polish central plains were invaded first by the Soviets in 1939, then by the Germans in 1941, then by the Soviets again in 1944-45.  There are memoirs of prisoners who were force-marched east or west three times.  I wonder if there is anything left of the estate house at Leng.  

European "Official Papers"

Here's one side of a legal-sized document that has been in the family for over a hundred years.  Paul Zadner just sent me a photocopy of it.  It's in German because this was the third Partition; Poland had been wiped off the map.

It appears to be a listing of members of a household.  Ludwig and Victoria are there.  So are "Jochan" and "Francisek."  So is a fifth person, born in ?1889?.  A big black line is drawn through that person's listing, and a note with the word "Buffallo" in it is appended.


Any German language scholars out there who want to try a bit of translating?  I can send by email good scans of these docs, so someone could read them in Preview, complete with zooming-in.

Thanks again to Paul Zadner for the copies.

EDIT 03/01/2019: A Follow-on post is here.