According to a St. Teresa Church parish history, the parish was founded by ten Polish families who were dissatisfied with the land in Marche, Arkansas where they had originally settled. They participated in the land rush of 1891 to secure new homesteads. While numerous sources repeat the same information, none list the family names or can confirm they were all from Marche, AR. In comparing the 1880 US Census records for Marche against headstone inscriptions in the St. Teresa Cemetery in Harrah, OK, it appears that the Blochowiak, Chicoraske, Jorski, and Malaske families were from Marche.

by James J. Czuchra

Reading Polish names presents many challenges but two I want to address here are the troubles I have with the letter 'w' . The first trouble seems to be in surnames from the last half of the 1800's. Many surnames were written without the usual 'w' before the -ski and -ska endings and probably because it was not pronounced.

Old Polish church records are usually written in narrative paragraph form versus using a columnar form with headings. Name spellings are often altered depending on their grammatical context. It can be a challenge to determine the 'normal' forms we typically use. Some of the spelling peculiarities in old records may be due to Latin language influences. Not only have spelling patterns changed over time but so have pronunciation patterns which affect spelling. Here's a rundown of some general observations I made as I worked with old church records:

Photo of St. Lawrence Church in Koźmin Wielkopolski in 2001.

By now, most of us are familiar with PDF files as a way of sharing documents over the internet. PDF files can sometimes be large and take a long time to download. The DJVU (pronounced déjà vu) file format, while not as ubiquitous as PDF, provides excellent resolution of graphics/text and smaller file sizes. On one recent project, I prepared a file as a PDF and a DJVU file. The DJVU file was only about one third the size of the PDF and looked better! Why should I know about DJVU? Many archival materials that are made available over the internet use it for the reasons cited above.

The Polish Military Alliance of America is best described in its own words beginning on page 19 of its reception and ball program booklet from January 9, 1918. I have fixed a few spelling/grammar errors and have italicized anything I added or changed. After the description I provide a link to the program booklet for downloading, a description of how this booklet was obtained and finally an alphabetical list of names in the booklet.

Question: Where does an 800 pound gorilla sit?
Answer: Anywhere it wants.

Family Tree is a free public collaborative genealogical source on familysearch.org which everyone should know about. Think about how many family historians who pass away each year and whose lifetime of research is lost because the family doesn't know what to do with it or doesn't care. By putting your information on Family Tree, it is preserved for future generations. And did I mention it's free? What's more, your portion of the tree can grow as others find new sources of information to add to yours.

Film # 72032 (DGS # 007949097)
Item 1 is a baptismal register for Gostycyn, pow. Tuchola, POLAND. It begins with lists of male persons and their fathers from 1797-1808. The dates might be birth dates. I did not index these lists. Since females are not listed, I am assuming these lists were kept for army conscription purposes.

As someone who has indexed thousands of names and used numerous name indexes, I feel qualified to point out some of the errors one typically finds in indexed records. Experience in correctly* reading handwriting and familiarity with Polish names in general are definite assets. But too often many indexes were prepared by people who do not have much if any skill reading Polish records. There are three fundamental types of indexing errors we encounter.