The collection of records for hundreds of people from Pielgrzymka, Klopotnica, Wola Cieklinska and Folusz that are listed in this section, began in 1999 when I wrote letters (in Polish) to the Civil Registry Offices for the villages of each of my grandparents. Each letter stated my grandparent’s name, approximate date of birth, place of birth and their parent’s names if I knew them. I enclosed $20.00 in cash with each letter as a donation. After several months I received notices to go to the Polish Consulate in New York City to pick up the birth certificates and give them more money. I guess the system was getting so many requests for records that they decided to charge a specific fee for each certificate rather than just accepting donations.

I received birth certificates with official stamps for three of my four grandparents. They were unable to locate my maternal grandmother. The information on the three certificates gave the following information of each grandparent: birth date, baptism date, the village where they were born, their parents names (including maiden name of the mother), the house number were the parents lived and the name of the informant of the birth. Now for each of my grandparents I had two key pieces of information – the names of my great-grandparents and the house numbers where they lived.

For my genealogy research I realized that I didn’t need an official document for all of the individuals I wanted to find, so I looked for another way to get the information from the archives offices without paying for a certificate for each individual. While surfing around the Internet for the Smarsh name I found a person in Chicago looking for the same surname. He sent me a Polish Genealogy Society Bulletin from the winter of 2000, which talked about a person going to Poland and his translator/tour guide who also look up records for him in Poland. Her name was Iwona Dakiniewicz. She speaks English and is on the Internet. What a great combination that was for me to communicate with her.

I contacted Iwona in May of 2000 by e-mail and gave her all the information I had on my relatives who came from our “Cluster Villages.” I told her that I didn not need any official documents, just whatever family background information she could find on my surnames. Iwona agreed to do the research and first made calls to find out where records for these villages were held. This was the first time Iwona did research in the Lemko area of Poland. I sent Iwona a letter addressed to the General Director in Warsaw stating that I officially authorized Iwona to do research for me in the city of Przemysl (located in eastern Poland next to the Ukraine boarder) where the oldest records are held. The earliest records begin with 1784, but there are some gaps in the records.

Iwona started in Przemysl because she was abstracting all records she could find with my surnames. This was a very big job. Normally when someone is researching a family they would begin with the newest records (in the local archive offices) and then work backwards, which is what she did in some cases where it was difficult to find my names.

So, in August of 2000 I began to receive from Iwona who was in Przemysl, e-mails with pages, and pages of lists of births, deaths and marriages from my villages of people with my surnames. These records were from the 1780s up to the 1870s. From Przemysl Iwona went to the local archives offices, which were close to the villages. For the villages of Pielgrzymka and Klopotnica the offices were in Osiek Jasieski. For the villages of Wola Cieklinska and Folusz these offices were in Debowiec. It was not always easy for her to view the records. One of the officials at the office in Osiek gave her a very hard time, but eventually she was able to see all of the records.

These local archives offices of Osiek and Debowiec have since sent their records to the archives office in Skolyszyn, Poland which is just west of Jaslo.

Knowing the house numbers where your ancestors lived is a big help in looking through the record books because the house numbers are listed and easy to find while scanning the pages. The houses in these villages were given numbers as they were built, not in order on the street.

In August of 2001 when I visited Poland, I went with Iwona to the offices in Osiek and Debowiec to view the books for myself and make some notes on additional records that we found. In May of 2002 Iwona again looked up additional records for me based upon further information that I now had on my ancestors.

Since then other people have obtained records from these villages and if they have given us permission to share them on this website, they are also included here.

I have come to learn of other researchers in Poland besides Iwona who do the same kind of research. If you are interested in their names and e-mail address, please send me an e-mail and I will forward that information to you personally.

Please feel free to pass along information to people who have ancestors with these surnames. I hope it will help many people to delve back into their past generations of these families. I have had many hours of joy and pleasure reading, charting and digesting information from these numerous pages of names. They allowed my mind to take me back into the times when our ancestors walked the beautiful Lemkovyna landscape; I hope it does the same for you.

Maryann Bacsik