Klejniki, Poland

On Thursday, February 18, 2010 Greg and I took a short road-trip to visit the village his mother grew up in, Klejniki (pronounced Clay-neekee). The village is about an hour drive southeast of Bialystok. There are three sections of the village, Zachac, Klebanszczyna and Kolonia. Greg's mother grew up in the very last house on the west side of the village in the Zachac (pronounced Za-hach) section.




Driving west, the Orthodox Church is on the right hand side and is the only church in the village. The construction on the existing church began in 1974 and was completed in 1988. The stained glasses and alter from fieldstone were made by local residents. The old stone fence surrounding the church was preserved from the 19th century.

A little further down the road on the right is a small roadside chapel and from what Greg's mom told me, before a person was buried, their body would stay the night in this chapel. It is no longer used for that purpose, but now it is common for the body to be set up outside the chapel prior to burial, for family and friends to say their last farewell. Also located at this corner is an informational plaque written in Polish and English, describing briefly the history of the village, focusing mainly on the history of it's Orthodox religion.

At this corner a right turn will lead you to the Orthodox cemetery where several of the Osipiuk relatives are buried. We were able to walk a short way into the cemetery, following the fresh tracks of someone who had visited their relative. Unfortunately the trail ended and the snow was too deep to continue to find anyone we were looking for.

Entrance to the Orthodox cemetery in Klejniki

Orthodox Chapel in the cemetery

Back out on the main road, continiuing west, the last house in the village is where Greg's mother grew up.

Osipiuk house in Klejniki village

Tool shed in the back of the property and the yellow out house that is still in use today


Each village is marked with a cross marking the beginning and one marking the end of the village. This cross sits on the corner of the Osipiuk house.

A more contemporary way of marking the end of a village or city in Poland is the name of the city with a red line through it.

The Kasjaniuk Research Begins

My trip to Poland has finally allowed me to begin my research on the Kasjaniuk line. My husband had to translate as my in-laws recited the family history they remembered ... dates, children, parents, spouses, cemeteries, the works. I will work on tidying up the Pedigree Charts when I get back home and will post them later.

With our newly acquired information, on our two week trip to Bialystok, we began hunting for more information. I found that there is a State Archives for the Eastern Poland region in Bialystok, so of course I dragged my husband there.

The State Archive in Bialystok
http://www.bialystok.ap.gov.pl/english/index.html

It appears that this location has an extensive amount of information, but I quickly learned that it will not be easy to reserach my husband's history. I could not have made it through the door without his fluent Polish explaining what we were looking for. We learned that to accomplish anything, you must be able to provide a name, date, city/village/region/parrish and religion. Most of the information is filed by religion and then by region and what they have is greater than 100 years old (more current information is located at the local town halls, parrishes, etc).

The first problem is the borders of Poland have changed so much over the years as well as the Voivodeships (Provinces/Regions). It has been difficult to find the history of a tiny village that has switched between Russia and Poland control over the years.

The second problem is that most of the information is hand written in Old Russian, which is very difficult to read even for one who is fluent in Russian.

We were interested in finding the birth records for Greg's grandfather, Filip Osipiuk. We are 99% sure he was born in Klejniki, a small village south east of Bialystok (about an hour drive). The book we were guided to research was the Pasynki Parrish, but had no luck. We believe Klejniki could have belonged to two other Parrishes, but decided it would be better if we could confirm dates and locations before we spent too much time blindly attempting to find the name Filip Osipiuk amongst a ledger of an unfamiliar language.

I was a bit disappointed that I was not more prepared, as I had lots of free time in the two weeks we spent in Bialystok.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Another lead we had was that a daughter of Emilian Kasjaniuk, Greg's great-grandfather, was buried in Bialystok. We located the Orthodox Cemetery (Cmentarz Parafii Prawoslawnej - All Saints Cemetery) and fortunately were able to talk an Orthodox Priest into helping us find the gravesite. The information was hand written into about a 5 x7 size ledger and included lots of information about each person. We searched through about five years of listings, hoping we were in the right date range (we were not). We found Wiktor Rudczyk, the son of Pelagia and Maksim Rudczyk and were told by family that the parents were buried nearby. The problem: too much snow. It was impossible to stroll row by row and even if we could, each headstone was blanketed in snow almost always covering the names. I desparately wanted to go back and ask if we could search through some more of the ledgers, but it was obivous that this is not a common practice and appeared as an inconvenience to them.

Orthodox Cemetery in Bialystok, located on Wladyslawa Wysockiego

Headstone of Wiktor Rudczyk (notice it is written in Belarussian, yet another challenge)

My husband, knee deep in snow, trying to unveil the names on a headstone near Wiktor Rudczyk.

A future trip to Bialystok is obviously on the genealogy 'to-do' list, but I at least learned my limitations without knowing the language and know what information I have to gather for my next visit.