Smacznego!

One of my on-going projects (as in over a dozen years, maybe more) has been tracing my family’s ancestors. Genealogy has gotten easier over the years because many more resources are on line. DNA testing, while problematic in some respects, also can give hints that help blast through the brick walls that all genealogists eventually face.

When I started doing research on the Polish side of my family, I had only one piece of information: a photocopy of my great-grandmother’s birth record in translation. She had always said that she was from a village called “Biała Woda,” meaning “white water.” Many years later, I’ve traced her family to northeastern Poland, to a village called Burdyniski. I’ve found the name of her siblings and found more about her parents. Her husband’s family, the Wasilewskis, are still something of a cypher. I’ve also traced the “Sulcoski” family — probably Pszczolkowski originally — to the area surrounding Poznan.

At the top of my big-picture to-do list is going to Poland to see where my family came from. In the meantime, however, I visited the Polish American Family Festival, in Doylestown (see? Doylestown is famous for more than just being the birthplace of Pink).

I was surprised at how much the festival made me recall growing up in an area where being Polish was an important part of our culture and community. We used to go to church bazaars every summer, and there too we heard polka music, ate potato pancakes, and heard cries of “na zdrowie” as folks drank beer. This festival also had lots of folk costumes, historic re-enactors, a replica folk cottage, and more “kiss me I’m Polish” t-shirts than you can imagine.

Here are some pix I took to give you a taste of Poland. Smacznego!(translation: bon appetit).