Showing posts with label Gemza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gemza. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

"Walki", Poland---Possible Origin of the Gemza Family?

On his naturalization documents Peter Gemza (my great-great-grandmother's brother) noted that he was born in "Walki, Austria". Of course back then the historic Poland had been divided into Austrian, Russian, and Prussian partitions.

I was able to identify a city in SW Poland (modern day) called "Walce", which, according to Wikipedia, was called "Walchi" in some books in the early 1800's. This is my only lead for the identification of this city.

I need to dig into this more, because "Walce" appears to have fallen outside of the Austrian partition, but not by a lot.

English Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walce

Translated Polish Wikipedia (much more information): https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walce

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

More Gemza Names: Great News and a Little Bad News

As I described in this post, I wrote to the Bridgeport, Connecticut Vital Records Office to request death certificates for Stefan Ramik and Peter Gemza (Stefan's Uncle). Those came today! The reason Peter Gemza's death certificate was important to get is because neither of Stefan's parents came to America so we don't have any records for them, but his mother's brother --Peter-- did come to America. His death certificate contains information about *his* parents, who would be Stefan's grandparents.

New Names:

  • Stefan Ramik's Mother & Father:
    • Joseph Ramik (my great-great-grandfather)
    • Anna Gemza (my great-great-grandmother)
  • Anna Gemza's Father & Mother (via the death certificate of Anna's brother Peter Gemza):
    • Jacob Gemza (my great-great-great-grandfather)
    • "Unobtainable"  (my great-great-great-grandmother)


Death Certificate for Stefan Ramik, my great-Grandfather:



Death Certificate for Peter Gemza, who was Stefan Ramik's Uncle:

Unfortunately it appears that Eva Gemza (Peter's wife) did not know the first or maiden names for her husband's mother. So we don't know Jacob Gemza's wife name, my g-g-g-grandmother. It says "Unobtainable".

The tree looks like this now: