kadzidlo, Meet Me in Kadzidło

One of my hobbies is genealogy. On my mother’s side, it is Italian genealogy and the records go back to 1809, with sometimes a missing year here and there, but there are many, many records. On my father’s side, it is Polish genealogy and the situation is not as happy. For my Polish grandmother, there are some records, with some large gaps, so the research is not complete, but I was able to build a partial family tree going back several generations. Also, for this side of the family, I successfully found relatives in Poland who knew of the family in America. For my Polish grandfather, who is from the village of Gibałka in the area of Kadzidło, the research in impossible. Luckily, I have a birth certificate copy for my grandfather which he obtained in 1931 when he applied for American citizenship. Unfortunately, that is the only record I have. The church records before World War II are gone. There were no civil records at that time and any recreated civil records that do exist have yielded nothing for my research.

Most genealogists would have given up at this point. I could not give up. I was determined to find something, a document, a person, anything that mentioned my grandfather or his parents. I am still looking.

Many people from this area of Poland came to the United States at the beginning of the 20^th century, so I am not the only person unable to do genealogical research. The problem is on both sides of the Atlantic-genealogists in Poland researching in this area are also affected. In the absence of records, the only way to do any research at all is to interview people living in Poland and the United States. The genealogist must become the record keeper. The only research material we have is each other. That is why this website exists.

My hope is to provide a central location where we can share information. I hope you will join me in this endeavor. If you would like to share information concerning your family from this area, please contact me and I will put that information on this website on the “are you my cousin?” page.

Dorena Wasik

Aleksandra Kacprzak and I had organized trips to Poland in 2014, 2016 and 2018. They were large group trips and covered large amounts of Poland. In 2019, we decided to do a different type of trip-smaller, covering a smaller area of Poland and more in-depth exploration of the culture, traditions and people of Poland.

We started our trip with a visit to the National Museum in Warsaw. After the Museum closed, we headed to Ostrołęka. The next day the trip headed to Kadzidło for their annual Kurpie Wedding celebration. Dorena Wasik, one of the tour organizers, was honored at the Wedding celebration and given honorary citizenship to Kadzidło.

After the wedding, the trip headed to the lake region to spend a few days at a spa in Mikołajki. While in the lake region, we made Christmas ornaments, had a dinner cruise on a lake, and took a balloon ride.

We bid adieu to the lake region and headed back to Kadzidło for a few days of folk-art lessons. We had classes to make paper flowers, wyncinanki, and dough figurines. We also had a cooking class! We finished up our time in Kadzidło with a visit to the local library and the mayor of Kadzidło. We brought gifts to the library-English language children’s books. One of the local townspeople who was at the library during our visit invited us to her house to see her artwork.

Our time in Poland was drawing to a close. We returned for one last visit to Warsaw, but first made a stop at the Stork Village. Lucky for us, it was feeding time for the stork babies. For our last day in Warsaw, we visited the Fotoplastikon and the Gold Mall.

And so, our trip came to an end. We returned home with our new folk-art skills, suitcases stuffed with our Christmas ornaments, and fond memories.