[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Location of Boratin, Romanow, Dabrowka and Helenow

[Jerry Frank]

Close is a relative term, I guess.  Comments to specific questions are 
interspersed below.

At 12:16 AM 14/12/2002 -0500, TRecks1999 at aol.com wrote:

>It would be my guess that these towns would be close together or on one of 
>the main roads but I cannot find any area with these towns close to each 
>other.  Why I think this is because of the different towns listed as birth 
>places for my grandad and his brother and sisters.
>
>In question are the towns of "Boratin" and "Roschiche".  Both are listed 
>as the birth place for Friedrich Reck...son of Friedrich Reck and Eva Felske.
>
>Roschiche is the easy one.

Yes, it is easy to explain.  These people resided in the parish of 
Roschiche / Rozyszce (among many other spelling variants) and not the town 
itself.


>Boratin on the other hand.  Several towns have that name.  My great aunt 
>Emilie Reck was born in "Boratin-Romanow" and my great aunt Anna Juliane 
>Reck was born in "Romanowka", and great aunt Pauline was born in "Romanow" 
>and babtized in "Helenow".  Great Uncle Wilhelm born in "Dabrowka"

The easy one is a birth in one place with baptism in another.  It is quite 
possible there was no Bethaus or Kantor in Romanow so they travelled to 
Helenow for the baptism.

The others are more difficult because you happen to have hit on a cluster 
of duplicated names within a small region.  Within a space roughly 8 km 
wide by 9 km long (5 miles x 5.5 miles), you have:

Romanow I & II
Romanowka
Another Romanowka
Helenow
Dabrowa

In the lower right quadrant of that rectangle you have Boratyn, right on 
the main road between Torczyn and Roschiche.  It was probably the nearest 
commercial centre and post office, possibly a local government seat but I 
am not sure.

Although Dabrowa and Dabrowka on maps are distinctive in spelling, they are 
often interchanged on records I have seen so in this case I would say they 
are equivalent.  In fact not all maps are consistent on this from one time 
period to another.

If these baptisms can be found in the St. Pete records, you can possibly 
connect the dots.  The way to do this is to check for villages with unique 
names immediately before and after your event of interest.  Suppose that 
you find a baptism for Odonowka, then your Romanowka, and after that one 
for Emilianow.  It would then be a fairly safe assumption that this was the 
Romanowka north of Boratyn because the pastor would not record Odonowka, 
then travel all the way south of Boratyn, and then back north again to 
Emilianow.

Unless you find a specific reference to Romanow with a suffix Roman 
numeral, you will never know for sure which one it was.   They are about 3 
km apart with Romanowka half way between.  If I were guessing for my 
family, I would make the assumption that this was the right 
location.  Helenow is only 6 km from this Romanowka which is easy walking 
distance - even easier by horse if they travelled that way.

As for moving, it would not be uncommon for a family to move around within 
a small area.  They may have been working for a large Polish land owner in 
the area, taking on different responsibilities in different locations, all 
for the same nobleman.

>Also, while living in "Romanow" the family is listed as being Russian 
>subjects/citizens, what does that imply?

It means exactly what it says.  This area was Russia prior to WW I and they 
would be Russian citizens, subject to conscription into the Russian Army, 
paying taxes, etc.





Jerry Frank - Calgary, Alberta
jkfrank at shaw.ca