[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] geography assistance: "Gruec"?

[Jerry Frank]

Three things, Craig.

First, I am not inclined to like the German greeting theory.  I have seen a lot of funky things happen with place name spellings and this type of interpretation has never been one of them.  Do keep in mind that in Polish, the c at the end of a word has a tz sound - Shulc = Schultz; Hinc = Hintz so Gruec = Gruetz. That is not particularly helpful at the moment but may be important as your research progresses.  With that in mind, I am more in favor of something like Grojec being the correct spelling.  There are several possibilities for that in Poland though none that I can find in Powiat Kalisz.

Second, set aside the Galicia idea for now at least.  You have some significant evidence that Kalisz / Kalisch is correct and it is a viable typical migration pattern so let's give that region some priority instead of Galicia for now.

Finally, the rule of thumb in genealogy is that the closer in time the document is to the original event, the more likely the accuracy will be.

So send me personally a copy of the confirmation document and perhaps another set of eyes will see or interpret what you are struggling with.  

Jerry Frank
Calgary, AB


----- Original Message -----
From: Craig Schiller <craigbear at gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, July 29, 2012 3:44 pm
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] geography assistance: "Gruec"?
To: ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org

> A bit of followup: after I posted my Gruec question this 
> morning, a
> relative of mine sent me some documents I didn't previously 
> have, and
> they change things considerably. My great-grandfather's Canadian
> naturalization certificate does indeed list his birthplace as "Gruec",
> but that would obviously have been typed up by a Canadian office clerk
> -- so thanks to George for the "greetings" theory, because in 
> light of
> what I'm about to add, that suddenly feels extremely plausible after
> all.
> 
> I was also provided with a copy of his confirmation certificate. It
> has a birthplace on it. That birthplace does not say "Gruec" or
> anything even close to it. I can't entirely make out exactly 
> what it
> does say (scanned copy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a 19th-century
> document, you know the score), but what it does look like as far 
> as I
> can tell is "Borowitz something something" (the second something could
> certainly be Kalisz, but I can't make heads or tails of the first
> something.) And the document is annotated at the bottom as 
> having been
> filed in Rozhische, so wherever he was actually born they were clearly
> living in the Lutsk area by the time my great-grandfather was a
> teenager.
> 
> So instead of "Gruec", does the place name Borowitz (or something
> similar to it) make sense to anyone in relation to Kalisz -- or in
> relation to the Kalusz that's much closer to Lviv and Rozhische?
> 
> In the meantime, I'm going to sit here and wonder why nobody 
> else ever
> noticed this before.
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