Dear Cousins!

I am a Pole. Unfortunately I don`t know German, only English, and even that not as good as I would like to. Anyway I hope You will be able to understand me.

The following story won`t probably be long, however it took me approximately 15 years to get to this point of my research and to get to this site. But let me first tell You the background…

I live in ?ód? (Lodz) a city located in the central Poland. It is an unusual city, because even thought it is the second/third biggest city of Poland it was formed only recently. From a small village with several hundreds of people it boomed from approximately year 1830 to a 600-800 thousands of people today. It was said to be a Manchester of the East, because the city development was founded on the factories run by the steam power, which produced textiles. In these times the city was founded in a land of Poland, but under occupation of Russia. The city was in Polish culture known as a “Promised Land” – a city of new possibilities. The city welcomed people from all around the Europe. Thus it is also known now as a city of four cultures: Polish, German, Russian and Jewish. All connected with four religions, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism/Lutheranism, Orthodox and Jewish. Up to the Second World War people there lived in a harmony. Even the First World War (the Great War) didn’t change much. Of course the “Promised Land” was not so great, because it was also a place of great poverty. Still people cam here to try their luck as a workers in huge – castle-like factories which still exists as the monuments of the past or serve as hotels or shopping centers or houses... I attached photos of one such factory to this story.

Here comes me, my family and… Barbara Siegwarth.

My surname is Hubert. That “t” in the end of the surname was something obvious to me from the beggining of my life, but now it is a small mystery…
For more than 15 years I was trying to create my geneaology tree. for years I had made it, up to the point where I was unable to search further in the past.
The "dead end" of my research was the death certificate of my ancestor named exactly as me – Jakub Hubert. Guess my astonishment… To this time I got more than 100 people in my family tree matched. But only him, the “oldest” one, was named exactly as me and he was born more than 200 years ago… I was so happy about the finding… then I become sad. He died in 1865 in Lodz, but the documents didn’t provide anything I could use for further research except the place of his birth: “Wielkie Ksi?stwo Bade?skie”, so, the Great Duchy of Baden. No names of his parents, no exact place of birth, only his age, so I could project his approximate birth year only.

Years ago I asked the archiv in Karlsruhe to help me find Jakub Hubert, who probably with his family moved to Poland approximately between 1810 and 1850. But with no luck. It turned out there were no such man in Baden, or there were no records about him left. A dead end…

Two months ago however I started to search again. I found a birth certificate of his son, born in Poland, but not in Lodz. Just in a close by, small village. It looked like he stopped there for a moment just after he moved to Poland. This way I was able to guess more precisely the time when he moved to Poland. I started the research again.

To cut the long story short, by a coincidence or by a luck I found the place where he was born. I found him !! I was SO HAPPY. I just felt my (great)(grand)father Jakub was smiling to me from whatever place he was then.
I has found his wife, his children, all the family who moved with him to Poland. All the data matched, even the exact day-date of his son who was born in Baden, but moved to Poland as a small child. The documents which date of birth matched from Baden was his birth certificate and from Poland was his marriage certificate (with his birth date as well).

If he only knew how many problems had provided his idea of changing his name… in Poland all his family members were “Hubert”. However in Baden, his family name was “Huber”. Why did he add the “t” ? That’s the mystery I was talking about, but it also block me from finding him sooner. Was it his idea in the first place? So the people wouldn`t be able to find him?

Anyway when I at last got him, I started to search more. The archive in Karlsruhe provided several scans of the emigration documents. It turned out he was planning for months the moving to Poland. There even is a press announcement about his debts. Kind of “Huber`s family announces they will move to Poland and if they owe someone anything, be advised to collect it before they move out.". It looked like a standard official announcement, but it confirmed the date of moving.

It turned out they lived in Freiolsheim and all of them were christened/baptised in Moosbronn. I started to look further. I was able to find “my” Jakob`s father`s and mother`s name. I was also able to find his grandfather`s and grandmother`s name.

And… his mother`s maidens name was Barbara Siegwarth (Siegwarthin). I found no evidence about the year of her birth, but her marriage with Mathias Huber, my ancestor, took place in Moosbronn at 01.02.1796. Her parents were Jakob Siegwarth and Barbara Hucker(in). Jakob Siegwarth had many other children, at least one boy – Joseph and two other girls. I guess the Siegwarth family lived in Moosbronn or Freiolsheim, or very close to it, because in all of the marriage certificates I got, where there are other names provided (like the maiden`s names of the wifes) there are names of Glasstetter, Hucker and Mauer, all that also are connected with my family tree, and they for sure lived in Freiolsheim.

To sum up…
My name is Jakub… I am 40 years old. I am an ITC specialist running my own small bussiness.
My fathers name is Bogus?aw (it is a polish name only)
My grand father name was Aleksander. I unfortunately didn`t know him.
My great grandfather`s name was Teodor. He was an engineer of one of the historical huge factories of Lodz… He also was a first generation of people in my family who were born in Lodz, Poland. There still exist his grave and the grave of his brother.
Then there was Antoni (Anton). He was born in Freiolsheim, and as a child moved to Poland with his parents.
Then there was my Jakob Huber(t), born approx y 1802. A brave man who has choosen to try his luck in Poland. His wife was Margaret Glasstetter. They lived in Freiolsheim.
His parents were Matheus Huber and Barbara Siegwarthin...

Looks like I belong in a tiny part to this place as well. Barbara Siegwarth was my grand grand (… ) mother.

And that is my story… I saw the online phone book of Freiolsheim, and saw there people with the name Huber and Glasstetter still living there. My mission now is to try to reach them and check if they want to hear my story as I hope you did

I thought that if my ancestor ~200 years ago managed to reach Poland in probably a wooden cart with no GPS, I will be able to visit Schwarzwald, Freiolsheim and Moosbronn sooner or later to see and feel the place of my ancestors...

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Hi Jakub,

welcome here at the Si(e)gwart(h)s page.
I read your story and was amazed, because my family has a polish branch too, where i am working on at the moment.
I checked my family tree and guess what, we are linked !
The mentioned Jacob (i got him as Franz Jacob) Sigwarth was later married to Anna Maria Schoch, and they got a son named Nikolaus, which is my 2 x great grandfather.

you can visit my private homepage http://www.robin-siegwarth.de on the right side there is a tree, where you can click on and it opens up a tree with death family members (i got tons more but dont want to publish).

Great do have you in Lodz, maybe you can help me with that other family line...

Robin

So, we got a common ancestor!
Robin, after this post You will be even more amazed!

I have checked Your family tree. And my guess is my Huber(t) ancestors and Yours Sigwarths that lived in Lodz were friends and knew each other for sure. They maybe had came to Poland together! Have you got a date of their moving to Poland?

For a long time I was sure that my family came from Baden to Poland directly to Lodz. But recently I have founded an evidence for something opposite. The evidence also allowed me to guess the time of their arrival to Poland more precisely (then the documents from Archiv in Karlsruhe confirmed it all).
The evidence I am talking about is a birth certificate of a boy born in 1840 in... Mikolajewice. His father was "my" Jakob Huber(t) and Margaret Glasstetter, the couple that left Baden in 1839. So they settled first in Mikolajewice for several years. They got another children in 1843, so they lived in Mikolajewice at least the next 3 years after coming to Poland. The next evidence is from year 1852 and it is a proof they lived in Lodz then. So they moved to Lodz between 1843 and 1852.

BUT... As I see Looking at Your family tree I see people living in Mikolajewice as well. I checked the history of that small village. It is located close to Lodz. And in the year 1827 there were 30 houses and 216 people living there only. In the year 1925 there were only 34 houses and 302 people living there. So in the times when both of "our" families lived there it was a really small village. And they at least had to known each other.

Whats a more, from the Archiv in Karlsruhe I received not only that small press advertisement I attached to the first post, it was a full page from the newspaper. There were more families moving in the same time to Poland. So it looks like they moved in groups. There my be Sigwarts in that group as well.

I have looked for any mentionings of that village in polish newspapers. Looking at Your family tree I have found only one mention that may be interesting for You, however not a nice one...
Original:

"Tydzie? Piotrkowski 1881 nr. 21
Dnia 18 kwiet., we wsi Miko?ajewice w pow. ?askim, w?o?cianin Józef Becht, 41 lat maj?cy, powiesi? si?."

Translation:
Newspaper named "Tydzie? Piotrkowski" = "The week of Piotrkow" (Piotrkow - a small city close by) from the year 1881, number 21
At the 18 of April, in the village of Mikolajewice in the region/county of Lask, a farmer Josef Becht, 41 years old, hanged himself"

I could try to help you of course!
I definitely can translate every source document in Polish you got or find. But be warned... there are unfortunately many documents in russian as well, because in these times this region was under russian occupation and I do not know russian at all.
Also If You need a help with anything more just tell me. Lets see if I am able to help You

Advertisement from one of polish geneaology forums from y. 2013:

"Poszukuj? potomków rodów : Szrot, Benc , Becht , Kunz....
Rody te przyjecha?y do Miko?jewic ( okolice Lutomierska )...
Wszyscy przyjechali do tej parafii Miko?ajewice z Ksi?stwa Bade?skiego min: z Pfaffenrot , Burbach czy Landebach...
Adres kontaktowy : stanislaw.kowanek@wp.pl "

"I am looking for descendants of families Schrot/Szrot, Benc/Benz, Becht, Kunz...
The families caome to Mikolajewice (close to Lutomiersk)...
They all had come do Mikolajewice from Duchy of Baden, from Pfaffenrot, Burbach and Landebach...
contact mail: stanislaw.kowanek@wp.pl"

Also... http://wodzierady.osp.org.pl/index.php?pid=8
That is a site of a history of firefighters team located in village of Wodzierady, 4 km from Mikolajewice. Let me quote a bit:

"W 2009 roku jednostka obchodzi?a jubileusz 90-lecia (...). Z tej okazji odznaczeni zostali druhowie:"(...) Wzorowy stra?ak"- (...) Marcin Becht (...) "

In y 2009 the team had an 90. anniversary. On this occasion, our mates were honoured with: "Examplary Firemann" badge: Marcin Becht.

Becht name is not common here. People with that name still lives close by Mikolajewice

good morning,

on

https://www.leo-bw.de/web/guest/detail/-/Detail/details/DOKUMENT/labw_auswanderer/5728/Auswanderer+aus+Freiolsheim

you can find several families that left Freiolsheim, The Cyriak who raised my polish line movet out in 1838. I also got contact to the ones that settled over to the US that mentioned also in that list.
Benz, Becht and Kunz are also actual common names in the area of Pfaffenrot, around 15 minutes from Freiolsheim. We do have a professional researcher from that village - he also has a female Sigwarht-ancestro - who is member of this comunity, i will forward him your message to reply,i assume, he can help.

As you see on my homepage, i already got a bunch of the Sigwarth-line in the area of Mikolajewice, but i run into the privacy-restriction (100 years after death), so i would be more then happy to get some support, to have lookups at polish side, in case, they support such family-researches. Do you have contacts i can ask for ? The Genetka side - which is a fabulous help - ends 1916...

At "myheritage.com" there are some enrries for "Zygward", especially from Szymon Szymcak, Aleksandra Salagacka, Lukasz Swit, they keyed in family information, but they never replied to my requests. They could help us to set up contact to living family members, which would help a lot !
By the way: Do you know, when exactly your Barbara was born ? i miss the exact date, only got the year and i was not able to set up another lookup-date at the Moosbronn church

Robin

Robin, I am amazed you know Geneteka!
Unfortunately there is no better place to search than the Geneteka. The other possibility is to go to the City Archiv and spend hours to look thru the archives. It is very time consuming and in the end I even tried to find some professional to do it for me for cash, but I didn`t find any.

I dont think there is a 100-years privacy restriction. I was pretty sure it is "only" 50 years in Poland. And the Geneteka is still under construction. More data are flowing in all the time, thats why You got no newer data. No matter it was 50 or 100 I suppose things may change after the new law imposed from 25. May. It is a pan-European law, so I suppose we will got the same regulations soon in both countries. I am not sure what will gonna change regarding the geneaology and protection of data od deceased people...

You do not need to forward the data I told you before, ie. that advertisement, I just thought You would like to know that some of the families still live here, but it looks like You know it very well. I thought I would provide some interesting informations for You, but now I see You know more than me! I should have know that running a site like that, having such a detailed geneaology tree and so on

So Cyriaks were first in Poland... they might have checked it all for the otheres and told to come.

I can tel You why admins of the trees from myheritage.com site never replied... I got similar problem. I see many data I would like to check there but I got no full/premium account there and cannot reply or even check the trees I am sooo interested in. It is not that I would not like to pay... I hacve read so many so bad things about that company that I just fear to pay them in case they will charge more than expected or use the payment data to charge more in the future. I suppose the same may be with people you tried to contact.
If you got any other contact in polish (mail, phone, address) I could try to help You. But with a contact from the myheritage.com is probably a dead end.

Unfortunately I do not know Barbara`s date of birth.

well, no need to appologize, this group is not professional, there are some people that are running their hobby more professional, some don`t. Some spent more time, some less. So after i found the entry at the emigration papers of Cyriak, i was told, the family vanished. I thought so too, until i got that information that their name changed to Zygward. Thankts to Genetka and the the support from Facebook (the group genealogy translations) i was able to translate the polish and russian churchbooks.
Also on Facebook i found one of the myheritage-researchers, we had a short communication, but then he stopped replying. very sad. Setting up the contact to living family members could help, so i wonder, why he isn`t that enthusiastic then me, finding family members, even if you put your datas on the web in the hope, to find someone.
Anway, search goes on.

and, by the way, dont register on myheritage.com. i did and most of the datas are just copy-paste between non-confirmed datas. even if you paid, you dont get access to some familytrees, most of them were still locked by the members. Just waist of money.

robin

Hahaha and again You are a step ahead of me !

With so much new data about the Mikolajewice and many families there form Baden I started to search once again... and I have found that Siegwarth may be written down as Zygwart in polish. And then... I have found a post from this year, which is probably Yours post:
http://www.genpol.com/index.php?module=Tablica&show_id=12682&page=5

Somebody named as You, from Germany as well... so I got it really is You, asking about Zygwart`s... and... you are asking about also my great grandfather !
Because Theodor Hubert is my great grandfather. In polish it is Teodor.
I didnt know he was married with Amalia Zygwart in 1900, but I may confirm it is him. It also confirms the data in Geneteka are still being improved. Several years ago there were no data of such marriage available there.
Teodor as I said is my great grandfather, however Amalia Zygwart is not my great grandmother. He was married four times, and his last, fourth wife was my great grandmother.
Teodor`s grave still exists in Lodz and my family is taking care of it. Also I got his photo, a very old one, but still It is him. I am not sure he got any children from the first marriage, I will have to investigate it.

Well... So again Siegwarth`s in my story!

Regarding the cold/short conversation with somebody from myheritage found in facebook... Well, I think I can explain it. But please dont blame me for the unpleasant news... We, in Poland, got now really at least "unfortunate" government. In my opinion it is badly nationalist government. They spill their hatred to the nation, which was open for strangers and foreigners so far. Oh well.. being open for strangers was a part of polish culture!
But the government now play the game exactly as in Russia - they try to find enemies outside the country. Having enemies is to be able to say: we will defend you from them. It is easier and simplier to govern with the fears. And the best enemy is of course a country which started the Second World War. I feel none of our neighbours likes Poland now. And I really don`t blame them. I really understand them. And If I said this aloud here in Poland I would be pointed out as unpatriotic individual. Even though I am a Pole and I am proud of it.

Somehow, which is totally not understandable for me, more than half of Poles support that sick political vision of Poland as a besieged castle... So, again, don`t blame me for saying this, but If you were ie. from Sweden or from Spain, that man would probably liked to talk to You more than when You are from Germany It is so - sorry for the proper word - fucking sick and sad. But it really looks like that and If you talked with such a person (who believes in the "official propaganda" ), then the outcome would be understandable.
The good news at least is that in bigger cities, especially in Lodz, the party wchich formed government is not supported as much.

hi,
well, thats funny, that your family is linked twice to the Si(e)gwart(h)s, once with Barbara and second with "my" polish branch with your grandfather.
i do understand the worry about the germans, we did not bring luck into the world twice, our generation only has the chance to learn from the mistakes of the past. So we have to accept the behavour of our neighbours.
I personaly understand some of the views of your politicians, but politics we better cut off here:lol:

by the way, i got an idea. In case you are right, it might help, if someone from Poland contacts the people, this might bring up more trust and the outcome we are looking for. would you mind in trying ?

Robin

But of course
I understand you got my email, as an admin of this site. Just sent me link to the one you would like to ask about Siegwarths and tell me what should I ask for.
Also - feel invited to Lodz - holidays are coming, and you got Your personal tour guide now (except I am not a tour guide, but I may try)