Re: Mianowo in Andrzejewo Parish and surrounding area

dnowicki — Thu Aug 06, 2020 4:22 pm

Author: dnowicki

Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2020 4:22 pm

jmd75 wrote:

Does anyone know anything about this region from late 1880's to early 1900's? I know it is in Mazowieckie and was part of the Russian partition and was a farming community. My great-grandfather was born in Mianowo in 1880 and immigrated in 1902. His father was a day laborer and the family seemed to move around a bit within the parish and for a time they seem to have been in Czyzew before returning to Andrzejewo parish in Ruskeleko. It looks like my great-grandfather was also working as a day laborer farmer before he left Poland as well. I know very little about him and am trying to get a feel for what his life was like there. I have not found a lot of information online but I have used Google Earth to look at Mianowo and I can see it is still a small community with a few farms and fields. If anyone can share any information about this area and what life for my great-grandfather may have been like there I would appreciate it! Many thanks!

Hi,

I have no personal knowledge of the village of Mianowo and environs but I can point you to some resources which describe the area and its history. A prime source for info about locations in the three regions of partitioned Poland is the Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich. It is a geographical dictionary in 15 volumes published from 1880 to 1914. It contains listings and descriptions for pretty much every location in Poland. Here is the link for Mianowo: http://dir.icm.edu.pl/pl/Slownik_geograficzny/Tom_VI/286 (Your village is 2. M in the entry)
The highlights of the entry are that Mianowo was both a village and a manorial farmstead (folwark) and was located on the Little Brok River (Brok mały). The entry lists the succession of the owners of the village and manorial farmstead. Entries often list the number of houses and the population of the village but, unfortunately, not in this case.

A site which describes the parish of Andrzejewo along with its history is at this link: https://andrzejewo.info/ Both these resources are in Polish and if you don’t read the language, I would imagine that Google Translate should give you the gist of the articles. The picture of the parish church is of the structure which replaced an earlier wooden church building in which your great grandfather would have been baptized.

The fact that your great-grandfather and his father were day laborers who moved around a bit is tied up with the history of the Russian Partition. In 1861 Czar Alexander II emancipated the peasant serfs throughout the Russian Empire. In decrees during and following insurrections in Russian controlled Poland in 1863 Alexander instituted land reforms in which peasants were supposed to gain ownership and control of their land. This was supposed to decrease the number of landless peasants. Although some benefits resulted immediately following the land reform decrees, the long term result was an increase in the number of landless peasants rather than a decrease. Thus many peasants in the Russian Partition moved from one village to another in search of work.

The term “day laborer” as used in Poland during the 19th Century derives from the Latin “mercenarius” or one who works for a wage, which was rather different from how peasants were employed before emancipation. Day laborers could easily be described as what we know as “seasonal” or temporary employees as opposed to being like men who congregate in the parking lot of a Home Depot store hoping to find a contractor who will hire them for the day. Another way to describe the 19th Century day laborers would be in terms of part-time help who are not entitled to benefits and have limited or no employment security. The reality of life for a landless peasant in Russian Poland during the final decade of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th Centuries didn’t just cause peasants to move around in search of employment but was a large part of reason for an increase in emigration—thus the large number of Polish immigrants to the USA and to other countries.

The attachment is a map of powiat Ostrowski from 1907.

I hope this provides a starting point for your further research into what life was like for your ancestors in Russian controlled Poland.

Wishing you successful research,

Dave

Mianowo in Andrzejewo Parish and surrounding area

jmd75 — Tue Aug 04, 2020 4:17 pm

Author: jmd75

Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2020 4:17 pm

Does anyone know anything about this region from late 1880's to early 1900's? I know it is in Mazowieckie and was part of the Russian partition and was a farming community. My great-grandfather was born in Mianowo in 1880 and immigrated in 1902. His father was a day laborer and the family seemed to move around a bit within the parish and for a time they seem to have been in Czyzew before returning to Andrzejewo parish in Ruskeleko. It looks like my great-grandfather was also working as a day laborer farmer before he left Poland as well. I know very little about him and am trying to get a feel for what his life was like there. I have not found a lot of information online but I have used Google Earth to look at Mianowo and I can see it is still a small community with a few farms and fields. If anyone can share any information about this area and what life for my great-grandfather may have been like there I would appreciate it! Many thanks!

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Re: Mianowo in Andrzejewo Parish and surrounding area

Mianowo in Andrzejewo Parish and surrounding area