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polishroots



Joined: 21 Feb 2020
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Location: United States

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Post Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2020 9:08 pm      Post subject: Official Document Surname Difference
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I am looking at two different people, both with the last name of Jock (my maiden name).

1. They first settled in Michigan, the first name John (father to Adam, husband to Stella), on a Marriage record wrote his last name as Jock on the upper half of the marriage license. Still, on the bottom half, the certificate wrote his last name as Zak (early 1931s). The families' immigration year may have been 1871.

2. The second, on naturalization paperwork through NY, stated that his last name is now Jock, but when he came over on the ship (unknown) and is unmarried.

Translation Dziok is pronounced how we say Jock; however, my grandfather told me about Zak match up. Finding Dziok has made me question everything that I know. When I search Dziok in the U.S., the name has remained, and the settlement is mostly in the New England area. The Jock family has settled in the Michigan area.

Is it quite possible that there are two branches of the same name? If this is the case, what point do I start looking for Dziok versus Zak? All the first names are crisscrossing among the surnames.


Jock:
Dziok
Zak

Considered:
Zok, but I haven't explored this idea yet.

Thank you all for your assistance,
Brandi
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mcdonald0517
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Post Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 3:40 pm      Post subject:
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Hello Brandi,

I am afraid I have more questions than answers:

1. You say you are looking at two people but only give the name of one. Is the NY Jock also John father of Adam and husband of Stella? Or does the NY Jock have different given name and relatives?

2. Is the Jock Family you are researching from Michigan? If so, why are you looking in New York?

3. What documents do you have for John Jock of Michigan? Do you know where he was born and when? Do you know where his parents were born and when? Do you know the village in Poland from which they came?

It is not uncommon for Polish surnames to change from their original spelling after immigrating to the US. But, The only way to determine if your ancestors changed their surname is to follow a document trail beginning in the US and going back to their origins in Poland. Then, hopefully, you can locate parish records for the broader family to see if other siblings immigrated to the US, settled in other areas, and perhaps changed the spelling of their surname.

If you can provide more details about what you know, what documents you already have, the community may be able to help. For example, I have seen documents (census, birth, marriage, death, etc) in Ancestry.com for John Jock Of Michigan that seems to place his family as coming from the Posen (Prussia) area of Poland in mid-late 1870s. Do you have these documents?

Best regards,
Cynthia
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polishroots



Joined: 21 Feb 2020
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Location: United States

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Post Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 6:32 pm      Post subject: Official Document Surname Difference
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Hi Cynthia,

Thank you for your reply. To answer your questions.

1. I only have information on John Jock (father Adam and wife Stella) and I have no information on John Dziok, hence why none was provided. The naturalization paperwork said that he wasn't married.

2. Some of the Jock family immigrated through New York and New Jersey. I am missing about 20 years of information on the family while they are in the US. The first time I see their names come up on documents is in the 1880 census in Michigan though some of them immigrated before that.

On many of the records that I have no specific village is given, it mostly says "Prussia" or "ger-Russia" or "Germania" or "ger-Poland" or "Austria" or "Germany", even. I will go back and look closer at the documents that do have the villages listed and do a traceback and see if that can be more of assistance.

I appreciate your reply!

Brandi
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mcdonald0517
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2021 12:10 am      Post subject:
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Hi Brandi,

Happy to help if I can.

I have been looking at your tree online and reviewing some documents. Finding their passenger lists will be difficult and even if you found it, the early passenger lists (1800s) had very little information.

The 1920 census for Adam Jock indicates his birth location as Posen Prussia. Posen (Poznań) was a very large area within the Prussian Partition of Poland. Now you need to find the name of his birth village.

Attached is the civil marriage record for Adam Jock. It indicates he was married on 30 Jan 1893 in Parisville, Michigan by a priest named Victor Rodowicz. I suggest you locate the church in Parisville where they married and request a copy of the church record. It may have the village of his birth and the Polish spelling of your surname - especially if they married in a Polish Catholic Church.

Best,
Cynthia



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mcdonald0517
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2021 3:35 pm      Post subject:
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Hi Again Brandi,

You may already have this.... an interesting history of St. Mary’s Polish parish in Parisville MI. Fr. Victor Rodowicz, who married Adam Jock, is mentioned in the article.

https://liturgicalcenter.org/media/parish_pdf/SAG/sag-17.1.pdf

Best,
Cynthia
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dnowicki
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2021 4:39 pm      Post subject:
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mcdonald0517 wrote:
Hi Brandi,

Happy to help if I can.

I have been looking at your tree online and reviewing some documents. Finding their passenger lists will be difficult and even if you found it, the early passenger lists (1800s) had very little information.

The 1920 census for Adam Jock indicates his birth location as Posen Prussia. Posen (Poznań) was a very large area within the Prussian Partition of Poland. Now you need to find the name of his birth village.

Attached is the civil marriage record for Adam Jock. It indicates he was married on 30 Jan 1893 in Parisville, Michigan by a priest named Victor Rodowicz. I suggest you locate the church in Parisville where they married and request a copy of the church record. It may have the village of his birth and the Polish spelling of your surname - especially if they married in a Polish Catholic Church.

Best,
Cynthia


Hi Brandi & Cynthia,

Th advice Cynthia gave about obtaining the ecclesiastical marriage record is one of the most reliable methods to find the Polish spelling of surnames and often of the place of birth and/or baptism of individuals born in Europe who married in the US. The church where Adam & Maggie (Margaret/Małgorzata) were married was St. Mary’s. The church still exists as one of the three churches used by th parish of St. Isidore. Here is a link to the parish contact info https://saginaw.org/parish/st-isidore-parish-parisville-ruth and here is a link to some background from a family genealogy page https://www.angelfire.com/mi3/ancestry/church.htm

However, there are some facts which may throw doubt on the availability of the record you would need. The parish and the region were plagued by fire on a regular basis. The church burned in 1871, 1881, and 1974. The rectory burned in 1902. Depending on whether the records were housed in the sacristy of the church or in the rectory and whether or not they were salvaged before the fire made their retrieval impossible the record you would need may or may not be extant. The best way to find out is to contact the church. It is certainly worth a shot. Since all the structures which burned were made of wood it would seem that the lesson of the 3 little pigs was valid—a wise person builds with brick or stone.

As far as the spellings on the surname are concerned, based on linguistics Jock is definitely out of the running as a Polish surname; Dziok is possible; Żak would be the best bet. The diacritical mark (the dot above the Z) results in a sound which in English could sound like Jock. In 1998 the number of individuals using the following surnames was as follows: Dziok (557), Zak (69), Żak (2020), Zok (460), and Żok (1079). Based on frequency, the odds favor Żak being the original spelling. But in the final analysis, all those spellings need to be considered. The critical key remains to be able to find a record on this side of the pond which contains the Polish spelling and, better yet, the place of birth. Civil records like census returns and the civil marriage license and return are generally of little value since the person entering the data was not familiar with the Polish language and thus “Americanized” spellings.

A final suggestion would be to find Adam’s naturalization papers if he was naturalized after 1906. If his father was naturalized while Adam was a minor he would have automatically become a US citizen by virtue of his father’s naturalization.

Wishing you success,

Dave
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mcdonald0517
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2021 7:22 pm      Post subject:
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Hi Brandi,

A couple of items as I have been reviewing documents:

1. You found one instance of the 1931 marriage return For John Jock showing the surname Zak. I also found a marriage document that lists “Mary Zak Jock” as the mother of the groom. Mary is the daughter of Joseph Jock son of John and brother of Adam. So this adds to Dave’s research and your own a bit more weight that their proper Polish surname could be Żak.

2. Have you pieced together the broader context of the information on the census records for 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920? By broader, I mean looking at all the entries on the page. I did just that and discovered that the brothers had farms near one another And are listed on the same census page. The brothers are: Joseph, Lara (Larry), Adam, and Michael. The birth dates and Other documents line up confirming they Are brothers. Larry is listed as Lara in the 1910 census which aligns with Lara in the 1880 census (maybe meant to be Lars?). The 1880 census taker mistakenly listed Lara as female Instead of male. Such mistakes often happened when scribing verbal reports.

3. Because all the brothers were born in Prussia, you can search through all of their documents - especially church marriage records and possibly naturalization records (if they were not naturalized with their father a John as children as Dave said.)

Hopefully, this broadens the possibility of locating the village and proper spelling of the surname.

Best,
Cynthia
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2021 7:47 pm      Post subject:
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Here is the marriage record of George Barnes (mother of groom Mary Zak Jock) so you can reference it. Again, Mary is the daughter of Joseph Jock Who is the son of John and brother of Adam Jock.


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