Galician Trails: The Forgotten Story of One Family
Page 13
Farmland that the Sobolewskis tilled themselves and would later lease to others was found in a few locations spanning the boundaries of Bohorodczany and Lachowce. One was just behind Ignatius’s family compound in an area called Lachowce Fields (Lachowce Łany), which could easily be reached by going through a small gate and crossing a working area behind the house. The soil there was rather poor, and it allowed mainly the planting of oats, which were grown on several rectangular fields.16 Additional plots of farmland belonging to the family sat on the other side of a small country road, in Lachowce. There were also other, smaller fields owned by the Sobolewski brothers further west, in the area that locals called “Beyond the Stebnik,” denoting a stream of that name that passed through the area.
Map showing the Sobolewski family fields in Lachowce, near their domestic compounds in Bohorodczany. (Section of a cadastral map from 1848.)
Sobolewski men, for the most part, married early—around the age of 20— and a string of children usually followed, implying that most of these men had somehow been able to avoid long military service. Did some members of the clan seek other career opportunities in those times? If they did, these attempts must have been rather sporadic, and any resulting positions, at best, temporary. We will have to wait approximately one hundred years before seeing a sustained break of any Sobolewskis from their ancestral lands.
Of the three Sobolewski brothers whom we have mentioned, Ignatius died first, in 1817. A few years later Joannes, who had never married (caelibis nobilis) and had continued to live with Ludovicus’s family, passed on in 1822.17 Without getting too far ahead of our story, let us note that the last of their generation to go was Ludovicus, who died in 1835.
In an era without modern healthcare, this was an unusually strong and healthy family. All of them seemed to live to a very old age; Sophia’s and Ludovicus’s records have each of them more than 100 years old at the time of death. But we should quickly be reminded that the sense of time and the perception of age were certainly different then than they are today. The documents we take for granted now were nonexistent; thus, it is quite possible that a decade or two were added to actual ages after a death, either by a distraught family member or by a less-than-inquisitive Dominican friar making entries in official records.18
Despite Bohorodczany’s location in the far eastern part of Galicia, the Sobolewski family came into contact with many newcomers who arrived in the area from other parts of the Austrian Empire or even from beyond its borders. There were German-speaking farmers (colonistas) coming to town from their nearby settlements, which bore foreign-sounding names such as Landestreu and Ugartshal. Even the village of Horocholina, which bordered some of the Sobolewskis’ land, had a sizable population of farmers from Bohemia or Germany. Over the course of a few generations, many of them became Polonized and integrated into the local society, like the Schüssel family, with roots somewhere in Bohemia, who lived next to the Sobolewski compound. In contrast to future xenophobic attitudes that would fuel ethnic tensions, those were times of friendly contacts between the new arrivals and their neighbors—including the Sobolewskis.
Living in a small community also meant that the Sobolewskis became linked through marriage with several other families from Bohorodczany. Expectedly, when going over years of records, we can easily find Polish-sounding names for young brides marrying Sobolewski men (Kaszubinska, Machowska). But the diversity of this place is quickly evident when we notice other sorts of names, both those of new brides and those of friends recorded as witnesses. Names of German origin (Ernest, Herman, Kühn) mix with Ruthenian names (Semianow) and, on rare occasion, Jewish-sounding ones (Feyerl and Baumann, from Bohemia). These were all new spouses joining the extended Sobolewski family in the early part of the nineteenth century. The same was true for daughters of the Sobolewski clan. Thus, it did not come as a surprise when one year a young woman, Theresia Sobolewska, married her next-door neighbor, Mathias Schüssel, a weaver (textoris).19 Others wed men with Ruthenian-sounding names (Halawaj, Martyniec) and then, on occasion, followed Greek Catholic religious rites. Daily interactions among neighbors, intermarriages, and frequent participation in each other’s family celebrations speak of a remarkable harmony between Poles, such as the Sobolewski family, and the larger group of Ruthenians living in Bohorodczany. This was in stark contrast to the real or sometimes inflated (for political reasons) ethnic tensions that would later surface in eastern Galicia.20
There were other visitors and new settlers in the area. From time to time, a soldier from a Hungarian military regiment was stationed there; or a newcomer born in the province of Moravia, on the other side of the Carpathian Mountains, was married in a local church with members of the Sobolewski family as witnesses.21 With its multiethnic composition, the Austrian Empire had brought a period of tolerance that allowed for even such unusual events as the marriage of a Lutheran couple in a Catholic church. Perhaps an inconspicuous note about this particular wedding, buried among other more typical entries in Bohorodczany’s church register (liber copulatorum), signaled that a broader acceptance of different faiths was making slow but definite inroads in Galicia.22
The book of marriages from the Dominican church in Bohorodczany (dated 1715).
At many of these important events, Sobolewskis signed their full names in their own hand. Others, however, must have been less comfortable with writing, as they depended on clerks to register their full names. On those occasions, “occupation” would be entered in the record books as rural gentry (nobilis agricola); but that term was slowly giving way to a more general description of who they really were—small, independent landowners (possessori liberi fundum). Times were changing; young men from the farming nobility were tying the knot with daughters of shoemakers and blacksmiths, with much less attention being paid to titles. With the exception of Jewish neighbors who, until the next century (with rare exception) remained off-limits for marriage, ethnic background seems not to have been particularly relevant. Certainly, the completely free choice of a husband or wife was still generations ahead; but a healthy dose of pragmatism was part of the social fabric that helped people manage the land and raise families in this farming community.
A tumultuous time surrounded the birth of Antonius Sobolewski, Ludovicus’s son, in March 1805. Within a few years of that event, Napoleon and his armies had pushed east, marching through the land that had formerly belonged to Poland. This was the same year that Mathias Lösch arrived in Wieliczka, in the western part of Galicia, as part of Austria’s wider attempt to respond to Napoleonic expansion near its borders. But the ultimate prize for the French armies was the conquest of Russia. War came closer to Bohorodczany in 1809 when nearby Stanislawow was overtaken by a small detachment of cavalry loyal to Napoleon’s cause. Without much fighting, the Austrian garrison laid down their arms and fled in haste.
Suddenly, in towns of the region freed from Austria, calls for citizens’ militias were coupled with a grandiose plan for establishing the first Galician-French military unit. Over the course of a few weeks of patriotic fervor brought by dreams of statehood, mounted and armed members of the rural nobility were to arrive for active duty. Those unable to serve were expected to furnish foot soldiers in numbers corresponding to the size of their landholdings. Every man counted, and free peasants were called into scythe-armed regiments. But after less than two months, local plans for joining Napoleon came to a screeching halt when Austrian troops retook the area.23 Even with Austrian sovereignty quickly reestablished in Stanislawow and the surrounding area, the period of tension must have lasted for months. The military garrison that was stationed in Bohorodczany suffered losses; its young soldiers were dying under suspicious circumstances that year. Whether this reflected the simmering of the pro-French insurgency or rather common but deadly military accidents will most likely never be known.
Were Sobolewskis directly affected by these events? Perhaps because they lived in a small town south of the major theater of war, they may have remaine
d (except for the few months of the “Galician-French” dream) for the most part shielded from the storm that engulfed other parts of Europe. We do not know the answers to these questions, but we can notice in passing an officer with the surname Sobolewski who served gallantly in a squadron of Napoleon’s Guard. Fighting against charging Cossacks somewhere on the eastern front, he distinguished himself for bravery against an overwhelming enemy force. Unfortunately, not much else can be said about this man, as neither his first name nor his place of birth was recorded.24
A few years later, when Napoleon’s threat to European order had been eliminated, life in Bohorodczany returned to its rural rhythm. House 26 was full of growing children. In time, the girls moved out to follow new husbands, whereas married Sobolewski boys tended to remain in the family compound with their wives and children, at least for a while. Once again, house 26 became a multifamily nest; it must have benefited from plenty of helping hands but offered much less privacy than we expect today.
Sometime in 1824, 19-year-old Antonius Sobolewski married local girl Anastasia Kaszubinska. An unusually long gap between their wedding and the birth of their first child is surprising at first; it is likely explained by Antonius’s misfortune of being drafted into the Austrian army. In those days, a long military service, generally starting at age 20, could keep men away from their homes for up to a decade. Ultimately, however, Antonius and Anastasia would have nine children between 1838 and 1853. Like the offspring of prior generations, most of these would remain in Bohorodczany. In due course, they would establish their own families, which would join scores of cousins in the quickly growing extended Sobolewski family.
Antonius’s and Anastasia’s son Andreas Sobolewski had been born in 1848. This was another period of turmoil in the empire; this time, the country would be shaken by troubles both inside and outside the borders of Galicia, threatening the very survival of the regime. But Bohorodczany would be again shielded from many of these events. Even the violence of the Galician Slaughter, which had taken place a couple of years before, would for the most part be considered a faraway event. Yet life did not spare the Sobolewski family from adversities closer to home.
Tragically, records suggest that Anastasia, Andreas’s mother, died not long after her last son was born, in late December 1853. As in the life story of Michaël Regiec of western Galicia, who lost his wife in similar circumstances, the widowed Antonius, with so many children, remarried quickly, in 1855. This was most likely a marriage of pragmatism rather than passion; Antonius was 51 years of age and his second wife, Anna Ernest, was a 45-year-old widow. Anna’s family had been established for a long time in Bohorodczany. They had emigrated from Germany in the eighteenth century, and some of their men had been involved in the construction of the Dominican church.25
Predictably, Andreas’s childhood was spent in the family compound, and at the age of 25, he married young Anna Machowska. Hers was one of the oldest families in Bohorodczany; their names are found in records dating back to the early eighteenth century. Anna was only 16; in accordance with local tradition, she was ready for marriage, but the couple required special permission from her father, Joannes Machowski. The church rolls contain the text of the approval, written by a Dominican friar and signed by the father of the bride with only an x.
This turned out to be a long and fertile union: Andreas and Anna had 12 children between 1875 and 1900. Many of their offspring were born in the ancestral home, number 26; they were the last generation that would be. Their parents must have had a special fondness for the name Ludovica, after Ludovicus Sobolewski, who had started this large branch of the family. Unfortunately, two girls given that name, born almost 20 years apart, did not survive beyond the first few years of life. As happened in almost all families at that time, several of the children (four altogether) would die shortly after birth.26
In the records of new arrivals in the Sobolewski family, Andreas’s occupation is noted as either farmer (agricola) or baker (panifex). The godparents at baptisms of his children, and the witnesses at weddings of the next generation of Sobolewskis, included local cousins, his wife Anna’s relatives, and numerous others. For the first time, the next generation of the Sobolewski family can be seen by us with greater focus—often through pictures, and records other than entries in church registers. Paradoxically, however, the lives of some of them will become more difficult to describe, as we try to understand not only their journeys through time and place but also the reasons for the many changes that were to come.
With a quickly growing household, the Sobolewski family eventually came to need more space. We also suspect that the wooden house 26 that had stood for more than a century and had been home to four generations was coming to the end of its useful life. Sometime after 1898, Anna and Andreas and their many children moved to a new dwelling, given the number 546. A couple of surviving photos show a wooden house with a small porch and a few steps in the front. Modest by the standards of today, this house was nevertheless a symbol of the family’s financial independence. When a few years later arson fires would plague the wealthy families of Bohorodczany, apprehensive discussions must have filled many evenings around the Sobolewskis’ dinner table. Whether due to luck or some well-planned preemptive steps, this family house would remain safe.27
AMONG THE MANY CHILDREN of Andreas and Anna Sobolewski, Franciscus, my grandfather, was their sixth. He was born on November 15, 1885. We might wonder if his parents were concerned about his health; if so, that might explain his recorded baptism on the same day as his birth. Or perhaps there is a simpler explanation: a friar’s simplifying the records, as all newly born children on this particular page of the liber natorum have baptismal dates that match their birthdates. The register identifies as godparents of the infant Franciscus Alexander Swirski, a blacksmith; and his wife, Apolonia, related to the boy’s maternal grandmother. Alexander must have been a good friend of the parents, as over the years he was asked to be godfather to several of their many children.
Like his brothers and sisters, Franciscus received a basic education at the local elementary school. His early years were apparently uneventful, but soon an important decision was to be made about his future. It was something like reaching a fork in the road. There was a real possibility that Bohorodczany would remain Franciscus’s entire world, as it had for Andreas, Antonius, and Ludovicus Sobolewski before him. Or would he have a chance of turning in a new direction? The signs were clear that living off the land was becoming less attractive for the Sobolewski children, and new opportunities were opening up. Sure enough, in 1901, Franciscus and his cousin Stanislaus went on to high school and teachers’ college in Stanislawow. These boys were lucky, because Franciscus’s older brother Antonius had recently moved to that town after being hired by the railroad. This must have provided some sense of security for the two country boys.
Stanislawow. The teachers’ college attended by Franciscus Sobolewski from 1901 to 1904. (Postcard from the early twentieth century.)
Surviving pictures of Franciscus’s siblings provide a glimpse that an intergenerational change had been set in motion. The Sobolewski family’s long tradition of earning its social position from owning and leasing ancestral lands was fading away. The pictures show smartly dressed and sophisticated-looking young people who clearly no longer worked with the soil. Rather than repeating patterns of the past, two Sobolewski sisters would marry men who earned their livings in new professions. Franciscus’s brother Michael was poised for a career in civil service; other siblings also tried their luck far beyond their familiar fields.28 Soon, Sobolewskis from various branches of the extended family would appear on the scene, occupying new professions—including accountant in the magistrate office of neighboring Stanislawow and physician in a different part of Galicia.29 One can only wonder if Andreas and Anna, the parents of Franciscus, were supportive or apprehensive about their children’s chosen paths—into adulthoods that would be so different from their own life journeys.
Michael Sobolewski (1883–1907) in a picture from 1904.
The month of July 1904 turned out to be quite important for the entire family. Happy news arrived first: Franciscus and his cousin had successfully passed their oral and written examinations and graduated from the teachers’ college.30 Franciscus could now return home, but in a break from tradition, he was no longer expected to tend to or even administer family land. And there was other news of concern to the family. During that same month, Antonius Sobolewski, the oldest of the Sobolewski brothers, petitioned a local court in Bohorodczany about a minor legal matter. Not surprisingly, the papers were filed in Polish; but when the court reply came in Ruthenian, Antonius’s emotions flared up.
In those times of growing ethnic sensitivities, language was often used to impose national identity or signal dominance of one group over another. Despite its status as one of the official languages of Galicia, German was often frowned upon by Poles when it was used in public. Ruthenians, in turn, had tried to assert their rights by increasing the use of their own language when interacting with the Polish-dominated civil administration. Yet Poles growing alarmed about the prospect of loosing ground in eastern Galicia jealously guarded against any attempts of making their mother tongue less relevant. In this context, Antonius viewed the court reply in a “foreign” language as an affront. As often happens when emotion overtakes reason, the initial legal matter became irrelevant and was quickly forgotten. The imagined slight became the issue, harsh words were said, complaints were made, and judicial reports were hastily written. Suddenly, a judge in a small court in Bohorodczany perceived all the protests and the manner in which they’d been raised as contempt of court by a member of a rabble-rousing Polish family. Without wasting any time, he sentenced Antonius to three weeks in jail for offending an officer of the court. This, of course, only added to the minority Poles’ sense of victimization.