Gruszecki Surname, Peerage, List of
Noble Families
Having been born with a Polish surname like Gruszecki, it
has been interesting through the years to hear American English speakers murder
the pronunciation. It’s groo-zek-eee in
English, and groo-zshets-eee in Polish or Russian. Since Polish was the first language that I
heard from my mother, who was born there, the Slavic combined consonants that
twist American English speakers’ tongues come somewhat naturally to me.
I’ve always looked the name up when I travelled in the past,
but I could never find it in the phone books of any large cities like New York
City, London, Paris, Rome or various other large western cities. Until about the 1980’s when suddenly there
were Gruszeckis all over this and other countries. Someone, somewhere, “went and multiplied”.
I joined Ancestry.com several years back, and traced my
paternal and maternal lines back as far as I could, which meant as far back as
this country (Ellis Island, etc.), would allow.
The trail ended in Europe, at least as far as normal research was concerned. There was no way without accessing records
from Poland without going there, and even then, there were no guarantees, since
Nazis and Russians had both occupied that part of Poland, and it was dubious as
to what records still existed.
All of the above was several years ago. A recent dive into Ancestry.com revealed that
now, a raft of genealogical records were available in Poland in digital form,
online, since the Roman Catholic church had made available their birth,
marriage and death records going back for several centuries. The Gruszecki surname has primarily Catholic,
but also some Jewish roots. I was able
to trace the family lines in Poland back to the early 1800’s.
Another thing I recently found was that the Gruszecki name
Is rooted in Polish peerage, and derives from the knight Maciej – Chorąży, or
flag bearer, of the King of Poland Jogaila.
The King had given him the village Gruszka Duża, in eastern Poland, in
favor of knightly merit, in 1411, presumably after the definitive battle of
Grunwald, or Tannenberg, which defeated and drove back the Teutonic Knights.
The Gruszecki name appears in lists of both noble Polish and
Russian families. The Gruszecki coat of
arms:
Ray Gruszecki
April 28, 2019
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