Alan, Clearly, the peasants didn't like your family and chased them off their land. ;) Seriously, the family left the area (even emigrating) or they ran out of males hence, the surname died out. BTW Is it Migdal or Migdal~ ? Using Migdal there were a total of 178 in the country in 1990; none in BB. Debbie Alan J. Kania wrote: > Using the www.herby.com site for distribution of surnames prompts a > "curiosity" question on my part. I'm primarily search two family > surnames (and anyone else that surfaces to the top) in the area south > of Bielsko-Biala (Buczkowice and Lodygowice valley). I know that KANIA > is the ninth most common name in Poland and one of the primary areas > the surname is found is in the Bielsko-Biala area of Poland. So far so > good. According to "Herby" -- "BB" has 1,464 occurrences of KANIA out > of 22,434. There is one occurrence of Kaniaburka in that area > (obviously a Kania converted to the Muslim faith -- only joking). > > The other once prominent surname I am searching is MIGDAL. Even though > the surname does have Hebrew origins to it, I've been able to trace > that family back to the mid 1700s in the Lodygowice area and they were > definitely Roman Catholic in my family through that period. My > curiosity question stems from "Herby". Even though the MIGDAL family > were prominent land owners in the valley, there are NO Migdals that > show up on "Herby." Only one occurrence in the Bielsko-Biala for > MIGDALEK, one for MIGDALEWICZ and thirteen for MIGDALSKI. > > In the church records, the MIGDAL name (just as the KANIA name) > remains that way without any alteration. The same is indicated by the > gravestones in the Buczkowice cemetery -- KANIA is KANIA and MIGDAL is > MIGDAL. > > What happened to the MIGDALs? > > -- Alan

When I was watching the scene in Frankenstein when the villagers were chasing the monster with pitchforks and torches, my parents would say "Poor Grandpa Stashu." The Migdal (yes, with the slash through the last letter) and the Kania families were supposed to be major land owners in the valley. Iwona is working on that. The large families led to dividing the property into smaller and smaller tracts of land until what was left ended up being suburban-sized house lots with barely enough room for a backyard garden. It makes sense that people of my grandmother's age would have taken their chances and migrated to America. Right now I'm mushing my brain to pulp with a deadline for another book project (dueat the end of this month). When I'm finished (with a little luck, I may have it done by the end of this week), I'll rekindle my Ancestry.com subscription and start looking for any Migdal~ or Migdal folks that may have immigrated from the Buczkowice/ Lodygowice valley. It may open a whole new branch of the family. I'll see if Iwona wants to take on this new branch of her research (going through copies of the Lithuanian family records). She's currently on a four-week tour of Poland with an American researcher. Hopefully she'll only charge me an hourly fee since I'm sending her print-outs of the microfilm plus .tiff files of the individual scans. -- Alan On Jul 22, 2008, at 2:19 PM, Debbie Greenlee wrote: > Alan, > > Clearly, the peasants didn't like your family and chased them off > their land. ;) > > Seriously, the family left the area (even emigrating) or they ran out > of males hence, the surname died out. > > BTW Is it Migdal or Migdal~ ? Using Migdal there were a total of 178 > in the country in 1990; none in BB. > > Debbie