I felt exactly the same way, but I've changed my point of view from what I considered my own "fox-and-the-grapes" tale. Just because my peasant farming family "couldn't" be nobility - "the grapes were probably sour anyway." In the meantime, I was able to encourage my Polish family (that I met only after a personal visit to my grandmother's home village) to help me fill in the blanks with information about my poor peasant farmers and their more economically successful children and grandchildren of today. Using "Polish Roots" as a guide, I was able to correspond with the gmina in Buczkowice and found more information about my poor peasant farmers going back to the turn of the last century. And then with the assistance of a hired researcher who went back into the 1800 and 1700 parish church records, I found even more information about these so-called poor peasant farmers who acquired large (for that era) tracts of land shortly after the end of serfdom. I also learned there were several KANIA surnames included among those eligible for inclusion as "nobles" -- not in the British sense of the word, but through some act of kindness or good deed to the nobles of that region. The existence of KANIA among several legitimate "coats of arms" combined with the realization that large tracts of land were part of the 1700s family line of my ancestors does not (on its own) mean I can start considering my family legitimately a part of Polish nobility. HOWEVER, it does raise enough curiosity on my part to want to continue digging deeper to see if the Nobel line of KANIA and the Poor Peasant Farmers line of KANIA have any common ancestors. The comment "I've never understood why anyone cares whether their ancestors were noble..." can best be answered (in my case) in one word -- CURIOSITY. From what I understand, in order to qualify for a coat of arms, a rather detailed genealogical record must be submitted. IF there is a common thread between those two lines of KANIAs (the noble crossing with the poor peasant farmers) -- there COULD be a beautiful cache of information that COULD take a branch of my family tree through a rather fascinating forest of information that I would never know because I turned away because the "grapes were probably sour anyways." Isn't that what motivates us researching our family trees to begin with? CURIOSITY. -- Alan On May 20, 2008, at 11:08 AM, Barbara wrote: > Hi Fred, > Thank you for the information, and for your web site, again it was > very > interesting. I read the article and towards the end I read " I've > never > understood why anyone cares whether their ancestors were noble; so > I'm not > going to criticize you." I thought about that for a few seconds but > did a > quick search for my family name, then I thought, I never thought > about this > before so why think of it now , so I quit. I don't need a crest or > coat of > arms to tell me about my family, I'm proud of them, and proud to be > Polish. I have birth and marriage records back to 1760 from their > tiny > village, their deaths records here in the US and tons of information > in > between. They were poor farmers, coal miners and railroad > workers.................if there could be a coat of arms for my > family it > would state "adventurous, loving, brave, and sacrificing", and > believing > that, that's good enough for me. > Now to get it all my findings in order I will be happy. > Thank you again