Dear Barb: These days I'm normally too busy to do this, but two of the names you gave caught my attention (see below) and I thought I could quickly give some clarification. In the end, though, I took the "bait" and researched it for you at length, as you'll see below: > > Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:35:24 -0500 > From: "Barb & Spence Gludish" <gludish@rogers.com> > Subject: [PBS] Hujsko Dombromil Poland > To: <polandbordersurnames@rootsweb.com> > Message-ID: <B05C69AC1B1345F3A9FB6211022EAC6E@BarbPC> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > I am looking for some direction. > > I have anecdotal info that a Ukrainian relative was born in 1911 in > Weiska??? near Hujsko Dombromil Poland. He indicated to family that > he fled to Canada to to avoid conscription into the army but was > worried about reprisals to his family left behind > Although he spoke Ukrainian and indicated that was his heritage he > associated with Polish assistance groups when he arrived in Toronto > Canada in 1926. > He changed his name and I have no knowledge of the original family > name or details about the birth family. > Was there a town call Weiska? My spelling may be wrong. Wiejska would be a common Polish street name, meaning 'of / from / to the village'. As rendered in Ukrainian it might be вейска, which could be transliterated as Weiska and pronounced "vay-ska". Google Maps yielded no town name results for Wiejska, Poland, only streets. Dombromil would be either Polish Dąbromil (the hook-bottomed "a" = "om") or Ukrainian Добромиль (Dobromyl'). The latter can be located by entering "Dobromyl, Starosambirs'kyi, L'vivs'ka oblast, Ukraine" on Google Maps. and appears to be famous among Catholic church historians for its Basilian monastery. It is near the border with Poland. Searching Google Maps for Hujsko, Poland yields a hit for a tiny locality named Nowe Sady, south of Przemysl, an ethnically mixed city, both near the Polish-Ukrainian border, not all that far away from Dobromyl', Ukraine. No result for Hujsko in present-day Ukraine, but back in 1911 both Dobromyl' and Hujsko/Nowe Sady, Poland would have been part of Galicia, the Austrian partition of Poland. Between WWI and WWII, both would have been part of Poland. It's possible that this is your town and that Гуйско (Hujsko) got renamed Nowe Sady at some point because of an unfortunate resemblance to a very vulgar word in its Polish spelling (but not to the corresponding vulgar word in its Ukrainian spelling), due to the discrepancies between etymological correspondences & modern pronunciations of the consonants /g/, /h/, and the guttural sound spelled "ch" in Polish and "x" in Ukrainian. I did a regular google search on Гуйско Добромиль and found one hit, for volume 17 of the Ethnographic Digest (or Collection) (Etnografichnyj Zbirnyk) published by the Ethnographic Commission of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (Etnografichna Komisija Naukovoho Tovarystva imeny Shevchenka) in 1905 in L'viv (Lwów): http://books.google.com/books?id=WGcKAQAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PR11&lpg=RA1-PR11&dq=гуйско+добромиль&source=bl&ots=68a3hh5G_e&sig=2pSNX1V6QCvMVOp7AlPRMTyR7uI&hl=en&ei=e0FmS-72NcSf8Aa_3dyKAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ve d=0CAcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=гуйско%20добромиль&f=false In this volume, a collection of folksongs (Kolomyjky, Kolomyjka in the singular), author Volodymyr Hnatiuk provides a list of villages from which songs were recorded, and Гуйско is one of them. It is then listed as belonging to the povit (in Polish, powiat, roughly equivalent to our county) of Dobromyl'. I looked up Nowe Sady in Polish Wikipedia (English version had too little info) and confirmed that the town's name was changed from Hujsko in 1957: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowe_Sady_(województwo_podkarpackie) So I think that's probably your town, Hujsko in the pre-WWI county of Dobromil (Polish name) / Dobromyl' (Ukrainian name); the new name translates as "New Gardens". It's now in the powiat of Przemysl. Brian McHugh, South Jersey / Philadelphia > Did this area change from Polish to Ukrainian control and back again > over time? > What port would he arrive from? > I would appreciate any help > Cheers > Barb in Toronto > >