Hi I’m from America but my family immigrated from Poland my dad has had our family coat of arms but we know very little about it I was wondering if anyone could provide us with any information

24 comments

  2. You should look around parishes and city archives around where your family is from (parish in the village, and archives in the nearest city). There’s no real “popular aristocracy” in Poland, due to, well 20th century:)

  3. Don’t get your hopes up. In late sixteen hundreds about 10% of the Polish population was considering themselves as gentry /nobility. Most of them was poor and had nothing beside the title and a scimitar.

  5. Ask them:

    http://szlachta.org.pl/

    Also it’s largely unimportant nowadays. Given the way szlachta treated most of our national and those surrounding us, you could say that they’re even despised to some degree.

  6. As somebody mentioned you might check parish records, but since they would be located in the lands occupied by the Soviets I wouldn’t get my hopes up.

    Also, if the thought of coming from the noble family is precious to you, you probably don’t want to fig around to much, since it wasn’t uncommon for serfs to take up the name of their former master.

  7. that’s the crest of the Bohuszevic family (read bo-hu-she-vits) and it seems like “paratus et fidelis” is the family motto (it means “readiness and faith” in latin)

  8. You are not polish, but rather Lithuanian, or Litvinian(Litvin), Belarusian nobility.

  11. Seems like your ancestors were of House Bohuszewicz, with Gozdawa coat of arms. Here’s a Wiki article [https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gozdawa_(herb_szlachecki)](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gozdawa_(herb_szlachecki)) it even got English version. Afaik Bohuszewicz were Polonized Ruthenian (so, old Belarussian / Ukrainian) nobility. Rather minor house, definitely not an aristocracy.

  13. That coat of arms looks… like weird (westernized?) version of Gozdawa coat of arms.

  14. Being a noble in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth wasn’t really prestigious. From collected data around 8-10% of the population was a noble (szlachta). Compare it to France which had ~0.5% or England with 1.7 % (18 century). Most of the nobles in the PLC didn’t have land, and worked as servants to more wealthy nobles, they were called the lesser szlachta. You would have to look in archives of the villages, or surrounding cities where your ancestors are from. You can check where people with the surname Boguszewicz live on an government site (type in google: nlp.acaforte.pl) and start your search there, good luck!

  15. The fact that ur in the US means they prly weren’t very wealthy nobles.

  16. In the 70s I recall you would write to some outfit,send them a bit of money and they would send you a nice coat of arms with your name. Marketplace did a story on it, even got one for Stompin Tom.

  17. My family was a historically well known enough family that, when I was a child decades ago, we were able to arrange some special tours of a few well known historic sites. I think at this time my mother was given a book on the history of notable Tatar families (which was passed along to me) and it seems your family name is in there – I’ll try to include pictures below in comments, otherwise I’ll find a way to upload them later. Maybe someone whose Polish is better than mine would be able to translate it for you.

    https://preview.redd.it/i0wthjtn7oka1.jpeg?width=2268&format=pjpg&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=ca0dcfb8adec34d96a5f9334710935553d2dcfc9

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