One of the things you need to do once you track down the origin of your Polish ancestors, is to search for an entry for the location in the S?ownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów s?owiańskich (or Geographic Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and Other Slavic Countries.)
According to a description of it on the “Genealogy of Halychyna/Eastern Galicia” website:
This massive collection took over 20 years to publish all 15 volumes. [15 volumes. 1880-1902.] The gazetteer was published when officially there was no Poland in existence. From 1772 to 1918, Poland was dominated by three empires: Austria (later known as Austria-Hungary), Russia and Prussia. The gazetteer contains a great wealth of information on cities, towns, and villages, as well as mountains, rivers, and other geographic points of interest in the lands that were once a part of the old Kingdom of Poland.
When I searched for the location that I was pretty positive was the origin location of my ZALEWSKI and LINDNER ancestors, Gottschalk or Gocza?ki, there were a few entries. But, after some searching I think I narrowed it down to one entry. The entry is located in Volume 2, Page 755 under Gocza?kowo. You can use the online search engine to find an entry, though you do need to install a document viewer plugin, but it works nicely.
The book gives amazingly detailed descriptions of even the smallest towns.
Here is the (somewhat) original entry in the dictionary for Gocza?kowo. There may have been some mistakes when they translated the characters in the book into electronic format.
I moved my translation entry over to its own post.
Send it to Monika.
I can try, but it’s not true Polish. There are a lot of old and no longer used words and places in it, plus a lot of it depends on how it’s used. The translation guides are very helpful.