The old saying goes you can’t judge a book by its cover. You can’t judge a book by its title either. Recently my parents found “The Iglinski Family Heritage Book” that once belonged to my Mom’s great-aunt Alice IGLINSKI. They told me it looked like a genealogical goldmine, a thick hardcover book filled with info.

They said it was written by a Beatrice BAYLEY. I was curious how she was connected to the family, given the uncommon surname. She must be related somehow. I was looking forward to comparing her painstaking research with my own two decades of work. Had she gone through Szemborowo records like I did? Did she find the Zamiara link?

A skeptic at heart – it’s my journalism background – I wasn’t convinced this was indeed a goldmine until I flipped through it and judged the book’s credibility. And as soon as I laid hands on it, it was disappointing.

The book was filled with generic fluff on American history, the Pilgrims, the Mayflower, and it was generally a guide to conducting your own genealogical research. (This was all the more ridiculous given our branch of the Iglinski family didn’t even arrive in America until 1891.)

Beatrice BAYLEY only dedicated a handful of pages in the center of the book on the Iglinski surname, supplying public information like first and last names of Iglinskis living in the United States with their mailing addresses. Each page had blanks for birthdate, parents, spouse, etc. – it was up to you to fill it out! She encouraged you to write to each of them and provided sample letters on what to say.

Perhaps marketing genius, at the same time it felt like poor Aunt Alice fell for a scam. Based on articles on these controversial Beatrice Bayley “Heritage Books” in the 1980s, she would have received a postcard teasing extensive research and insights to understanding the history of the Iglinski family. I can’t imagine how she must have felt when she received it. What a bummer.

Aunt Alice didn’t fill in any of the pages, but I was determined to give this a try. I went through each Iglinski mentioned, connected them to the family tree if I could, if I hadn’t already. And I realized, yes, I could easily fill out this book, then take it way further to form the actual story of the Iglinski family heritage.

Our Immigrant Ancestors: Ludwik, Katarzyna & Stanislaw Iglinski

This “Iglinski Family Heritage Book” makes no mention of Ludwik IGLINSKI, his wife Katarzyna (GACA) IGLINSKI, or their son Stanislaw IGLINSKI, who immigrated to the United States in April 1891.

Stanislaw was 5 years old at the time. His sisters Antonina & Wladyslawa were also aboard the ship. Our Iglinski’s American Dream began with this young family.

Alice was Stanislaw‘s youngest child. The book only named Iglinskis who were living in 1984, when the book was published.

At the time of immigration, they were from the province of Posen in the German Empire. Thanks to civil records going online in the last few years, I found the birth record for Stanislaw IGLINSKI. He was born on 19 October 1885 in Skorzencin, near Witkowo, and his parents are listed under the German version of their names, Ludwig & Catharina.

Of course, today this lies in modern-day Poland and they were certainly Polish. The Poznań Project has Stanislaw’s parents’ marriage record indexed. It states Ludwik IGLINSKI, son of Maciej IGLINSKI and Jozefa KOZIELSKA, married Katarzyna GACA, daughter of Jozef GACA and Anastazja WESOLEK, in 1884 at the Catholic parish of Ostrowite Prymasowskie.

Iglinski Family Origins in Szemborowo

A further examination of area church records led to the discovery of Ludwik’s baptism record in the parish of Szemborowo. This village of Szemborowo is where the Iglinski family has lived for more than a century, from the 1810s to the 1900s.

But prior to the 1810s, the surname is strangely absent from Szemborowo parish records. How could this be? Two brothers Wojciech (Adalbert) and Antoni IGLINSKI had families around the same time, but they appeared virtually out of nowhere, which didn’t make sense.

Even weirder, I couldn’t find a baptism record for Maciej IGLINSKI, Ludwik’s father. It seemed like he should have been born in Szemborowo Parish and somehow connected to one of these two brothers.

There were so many Iglinskis in Szemborowo though, especially in the mid-1800s. Many of the Iglinskis in North America, I later learned, including nearly all of them in “The Iglinski Family Heritage Book”, traced their origins to these Iglinskis of Szemborowo.

And then I realized why they were so elusive in the earlier records.

The Zamiara Family of Szemborowo

Closely examining the parish records of Szemborowo, I realized a crazy coincidence. There were brothers named Wojciech (Adalbert) ZAMIARA and Antoni ZAMIARA who lived in Szemborowo around the same time as Wojciech (Adalbert) IGLINSKI and Antoni IGLINSKI.

Then things got really weird. Their wives had the same names, Regina JALOSZYNSKA and Zofia KUBIAK. Burial records couldn’t be found for any of them under the ZAMIARA names, but burials were found under IGLINSKI. I studied the names of their children, the dates they appeared in records, and that’s when it all clicked.

They were the same people.

For some reason, the Zamiara brothers of Szemborowo adopted (or started appearing under) the Iglinski surname around the 1810s. That’s when I found Maciej ZAMIARA, born 27 January 1803 in Szemborowo, a perfect fit to be Maciej IGLINSKI. It was a match!

His father was Wojciech (Adalbert) ZAMIARA, alias IGLINSKI. Maciej’s siblings and 1st cousins (children of Antoni) were also first called Zamiara and then Iglinski in later records.

There are some important historical notes to keep in mind. Surnames were not well established in Poland until the middle part of the 1800s. Prior to that, it was possible for a person to appear under more than one surname, or without a surname at all. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this either. Check out the case of another one of my ancestors, Pawel KOSCIELNIAK, also known as Pawel MROZIK.

Alias surnames were a fairly common thing for Polish families around that time. An alias surname may have been used for estate or land reasons. Sometimes a male had one surname pointing to patronymic or hereditary origins and another as a nickname or describing their occupation. Another type of surname was geographical or habitational, and sometimes an alternate surname was used in that case.

How the Iglinski surname may have originated

A Polish genealogist took a look at this specific case for me and she had some interesting insights. “Igla” in Polish translates to needle and it typically has to do with either a stylus (writing) or spire (tower). Perhaps they were writers and chose the Iglinski surname, or they helped with upkeep of the church tower and became Iglinskis. In either case, the brothers may have adopted the name for occupational reasons or as a nickname.

Another possibility is that their mother was an Iglinska and they chose her surname for estate or land reasons after she passed away. So far, no evidence has been found supporting that. Their mother’s name was Apollonia and their father was Jakub ZAMIARA, but no marriage record could be found.

There is something else that supports the occupational angle. Wojciech and Antoni had a brother Feliks ZAMIARA who never took the Iglinski surname. The same was true for his children and descendants, they remained Zamiaras. These Zamiara distant cousins are confirmed, thanks to DNA testing. Descendants of Feliks (through multiple of his children) appear in my family’s autosomal DNA matches at AncestryDNA. That DNA connection solidifies the Zamiara link altogether, which is obvious when you study the parish records.

So there you have it. The real Iglinski heritage, none of which is mentioned in “The Iglinski Family Heritage Book” – not even close. Hopefully an Iglinski or two will stumble upon this blog post, and learn some new things about their family history!

Oh, and as for those Iglinskis in the heritage book. Some of them go back to Wojciech, like my family, and some go back to his brother Antoni. A few branches went to Illinois and Wisconsin, and they spread out across the United States, from Idaho to Florida.