On Saturday I got a note from a woman named Sheila who’d been reading through some of my blog posts. She’s a distant cousin, going back to the days when the various family lines were in Pomerania. Hello, Great information on your blog about Butow and the Thun lineage. Loved the Stagecoach route map. I [...]
Archive for the ‘Kreis Bütow’ Category
Bytow (or Bytów) is the Polish spelling for Bütow, the town where my great grandparents married in 1880. So when I read about a placed dubbed Bytow in Indiana, naturally I was curious. It was in a press release for a petroleum company. When did the name come about? Did immigrants from Bütow settle in Indiana? [...]
Kristallnacht in Bütow
Posted: August 7, 2011 in Germany, Hitler, Kreis Bütow, PomeraniaTags: Nazis, Pomerania
In November of 1938, Nazis tried destroying the Jewish cemetery in Bütow (Bytów), the town where my great grandparents were married. It’s known as the Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht. Recently, during restoration work in Bytów, matzevot (the Hebrew word for monument, but often translated as gravestone) lost during the violence and destruction of [...]
A seller on eBay from Tallinn, capital of Estonia, has a proclamation from Stalin thanking a soldier for ‘liberating’ the towns of Bütow (Bytów) and Berent (Kościerzyna) in Pomerania during the last days of World War II. Stalin’s portrait graces the top center and is flanked by flags. The bottom portrays a Kremlin tower, possibly with celebratory fireworks. It’s known as decree No. 296, issued on the 8th of March [...]
Becoming an Honorary Citizen of Bytów, Poland
Posted: January 19, 2011 in Kreis Bütow, News, Pomerania Winona, a small town of just more than 27 thousand people in southeast Minnesota, is a sister city of Bytów, Poland. (The German name for the town is Bütow. In English it is usually translated as Bytow or Buetow.) The relationship stems from German and Polish emigrants to the United States, specifically people from the Bytów area to [...]
History, Genealogy & Genetics Mailing Lists
Posted: March 28, 2010 in FROMKE, Germany, HAY, Kreis Bütow, MILCZEWSKI, Pomerania, RADDE, VAN NOTEHere are some of the mailing lists that I manage. Most are related to genealogy and some about genetics. My mother’s family was named Fromke and was from Pomerania, an area south of the Baltic Sea. They came from Kreis (the German equivalent of a county) Bütow, which is now in Poland. Among the surnames [...]
