LOOKING FOR ANCESTORS

We started the day at a farmers market here in Leczyca, where we stayed last night.We weren’t looking for anything in particular, just looking.  What a variety!Everything a farm family could need.
 
From the market we headed out on small country roads to find the villages that Marlene’s research had revealed. The first on the list was Romartow.Now, Romartow today is just a cross road with a few houses.  At one house, some young women and their babies were visiting in the front yard so we stopped and showed them a letter we had prepared that told what we were doing and the names of the people we were searching for.  By the time we finished we had the whole family involved in the conversation.Not shown in the picture is the grandson who must have been 6 years old and the great grandmother who was standing on a balcony shouting down her ideas to the group on the ground.  Of course, all their advice was in Polish and all our questions were in English.  We learned that we were in the right place and that any records might be in the next town at the church.  The village or what remained of it looks like this. It has it’s identity   marked by a monument. 
The next village was easy to find, but the roads got a little narrow. 
  Here we found an old Catholic church and the parish house.  The young priest was home and welcomed us into his yard.  He was wearing shorts and a tee shirt and spoke very good English.  He suggested that the records of the Lutherans in this area would be kept at the City of Plock which was about 50 kilometers north.  He also got out his cell phone and looked up the number of the Minister and told us to use his name as reference.  Unfortunately the minister didn’t answer his phone, so we drove to Plock to see if we could find the church.  Plock turns out to be a big city, 130,000 people, and we were unable to find the church.  Even the information center did not know where it was.  We spent some time checking out Plock which is situated along the Wisala River downstream from Warsaw.  The river at this point looks almost as wide as the Columbia at Portland.