Szczepanowo, Kreis Mogilno,
Posen
Szczepanowo is the birthplace of my great-grandmother Wilhelmine Hardwardt. It is also the ancestral home of the Andreas Pomerenke family that traveled to America via Volhynia in the Ukraine. This village is hard to find; it is west of Poznan, north of Gneisno and Mogilno but south of Barcin and Bromberg in Poland. Click here for a modern map.
My great-great
grandparents were Jakob Hardwardt
and Wilhelmine Kolek (put a
slash though the l of Kolek as it is a Polish family
name). So although Jakob Hardwardt
was born Lutheran, his daughter was baptized in the village Catholic Church.
The village
Catholic Church is a modern building at the south end of the village. It was
restored after the Second World War but it does contain the altar and baptismal
font that were in the old church for my great-grandmother's baptism (as well as
many members of the Andreas Pomerenke family of this
village). Here are some pictures of the church.
Click here to see the details of the church interior using Adobe Acrobat.
This village is
not a typical Polish village; it uses a common German village plan called strassendorf (street village). The village in the past and
still consists of a line of houses to both sides of a road. The village is next
to a lake that would provide the swampy land necessary to process flax into
linen. The soil appears rich and good for farming.
Most of the
Germans like the Hardwardts lived north of the
village in Szczepanowo Kolonie.
Here are pictures of the Kolonie's settlement area,
an Evangelical cemetery, and a gravestone from the cemetery. Wilhelmine also attended the Evangelical Church in Barcin where she was confirmed in 1861.
I believe that the
Hardwardt family likely came from Rogowo as there were no Hardwardts
in this or any other nearby village in the 1772 land census. Click here to go Rogowo for pictures and the census records.
Click here for some of the Pomerenke records
from Szczepanowo. The only Pomerenkes
in the 1772 census of the whole area were in Kohlstedt
near Czarnikow. Here is that record:
Pomerencke, Chria (Christian) 25. Kohlstedt Czarnikow - 12 - 225
Crone Poland II 12 348
Christian was
living, with wife, one son over 12 and one daughter under 12.
Click here for a list of web pages about the Nietze area.
Click here to go to other villages.
Please
send any queries to Bill Remus at
October
8, 2010