Piekarski / Francikowski / Starszak / Stateczny

Whether you favor Darwin or the Bible, it is a cinch that genealogy is NOT going to trace our roots back to the first hominid. Baring the discovery of an historically significant ancestor, we will be lucky to get back into the 1600's.

Genetic genealogy, on the other hand, holds great promise, but is still in its infancy. Perhaps in the future I will be able to write an appendix to this document that pushes our genetic history farther back than will likely be comfortable for any of us.

In the meantime, I have decided to share with you some of the info that I gathered in researching the places in Europe from which my paternal roots emanate. These are the origins of the families associated with these surnames: Piekarski, Francikowski, Starszak, and Stateczny.

Piekarski	Francikowski	Starszak	Stateczny

2500 years ago, as Rome was beginning to develop, our ancestors had a culture and a spoken language, but not a written language. They left no books, no love letters, and no accounting ledgers. They are identified by their language, their physical artifacts, and by their contact with Rome as recorded by Rome.

As Rome developed and began to expand north out of the Italian Peninsula, they encountered mostly peoples they called Gauls, or we would call Celts. The Romans had probably themselves started as a Celtic variant. Far to the North of Rome, in Sweden and Denmark were an identifiably different people known as Goths (Germanic/Teutonic). Far to the East of Rome, above the Black Sea, lived another identifiably different people known as Slavs.

As civilizations succeed, their populations grow and they put pressure on their borders. By 100 BC Rome encompassed much of the Adriatic and Mediterranean shores and was about to expand west and north into France and England. By this time the Goths had expand east and south and met the Romans roughly on the diagonal running from the mouth of the Danube to the mouth of the Rhine. The boundary along the Rhine stabalized as neither side made significant progress, and the Romans switched to diplomcy. German neighbors received some of the benefits of Roman civilization in exchange for their policing the border against incursions by less civilized barbarians.

On the eastern front, the Goths expanded along the line of the Vistula and Dneister toward the Crimea. It is not clear to me who was displaced by the expansion - perhaps some of the Slavic peoples. By about 200 AD the Goth reached the Black Sea and split in to Ostrogoths (East Goths) and Visigoths (West Goths). The Visigoths entered the eastern Roman Empire and followed the coast around Greece, the Adriatic, Italy (stopping to visit Rome), and ended in Spain. The Ostrogoths split again, some crossing into Turkey and others heading across the Balkans toward Rome.

About 150 AD, the western faction of the Steppe nomads (Huns) began moving west. They were accomplished cavalry with metal armor and perhaps the most genetically superior horses on earth, and they swept all before them. About 375 AD they reached the Crimea and may have been the cause of the Goths turning westward. By 451 AD the Huns had penetrated to France. Attila died, his three brothers fought over leadership, followers joined Ardaric of the Gepids (a Goth variant), and the Huns were defeated and evaporated from history.

Part of the fallout from this tumultous time was the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire. All of Europe west of Constantinople fell into the chaos of the Dark Ages waiting for skilled and opportunistic leaders to organize around strong points into the multitude of fiefdoms of feudalism. Europe became a crazy quilt of Duchies and bishoprics.

Although Europe was an administrative shambles, all the pieces predominantly followed the Roman Catholic religion, and so the Pope had considerable influence. The relationship between spiritual and temporal administration was, as they say, complicated. Many would be unifiers sought approval from the Pope to validate their rule. When Islam invaded Spain, the Pope revived the title Emperor for Charlemagne in support of his opposition to their incursion.

As I hope you can see from the series of colorful maps that follow, the coalescence of the fragmented Europe from 1000 to 1700 can be oversimplified as follows:

• In the west, most land was consolidated under the Kings of France and England, and later of Spain.
• In the east, most of the land was consolidated under the Kings of Hungary and Poland-Lithuania.
• In between, a form of chaos reigned that eventually acquired the nominal designation Holy Roman Empire.
• In the south of Spain and in the Balkans, Islam was knocking at the door, and
• In the far east the threat of asian hordes still had to be considered as Russia struggled to define itself.

For our purposes we now need to narrow our focus to the areas of central Europe covered by Poland and The Holy Roman Empire. We also need to take a small detour back in time and introduce the Teutonic Knights. This highly capable band of bellicose Goths enlisted in the crusades and participated in the siege of Acre. A lot of Germans fought there and the Pope declared that their hospital should always be staffed by Germans, since these soldiers could speak neither the local language nor Latin. These knights then reinvented themselves after the Military Orders and bought a nearby castle to protect fellow crusaders on their way to the front. Eventually they lost the castle to Islam and the Knights moved to Transylvania to defend Hungarians against the neighboring Cumans (a Turkic people, also called Polovtsi, and lending their name to the "Polovtsian Dances" in Borodin's opera "Prince Igor"). Apparently the King of Hungary came to believe that the Knights were becoming excessivley attached to their base of operations in Transylvania and encouraged them to leave.

The Knights next caught an invite from Poland to defend its northern borders against the pagan "Old Prussians". Starting from a base in Thorn, they pressed their way along the Baltic coast to Konigberg and then on thru coastal Lithuania, Lavonia, and Estonia. By the time the Polish began missing the Old Prussians and asked the Knights to vacate, the Knights were too entrenched, and strife between German and Pole ensued. The Knights encouraged German immigration from central and western German lands, and when the Goths embraced Protestantism Prussia became Protestant.

For a while Poland got the upper hand and Prussia was divided into two parts. One became a province of Poland and the other a fiefdom of Poland. However, due to a marriage, the fiefdom (Duchy of Prussia) became united with Brandenberg and this cemented Prussia to its Gothic roots in The Holy Roman Empire.

By 1770 The Holy Roman Empire found that two of its members - Prussia and Austria - had begun to dominate its deliberations. The Germanic and Protestant Empire began to see in Poland and Lithuania - Slavic and Catholic - an increasing afinity for their Russian neighbors to the East. Russia had many Slavs and was Catholic-like, and Russian influence was seen to be increasing in Poland. In a pre-emptive measure, Prussia and Austria entered into a deal with Russia to partition Poland between them. The first bites were taken in 1772, and by 1795 (Third Partition) Poland ceased to exist as a political entity.

As Prussia added Polish territory it administered it first as the "Nietze District", then as "South Prussia", and finally as "Posen". Posen was divided into two administrative units - one managed from Bromberg and the other from Posen. Prussia also re-acquired the Province of Prussia, that it had lost to Poland, and renamed it "West Prussia". The Duchy of Prussia then became "East Prussia".

The homelands of Piekarski, Starszak, and Stateczny fell under Prussian Posen. Wierzchucin was administered from Bromberg and Ostrowo from Posen. Lobsens and Luchowo are very close to the dividing line and I am unsure of their affiliation. (Until proven otherwise I am currently designating Luchowo and Lobsens as reporting to Bromberg.)

The Francikowski's of Osiek / Olawa were living in Silesia. Silesia is rich in resources and neighboring powers often found an excuse to attempt control. The first claims were probably Moravian, then Bohemian, then Polish, then Piast, then Bohemian (again), and then Austrian. Finally, in 1742 (30 years before the Partition of Poland), Silesia was invaded and conquered by Prussia and remained Prussian until the end of WWII, when it returned to a reconstituted Poland.

At the year 1800 we take a break from our story for a visual interlude. The following sequence of maps attempts to display the evolving organization of Europe between 1000 and 1800 AD.
1000  
1200  
1400  
1500  
1600  
1700  
1800