This post is number 26 in the series of the #52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge where a group of us blog about a different ancestor for each week of the year.  To learn more about the 52 Ancestor Challenge visit Amy Johnson’s site at Amy’s website.

Time flies as they say.  Half a year has gone by since I accepted the challenge to write about one ancestor a week.  The difficult part is getting side tracked doing genealogical research instead of writing a post. Not this week.  I am in the final stages of packing to move out of my condo.  I need to stay focus.

I chose to post two photocopies of documents that record the birth and death of my Great Uncle Feliks Budny.  He was born near Mamino, Poland in 1898 and died in 1900.   He is the first born child of Adam Budny and Marianna (Mary) Borucki. 

The documents were provided by Michal J. Marciniak from PolGen Research, online at www.polgenresearch.com.  He did some research for me back in 2010.  Michal was able to find the records at the Pultusk Archives.  

Birth record written in Russian.

Death record written in Russian

The documents are in Russian which I do not read.  I can identify the names of the parents and child.  I still need to find out the month of birth and death. Adam departed from Hamburg, Germany on May 6, 1900, and sailed to New York.  It is about a 1000 kilometers (621 miles) from Mamino to Hamburg.  That could be a 5-10 day trip or longer back in 1900.  Was Adam there for his son’s death or was he already en route to the new world.  Mary makes the trip a year latter joining her husband in Pittsburg.

The names of the parents and child are written in Russian.  I can see why there are variant spellings of Russian and Polish names based on Cyrillic writing. One could chose the Russian spelling over an English version. I used blue boxes to indicate Adam Budny, pink boxes for Mary, and two shades of purple for Feliks Budny.

The Russian spelling varies even by the writer.  Both records were written by the same person.  I have circled the names of the individuals. The capital letter “B” resembles a fancy C, E, or G; in English. The “d” in Adam can be written in the Russian form resembling a “g”.  The last letter or letters after the “n” in Budn**, I cannot decipher.  It could be the letter for, ‘y’.  Which can be confusing as the ‘y’ is ‘u’ in English.  I used a Cyrillic reference chart as a guide.

The ‘r’ in Marianna looks like a ‘p’.  Her last name Borucki looks like Bopyukou in Russian. The name is pronounced Borutski. Budny is pronounced Boodny.  My family has always pronounced Bud as in Budweiser.

Feliks name is also recorded in Russian, Феликс. Which looks like Opeunkea in the photocopy.  Mary would bestow the same name on her last child born in October 1917.  Adam most likely was not there for his birth.  Adam “disappeared” sometime in 1917.