I remember the first night I went on the Internet back in
the fall of 1996. Before going to bed, I decided to do a search
(probably Altavista or Yahoo! or whatever was the most common engine or
directory at the time) for my surname, Stuczynski. I figured there would
be no hits, as it is a very rare name, but instead I found around 80 hits,
mostly for a man by the name of Steve Stuczynski.
To this day, he's all over the net, mostly because of his involvement with
computers, back before people called it "IT". But what I found was an
explanation of what my last name meant. Most books don't even list it,
and various geneaology-types told me it was a corruption of Strucynski or
other similar names. And it may or may not be related to the Polish word
for "strike" or "hit", but my family believed (apart from an amusing anecdote
that was meant in jest) that it meant nothing in particular.
And here I was, looking at the "Stuczynski Family Roots
Page" of Steve's (whom I do not believe I am traceably related to) offering
the following explanation, which can be found at Stuczynski.Com.
(I am reproducing it here without his permission as an informational quote,
and to spare you a lot of annoying midi music.) Information given to
Steve by a design engineer, Dan Stuczynski of Detroit, Michigan, USA paints a
picture of the origin of the name:
The story starts at the end of the 13th century,
about 1250 to 1270 A.D. when warriors from the Stuczynski clan joined forces
to fight in the Holy Wars or Crusades. Upon returning from the Wars, the few
Stuczynskis that survived, were granted a large parcel of land in
Northeastern Poland (near the Russian border) known as "Stuczyn". Then Clan
nobles managed this land and its people for hundreds of years.
However, upon a touch of research done online recently, I
discovered that for a number of reasons, Poland did not participate in the
Crusades. In fact, they were pillaged by the crusaders (the Teutonic
Knights) in an effort to convert the local Pagan populations. I can find
no record of any involvement by the Poles as crusaders, except to throw out
the Teutonic Knights, and not having set foot in the Holy Land. More
specifically, in spite of having an extensive Christian population, they were
on the other side, fighting for the rights and peaceful existence of Pagans
and Jews.
I will research this more, looking for actual sources from
historians and other accounts to verify or disprove the information given by
Dan Stuczynski. Perhaps the story is half-true, where the clan given the
land were the people who played a part in casting out the Teutonic presence.
Dan, if you're out there, drop me a line and let me know your sources, or if
it's something passed down over the years.
More to come ...
