The
STANISLAW BIENIARZ
Family

Purpose and Background

The purpose of this website is to disseminate vital family information and to encourage YOUR participation in sharing family information with us.

Time is relentlessly taking our family elders from us and we must preserve and record our family information for future generations.

Our Bieniasz family has its roots in the former Austrian crownland of Galicia. But except for a few burocrats, tax collectors, and army recruiters, there was nothing Austrian about or in Galicia. Our part of Galicia was and is POLISH -- historically, ethnically, culturally, linguistically and even spiritually!

The Allies agreed, at the end of WWII, to let the Soviet Union annex the eastern portion of Galicia from Poland into the Ukraine. Lwow, a historic Polish capital city, now is in Ukraine. Luckily, our ancestral home towns lie pretty far west of Lwow, in the brand new Polish provinces of Malopolska (Little Poland) and Podkarpackie (SubCarpathia).

While other related Bieniaszes emigrated to North America as early as circa 1870, our direct ancestors came here at the very beginning of the 20th Century. This is their story. And ours as well.

Bieniarz vs. Bieniasz

For years, the spelling of our family surname has been a source of controversy within our family. Let's put it to rest right now.

Stanislaw Bieniarz was indeed born to parents Franciszek & Jozefa Bieniasz and christened Stanislaw Bieniasz, There is no doubt that he is descended from a long Bieniasz line. Why the controversy?

The misspelling started with an arrogant German emigration official at Hamburg-America Line in Hamburg. He insisted on changing the spelling of the surname from Bieniasz to Bieniarz for both Stanislaw and Michalina in March 1905. (I have found that this happened to as many as half of the other Bieniasz emigrants. However, when Stanislaw Bieniasz first immigrated to America in 1901, his name remained intact and unchanged.) Thus, the misspelling at Hamburg continued on U.S. immigration records at Ellis Island NY.

Stanislaw Bieniarz apparently accepted and used the "new" spelling on various records throughout his life, including records at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church and on his gravestone. His children were christened with the surname Bieniarz.

Some of his sons, Joseph and Daniel, continued using Bieniarz. Others reverted to Bieniasz.

In these pages, I use Bieniarz only because that is the way Stanislaw is identified on many American records. Future family researchers will find it difficult, at best, to uncover very much information about Stanislaw using the surname Bieniasz.

Adding to the confusion, Catholic clergy back in medieval Poland were sometimes known to record the same individual's name with different variant spellings at different times in the same individual's life. This is because some peasant folks were illiterate and the spellings sounded the same. Bieniarz, Bieniasz and Bienias' (with an accent over the "s") sound nearly the same to the untrained ear. Bieniarz is pronounced B'YEN-yarsh, while the other two are pronounced B'YEN-yosh. Had our Bieniasz/Bieniarz family originated in England, this controversy might be between Benson, Bensson and Bensen.

However, because our ancestral parish at Straszecin maintained an elementary school for centuries and was also the site of a college for a time, literacy was not a problem and our Bieniasz surname was consistently recorded accurately in the parish ledgers.

Editor's note: I have heard our family name pronounced B'YAIN-yosh instead of B'YEN-yosh. I'm not about to start a controversy over it. In any event, medieval Polish historian Jan Dlugosz made several mentions of the surname in his works and always as "Bieniasz").

What's New!

Visltors to and folks living in Poland often contribute new photos of our ancestral villages and parishes. The newest stuff is located at the SPUSCIZNA Polish Heritage Research Group website. Over 140 old Catholic parishes in SE Poland have been catalogued. Click here:

Editor's Note 11/9/2005: The original version of this website was deleted without warning on 1 December 2004 by its prior webhost AccessGenealogy.Com. Luckily, we had the foresight to create a mirror website here. The original website was put back online shortly thereafter and in March 2005 it was announced that all AccessGenealogy websites would be eliminated. However, six months later the website still appears online although it has been stripped of its background and other components. First lesson to be learned: When a webhost offers offers you free space, you are completely at his mercy. Second lesson to be learned: Don't place your trust in "professional" genealogical groups.

Dennis Benarz, Webmaster
Email: bieniasz@fastmail.fm