Continuing my little travelogue of Mennonite stuff in Poland…
On Friday, July 5th, 2024, we had just seen Chelmno and then in our excitement at seeing a Mennonite cemetery “in the wild”, had impulsively added Kosowo Mennonite Cemetery to our itinerary. Once Andrew had successfully extracted me, we were on the road once more. Now, I’ve been relying on time stamps on our photos to know what time it was when we arrived at each location but at one point I noticed my pictures and Andrew’s pictures were about an hour off from each other. Now that they’re on our computer I have no idea anymore. This could be accurate or an accidental lie, but these photos tell me that I was taking this picture at 9:57am:
We had arrived at Christfelde! Its Polish name is Chrystkowo. Andrew and his parents immediately went to the homestead but I first took a picture of this flower in the ditch with morning dew.
There are two signs in the picture below. The white sign with an arrow says Olender Homestead in Chrystkowo, and the yellow sign notes historical names of the village of Chrystkowo from the 14th and 15th centuries: Krostkowo, Crostaw, Crosakow. Then from 1649 onward. I can’t retype them here because the image is too blurry but it seems like they’re continued versions of what we’ve already seen.
So now, once again, I am looking at the paper Andrew had created for us to follow on these days, throughout this tour. The paper features information from a very helpful blog — but I have no idea which one it is. (Every time I search for it, I find this very fascinating blog instead.) Hopefully I’ll amend this omission soon.
This arcaded house is magnificent. But we could not go inside. We had not contacted anyone about our plan to visit. We just showed up and wandered around and took it for what it was! (But if you want to see what’s inside that house, you should check out the blog link I posted above.)
Chrystkowo village on the Vistula was a village where Mennonites lived from the late 1500s to the early 1700s. Probably this house was built by Mennonites. Rich Mennonites. It was built in 1791, replacing an earlier peasant homestead.
Today I believe this place functions as an educational centre, and I think someone lives here to care for the site. But we wouldn’t know because, as I said before, we did not book a tour or anything — we just showed up and nosed around. Kinda hoping someone would emerge and interact with us, but that did not happen.
This place is lovely. It’s old, atmospheric, it’s a great place to ignite the imagination. But does it have anything to do with our ancestors? No idea. It’s quite possible. A ton of records were destroyed in World War 2 so there are a lot of blanks in my family tree on Grandma Online, and with every generation you go back, your ancestors double. So when you think about the math, for people like me, whose entire ancestry lived in Poland for 250 years… we’re talking about hundreds of ancestors who roamed, lived, loved, and died… somewhere here. And the purpose of this trip was to walk where they may have walked. And so we did.
Taking it all with a grain of salt, that this likely doesn’t have anything to do with us, and even its Mennonite connection is a distant (but still very real) memory.
I would love to return to this place and take some more time, and perhaps announce our plans to arrive ahead of time so as to explore the inside of the various buildings.
Andrew and I were fascinated by the roof on the barn. The moss was glowing in the morning sun. We both took pictures of it, but you can tell he is much taller than I am. I’m not sure which picture I like better. I think they make a good pair, just like Andrew and I 🙂
Andrew’s favourite picture from this site, showing me and his parents all taking in one final look at this house, each in our own way.At 10:44am we were back in the Opel, heading toward our next stop: my ancestor’s resting place.
