Polish Ancestry?

Cholewa coat of arms

One thing that happened as a result of reading With Fire and Sword and then the rest of the Trilogy (see last post) was that I got very interested in Polish history. I had never dug much into that side of my heritage but, as I read more about Poland, I was increasingly fascinated by the country's impressive history.

While digging around, I found that - at least according to Wikipedia - this Polish coat of arms was "used by several szlachta families in the times of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth". The families who used it included my last name! Now, of course, I have no idea if this is a definitive connection of any kind or if my family tree even extends back that far. Still it's intriguing to think this might be a part of my history. Further, from what I understand, if I could trace my family back to Poland then the Catholic Church in the town we came from will likely have the family history going back for centuries. Could be exciting to learn about all this (although I have no doubt there are some dark pages in the recent history of the family).

Reading opens all sorts of doors to us. Maybe someday I'll walk through this one to learn more about where I came from. It's interesting how much we can learn about who we are from even the distant past.