The memory of the Działowski family

Abstract

The Dzialowskis living in Chelmno Land until the 20th century belonged to the szlachta (nobility) and the landed gentry who attached significance to learning about, constructing and maintaining the memory about members of their family. In the first half of the 18th century the writer from the Prussian territory Wawrzyniec Dzialowski created the so-called black book of the Dzialowskis on the basis of preliminary research in the court and private archives from Royal Prussia. It is a lost manuscript including extracts from documents and diaries from the 16th to 18th centuries, concerning the family and families related to them. Wawrzyniec was motivated not only by his curiosity, but also by the desire to strengthen the prestige and the social position of his family. That is why when in 1738 in the second volume of the armorial of Kacper Niesiecki there appeared a very laconic comment about the Dzialowski family, Wawrzyniec asked Jozef Andrzej Zaluski for help, and sent a summary of the work about the Dzialowskis to the author of the armorial, who included it in the supplement to the 4th volume. It shows that since the 18th century the representatives of the family had spread the untrue legend about their origin from the medieval knight Mikolaj Dzialowski, known for supporting Poland during the Thirteen Years' War. Handwritten notes in the above-mentioned copy of the volume, kept in the collection of Copernicus Library in Torun and belonging to Wawrzyniec's descendants until the end of the 19th century, show that the Dzialowskis treasured the memory about their family. Wawrzyniec's son, Teodor, recorded births, weddings and deaths of his family's members on the endpaper of the book in the years 1763-1778, thereby creating a kind of family chronicle of the Dzialowski family residing in Mgowo and Turzno. The records, which came from the manuscript traditions of 'silva rerum', were later completed by Teodor's brother - Dionizy, Wawrzyniec's great-grandchild - Ksawery, and the unidentified person who continued writing the chronicle until the genealogical line of the family died out in 1899. In this way the unique source of information about the genealogy of the Dzialowskis family and their desire to maintain the memory about their family was created.