[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Belchatow

[Paul Rakow]

   Is there anyone else here who is interested in Belchatow, a textile
 town in Poland, south of Lodz? 

   I have ancestors who lived there in the 1820s. I've found some records 
 of my relatives in the microfilmed metrical books, and am now wondering
 what else there might be to look at. 

    In the British library I've found a local history book, "Belchatow
 and its historical advance", by Apoloniusz Zawilski, (written 1967, when
 Poland was still communist, which helps to explain the title). It's a 
 bit of a struggle reading it, since my Polish is quite feeble. 

      From the sources he uses, it seems that there are quite a few 
 surviving financial/tax records from the time when the cloth industry
 was getting started, some in the archives in Warsaw. Some of these 
 include lists of craftsmen. Has anyone experience of this sort of
 material, maybe from other towns in the Lodz area? 

           Paul Rakow 
           rakow at ifh.de 

 PS - The main Belchatow families I'm interested in are Gruenke and Zibell,
 (with very many spelling variations).