Background to some Polish place names
The following place names can readily be found on one or more of Google, Google maps or Wikipedia.
| Lodz | The third largest city in Poland with a population of 680,000 |
| Pabianice | Town 10km south-west of Lodz. Population 65,000 |
| Nowosolna | Village 20km north-east of Lodz. |
| Bukowiec | Village 18km south-east of Lodz. Population 1000 |
Other places mentioned are
| Andrzejow | Not found ? The nearest possibility is an Andrzejow which is 62 km south-west of Lodz |
| Sasieczno | Not found. The Polish researcher suggests that it was part of Nowosolna. |
Some history of Lodz
Lodz was granted a town charter in 1423 but never grew beyond the size of a village until the 19th century. The population is put at 700 in the 16th century but had declined to 190 in 1810. After the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, Lodz became part of the Russian sector and this was confirmed after the Treaty of Vienna (1815) at the end of the Napoleonic war. From1816 the Russian czar encouraged German immigration into the area with grants of land to new settlers, freedom from taxes and exemption from military service. The town progressively became an industrial centre and, by about 1850, specifically a centre for the manufacture of textiles.
Grazyna, the Polish researcher, notes that the Kuhler family appear to have arrived in the area before the period of industrialisation and are said to have been tenant farmers in the earliest records yet found.
There are good articles on the history of Lodz on Wikipedia.
Some notes on Bukowiec
Grazyna Rychlik tells us that immigration to the Bukowiec area was sponsored by the Prussian authorities somewhere between 1772 and 1794. These immigrants came mainly from Wurttemberg and formed a new settlement known then as Kolonia Koenigsbach. This was later renamed Kolonia Bukowiec or simply Bukowiec. She suggests that the Kuhler family might conceivably have been some of the first Wurttemberg settlers in the area.
Religion
I note that almost all the Polish records which come from Church sources are specifically from Lutheran parishes. The one exception appears to be the second marriage of Karol Kuhler, which was in a Catholic parish. (It is suggested that his second wife had been born in Austria.) Robert Karl's British Army record specifies that his religion was Lutheran. We are always told that Poland is a strongly Catholic country. Does the Lutheran connection by itself point to German origins for the family?