Welcome Friends and Family!

Welcome to the genealogy web site of James Smock and Cherry Burgin Smock. James is a 4th generation Texan and Cherry is a late comer, arriving in Texas in 1957. On the way to Texas, our ancestors resided in Poland, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Romania, Russia and other far away countries, as well as many areas of the United States.

I've been collecting information on our families for about 15 years now and this site is a compilation of that information. You can find an article about how I got started here. If you are kinfolk or have information or photos that you would like to share, I would love to hear from you. You can contact me using this form or email me direct at jp@smock.com.

Enjoy the site!

James

The People

This web site consists primarily of people who are related to my wife and I, but there are also lots of unrelated people that I put in the database while I was searching a particular area, such as New Waverly, Texas and the Debica / Pilzno area of Poland. I've also included ancestors of many of the people who are not directly related to my wife or I. On most entries, I have included the source of the information, but if you see something that you know is wrong, let me know.

Polish Names

When compiling the data on the Polish side of my family, I used transcripts of the Catholic church records in the villages of Debica, Dobrkow, Pilzno and Jaworze. These records were hand written in Latin, not Polish, and the names of the people were written in the Latin version of the Polish name. When I first started this project, I converted many of the names to the English equivalent. So, my database was filled with a combination of Polish, Latin and English names. In an effort to be as accurate as possible, I have now converted the first names of the people that were born in Poland to the correct Polish version of the name. You can find a list of most of those Polish names with their English equivalent names here.

Privacy and Living Individuals

In consideration of personal privacy and security, details on living persons is limited unless you are a registered member of this site. Non registered viewers can see only the initials and surnames of living people and can not see any birth, death or marriage dates. If you see any information that you think should not be on the site, please let me know.

Information on our members is never sold or distributed and will not be used for anything other than family information.

Become A Member

If you are related to any of the people in this database, please register for a login ID and password. The login account must be approved by me, so if we aren't already acquainted, please let me know how you are related by listing your ancestors or the person that referred you in the notes section of the registration form.

Information Usage

The information on this website is provided for the free use of those engaged in non-commercial genealogical research. Any commercial use is unauthorized and strictly prohibited. Please credit all sources taken from this site.

Navigation

Our site is really pretty easy to navigate. Probably the best way to learn the navigation system is to do a surname search and then start clicking on the menu tabs and links on the individual person page. You will find that there is a lot of information and a lot of ways to view it. You can also click on each of the menu items at the top of the pages to see where it takes you.

Sources

The family data on this site came from a variety of sources including recollections and records of individuals, original sources such as birth certificates and census records, birth, death and marriage indexes and published family trees of other individuals. This site includes source references for most items of data, citing either another researcher or an original source.

Acknowledgements

Over the years, many individuals helped me compile this information and I am forever grateful for their help. A special thanks goes to Teana Sechelski for sharing her vast knowledge of the Bremond and New Waverly Poles and David L Smock who in my early years of research, helped me fill in the blanks on the Smock tree. Over the years, the support of the officers and members of the Polish Genealogical Society of Texas has been invaluable.

Advertising

You may have noticed the google ads at the top of the page. These ads are kept to a minimum and should be relevant to the information on this site. We do not use pop up, animated, flashing or other annoying ads. While the ads help with the expenses of this site, if you are one of those type of people (like me) that change the TV channel when the commercials come on, you can ignore the ads and just enjoy the information.