So, a little change of subject today. I recently contacted my sister, Eleanor, to see if she had possession of any of our family photos. Providentially, she was in the process of sorting through a closet that held an archive of photos, papers, and mementos from our parents. At 89 years of age, she wanted to pass this trove on to someone for safe keeping and was ecstatic that I was willing to take them. So now I’m in the process of digitizing much of this to be included in this blog. As is the usual case, so many of the photos of people from eighty, ninety, even one hundred years ago are unidentified, leaving me to only wonder about them. There are better than a thousand photos to select from and I’m anxious to share some here.

Within that archive I found correspondence regarding another line of Naucks. As yet, I haven’t been able to find a link between our ancestors, but one letter was from a German immigrant, a William Nauck of Greenwich, Connecticut, who, at least, added some light to the origin of our name. Interestingly, he was an officer in the U.S. Army on assignment in Germany at the time he wrote the letter in 1983, during the unrest brought about by the Polish “Solidarity” movement which had caused a martial law state in Poland.

From his writing, it seems the Nauck name is essentially Slavic, originating from an ancient powerful tribe called Wend, which was practically annihilated during the wars between the Germans and Poles after 1200AD. Those who were able to escape settled into the mountain valleys in what would become northern Bohemia, where they lived undisturbed until the 1500’s, when they began moving north and east into Prussia, joining into the modern life of that time. Many of them settled in Pomerania where William’s family lived in Stettin, where they worked in the shipyards, building the wooden sailing ships that sailed the Baltic Sea. Many others settled around Berlin, just to the south of which, lies Finsterwalde, first noted in historical records around 1288. That is where our oldest known ancestor lived, in the late 1500’s, with his linage continuing there into the 1700’s. My original post contained information about that.

In researching these people groups, regions and places, the history of Europe becomes so very involved, somewhat confusing, and yet fascinating. Unrest, rebellion, and war have plagued the various societies on a regular basis from the beginning. Of course, that is true for most of the world, but Europe is of special interest since it is part of the history of our family.