Ancestral Attic Testimonials

Over the years, we at Ancestral Attic have received praise for our services. These accolades are always appreciated not just because they are a testament of a job well done, but because each experience has given us as much joy and it is truly an honor to play a role in each clients' family history discovery through our genealogy research and heritage tours. Below are just a few examples of the feedback we have received........


I am traveling at the moment, but I wanted to write you a quick email to let you know how pleased I was with Alicja-- she was an incredible guide who truly went above and beyond. I am beyond impressed with her knowledge and professionalism!

I am so pleased I used your service and I won't hesitate to recommend you to friends and family.

Cheers!
Shelley Puhak - Baltimore, Maryland


I returned from Poland a few weeks ago. My side trip to Dziektarzewo was amazing. I finally saw where my family came from and loved the area. My guide, Renata, was great. We had luck on our side as the church was open when we got there. The priest was outside and he gave us a tour of the church. The tour of the church made it a memorable experience. I can see why my father was very proud of being Polish. It is such a beautiful country.

Thanks
M. Sliwicki - Princeton, NJ

This was very enjoyable tour for us. We got a taste of Ukraine and Poland, as well as some significant experiences about our family history. While Ukraine is not that developed, we found Poland to be very up to date with good highways, roads, and services. This may be a one time experience for our group, but I am sure each of us would love to return and uncover more treasures. We appreciate very much your organizing the custom tour and as one of our group remarked, “Our guides knocked themselves out for us and thereby added greatly to the discoveries and experiences.”

Best Wishes and God Bless,
K. Kuhn - Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada


We just returned back from Poland earlier this week, and I'm finally getting a chance to write you and thank you for helping to arrange the first portion of our trip. We had a fantastic time, and the time we spent with Magda and Ania were the highlights of the entire trip.

Both ladies were excellent guides and extremely helpful. Magda in particular was absolutely wonderful!

Magda picked us up from our hotel in Warsaw on our 2nd day in Poland. She drove us to Strzewego, where she had already made arrangements to meet with the priest at the local church, so we could search through the records. Father Paul was unbelievable. He was so helpful, and with Magda's help translating back and forth, we were able to see the records of all my husband's grandmother's siblings that were baptized in that church. After helping us find the records, we asked if we could look inside the church. As we were walking around, Father Paul and Magda started chatting, and it turned out that the church was not the original church, and Father Paul wanted to know if we'd like to see the original church. So, Magda loaded us all in the car and Father Paul took us over to the original church (which is currently being restored) where my husband's grandmother and her family would have attended Mass on Sunday mornings. It was unbelievable! Father Paul let us take as much time as we wanted, and let us walk all around. He then pointed us to the local cemetery, where we were able to find gravestones of other relatives.

Without going into details (which would take up pages and pages), Magda drove us all over that day, took us to government offices, churchs, cemetaries, etc. and helped us track down all sorts of information about our relatives. Through all of our travels (and even with a slight glitch with our hotel rooms for the night), she had everything under control. She went out of her way to do anything she could for us. In fact, Father Paul offered to write up a certificate for us with the baptismal records we found. He mailed it to Magda, and when we were in Warsaw again about a week later during our trip, Magda met us for lunch on her own time to deliver the certificate. I've used a lot of tour guides in my travels over the years, and Magda is at the top of my list. She is someone I hope to stay in touch with on a personal level for life. Absolutely a wonderful person!

Ania also did a fantastic job in Posnan. She took us all over the city, but at the same time was very conscious of the physical limitations that the more "senior" people in our family had. In the morning, her and her husband picked us up at our hotel early in the morning, and drove us to the train station. She made sure we got to the right platform and even waited with us until our train came to make sure we got on the right train.

Again, thanks for your help. The trip was fantastic! I passed your name on to a few people in our tour group later in the week, so I hope they got in touch with you.

Take care,

C. Rieck


I just wanted to thank you for supplying us with such a wonderful guide Piotr.

The whole tour exceeded our expectations.
He was excellent in every way, he had prepared so much for us in advance at the archives.
We were so impressed with his level of Jewish & local history knowledge.

Many thanks again

Helen Lewis - Australia


Its a week since we returned from our wonderful trip to Poland and now that the dust has settled and our "clocks" are back to normal I can give you some feedback on just how things went.
As planned, we were met by Magda and I must report to you that Magda was  and is an absolute joy. I have read your other testamonials and where they say that their guide gave 110%, I say Magda gave 130%. She was completely familiar with every aspect of the history and trivia of every venue on our itin-
erary and her contacts with our family members proved to be most rewarding.
We are living proof that you can leave Warsaw in the morning, drive to Czestochowa, tour all of Jasna Gora (even on Mary, Queen of Poland Day) with the help of a fabulous private guide, drive to Auschwitz, tour that tragic site, drive on to Krakow and have a wonderful dinner.  I can best describe our family get togethers in both Wykrot and Dwory as fun.  Magda and Alicia both did an amazing job of arranging our meetings and they were more memorable than we could have hoped for.
My kudos to you and all of Ancestral Attic for a job well done.

Bardzo dzienkuya.

Jack Sulik - Stoneham, Massachusetts. 

Nicole and I want to thank you for a marvelous trip and the bottle of wine. The trip to Poland was the best trip I ever took. We enjoyed every minute of it. The floods didn't effect us and it only rained when we were on the trains. OMG!!! It was such a beautiful country and your tour guides are so knowledgeable.
Thank you again for everything.

Teresa Henry - Eastpointe , MI

The trip was great!! No problems with flights, weather was quite nice (just a little rainy the last weekend - good excuse to shop & tour museums), guest house Trecius was perfect for me, records found at the churches exceeded my expectations, and we had a lovely dinner with the living Jedrocha relatives in Skawa. Alicja was wonderful - friendly and informative, good at getting information about me and my family while we were driving, etc. so she had answers to the questions the Polish relatives had (less need for translating back and forth). All my goals were accomplished!

Thank you for being my conduit for making the visits to the ancestral villages so successful.

Ginny Babczak - Concord, NH


Just a quick note to say a BIG BIG Thank you, Jenkuya and dyuk-oo.
I'm in Odessa and almost at the end of the Polish/ Ukrainian leg of my Geneodyssey. Everything has gone swimmingly - even the last minute change!!

All the guides have been superb - especially Alicja, who is a total darling. Marta was excellent too... Completely overqualified - she has a masters in International Relations. She was very proactive, especially in the archives. Even Yuri, our driver, helped out looking through some old books in Zalishchiki!!

I've been delighted with everything and thank you from the bottom of my heart. Hopefully I'll be able to use your services again in the future.

Dani Haski - Sydney , Australia


As a general comment it was an excellent trip and well organized (by you). I could not have done this by myself. I achieved what I set out to do which was visit my ancestral village and get a good look at that area of Poland .
I want to thank you once again and will certainly recommend you to anyone else who may be visiting Poland.

Kevin Kubank - Evatt , Australia


Our trip to Lithuania , Latvia , Slovakia , and Slovenia was wonderful. The guides were very good, the hotel rooms were quite comfortable, and the breakfasts were more than adequate.

Marius was our guide/driver in Lithuania and Latvia . He could not have been better. He went above and beyond the call of duty in our search for my grandmother's birth village, which (as we had suspected) apparently had been abandoned/destroyed many years ago. He also took us to the home of a family who appeared to be related to my grandmother. I was very pleased to make this unexpected connection with more relatives in Lithuania .

Lucia, our guide in Vysoká nad Kysucou, led us to the church, the cemetery, and to the municipal building. Tatjana was our guide among the villages southeast of Ljubljana . Tatjana led us to the church in Vinica where the records for the region are maintained. The priest there gave us information about my grandmother's family that was previously unknown to me. This was an unexpected and exciting find.

Graeme, our driver/guide to/from/in Bled spoke English very well because he was born and raised in England . Our guide in Ljubljana showed us the highlights of the Old Town section, led us up to Ljubljana Castle, and (because his father operates tour boats on the river and had an urgent need for a helmsman) gave us a free boat tour.

I will miss our email exchanges with Ancestral Attic. I feel that I have found a new friend during these months of planning.

Al Vareha - Monroeville, PA

Wow! We had such an amazing time in Poland ! First, we'd like to let you know that our guides, Alicja and Gosia, were very knowledgeable and nice. They put up with our questions graciously (even when we got a little silly).

We were even able to visit the Lemko church of Jim 's grandfather and found Babci Dziad's sturdy log home in which she and her siblings were born. What a treat! Finding Bapci's childhood home was unbelievable. The ONLY one that hasn't been torn down in the entire neighborhood! We like to think it was meant for us to see it.
Of course, the highlight of the trip was meeting our relatives. That first night when we were showing Jozef our photos and he brought out a shoebox with copies of some of the same photos........We WERE family! He was also able to fill in many of the blanks in our family tree.

Thank you so much for all your hard work tracking down our family roots. The trip exceeded our expectations.

Judy K. - Great Falls , VA

Our most sincere thanks for arranging all the details for a trip that would become the fulfillment of a lifetime dream. Since retirement we have run into many obstacles in locating possible family members in Greece that we only hoped might exist. Once the relatives were located, our plans went into high gear. We decided not only to visit Greece but to make a few European stops on the way.

All the discussions and planning culminated in a trip that couldn't have been nicer. Your attention to detail and prompt response to our many questions over the months of planning were so appreciated.

Our experiences with transportation, hotels, side trips and guides, were fabulous. We depended totally on your guidance and expertise for our hotel locations in each of the three cities we visited. The hotels were totally charming and afforded tremendous views of our host cities. Additionally, each hotel was very clean and reasonable and the staff provided friendly and efficient service. Our guides were very fluent in English and extremely knowledgeable of the history in each location. We enjoyed our side trip to Chesky-Krumlov outside of Prague . It was a very charming little village.

We highly recommend your services to anyone interested in future travel and in discovering more about their families. You were a godsend for us and we wouldn't change a single thing. A million thanks for a wonderful trip.

Joe Kostoff - Indianapolis , IN


As to our trip, it was outstanding! Ewa was a top notch guide, fun, good sense of humor (once when everyone was going in different directions she said keeping all 16 of us all together was like herding sheep, I said it was more like herding cats), she was very flexible and was always able to fulfill our wants & needs. We would recommend her to any of our relatives or friends. Jack, our driver was also fun even though he spoke no English. One of our spur-of-the-moment events was to go mushrooming in the woods. Jack showed us which of the mushrooms were edible & which weren't.

Ewa was able to always find a restaurant in the evening with delicious Polish food. We enjoyed many picnic lunches along the way. We all enjoyed walking the streets of the many towns & villages of our ancestors and all took hundreds of pictures. We were able to make quite a few stops along the beautiful Baltic coast. We had two shopping forays into Gdansk especially enjoyed by the ladies. All in all it was an outstanding experience and I thank you again for putting this all together for us.

Laurie Tauscher. - Elbert , CO


Finding my relatives and going to meet them will stand as a lifetime highlight, and it would not have happened without the great care and attention the project received from you Deborah and Elaine. I will always be grateful.

Gerry Levandoski


I would like to thank you and ancestral attic for literally making a dream come true. With your help, I visited the birth places and parishes of six great grandparents, met my relatives and learned something about 19th century life in Poland. All details were perfectly arranged - itinerary, guide, hotels and transportation. I particularly appreciated your prompt e-mail responses, patience, flexibility and sense of humor.

Judy Eckert


The entire trip was AMAZING!! Everything happened exactly as planned. We were thoroughly impressed with each and every one of our guides and drivers. They were all exceptional. Each guide had deep and thorough knowledge of their geographic area.

Jeanette Orihuela - Hawaii


Curiosity regarding my family members in Poland - both past and present - grew stronger as time and generations in America passed. Initial (localized) attempts to discover relatives in Poland yielded promising results, but it was obvious that only more specific research on-site would provide the "keys" to the details we so much wanted to discover. Since such an effort posed numerous - and obvious - challenges, the initial goal was to discover a way to obtain guidance and assistance in Poland. We are so thankful that an internet search "linked" us with Ancestral Attic.

This organization completely understood our challenges and promised to put its expertise to work to help us with phone calls and actual visits to small parish archives to inspect books that had not been viewed in "a century". The staff of Ancestral Attic presented me with my verifiable and documented "past" and the ability to help make contact with 120 current family members who ultimately joined me and my sister for a reunion in a beautiful lakeside town in northern Poland! We never dreamed such an event would be possible!!
I recommend without reservation the services of Ancestral Attic to anyone who harbors any curiosity about their family in Poland. The results can be quite exciting!!

And I must mention one more fact…

Research in Poland opened other doors in Lithuania and Brazil. Ancestral Attic's expertise extends well beyond the borders of Poland itself. The family history is growing, questions are being answered and additional reunions are planned!!

David Narwich - Chicago , IL


Despite fifty-some years of researching US and Canadian families, I had come to a standstill on a project for close friends to trace back to Poland and Lithuania the families of their four grandparents who came to America in the early 1900's. Deborah and her colleagues at Ancestral Attic have been remarkable in their ability to trace these families back to the mid-1700's including providing original and translated birth, marriage, and death documents. Records by themselves, however, are only half the story. Becoming as involved as family members themselves, Deborah and her associates at Ancestral Attic were able to locate (and arrange to meet) close relatives in Poland, England, and Brazil with whom contact had been lost long ago. Ancestral Attic also assisted in planning a memorable ten-day trip to Poland and provided a wonderful guide (interpreter and driver as well) along with hotels, restaurants, and visits to ancestral villages, churches and cemeteries, and church archives.

It has been a great pleasure to work with Ancestral Attic and I can hardly wait for them to begin a new project on my own German ancestors in northwestern Poland and I look forward to their arranged visit there next spring.

Todd Cannon - Lakeside , MI


Thank you, thank you, thank you! We had one of the best trips ever! I have traveled all around the world, and to many places in Europe, and I don't think I've ever seen a place that is more beautiful than Krakow and especially the market square at night. The restaurant that we went to that first night was very, very good, and it was so nice to sit outside!

We had a wonderful time in Wadowice Gorne. So for us, just to be in that town, and to see the church, and the old church and these people was so special! My mother cried when she left Stanislaus, and she kept saying that he looked exactly like her grandfather. All of them were so friendly and so nice to us and we loved meeting them. Perhaps I will need to make another trip there to finish! :)
I can't even tell you how special it was to go the the church in Brunary. I did not know my grandmother Kulig, because she died before I was born. But on the Kowalsky side, I knew my grandfather very well, and also his mother. I never thought in my life that I would ever go to Poland , let alone the town where she came from, nor that I would one day stand in the same church where her wedding was! It was a day of a lifetime for all of us.

My father gets very impatient, and we were worried that he might not enjoy the trip as much since he is not Polish. He was interested every second and loved the trip. He owns a coal mine in Pennsylvania , and loved seeing the salt mine. We all did. Afterward, Mike showed us where Schindler's factory was, from the Schindler's List movie. Again, it was sad but we enjoyed it so much.

It was very difficult to say goodbye to Michal and Alicia. They were wonderful to us and so very very nice. We miss them a lot.
After being on a tour with strangers, and having someone point everything to us through a window my Mom and Dad kept saying that they were so glad we didn't take an organized general tour the whole time. They kept on saying, and I agree, that we saw the "real" Poland with Mike and Alicia. We were in remote cities and eating in out of the way places and loved it!!!

I never expected to love Poland so much. Growing up, my father's family had much more influence on my life because my Polish grandparents died so young. We always kept the Polish customs on Christmas Eve, (Wigilia) and on Easter, but didn't know much about Poland or Polish people. After this trip, my brother and I keep saying how PROUD we are to be Polish! The polish people are so religious, and so nice, and so friendly!!

We were nervous a little because we waited until the last minute to plan the details of our trip, and we didn't know you except for what we read on your website. But you did a wonderful job. All of us said that we would be happy to write letters of recommendation if you want.

All of us who went on the trip have told everyone else in our family that they NEED to go to Poland! We are saying the same thing to people who are not in our family. Americans don't know much about Poland, and ask us why we went there. We show the pictures now, and can't wait to go back.

You have a great business. Poland is a wonderful place, and again, I am so happy to be Polish!

Louis Beltrami, Jr. - Roswell , GA


Today I received the final report on the Mudryszyn family roots in Poland . I am so VERY pleased. The report was extremely professional and much more than I expected. The history lesson really helped me to understand the changing borders and logistics of the Lemko region. Again, I want to thank you and your staff in Poland for their hard work and efforts. I cannot wait to share this information with my Mom and family.

I would strongly recommend your services to anyone needing Polish Research.

Take care and best wishes,

Sandra Pozar-Keeter - Harvest, AL


Thank you for all the difficult work that you did! You went beyond the call of duty!

Karen Lawson - Ames , IA


We have just returned from our wonderful trip to Poland. I cannot thank you enough for all the research into my family history or for the planning and coordination of our trip to Krakow and the villages my grandmother and grandfather immigrated from As you know, I and 8 family members took my 79 year old father to Poland to see where his mother and father once lived. We had the slightest hope that we would actually meet a living relative from our Polish roots. The trip you planned for us was beyond our wildest dreams. The apartments were nice, our bus service and driver were top notch and our guide Ewa could not be described by any other word than "outstanding". Ewa gave us a 110% effort in meeting our needs and requests and 110% of the time, she went well beyond any duties that she was contracted for and it reflects the type of person associated with the Ancestral Attic. In all of my life, I have never seen my father so happy. A farmer by trade, like his father before him, he was busy raising a family and trying to put food on our table and never had time to think about a family still in Poland. It did however fascinate him, like me on why they may have immigrated to the US in the first place. His father wanted to return to Poland one day and never got that chance, although I felt his spirit with us through my fathers' tears of joy. Because my own fathers' time on this earth is limited, I feel that he has in some small way fulfilled his own father's dream of returning to his home land. Again, we owe this all to you and the Ancestral Attic.

There are no words to describe what you have done for our family. It has truly been a gift from God that could never be replaced. I have traveled to many different parts of the world and in 2008, will be traveling to Africa, in all my years; I have never enjoyed a trip more than the one you planned for us in Poland in 2006. For the potential people who may want assistance in researching their families' roots in Poland or would like to have a personalized trip to Poland planned for them, they could not find a finer and more professional person to assist them than you. Please feel free to use me as a reference, if any of your customers would like to talk to me personally about your services or your assistance to our group. We can never repay you for what we received back from our Poland trip and thank you does not seem nearly enough, therefore in closing…..I thank you, thank you and thank you again for everything from the bottom of my heart.

Gary J. Socola - Bloomfield , NY


Over twenty-five years ago, I embarked on learning about my families' roots, knowing all of my ancestors came from Poland. Because I neither read nor speak Polish, I believed I could go no farther then those relatives that first came to America. But after working with Ancestral Attic, I've learned that is not true.

How thrilling it is to read about the birth of your grandfather, the marriage of your great-grandparents, the lives and accomplishments of many of their descendants and much more.

It is my privilege to highly recommend the services of Ancestral Attic. Not only have I learned so much about my ancestors, but I am in contact with several relatives I never would have known I had.

Ray Mann - Reno, Nevada


My experience with Ancestral Attic has been a favorable one. If you're like me and do not know where or how to begin, the experienced Staff at Ancestral Attic can guide you through the process and the language barriers.

Finding dependable Genealogists is not as easy as it may seem. My experience with an earlier genealogist left me totally frustrated as he just disappeared. I found out later that I was not the only one that he scammed.

Ancestral Attic provides a professional atmosphere with personalized treatment. In my case because of the rarity of my name, phone interviews were also conducted with potential relatives. They will leave no stone unturned and will conveniently provide those periodic updates that we all desire.

Copies of Documents researched can be requested for a modest fee. The best part I have left for last. Ancestral attic will translate the Russian, Polish, etc. documents and summarize in a PDF File!

I'm looking forward to my next phase of research using Ancestral Attic to guide the way.

Sincerely,

Steven Skoropowski - Tewksbury , Massachusetts