The next day, we went to the church at Wysoka Strzyzowska.
The priest was amiable, ribbing me about my lack of Polish skills. He let us look at the original parish records of births, deaths and marriages, which went back to the early 1800s. The aged books were in remarkably good condition, given that they were over 100 years old and had survived two world wars. After a bit of searching, we hit paydirt. We found the birth record of my great-grandfather Wladyslaw, his siblings, his parents and forefathers. All told, I was able to trace ancestry back to the late 1700s, discovering three earlier generations about which I had known nothing.