IThe generational chain
The story works as a chain of generations, from an early-nineteenth-century couple in the Korzec / Zviahel area of Volhynia down to today.
Maciej and Marianna
The earliest named couple in the family tree are Maciej Czerniachowicz (died 1850) and Marianna (1778–1851).
These names come from a tree kept by relatives and are not yet corroborated elsewhere, so they sit at the edge of what can be claimed. A “Maciej + Marianna Czerniachowicz” recorded in parish indexes at Korzec may be the same couple, but that rests on a fuzzy name match. It is a hypothesis, not a finding.
Their son Erazm
Erazm (born 1817) is on firmer ground. A parish record shows an Erazm Czerniachowicz marrying at Nowogród Wołyński in 1842, with his parents named as Maciej and Marianna. That backs up the tree well, even if a few details, such as his wife’s maiden name and his mother’s name, still need reconciling between the document and the tree.
Erazm’s son Jan
Jan (born 1871) is firmly documented. He married Teofila Zagórska, and the couple appear in the Krasna Słoboda parish records baptising their children in 1900 and 1907. By the 1914 confessional list, Jan had died and Teofila is recorded as head of household, a widow with seven children. Family memory adds that Teofila came from a wealthy noble family and lived until 1955; her existence and widowhood are documented, those further details recollection.
Teofila’s seven children
This is the generation the family story turns on. Among them is my grandfather Antoni, and the brothers lost to Soviet repression. Antoni’s children, born in exile in Africa, carry the line into England. One of them was my father, Józef.
The 1914 confessional list, a primary document, names seven children. The relatives’ family tree shows only three, plus a son, Bolesław (1907–1944), who does not appear on the 1914 list at all, even though a boy born in 1907 should have. The two sources do not fully reconcile. Most likely the tree just follows the branches of interest and leaves out siblings. But Bolesław’s place in the picture is genuinely unresolved, and I flag it rather than smooth it over.
IIThe branches
As records have surfaced, it has become clear the wider family is best seen as a set of related branches, shaped by where people ended up.
The Volhynian / Ukrainian branch
Centred on Krasna Słoboda and Katiukha, the household Teofila headed, and the branch that bore the heaviest cost under Soviet rule. It includes the line, through Bolesław, leading to Olya Chernyhovych, the relative in Ukraine whose research has made much of the recent progress possible.
The British branch
Descends from Antoni, through his journey out of the USSR to Uganda and then England, where the surname continues in a few lines. This is my own line.
Other lines
The name persists in Belarus and Russia under the spelling Черняхович / Chernyakhovich, and in post-war Poland, mainly the western regions where Volhynian families were resettled. These may descend from cousins of the Volhynian line, though the exact links are mostly unproven. Other bearers, related and not, are gathered on the Other Bearers of the Name page.
Two of this family’s threads have their own pages: my grandfather’s route out of the Soviet Union, and the household he left behind.