My maternal grandfather, Franz August Heinrich Kwiatkowski, was born 11 May 1872 in Neufahrwasser, Danzig (today Gdansk). His parents were Joseph and Maria (geb. Bork). In the 1890s Franz Kwiatkowski moved to Werdau, Sachsen, to seek work. There he met and married Hedwig Lina Bauer (my grandmother). In the next few years five girls were born (one was my mother) and two boys who died young. The family moved to Leipzig, then to Magdeburg, then to Berlin.

In 1912 the emigrated to Montreal, Canada, and when Franz Kwiatkowski received his Canadian Naturalization (citizenship) papers, he took steps to legally change the family name to Blume. I did not know that my mother's family name was Kwiatkowski until in 1983 when my last living aunt gave me the Familienstambuch they had brought with them from Germany. In it I was surprised to see that the family name had been Kwiatkowski.

Recently someone on another discussion wrote that Kwiatkowski was the Polish equivalent to Bluemke (or Blümke). I had never heard that before, and my aunt had given no clear explanation as to why her father had changed the family name in Canada. Is it possible that in changing his name from Kwiatkowski to Blume in Canada he was returning to a variation an earlier family name that he had known about?