O gdańskich korzeniach J. R. R. Tolkiena
J. R. R. Tolkien’s Ancestry in Gdańsk, Poland. From 1724 in Gdańsk to the Coming to London in 1770

Summary/Abstract: J. R. R. Tolkien’s (1892–1973) ancestry has been an obscure matter. From the official biographies of the famous Oxford professor and author we have known only about Tolkien’s great-grandparents and about the general direction of the Tolkien family’s migration in the eighteenth century described as „Saxony”. Ryszard Derdziński has found out J. R. R. Tolkien’s great-great-grandfather’s roots. Discovering crucial genealogical documents from London, Gdańsk (Poland) and Kreuzburg (East Prussia) ie. church records, a Parliament bill, newspaper news, entries in the books from that age etc. Derdziński has proved that John Benjamin Tolkien (1752–1719), J. R. R. Tolkien’s ancestor who lived and died in London and was a watch- and clock-maker, was born in Gdańsk in June 1752. His brother was Daniel Gottlieb Tolkien from London who also was born in Polish Gdańsk in July 1746. They emigrated from Gdańsk to London in the years 1766–1772. Their father was Christian Tolkien (1706–1791), a craftsman from Gdańsk, brother of a Gdańsk furrier, Michael Tolkien (1708–1795). Both Christian and Michael were born in a little town Kreuzburg in East Prussia (now Slavskoye in Kaliningrad Oblast). Derdziński has found there at least four generations of this line of the Tolkien family and the first known Tolkien from Kreuzburg was Friedrich Tolkien from 1614. The article shows also the genesis of the Tolkien family name and locates its beginning in the fourteenth century and a small village Tolkynen (today Tołkiny in Poland).

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