The House of Przanowski, also knowns as Przanowski of Nowina coat of arms (Polish: Przanowscy herbu Nowina), and as Perzanowski, is a Polish noble family originating from Sieradz region. It is a part of the boyar families of the Nowina heraldic clan.
Early history
The Przanowski family (also known as Perzanowski) originates from the village of Przanowice in the Łęczyca Voivodeship. The Przanowski family established a court in Chełm and in Red Ruthenia in the early 17th century. The family signed the elections from the province Kalisz in 1669. They further signed elections from the province Sandomierz in 1669 and 1697. Initially, the Przanowski family promoted religious freedom for all subjects and thus obtained notoriety.
The qahal (Hebrew: קהל), an ancient Israelite society, predecessor to Alliance Israélite Universelle (and an Ashkenazi Jewish system of a self-governing community or kehila), endowed their support to the Przanowski family in the Sejm of Four Lands and therefore the vast majority of the Jewish community gave their support to the Przanowski family. The Jewish community in Kalisz was one of the most important in the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, and the rabbis of Kalisz presided over the sessions of the Sejm of Four Lands (1581–1764). In 1669 with the support of the community the Przanowski family was able to establish the House of Przanowski.
Early members of the family include; Krzysztof Przanowski, who was the township clerk of Chełm from 1655 and selected as land judge of Busko in 1665; Jan Krzysztof Przanowski, who was land scribe of Czerniechów (Land scribe: an official of the land court, often from nobility, who manages property matters of the nobility) and Chorąży of Inowłódz; Wojciech Przanowski, who was appointed town clerk in Chełm 1663; Maciej Przanowski rector of the Jesuits in Kalisz 1746; and Ludwik Przanowski, who was appointed captain of the Crown Army in 1778.
They showed their nobility in Galicia in 1804, and in the Kingdom of Poland in 1844, 1854 and 1862. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they owned Lubowice in the province of Poznań and Markuszewice in the Lublin County.
Second Generation Norbertines
Edward Przanowski
Edward Przanowski (1845-1929) graduated the Men's Gymnasium in Piotrków (Present: Bolesław I the Brave High School in Piotrków Trybunalski) and was admitted to the newly established (Warsaw Main School) at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. Przanowski's studies was halted due to his involvement in the January Uprising. Edward fought in the party of General Edmund Taczanowski. On August 29, 1863, he was a part of the defeated forces of the battle of Kruszyna (Nieznanice) and was seriously wounded twice. According to his own testimony, the Cossacks (Ethnic group used for policing in the Russian Tsardom) went around the battlefield verifying that everyone apart from the insurgent was dead by piercing the bodies with pikes. Przanowski was one of the insurgent soldiers pierced. In his testimony, he details how, despite the pain, he was able to not make any noise or movement and thus survived. In 1864, Edward Przanowski practiced at the Road Administration of the Kingdom of Poland, and on December 22, 1868, he passed the exam and received the title of engineer-conductor.
At the age of 44, in 1889, Przanowski worked as an engineer in the cities of the Kingdom of Poland, which experienced regression in the second half of the 19th century as a result of tsarist post-uprising repressions. From 1866 to 1871, he was an engineer-conductor of the Sieradz district. In the years 1871–1880, he was an engineer and a district architect in Słupca. Przanowski was responsible, among others, for the technical infrastructure of the administered areas, road maintenance, renovation of public facilities, fire protection. In 1878, he was in charge of technical works on the construction of a church in the Evangelical-Augsburg parish in Zagórów near Słupca.
In 1880, Edward Przanowski was appointed as engineer and architect of the Łęczyca county. As a poviat engineer and architect, he drew up plans of towns in the Łęczyca region. Four of the plans have been preserved since 1893 in the Cartographic Collection of the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw. The plans of Łęczyca, Grabów, Piątek, and Poddębice was a valuable source of spatial and urban development of the county.