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I'm doing my Wife's genealogy and she is related to Jan Kalinowski (1855-1941).
We have records of 13 of the 15 Jan Kalinowski descendents and my wife is a granddaughter of one of Jans sons named Celistino.
If anyone is familiar with this story or possibly Jan's ancestors in Poland please email me.
Here is some material to enrich the Kalinowski story and jog some peoples memories:
Jan Kalinowski is refered to in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/8489119120/qid=1086363519/sr=2-3/ref=sr_2_3/103-9526644-1754241
on pp 42-43
The story, in part, goes something like this:
The time was the late 1800’s. A revolution was erupting across Russia, and while men and beasts crashed through the chaos of history thousands of men were imprisoned in Russian jails. One of them was Jan Kalinowski, a Polish zoologist. After having been found roaming about mysteriously in the outback of the empire, he was thought to be a spy and was apprehended. In prison, however, Kalinowski made a mysterious and repeated request: “Take me to the Czar,” he said, “and I will make him an unforgettable gift. His guards, interpreting this as a threat, seized the Pole and dragged him before the Czar.
“And what am I to make of this talk of a ‘present’?” the Czar demanded, angry yet intrigued.
“Give me the opportunity and I will make you the finest present you’ve ever seen,” Kalinowski replied.
After some further discussion, Kalinowski was released into the company of four Russian soldiers with whom he traveled to Siberia. There, the former zoologist tracked, confronted and killed a giant polar bear, then returned to Moscow where he stuffed it so that the bear stood rearing as if on the point of attack. The Czar was enormously pleased, soon placing the bear behind the door in a special room where he used it to frighten friends and enemies alike. Shortly thereafter, Kalinowski was released.
Sickened by the devastation and chaos of war, the resourceful Pole soon made his way to Peru. He was sent there by a Polish count who wished to from a collection of Peru’s birds, already renowned as being among some of the most colorful and diverse in the wold. Kalinowski arrived in Peru in 1887, at a time when fortunes were being made in the Amazon from the extraction of rubber, or black gold. For scientists, however, the jungle itself was the lure - it had already attracted such luminaries as Humboldt, Agassiz, Darwin, Wallace and Bates. The hand-made sketches and reports of these scientists had seized the imagination of naturalists all over the world, only adding to the Amazon’s already legendary stature.
Journeying to the former capital of the Incas, Kalinowski soon met and married a Cuzquena woman, retiring from the world’s cares in the remote jungle valley of Marcapata, about 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Cuzco. True to his nature, Kalinowski began explorations into the flora and fauna of his new home and was soon sending zoological specimens to some of the finest museums in Europe. He even had a newly discovered rodent named after him, Dasyprocta kalinowskii romas. Although he would never return to Poland, one of Kalinowski’s 18 children - Celistino - would eventually begin accompanying his father deeper and deeper into Peru’s remote southeastern jungle. There, and in the region of Manu, he could begin learning everything that his father, and the jungle Indians whom his father befriended, had to teach. Unbeknownst to the elder Kalinowski, the legacy that he imparted would through his son lead to the creation of the National Biosphere reserve of Manu.
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