GOESSEL ? A visitor from Poland is helping residents of Goessel complete the picture of their city’s history.

For a visit to the Marion County community this month, Henry Zamojski brought information about Mennonite history, Goessel history and agriculture.

“The history we know (of Goessel) doesn’t have all the pieces,” said Laura Flaming, who is Zamojski’s host.

Zamojski first visited in 1978 through a program with Mennonite Central Committee. He stayed with Flaming and her husband, Randolf, and took an interest in the history of the area.

Since then he has studied documents that tie the city to Kurt von Goessel, the 19th century Polish-born steamship captain from whom the Kansas community took its name.

Von Goessel was among some 350 people who died in 1895 when the steamship Elbe sank in the English Channel after being rammed by another vessel. Stories of von Goessel’s calm command in the moments before his death made worldwide headlines — at the same time citizens of what is now Goessel, Kan., were looking for a name that would be acceptable to the Postal Department.

On his trip this month, Zamojski brought von Goessel’s seal, as well as a letter from the Polish city of Urbanouitz, where von Goessel was born and which Zamojski hopes will become a sister city with Goessel.

Zamojski lives near Urbanouitz and another Polish city, Raciborz, where von Goessel grew up. He found documentation of von Goessel’s life in the area, which he has brought to the United States.

Also in Zamojski’s luggage for his Kansas trip were documents on the history of Mennonites in Poland, which he hopes to give to the Mennonite church.

“I want to leave this for the young fellows so they can check and find where their grand-grand-grand-grandparents were from,” he said.

Zamojski is head of the agricultural department in Opole, Poland, a position he compared to that of Kansas’ state secretary of agriculture. He has spent much of his time in Goessel on the farm of the Flamings’ son, Dwight.

“On the farm, there are big changes,” Zamojski said. “Some are good for the farmer, some are not. He just told me the price for 100 pounds of milk. It’s just like it was 25 years ago.”

Zamojski plans to present Kurt von Goessel’s seal to the mayor next month, when the town begins its Threshing Days celebration.