Selesian

Hello Fred, I've found the people in the Polish Genealogy group on Facebook very knowledgeable and helpful regarding questions involving Polish ancestry. They have been very generous in pointing me to maps and records.

Thank you for your replies and links. I will take a look and also try Facebook. I think when they were in that area it was under German rule, so that is why the name Demel (Dehmel) is not so common. I know I found a reference to Kamena for a person who was a witness to a birth in Hultschin in 1642, So I am assuming the towns could not have been that far apart.

Maybe they were in the area that is now Czech as it seems that Hultschin (Now Hlucin) is in that area. But my grandmother maiden name Ulbrich came from the area Steinseifensdorf, District Reichensbach, Breslau, Schlesien, which I think is now Poland.

Thanks

Maybe they were in the area that is now Czech as it seems that
Hultschin (Now Hlucin) is in that area. But my grandmother maiden name
Ulbrich came from the area Steinseifensdorf, District Reichensbach,
Breslau, Schlesien, which I think is now Poland.

Hultschin was a German linguistic enclave between the Czech and Polish-German settlement area of Czech-Silesia/Silesia. In German it's called "Hultschiner Ländchen". "Ratabor" could be Ratibor, today Raciborz, which is a few kilometers to the north. Gratz could also be Glatz, today Klotzko, which is between Hultschin and Steinseifensdorf.
It will be difficult for you to find out more. Some of the towns, like Ratibor or Hultschin, lie in an area were Czech, Polish and German culture mixed. With a German majority these places were written in German, in other cases in Polish or Czech. The spelling also changed over the centuries. And with WW2 and the following population exchange the region was turned uspide down.
It's wrong what Marginata said: often the records are still there. In some cases they were destroyed in or after the war, and sometimes they were moved to different locations. I think Protestant church record to Wroclaw for example.

@ fdehmel...If you want to find out more of the locations in the Ratibor area, look at a detailed map of Upper Silesia (Oberschlesien). Try Höfer Verlag. They publish a map covering from Upper Silesia to Lower Silesia (Niederschlesien). These are excellent, detailed, bilingual maps (German/Polish) or German/Czech, great for learning the geography of the areas. I have a few of these myself.

The Höfer Verlag maps also cover all of the present Czech Republic...from Ostrava to Cheb.