Rita Park wrote:

I have had a number of birth records >from Zgiers translated & in each case
the father was somehow involved in the Chicory trade.
The records range >from 1849 to 1874. Does anyone have any knowledge of the

Chicory trade in this era...

Mayer Kirshenblatt remembers chicory >from his childhood in Opatów. It was a
coffee substitute. He describes how it was prepared and consumed in They
Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland
Before the Holocaust on pp. 64, 209.

Here is another account >from Gorodenko, before and during WW I:
http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/gorodenka/gor117.html.

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw