. . . And Elżbieta Makes Twelve

 

Welcome to December, the last month of the year, filled with holidays and celebrations. In my case, I hope to celebrate some discoveries about my second great-grandmother, Elżbieta Gramlewicz, her siblings and parents.

I named Elżbieta the last of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025. As I outlined in my research plans nearly a year ago, I hope to learn more about not only Elżbieta herself, but her siblings and parents, as well.

Before we begin this month's search, though, here's an overview of what I've already uncovered about this Polish ancestor. Like many family history researchers, I first learned of Elżbieta's name courtesy of the 1935 New York City death certificate of her son, Antoni Laskowski.

Though I had sent for my immigrant great-grandfather's death certificate the old "SASE" way years ago (if you know, you know), it wasn't until recently that I've been able to retrieve further family information through online means, both in New York City and back in Poland, the land Elżbieta never left. Thanks to FamilySearch.org, I can now view her January 22, 1844, marriage record to Mateusz Laskowski in their home parish in Żerków. 

According to that Żerków marriage record, Elżbieta was noted to be twenty four years of age, putting her estimated year of birth at 1820. However, I have yet to locate any baptismal or birth records for her. The only other detail I've been able to find is courtesy of one website in Poland, which then pointed me to online records from a Polish archive, confirming Elżbieta's 1886 death in the same town where she was married.

To find Elżbieta's siblings will mean locating that birth or baptismal confirmation to first uncover the names of her parents. These details will help me to confirm a number of DNA matches, both at Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com especially, due to the latter's high number of customers from European countries. That puts this as job number one for this coming week, but while I'm looking for further details on this Gramlewicz family behind the scenes, we do need to talk about the one connection I had made with this family, back in New York City, the same place where Elżbieta's name first appeared during my earliest search for her identity.

Looking Ahead

 

With the close of one month, it's time to look ahead to the upcoming month's research challenge. For December, that bustling month of holiday preparations, I'll hopefully reserve some time to gain a breakthrough on yet another of my father's Polish ancestors, my second great-grandmother Elżbieta Gramlewicz. 

For this upcoming month, I'll be taking my cue from last month's research success. I'll not only be exploring what I can find on Elżbieta's parents, but examining her collateral lines. Of course, the main reason for such a move is to seek connections through DNA matches, but in finding records for those collateral matches, it is also possible to find corroboration for other family details, such as mistakenly-entered surnames on records. After all, Polish surnames are not exactly the easiest to spell, as I've already discovered with the past two months' research projects on my paternal lines.

To search for Elżbieta, we'll shift our attention from last month's focus on the tiny villages in Pomerania to the west and the province of Posen, another region where Poland was also swallowed up by the governmental designation of Prussia. Thankfully, once again, a local Polish genealogical organization will come to our rescue with their website providing not only transcriptions of Prussian documents but also links to view the actual records. In particular, we'll be seeking the Gramlewicz family in or near the town called Żerków.

As we launch into December's edition of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025, I'll start with a recap of what we've already discovered about Elżbieta Gramlewicz from work in past years. Then, as always, it will be time to explore what record sources are now available to us this year, and look for promising signs of Elżbieta's life story between 1825 and 1886.

In the Encouragement Department

 

Trying to find a way around a brick wall ancestor can be discouraging, especially when, failed attempt after failed attempt, the frustrated researcher still comes up empty-handed. That miserable series of disappointing results, as I've experienced with my Polish ancestors' cases, only serves to make the arrival of a document discovery all the sweeter. With this past month's focus for my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors for 2025—the siblings and parents of my second great-grandmother Marianna Wojtaś—I'd say last week's discoveries did just nudge me across the threshold into the encouragement department.

Thanks to the records available online through FamilySearch.org, I was quickly able to locate the June 29, 1815, baptismal record for Marianna from her Catholic parish in what is now the Pomeranian village of Pączewo. That, of course, revealed her parents' identity: in Latin, their names were written as Martino Wojtaś and Anna Szczyglieska.

From there, I easily located Marianna's 1833 marriage record in the same parish, confirming her parents' names, as well as the identity of her husband—Johann Zegarski in Latin, but Jan in Polish.

Jumping to Marianna's parents' generation, I began searching for her siblings. So far, I've been able to identify three: two sisters and one brother. Based on my discovery of those five DNA matches in Australia whose trees point me to an ancestor named Susanna Wojtaś, I'm eyeing that one brother, also named Johann, to see whether he had any daughters by that name.

There are likely other children in the family of "Martino" and Anna beyond the ones I've already found records for. I suspect some of them will lead me to more DNA matches, so this will be a family line I'll look forward to pursuing in upcoming years. But for now, at the close of this month, I'll button up my pile of documents and handwritten notes and diagrams and prepare to move on to December's Twelve Most Wanted challenge, another of my father's Polish ancestors.

Much to be Grateful for

 

The Thanksgiving holiday continues over the entire weekend for our family, so the gratefulness didn't stop with yesterday's sunset. Today, for instance, the turkey saga continues as we button up the leftover meat in the stock made from the picked-clean bones and roasted vegetables and park it all in the freezer for future soup-making endeavors. Much of the rest of the weekend will be devoted to preparing for the next holiday celebration which, from my vantage point at the close of a too-short month, will be here all too soon.

There is, however, something else which I am grateful for during this final weekend of November. Since the close of one month means wrapping up that month's research project, I often end with a to-do list of what needs to be completed next in my continuing struggle to discover my family's roots.

For the last three months of each year, those research projects do indeed signify a struggle, for that is the time I devote to pushing against the brick wall of my paternal grandparents' heritage. My patriline, in particular, has been a challenge, but in reality, I've struggled with all four of my paternal grandparents' parents. 

To think that, when I began this quest decades ago, I dutifully searched in the direction I was told: that my father was Irish. After all, his surname certainly sounded Irish—but that was because I didn't know my immigrant paternal grandfather changed his name.

It's been a long, plodding journey filled with twists and turns—and mostly dead ends. Polish records are not as accessible for the regions I've discovered for my paternal lineage, but with DNA—and cousins helping cousins—that journey has become a step-by-step process. And just this past week, I believe I've made a significant step on this Polish line with the surprising discovery of some DNA matches in Australia.

When I awoke at the beginning of this holiday weekend, the thought hit me how long it has taken to get to this point—and that the work is now actually leading to a clearer picture of my paternal ancestors' story. For those who stayed behind in Poland, it certainly wasn't a happy one, true, but at least now I know. For once, as I close out a month's work, I can look forward to continuing on this line for a future year's Twelve Most Wanted.

For now, I have two more days to wrap up this month's search by summarizing what I've discovered on my great-grandmother Anastasia Zegarska's mother's Wojtaś family. Over this holiday, every time I think about it, another wave of gratefulness washes over me. This breakthrough has been a long time coming.

Here's to Thanksgiving

 

Here's to the holiday which first got me wondering about all those ancestors who made up my (very) extended family. To the ones whose stories I knew—and the ones whose stories I hadn't yet heard. More than that, here's to those family members as yet so completely unknown that it may take years more to even discover their names, let alone their life story.

That, in a nutshell, is what Thanksgiving did for me. Oh, of course I take time to recall all the good times for which I'm grateful—and there have been plenty of those blessings to inspire giving thanks. But sometimes, in the loneliness, in the struggle, in the disappointment, there is just that spark which, though nearly invisible at first, eventually sets in motion a series of events which we couldn't have anticipated—maybe even couldn't have interpreted as it first unfolded.

Thanksgiving isn't really the great meal hours in the preparation for the holiday's featured event. Nor is it the big game, or even the parade televised from miles away. It's really about being together, and being grateful for that togetherness—even if right now, there is more yearning for that togetherness than actual physical closeness. Sometimes the glass half empty can turn into the glass half full. For that, I can be thankful. 

Searching for the Right Place

 

Finding a family connection between five DNA matches in Australia and my paternal roots in Poland was a discovery which came, at first, with much doubt. But looking for further details uncovered possible signs to guide me further—but only for a short distance. Sure, it was encouraging to find an Anastasius Kaminski who married someone named Susanna Wojtaś—that maiden name being the key to our connection—but when I began researching their supposed son's place of birth and Susanna's place of death, I realized I had run into a big problem.

Searching for the right place may be important in building a family tree, especially when we run the risk of encountering name twins. With the case of a fairly common surname like Kaminski, I knew that name twins would be a high possibility. What I didn't bank on finding, though, was the possibility of several towns having the same name, back in Poland.

Looking at the family trees posted for those Australian DNA cousins, I noticed that there was very little shared about this ancestral link—and much of it without any supporting documentation. One tree gave Susanna's place of birth as "Dambrova." Another match's tree mentioned her son's place of birth as "Dabrowka." A copy of a passenger list—apparently typed on a machine with a malfunctioning letter "w"—showed among the displaced persons being transported from Poland to Australia after World War II Susanna's possible son Bernard, born in Dabrowka.

Well, what are the chances? I may as well check out that location by an online search, I thought. Easy, right? Until the Google AI narrative informed me,

Dąbrówka is a very common place name in Poland, so there are dozens of locations with this name. To find the correct Dąbrówka, it is important to provide more context, such as a nearby city, voivodeship (province), or county, as there are villages with this name in many different parts of the country.

Think that AI was hallucinating? Think again. Check this list of all the possible places in Poland with the place name Dąbrówka. Just picking one to start the search would mean casting off into a Sargasso Sea of genealogical listlessness. Talk about an exhaustive search.

I tried a different approach. I headed to the database on the website of the Pomeranian Genealogical Association (PTG) to look for any transcribed records of Susanna's death in Poland. At first, I tried following the rules, entering Susanna's married name as Kaminska, according to the Polish way to designate a woman's surname. No luck.

Just in case, I also tried her name, spelled as Kaminski, and found a transcription of a death record for a Susanna Kaminski, along with the entry of her maiden name, given as Wojtas (lacking the diacritical mark over the "s"). The transcription provided a year of death as 1943, in the midst of those horrific war years. In the column which would normally have given the decedent's age, instead was provided the entry, "11.06.1870."

Could that have been Susanna's own date of birth? From another record, I had found her to be born in 1870. Assuming the European style of noting dates, that would yield a birthday on June 11, 1870.

The transcription indicated that the actual document was drawn up (or held by?) by the Catholic parish in Starogard Gdański. If I could see the Catholic record itself, it might show the specific place in the parish of Susanna's residence during her last days. Could that place have been in Dąbrówka? That's a possibility I'd like to check, if for nothing else than to determine which of more than eighty villages named Dąbrówka the Kaminskis had once called home.

Minding the Gap

 

In 1950, a thirty four year old Polish blacksmith from "Dabrovka" arrived at port in Fremantle, Australia. Along with several other single men, this passenger had departed from the Displaced Persons Camp in Fallingbostel in what was by then the British zone of post-World War II Germany. Listed under the name Bernard Kaminski, he reported himself to be Roman Catholic and unmarried, and provided his date of birth as August 8, 1916.

For a Polish person born in 1916—especially one who possibly could be related to my Zegarski or Wojtaś family lines in Pomerania—it might be possible to find transcriptions of baptismal records at the website of the Pomeranian Genealogical Association (PTG). After all, that group of avid genealogists has been working hard to make local records findable by the rest of the worldwide Polish diaspora.

What I've been minding, however, has been the gap between available dates of baptismal records at PTG and dates like those of refugees of World War II. There is a considerable gap between what can be found online in documents and what is still needed to be available. 

While subsequent records painted a clearer picture of just who this "displaced person" might have been, the one document I was keen on finding was any record of his death. There, hopefully, I'd discover the name of this refugee's parents, the one means of bridging the gap between records of a new life in Australia and the war-torn life of his younger years in Europe. I've been minding that gap with many of the collateral lines in my Polish heritage.

There was, thankfully, a transcribed Australian death index at Ancestry.com which included someone by that same name of Bernard Kaminski, with parents' first names given as "Anastasia" and "Suzzana." At first, I was stumped when I saw the father's name listed as Anastasia—until I realized that there was a Polish version of that name for men: Anastazy. When looking for baptismal records, though, I knew the Latin version of the name would be Anastasius.

Realizing that the PTG database has expanded to include some records from as late as the 1930s, I hoped for the best in searching for anyone named Bernard. No such luck in this case, however—but I did find something else which caught my eye: an 1895 baptismal record for someone named Anastasius Kaminski.

The place was close to being just right: Pączewo in Pomerania, a Catholic parish where I had found records for children of other collateral lines. But even better was one detail: this Anastasius' parents were identified in this Latin record as Anastasius Kaminski and Susanna Wojtaś.

Whether this 1895 newborn would, in twenty one years, turn out to be the father of our Bernard, I can't yet determine. Perhaps he might be a much-older big brother to Bernard.

Even if neither of those scenarios turns out to be correct, I'm now fixated on one detail: how does that Susanna connect to my own family's Wojtaś line? After all, this whole chase began with the clue of five DNA matches down under, each of whom connects with my other Zegarski and Wojtaś cousins. Hopefully, the rest of the details I'll need won't be swallowed up in that frustrating records gap.