Revisiting Family Lines

 

Some ancestors need more attention than others. In the case of selecting three of my father's ancestors for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, it turns out there was more than one neglected Polish line. Of my dad's eight great-grandparents, I had only spent one month out of the past six years focusing on his maternal grandmother's father—and that was back in 2021. It's about time I revisit that line in the family tree.

This ancestor, born about 1829 in what used to be the country of Prussia, was listed in his marriage record as "Franciscum" Jankowski. That was from a record in Latin. As far as his family, friends, and neighbors went, I'm sure it was more likely that he was called Franciszek. But since government records kept during that time period would have been in German, we'll need to keep an eye out for the name Franz Jankowski, as well.

Thanks to his marriage record, I already have one document naming his parents. In addition, I've already found records naming three children. One, of course, was my own great-grandmother Marianna, who left her homeland for New York City along with her three young children when her husband sent word bidding her to come join him in his new home. Franciszek's second daughter followed a similar path after her own marriage—only in her case, the immigration route led her to upstate New York to settle near Buffalo. For a third daughter of Franciszek, I can find Polish records of her marriage, and documents naming several children, but at that point in the years leading up to the first World War, the trail of Polish records disappeared.

In the years since I last worked on the Jankowski family line, there have surely been more recent records added to sources such as the Polish websites I now frequent. It's time to revisit those foreign resources, check for each of Franciszek's grandchildren by name, and delve into those collateral lines.

The main goal here is to seek DNA cousins whose ancestry shares this same Jankowski root. In addition to that, since I have the names of Franciszek's parents, I'm hoping to see whether I can push back that line yet another generation. If nothing else, I'd like to explore records for possibilities of his own siblings and their lines of descent, as well.

It often seems as if finding one piece of information becomes the key to open another door in these Polish brick walls, so I want to press through in any available direction. After all, Franciszek spent a good portion of his life raising his family in that same Polish village I researched last fall, Żerków, so the record set availability has become more familiar to me. I'm looking forward to expanding this Jankowski branch of the family quite a bit more this coming November as part of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026.

Taking Inventory

 

Looking into the new year, I decided it was time to take inventory on my research progress before making plans for upcoming projects. Much as I had done when I began making selections for the three ancestors from my father-in-law's Irish lines for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, as we move into plans for my own paternal ancestors for the last quarter of the year, I thought I'd follow suit with a tally of results for my Polish ancestors.

There is a reason for keeping track of such selections. I tend to lean toward those ancestors who keep me chomping at the bit to continue working on the same line. These are the ancestors for whom ample records keep luring me onward—meanwhile, sucking up all the available research time in my calendar while other branches lie dormant. I want to ensure that no branch is left neglected—especially those brick wall ancestors.

So once again, I drew up a list of the eight great-grandparents, this time from my father's side of the family tree. Fortunately, in some cases, I had broken beyond that generation to find parents' names, but in those cases, I just tallied the parents in the category for that specific paternal great-grandparent.

As had happened when I examined my father-in-law's eight greats, I saw that some lines were weighted with more attention than others. And, just as with my father-in-law's results, there was one of my father's great-grandparents whom I hadn't researched at all.

That glaring exception will become the tenth of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026. That featured relative will be Susanna Radomska, wife of the brick wall ancestor on my dad's patriline, Jan Puchała. Though I am stumped with her husband's line, learning more about Susanna herself may provide some clues about how she met her future husband. We'll examine what we can find about her parents' identity as well as the names of her siblings, so that we can trace collateral lines for DNA purposes, too.

With this research plan for next October, we will move from researching my father-in-law's ancestors in Ireland to puzzling over Polish records for the last three months of the year.

Just as planning for this new year's Twelve Most Wanted works better by taking inventory of research objectives to find the neglected branches of the family tree, today also marks another type of inventory: my biweekly count. Granted, the past two weeks have been filled with holiday activities—not to mention some needed rest and relaxation with family—but I was able to complete some work wrapping up last December's goal, and slip into the new month's project.

Between those two activities, I managed to add eighty more documented names to my family tree, so we will start 2026 with a tree filled with 40,824 individuals. And thanks to those newsy inserts arriving with Christmas cards last month, I was able to add six more names to my in-laws' family tree, where the count is now at 41,737 relatives.

I anticipate the biweekly count will jump back to more usual parameters as we move past the holidays and I launch into January's research focus. But before we do so, there are two more ancestors I need to line up for this year's Twelve Most Wanted.

Finding Family, the Next Generation

 

When it comes to finding family to research, pressing backwards in time to the next generation gets harder and harder. Couple that dilemma with research in locations such as Ireland, and the lack of available records can bring research to a standstill.

Still, as I push through my Twelve Most Wanted for each year, microscopic breakthroughs do happen—occasionally. Even that sense of "getting closer" to a breakthrough is enough to encourage a researcher to press onward.

As I select the last of my three ancestors from my father-in-law's line for research in 2026, I was actually torn between two family lines. Each of these lines represents ancestors for whom I may actually identify the next generation. One choice was the line of my father-in-law's great-grandmother Margaret Flannery from County Tipperary, Ireland. The other choice was his Falvey line from County Kerry.

While I worked on each of these family lines as selections for last year's Twelve Most Wanted, it was on the Falvey line that I experienced more success, tentatively identifying the parents of his great-grandmother Johanna Falvey. 

I say "tentatively" because I'm not quite confident about the records I've found, and whether I haven't simply stumbled upon what might turn out to be name twins. So this coming September, I'll name Johanna's tentative parents, Patrick Falvey and Anne Fleming, as my selection for the ninth of this year's Twelve Most Wanted.

This task will involve three aspects. One will be to scour available records in Ireland, where Johanna was born, raised, and married in County Kerry. The second approach will be to examine all possible DNA matches linked to this Falvey line—especially since I see many more added to the list since I last visited this research question in 2025. And—spoiler alert—since several of those matches currently live in either Australia or New Zealand, I'll explore what can be learned in general about family history research in those two countries, especially as it regards immigrant records.

With this bulging to-do list for September's research project, we'll be quite busy, indeed. Though the task will be international in scope, it will all point back to one small location in Ireland, where the Falvey family once called a rural townland in County Kerry their home. 

Maybe This will be the Year

 

At the dawning of a new year, do you ever get the feeling that maybe, just maybe, this will be the year? Sometimes, that is the case with me, but not this year. When I look through my Twelve Most Wanted for each of the past six years, I see some remaining on my list who have tenaciously clung to that "most recalcitrant" category. They refuse to be found.

Among such a list for my father-in-law's ancestors is his great-grandmother Anna Flanagan. With a compelling story—and the saved ephemera to support it—she is one ancestor who stubbornly resists being put in her place, at least in the family tree.

Since Anna Flanagan's place is on my father-in-law's matriline, how I wish he were still alive to participate in DNA testing. A mitochondrial DNA test could at least provide guidance in this quest to isolate the right Flanagan family back in County Limerick. There is, however, hope that autosomal DNA testing can provide some guidance regarding this woman who was second great-grandmother to my husband—and at least one current DNA match who is a direct descendant of a Flanagan line.

Last year has been the only time I've tried to tackle this Flanagan line. Despite that attempt, I wasn't able to resolve the question of who Anna's parents and siblings might have been—other than her unmarried brother who also migrated to Chicago as she did. However, improvement in analytical tools coupled with possible expanded record availability back in Ireland may provide the tipping point to finally enable me to find the right place in the family tree for Anna Flanagan this coming August, as the eighth of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026.

Targeting Those who Escaped Detection

 

It's a new year, once again. While most people spend this brand new day with forward-looking thoughts, instead, I took some time for a retrospective approach. In selecting yet another year's Twelve Most Wanted to research for 2026, I wanted to target the ancestors who somehow escaped detection in past years so I can focus on them in the coming year.

Not only is today a day we celebrate as New Year's Day, but for my Twelve Most Wanted, today is the day I shift from selecting ancestors from my mother-in-law's line to finding which ancestors from my father-in-law's family need attention.

To do this, I drew up a list, not by date but by each ancestor's identity. For each of my father-in-law's eight great-grandparents, I noted the date for which I had selected that ancestor as my focus for the Twelve Most Wanted research schedule, all the way back to the first year I had initiated this process.

For instance, beginning with my father-in-law's patriline, I noted that I had worked on John Stevens in August of 2022. I tangentially researched that line once again the next month while researching John's second wife, Eliza Murdock. And in July of 2024, I once again poked and prodded around records for John's potential brother, Hugh Stevens. Still, no headway gained.

I repeated this inventory process for the remaining seven of my father-in-law's eight greats. Each one had two or three entries among each year's Twelve Most Wanted along the route from July of 2020 through the completion of last summer—all, that is, except for one. That one lone ancestor lacking in-depth research as one of my Twelve Most Wanted was John Kelly, my father-in-law's paternal grandmother's own father.

Oh, groan, as a good friend of mine used to say. Looking for someone named John Kelly in Ireland? Why not try launching a needle into a large haystack and see what can be found? With one of the most common surnames in Ireland, coupled with one of the most popular given names for Ireland's sons, this quest of seeking John Kelly's roots is surely doomed to failure. However, I can't not at least give it my best go.

This year, I've promised myself to make those Irish ancestors a chief focus. Though I'm still awash in doubts, I'm willing to sail in that direction and make July the month I'll focus on Irish-born American immigrant John Kelly. This time, hopefully there will be some clues over there in County Kerry, where John apparently met and married his wife, Johanna Falvey. If we never try our hand at smashing through those brick walls, we're sure to never make it to the other side.

Pushing Further Into the Past

 

Selecting specific individuals to research for each month of the upcoming year has been my main focus during these twelve days of Christmas. For each day, I select one specific ancestor I'd like to research for a subsequent month of 2026. I usually divide those Twelve Most Wanted ancestors according to family groupings, so that I have three relatives from my mother's line, followed by three of my mother-in-law's ancestors, then on to three selections for my father-in-law's research list and, finally, three from my own dad's line to wrap up the year.

By now, we've reached ancestor number six, the selection I'll be working on during next June and the last selection from my mother-in-law's family. Here I've bumped into a quandary: many of her roots came, centuries ago, from regions which are now part of the modern country of Germany. Do I choose to jump "the pond" and try my hand at research in the Old Country—wherever that might actually have been—or stick with what will turn out to be ancestors from colonial America? Having given that question much thought, I opted this coming year for the route of pushing further into the past in my own country.

Thus, with this last research selection from my mother-in-law's lines, I'll be focusing on an ancestor from her Ijams line. Launching from where we left off with this family last year, researching my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather William Ijams, we've moved to his parents, and then, on the Ijams line, to his grandfather, also named William Ijams. More than that, I'd like to learn more detail on the senior William Ijams' wife, Elizabeth Plummer.

With a lifetime well within the time frame of colonial America, Elizabeth Plummer and her family lived in Maryland where, fortunately, there still is access to some useful records helping to push research on this family further back into the past. Sometimes, we struggle to gain merely a toehold on a brick wall ancestor's life story. At other times, it is simply a matter of perseverance to move from one generation to the next, holding our breath to see how far back into the past we can go. It is this type of research adventure I'm looking forward to taking with Ancestor #6: finding more about Elizabeth Plummer.

Returning to Unfinished Business

 

I said I wasn't going to do this to myself for another year, but then I got an email from a fellow researcher and changed my mind. It just so happens this DNA cousin has been wondering about the same brick wall ancestor as I've been, and sent me a note theorizing why this mystery ancestor—my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother Lydia Miller—might have been a challenge to trace.

I've tackled Lydia Miller before, but despite that recent attempt, the chase to find her roots has remained unfinished business. In fact, last May was my most recent opportunity to ponder the roots of this woman who became wife to William H. Gordon and then, after his premature death, to Benedict Palmer. And yet, we'll so soon again be taking up the question of just who Lydia's parents might have been.

This time, we'll let DNA testing play a larger part in the chase to find Lydia's roots, and also complete a review of her descendants from her second marriage with Benedict Palmer of Mercer County, Ohio. Hopefully, some Palmer descendants will surface from among multiple DNA matches to help guide this quest.

In one way, it's frustrating to think that so little is known about a family relationship so relatively close—after all, Lydia, dying in 1895 in Ohio, is only a second great-grandmother to my mother-in-law. A life history like hers should be so reachable...and yet it's not. Hers may have been a story with twists and turns, with details buried from plain sight. This may take some sleuth work to uncover—if any progress can be made at all.

For this coming month of May as I turn to dig deeper into my mother-in-law's roots, Lydia Miller, her parents and descendants will become our focus as the fifth of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026. As with my research challenge for January, hopefully this May's ancestral discoveries will come through the teamwork of comparing notes with other researchers who have connected with me over the years—specifically with those DNA cousins who share this ancestral line with my husband. As research tools evolve, our ability to push back farther in time accelerates—something for which I am ecstatically grateful.