The Many Facets of One Woman's Life

 

Nearly a Christmas baby, Agnes Laskowska entered her parents' life in Żerków on December 22, 1851. Baptism had to wait until after the beginning of the new year. That detail became only one of the many facets of the story of this third child of Mateusz Laskowski and Elżbieta Gramlewicz.

I'm tempted to read between the lines on this child's story, but perhaps such an attempt would be misleading. Still, I can't help but imagine a life filled with sorrows—or at least see a picture of challenges.

When Agnes was twenty two, she married Alexius Szumski. The wedding was followed soon afterwards with the arrival of daughter Victoria, then son Ludwig and, finally, their son Joseph. 

While that may portray a family well on their way to a full and happy life, that was not the case here. Not long after Ludwig's arrival in 1878, life began to unravel for the Szumski family. Before Alexius and Agnes could welcome their third child, they were struck with the death of their daughter Victoria in November 1880, barely a week before her sixth birthday.

There was more to come. The couple lost their third child, Joseph, at the start of 1882—a year in which Alexius himself was to die that following July, leaving thirty year old Agnes a widow.

As often happened during that era of history, Agnes then married again in 1887. Now the bride of Ignatz Giernatowski, the newlywed couple soon welcomed their daughter Pelagia on January 17, 1888.

Perhaps as a way to remove themselves from the site of so many sorrows, Ignatz and Agnes afterwards decided to make the move from their home of many generations in Żerków to the United States. By 1900, they were living in Brooklyn, the part of New York City where so many of my other Polish family members had moved. Agnes' sad report in the census that she had been the mother of four, of whom only one remained, leads me to suspect that perhaps the language barrier and tendency to attempt spelling phonetically yielded Pelagia's name in that record as "Blanch."

It is probably owing to that same language barrier that I've been unable to trace any further details on Ignatz Giernatowski, but the New York City Municipal Death Index revealed that Agnes died on April 23, 1926.

It is fairly clear, once reviewing the many facets of Agnes Laskowska's life, why she might have had a clear motivation to move so far from all that was familiar in her childhood hometown. As for her two siblings who also emigrated, the story might not appear so clearly—until we blend the three siblings' stories into one timeline, and add another possible factor. We'll take a look at the threads in that story tomorrow.

Morphing Names

 

It would make sense, I guess, to expect that the names of people who traveled thousands of miles to settle in a new home might also undergo a metamorphosis of their own. That, at least, seems to have been the case for Mateusz Laskowski's second-born son.

When my great-grandfather Antoni Laskowski came to New York City from Poland, he may not have been the first of his immediate family to make the journey. His younger brother, Mateusz's second son, may have preceded Antoni's trip to a new life in a New World. When that younger brother stepped onto American shores, he became known—eventually—as Lawrence. But what he was called before that voyage is something I need to sort out from mixed messages—both concerning his name and that of his wife.

The headstone placed over his burial location in Rockland County, New York, listed his name as Lawrence Laskoski. I can only attribute the missing "w" from his father's surname to an issue of phonics. In Polish or German, the "w" in Laskowski would have been pronounced as LasKOVski, as the "w" would have had a pronunciation like a "v." Untrained ears might easily have missed that "v" sound and simply rendered the name's spelling as Laskoski.

That is an easy guess for the difference in the surname's spelling. But finding the actual Polish counterpart to the name of Lawrence, his American name, was a bit of a challenge. In Polish, Lawrence would have been rendered as Wawrzyniec, yet when documenting his son Joseph's birth in 1885, the proud father's name was listed as "Wawrzyn (Lorenz) Laskowski."

With that comes another name challenge. The mother of that same child, Joseph, had been listed in that same document as Anna Laskowska born Błaszczynska. Yet, when I went to find any marriage record for Anna with that maiden name, I found nothing. Checking my notes from last year's attempt at researching this couple, I noticed that I had found something for them—but the entry for the Laskowski marriage, which I found at the Poznan Project website, had given the bride's name as Błaszczyk, not Błaszczynska.

Because the civil entry showed the groom's name as Lorenz, and because I had also obtained the record of his own 1847 baptism—which, as record of a Catholic sacrament, would have written his name in Latin as Laurentius—I was certain these two marriage records corresponded to the same couple. Indeed, following the family to New York and checking later documents for their children revealed marriage records in the next generation providing that second version of their mother's maiden name—all, that is, except for the diacritical mark from the Polish documents.

Besides Antoni and his brother Lawrence, there was a third sibling who also had made the journey from Poland to America. We'll take a look at this sister and her story tomorrow, and then we'll blend the three siblings' timelines to examine what might have prompted their decision to leave home for a new land.

Image above: Results given at Polish website the Poznan Project for fuzzy search for surname Blaszczynska plus spouse Laskowski.

If the End Told All

 

If the part at the end told the whole story, then family history researchers would be in luck. That, however, may not always be true. Still, I'm hoping that the information contained in a document drawn up at the end of Mateusz Laskowski's life turns out to be correct.

Found, at my new best-friend Polish website, was the death record for Mateusz Laskowski, my second great-grandfather. Dated July 29, 1881, it confirmed Mateusz's wife's name—who was born Elżbieta Gramlewicz—and his residence in Żerków. Better than that—and in hopes whoever was the reporting party knew the right details and didn't bungle reporting those under stress—the document also included Mateusz's parents' names.

From that one document, I now know my third great-grandparents were Bonaventura Laskowski and Orszula Wroblewska. That, of course, is only pending verification of those details, as death records are notoriously fallible when it comes to ascertaining the decedent's parents' names. Even more so, if we consider the problem of remembering a mother's maiden name, especially during times of great stress.

At the time of his death, Mateusz was said to have been sixty five years of age—in other words, born in 1816. Yet his 1844 marriage record provides an age of twenty five, so maybe his birth was closer to 1819. Whenever it occurred, it was presumably in the same place where his marriage and death were recorded: in Żerków.

All told, I've been able to find records on three children of Mateusz and Elżbieta: Antoni, my great-grandfather, Lawrence, and Agnes. All three of these Laskowski children eventually emigrated from Poland and ended up in New York.

I always wonder whether there had been other children of this couple—and whether any of them had also left Poland for a new home in North America. Those three were the only Laskowski children I had been able to find documentation for. But with more resources available to us this year than in previous years, perhaps I will be able to uncover more details in this month's project.

For tomorrow, we'll explore what can be found on each of those three children in the various online resources now available to us. While access to American records will be fairly easy to accomplish, the main goal is to push back from the end of the story for each of these three to documents from the earlier years of their life back in Poland. 

Given a Little Time . . .

 

When I look back now at the research plans I had drawn up a year ago for this month's project, I notice how circumstances at the time had led me to draw certain conclusions. Having struggled to find documentary proof of my Polish ancestors over the past few years before that point, I had come to the conclusion that there was likely not much more progress I'd be able to make when I revisited that challenge this November.

How much things have changed.

Not that any changes have been earth-shaking, but bit by bit, I'm finding resources linked to other resources, pointing me in the direction of those actual document scans I had been seeking. With last month's ancestor, I was able to build out the collateral lines for two Olejniczak siblings, including one for whom I've traced descendants to the early decades of the 1900s. Posting that information on several different online family trees has certainly added to my cousin bait potential—none of which I would have suspected I'd discover only a year prior to that.

The same may turn out to be true for this month's edition of my Twelve Most Wanted. Since my goal is to examine the collateral lines of my second great-grandfather Mateusz Laskowski, I will essentially be repeating the process I followed in October—this time with a different ancestor but in the same town where I've already been able to find additional records.

Just taking an initial peek at the possibilities this weekend has shown me that I might find far more than I had anticipated only one year ago. Some records may have been recently uploaded to the websites where I am finding them. Some records were surely there all along, but different search capabilities revealed their hiding places. Others may have evolved through cooperative efforts of volunteer groups and local repositories. No matter which way, the discoveries are serendipitous for me now, and renew hope that I'll be able to find what I'm looking for—and possibly even more than that.

It would be nice to push back another generation beyond my second great-grandfather. Finding his siblings and tracing their descendants might help me connect to some mystery DNA matches I have at either the company with the largest DNA database, or perhaps at the database with the largest number of DNA matches who currently live in Poland. Seeing how much more I had discovered last month gives me hope of that possibility.

Pushing one step forward in that direction would be a welcome addition to my goal for this month's research, as my ThruLines results at Ancestry.com only show ten confirmed matches who share Mateusz Laskowski as their ancestor. Surely, there have to be more than those fairly close relatives.

Tomorrow, we'll begin with a look at what I already have found on Mateusz Laskowski from prior years' research attempts. At that jumping off point, we'll start searching for additional records to add to his story, looking in both directions: backwards in time, and forward to all his descendants.

On a Lark, a Wide Open Search

 

After attending to the uploading of several additional Polish ancestors to my various family trees online, on a lark, I tried my hand at a wide open search of the research location which kept my focus for the entire month of October, and is set to be my continued focus in November. I opened up the search engine at Google and entered the term, "Żerków." After all, that is the Catholic parish where many of my paternal grandmother's family records were found, and the seat of an administrative district by the same name. I was curious to see what else might be out there, online, and of possible use, so I conducted a general search.

Granted, the town of Żerków has barely more than two thousand residents right now, so I doubted there'd be much to find online of genealogical use. One resource I wanted to check for sure was the FamilySearch Wiki. I wasn't sure whether there would even be a page devoted to Żerków as a subject—and there wasn't, specifically. But there were some useful finds.

For one thing, doing a Google search of the overall FamilySearch.org website yielded two entries. The first was a catalog entry for the microfilms of Lutheran and Catholic church records for Prussia dating from 1430 through 1998, with many of the films available for viewing online. The second discovery was an inventory of those church records, sorting out the data by locality, district, and church organization, all laid out in a table format alphabetized by locality—with, of course, a long way to scroll to reach the bottom and the entry for Żerków.

There were other results for Żerków found through my experiment with Google. Since I've already written about this location in prior blog posts, it was not unexpected to see those articles show up in Google, too—but an appearance on that Google list by fellow geneablogger, Julie Roberts Szczecinkiewicz, was a pleasant surprise to see. I was already aware that Julie has blogged about her Polish roots, but I hadn't noticed this particular post mentioning Żerków, specifically.

Since adding this expanding branch of my family to my trees posted at several other sites has been a goal, it was good to notice that results for my Żerków search included an information page at WikiTree including subcategories of Prussian villages in the area, as well as an alphabetical listing of all those individuals in the universal WikiTree from Żerków. While I see no relatives on that list other than those I had added, myself, that is a list I'll come back to over time, in hopes of discovering others researching this same line.

While in November, I'll move on from researching that Olejniczak line to that of my second great-grandfather Mateusz Laskowski, we'll still be relying on records from the same general vicinity around Żerków. I'm looking forward to seeing how many additional records I'll be able to find on the Laskowski side, now that I've found the archival link to transcribed records at my new favorite go-to Polish website, BaSIA.   

The Unfinished Work Behind, the New Challenges Ahead

 

Despite a tidy research plan—my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors, one designated for each month of the year—the end of one month often leaves me in this same difficult position: with a pile of unfinished work I'm about to leave behind as I step into the new month's puzzle. With the start of November, I say goodbye to the family of my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak, and greet the incoming research puzzle embodied in the story of a different second great-grandparent, Mateusz Laskowski.

Franziska and Mateusz were related only by marriage, as Franziska's daughter Marianna Jankowska married Mateusz's son Antoni Laskowski. Perhaps Franziska and Mateusz knew of each other from associations through their church parish in the Polish town of Żerków, though Mateusz was already a teenager by the time Franziska was born.

With this new month, while we'll hopefully learn more of the details of the Laskowski side of my family, I can't just set aside the unfinished business on the Olejniczak family. After all, I just settled it in my mind that Franziska's nephew Jan Olejniczak may well be the Polish immigrant who settled in Ohio, and came to be known in his adopted country as John Olenzak. With a DNA match to guide me, I will be building a family tree behind the scenes as I continue the search for records to illuminate the possibility of this family match. With lots of work on that project, I may be sharing news of progress occasionally, before we close out the year of 2024.

Next week, we'll review what I've already gleaned on Mateusz Laskowski and his immediate family. As we've already seen from our exploration of the Olejniczak line last month, there are many more resources online now for finding Polish documents to confirm names, dates, and family relationships for these immigrants from Żerków, Poland. Piecing these together, we'll see whether we can push back the brick wall another generation or two before the month of November comes to a close.

Finding the Stop Between "Here" and "There"

 

It would be so handy in tracing the path of immigrant ancestors if they were careful to leave their homeland and go straight to their new home in that foreign land. In the case of Jan Olejniczak, however, there was this stopping place in between arriving here in the United States from his birthplace in Poland. And I couldn't locate that stopping point to even begin searching for records.

Thanks to discovery of a DNA match who descends from the man who might have been my family's relative Jan Olejniczak, I've been searching through records after his arrival in the United States. In the 1920 census, it was clear that before he arrived in the United States, Jan—his name now anglicized to read John—had not only married but become the proud parent of three children who were born in Germany: Kazmier, Louise, and Lottie. It took quite a bit of examining records of those three Olejniczak children to determine just where in Germany they might have been born. Eventually, the answer surfaced: a town called Reklinghausen.

Easy, I thought: I'll just look up the town in the online, searchable Meyers Gazetteer.

Not so fast, it turned out. "No results" was the answer to my query. I attempted the "sounds like" option, and got several results. Those, however, reminded me of my failed attempts at determining exactly which of multiple Polish towns with the same name might be the right location. So I tried a different approach.

While the original document I had viewed for the origin of Jan's children had spelled the German location as Reklinghausen, an online search yielded a Wikipedia article for the similar spelling of Recklinghausen.

In addition to discovering that the town had been the site of over one hundred witchcraft trials, I learned that it was part of the Ruhr area of western Germany, known for its coal mining activities. Chasing other resources, I gleaned some possible reasons why a Polish young man like Jan Olejniczak might have migrated to that far side of Germany: to get a job in the mines. In fact, Jan would have been in good company there. There was even a German term for those who came from Poland in that influx of Polish immigrants to work the mines in Recklinghausen: Ruhrpolen.

The migration of Polish workers occurred mainly in the 1870s. The significant fact was that most came from the same region where Jan was born. Yet Jan himself would barely have been an infant at that time. Presumably when he did make the move, he would have found a thriving Polish community of his former neighbors and associates when he arrived.

Still to be found, however, are any records of the birth of those three children of Jan and his wife, Pelagia. Nor have I been able to find a marriage record for the couple. The long tasks ahead also include locating passenger lists with the family's names, presumably in a predictable grouping. While I'll be searching to  find more of such genealogical tokens, in the meantime, I'll be tentatively adding this possible branch of the Olejniczak family into my own tree—and reaching out to connect with the DNA match who led me to this clue.