. . . and I Alone Have Escaped to Tell

 

There is a passage in the Bible, contained in one of the oldest stories in that book, concerning the many tragedies which befell a man named Job. One by one, devastation caused the destruction of his business ventures, his home, and ultimately, the loss of all his children. With each tragedy, a breathless runner brought the news to him, then added, "...and I alone have escaped to tell."

Those lone reporters remind me of what I'm discovering, now that I'm searching for signs of any surviving lines of my paternal grandparents' ancestors. At first, reviewing my DNA matches, I found third and fourth cousins from a few lines, but those were all descendants of other siblings of another great-grandmother, who had also emigrated from Poland in the late 1800s. When it comes to looking for signs of my Polish ancestors, those who migrated to America became much like those reporters of bad news in the biblical account: "and I alone have escaped to tell."

This becomes far more understandable when we look at what survives of Prussian records for the provinces my ancestors once called home. In the case of the Radomski family—both for Susanna's own generation and that of her children—so many of the children died young. True, there may still be cases of lost records and the hopeful future discovery of family connections over the generations. But I doubt I'll find many more than I've already identified. The DNA of those unfortunate cases of infant mortality were not among the few who did manage to escape to tell of their generation.

As I look ahead to the next Polish ancestor I'll be researching—likely with an early start to the November selection of my Twelve Most Wanted—I see much the same pattern repeated. Though this ancestor lived and died in a different region of the old Prussian domain, many of her children suffered that same fate. Very few of those descendants escaped the scourges and diseases which plagued my ancestors of that region, as well. Their DNA did not live to tell of that generation, either.

Perhaps, as is sometimes mentioned in DNA classes, I just need the patience to wait until that missing perfect DNA candidate tests. That, I would love to see. But as I look over the records I have been able to find, the ones which reveal the Prussian story for my family, it becomes quite obvious that there were many from those ancestral generations who never lived to tell of their roots. They never escaped what befell them to pass their genetic story to future generations.

Regarding Sloppy Handwriting

 

Family history researchers who have pursued ancestors from foreign countries may have caught themselves muttering under their breath about the sloppy handwriting of the clerks and clerics tasked with pinpointing those forebears in history. As I work through the generations preceding my paternal grandparents, I certainly know I have—if, that is, I've been able to find any documents at all.

The reason for the difficulty in finding documents lies partially with the fact that some of the usual online genealogical resources lack access to actual documents from my Polish roots. I've had to look elsewhere for many of my discoveries, and there is one significant drawback to that.

Many Polish genealogy websites began as indexing or transcription services. While I'm grateful for that resource—it's better than no resource at all—such a situation simply shifts the onus for deciphering impossible handwriting from my own two eyes to the capabilities of a proxy reader. I'm glad for those volunteers, of course, but I also realize what a challenge it can be to read a sloppy hand, even if it is a native Polish-speaking volunteer who is attempting to catalog the records.

Now that I'm pondering whether to give up on October's research focus for my Twelve Most Wanted, I spent last night exploring what records are available for the upcoming featured ancestor. In this case, we'd be shifting our attention from the northern region of Pomerania to a province somewhat to the southwest.

It's been nearly a year since I last researched family members from this line, but I was surprised to discover, in exploring documents at FamilySearch.org, that instead of merely finding transcriptions of records (plus, in some cases, a notice that the record can be viewed only by personally researching at a designated center), the document itself was available online. 

This is a welcome bonus for several reasons. First, I know the names I'm seeking, and in many cases, I know who those names should be attached to. I also know the appropriate diacritical marks that should accompany the surname, and am familiar with the usual way that a quick hand might confuse the issue. But most important, I can double-check what an indexer, weary from reading pages and pages of documents, might have read as one letter, when in fact the letter in question might clearly be different. 

If only we have the eyes to see that handwriting—no matter how sloppy—we can double check what others perceived, possibly incorrectly, and find that "missing" document which referred to our brick wall ancestor. Being allowed to access that document for ourselves can make such a difference.

It almost convinces me to stop my complaining about how sloppy that handwriting really was. At least, with a digitized copy of the actual document instead of only a transcription, I can see for myself what that entry actually reads.

Crossing the Chasm

 

While there may be facetious remarks in family history circles about "leaping across the pond," I'm convinced that connecting some immigrant ancestors to their roots is more like attempting to cross a chasm. That, at least, is how I'm feeling, now that I've run across a DNA match whose roots lead back to relatives of my third great-grandmother, Mariana Nierzwicka.

That, in fact, is all I know about her: her name. I found that little detail on the baptismal record for her daughter Susanna Radomska. Finding anything further, though, has been an effort taking much time for minuscule results. 

Looking at this match's tree, I can see how the Nierzwicki line was traced back to the start in the immigrant's adopted home in the United States. But the few documents producing details about the immigrant's origin in Poland are reports which I cannot corroborate, despite searching on three different databases.

And yet, there's the DNA. We certainly are connected in some way. The question is how. And the answer must rely on documentation. Yet, arriving at the records to confirm what seems to be true is a journey with no destination. There's an uncrossable chasm separating each of us from the answer we are both seeking.

Perhaps it helps to take on a philosophical air and accept that some things we will never know. In my case, it takes on more of an itch that, whether scratched or not, merely gets itchier, no matter what choice of action is taken. At halfway through this month and the immediate answer to my research question in hand—finding Susanna Radomska's parents—the question becomes whether to continue the research path to the past, or acquiesce to the obvious. Perhaps adding Susanna's siblings to the tree should be satisfaction enough for this year's attempt at the Radomski line.

Probing Further for Clues

 

I've resorted to speed-reading my DNA matches. I've examined them from every angle: using ThruLines at Ancestry.com; checking my tests at MyHeritage, Family Tree DNA, 23 and Me; searching key surnames in matches' trees at all these sites. But nothing promising has shown up.

I'm truly playing the role of the genealogy guinea pig this month as I probe further for clues about the roots of my second great-grandmother, Susanna Radomska. I have a fairly decent grasp of the availability of Polish record sets for the time period in question and general location of Lubichowo in Pomerania. But that doesn't mean I know everything—or even have it all at my fingertips.

Sometimes, lacking access, it helps to noodle things out. (That's my technical term for writing notes to myself in thinking through why I'm stuck.)

Here are a few details I realized:

• Some distant Radomski cousins won't be found because the record sets in Poland are not accessible for more recent years.
• Some descendants of Susanna's siblings who remained in Poland over the subsequent generations may have been relocated due to the turmoil of war or, after the war, forcibly removed to labor camps far from their home—perhaps even in a different country during post-war Soviet occupation.
• Some lines of descent for those remaining in Poland may have died out in earlier generations, due to disease, hazards of life, or acts of war.
• Some of these distant cousins may indeed have migrated, but not to what I'd consider an obvious destination; I apparently have DNA matches from my paternal side living in England, Wales, Germany, and Scandinavian countries whose ancestral origin, like mine, was in Poland. 

With that, I turned to DNA matches for one last whirlwind inspection. With Susanna Radomska being my second great-grandmother, the closest DNA matches I could hope for would be third cousins, but oftentimes, the result could be much more distant than that. Indeed, among the 48,758 total DNA matches linked to me at Ancestry.com alone, those who are fourth cousin or closer (2,831) represent a marginal tip of the genetic iceberg. Those are a lot of small matches to consider.

And yet, reiterating the several approaches I've already tried this month—though this time looking even farther—I did run into a puzzling discovery. A distant DNA cousin I found turns out to be one of those few who not only maintains a tree—complete with that often rare link to their own position in the tree—but who had a tree of considerable size. In fact, this match had even included my paternal grandfather's name in two versions: the Polish version, and his Americanized name.

As you might expect, I wasted no time in sending a message. I want to compare notes. But this discovery prompted me in one more area to research. Not only do I need to research the lines of Susanna Radomska's siblings, but—if I can—I need to push back yet another generation and see whether there is anything that can be found on Susanna's parents' siblings.

Whether Home or Abroad

 

When researching the family of our ancestors before they became the immigrants to our country, I always wonder about their siblings. Did they remain at home? Or did they follow the lead of my ancestor and travel abroad—maybe permanently?

So far, I've documented as many as I can of the siblings of my second great-grandmother, Susanna Radomska. For each of those surviving siblings, I've traced their spouses, then children, and moved to the generation of their children. In some cases, I have been able to continue the line of descent up until the early 1900s—all still living in Poland.

But what of the others? When I can't locate any explanation for their continued life, or even death, in Poland, I wonder whether they, too, decided to heed the call to a more promising life across the ocean, especially if they were following a sibling or cousin who had already done so.

Finding signs of such adventure, however, has eluded me so far. I do watch for the same surnames in North American records, and even in documents from Australia, as I've discovered DNA matches from that country, as well. Documents like death records or Social Security reports might provide names of the deceased's parents, if anyone from the new country was still remaining to remember those details from the old country—or worse, could manage to spell those challenging Polish names correctly.

Yet, even trying my best to think phonetically rather than literally, I haven't yet found any sign of Radomski descendants heading for America. Approaching this month's research challenge from the records standpoint, I may have exhausted the supply of digitized resources.

However, knowing I have several unexplained DNA matches whose roots point back to Poland, this will require some inventive approaches. Who knows? Perhaps I'll need to try my hand at sending a Polish mystery cousin an email in a language I don't even speak.

It's the Little Steps

 

While it may be discouraging to find that there aren't too many digitized records—or even transcribed records—available for researching my father's Polish roots, I have to remind myself that it is the little steps that may matter the most this month.

Yesterday, for instance, I spent most of my research time taking lots of those little steps, just as I had done in the previous week at PTG. This time, I logged on to a different Polish website—this time, it was Geneteka—to see if I had missed any of the birth, marriage, or death records for any of the descendants of Andrzej Radomski, my third great-grandfather in the Pomeranian village of Lubichowo.

Of the six children I've been able to find for Andrzej and his wife, Mariana Nierzwicka, only a few lived to adulthood and married—at least, those I can find at this point. Of those siblings of my second great-grandmother Susanna, I've begun tracing their lines of descent.

In this process, I'm hoping to find 1) possible DNA matches, or 2) immigrants to the New World. So far, the first option has yielded me zero leads, and the second option is not far behind.

In the meantime, I'm continuing those little steps I had begun taking at PTG. Yesterday, I searched Geneteka to see if there were any further discoveries on the children or grandchildren of my third great-grandparents. As I worked through that process, I made sure that each line of descent was recorded on my trees at Ancestry and FamilySearch. Eventually, I'll replicate those baby steps on my trees at MyHeritage and WikiTree. I see them as tiny voices crying out for matches: cousin bait for the relatives I don't even know I have. Yet.

"How Far Back Can You Go?"

 

In researching ancestors, I've generally preferred chasing after those family members who lived in North America, especially when it comes to those who were alive in the 1700s and even 1600s. American records can help us push back through the generations far more reliably than I've experienced for the homelands of those immigrant ancestors whose arrivals dated in later centuries.

Now that I'm working on my father's Polish great-grandparents' lines, I frankly haven't held out too much hope for making progress back through earlier generations. But since Randy Seaver recently asked, in a comment, "How far do the records go back?" I thought it might be an interesting diversion to actually take a look.

For a quick and dirty sketch of possibilities, I turned to the website of the Pomeranian Genealogical Association—or, as they put it in their native Polish, Pomorskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne. (You can see why I call it PTG for short.) Granted, the bulk of that website, as far as I can see now—there are several articles on that site for which there are no translations into English—involve volunteers transcribing records held at regional archives. Searching their database produces results from their transcriptions.

At the PTG website, I simply constructed a search using as wide open a request as possible. Basically, I repeated the search I had done the other day, asking for all records for the shortened surname "Radom." I didn't select any specific regions, nor delimit the results by date.

My very simple search provided an overload of information: 2,602 birth records (most of them, I suspect, being baptisms), 780 marriages, and 1,039 deaths. Naturally, not having set stricter parameters, it was then up to me to scroll through the results. Fortunately, the database arranged itself by date, allowing me to quickly answer Randy's question.

The earliest records noted, by that search method, were for births from Chełmno, a town about sixty five kilometers south of Lubichowo, a journey in my great-grandparents' time of about fourteen hours, so not likely a location featuring any of my ancestors. And that search was additionally limited by the use of one surname, while previous generations might yield results by checking the as-yet-unknown maiden name of an ancestor's mother.

Still, one never knows. After all, those earliest records from Chełmno dated back to 1683. If I am so lucky as to find such old records for any of my ancestors, I'd say I'll be making quite a bit of progress on my brick wall Polish kin.

If, however, I employ the specific field labeled "Civil Registry Office/Parish" and select "Lubichowo kat." for the Catholic Church records of the village where I found the Radomski family, the earliest date available was for births in 1801. Marriages in that village ranged from 1828 through 1941 for that "Radom" surname search, introducing the possibility of reaching for more recent descendants of collateral lines in hopes of figuring out those Polish mystery DNA matches I've found at MyHeritage.com. The deaths entries for this surname stub ranged from the mid to late 1800s, an uninspiring option for expanding that family line.

Of course, if any of my father's Pomeranian ancestors moved to Lubichowo from neighboring villages, perhaps there would still be a chance for me to push through that stalled scrimmage line and gain new ancestral territory. That will remain a puzzle for me to ponder for the rest of this month's research task.