Branching Out

 

Looking back to the beginning of January when I planned my research goals for this year, my intention in selecting Franciszek Jankowski as my focus for November was to branch out and see what became of each of his nine children. Since I've begun that process, I already know that at least two of his daughters left their home in Poland to raise their own family in the United States. What became of the rest of these children, I still need to uncover.

Since Franciszek was my second great-grandfather, any of his descendants in my generation would be third cousins. For those accustomed to using DNA testing for genealogical purposes, you already know that is a reachable match relationship.

With that in mind, I've tested at all the major DNA companies offering such details. However, I have yet to stumble upon many DNA matches who lead me back to this Jankowski ancestor. Now that I've outlined all I can find on each of Franciszek's children—believe me, there is still so much to uncover—I've realized some of the reasons for this lack of telltale matches.

First among those reasons is that not all of the Jankowski children survived to adulthood. My introduction to that fact occurred right away with his firstborn son, Anton, who died only a few months after his parents' first wedding anniversary in 1856. His was not the Jankowskis' only loss. As I work my way through the rest of the baptismal records for this family, I've found more.

Complicating matters is that for some of the other Jankowski children, I can find no further records at all. That could make sense for Franciszek's namesake son, born in 1874, who might have found a bride outside his immediate community—if we consider the possibility that not all records of that time period survived to our current day. But what of all the daughters?

There were two other daughters whom I did manage to trace. One was Stanisława, a younger sister of my great-grandmother Marianna, who married Franciszek Janczak in 1894, then moved to Buffalo in upstate New York to raise her family. The other sister was the baby of the Jankowski family, Antonina, who married but apparently remained in Poland. It is with this youngest Jankowski sister that I am currently struggling to trace descendants.

DNA tells me there must have been surviving Jankowski relatives in Poland, for on MyHeritage, I have several matches still living there whose posted family trees at least include an indication of a connection to that surname. Unfortunately, most of those trees are listed as private trees. Though I've requested permission to view those trees, I've not received any answer. I wouldn't be surprised to discover we may be in a tight loop, with neither of us knowing how to communicate in the other match's language, a dilemma I've yet to overcome.

However, over at Ancestry.com's DNA program, I also find matches linked to the Jankowski line. Thankfully, those matches have included a public family tree—with the added bonus that we each speak the same language. Tracing those Jankowski lines has been relatively straightforward. 

That, however, would not suffice as the research challenge for this upcoming month, so we'll be heading back to Poland—at least on paper and in cyberspace—to see if there is any other way to trace those missing descendants.

The answer to that, in fact, will be yes. There are a few ways to trace those missing Polish ancestors. That, though, requires a multi-step process relying, first, on transcriptions provided by volunteer genealogists, then links to online repositories. We've visited those websites in previous years, but with the passing of time, things have changed, and it might do us good to review the website updates before diving in to the tedium of such ancestral documentation.

Back Home With the Jankowskis

 

I probably wouldn't have known much about my second great-grandfather Franciszek Jankowski if it weren't for his daughter marrying and then leaving home with his three remaining grandchildren. That his daughter Marianna didn't suffer the fate of so many young people growing up in the old Prussian town of Żerków was unusual enough. I'd already noticed the finality of multiple extended family members having laid their young children to rest. Though it might have seemed young, Marianna's marriage at age sixteen may have been her ticket away from the doomed future which befell so many of her family members.

When Marianna left home to follow her much older husband to New York City, she left behind the small town of her parents' generation. By the time of her 1889 departure, her father would have been closing in on sixty years of age. Her mother, Franciszka, would have been in her early fifties. The Jankowskis' youngest child, Marianna's sister Antonina, would barely have turned eleven.

Thankfully, when Marianna's parents were married, marriage records of that time period included information on the parents of both Franciszek and his wife Franciszka. Though I have yet to access the actual document at a FamilySearch Library, the main details from that February 13, 1854, marriage record tell me several details about Franciszek.

For one thing, his age given in the marriage record provided the estimate of a year of birth in 1830. More helpful than that was the provision of his parents' names, likely Jan Jankowski and Anna Stajeska in their native Polish tongue. Franciszek's wife, Franciszka, was the daughter of Nicolai (likely Mikołaj in Polish) Olejniczak and his wife Josepha. Franciszek's mother-in-law came with a bona fide Polish tongue twister for a maiden name: Grzegorczyk (though that run of consonants only serves to puzzle those who haven't taken the time to learn how to pronounce Polish phonics).

All told, I've been able to account for nine children for this couple, though as far as I can tell, many of them died in infancy or early childhood. Tracing documents for these family members requires not only relying on the digitized records available at FamilySearch.org, but also by venturing out online to websites in Poland, where volunteers dedicate themselves to posting transcriptions of digitized records from Polish archival sources.

Documenting who those many children are will require bouncing between three or four websites, juggling with verbiage in two different languages (neither of which are Polish), and posting those sources in all the places where I keep family trees.

As I mentioned earlier this year when I set up my research plans through my Twelve Most Wanted program, my main goal in zeroing in on Franciszek Jankowski is to trace the lines of all survivors in the hopes of pinpointing the shared ancestral couple linking me with several DNA matches I have at the major genetic genealogy websites. Expanding the Jankowski branch of my family tree may be challenging, especially for those descendants remaining in what eventually became war-torn Europe in the 1900s. As research resources become more available online, helpful tools may make this more of a possibility than in years past.

If He Were Here, We'd Call Him Frank

 

If I were researching my mother's ancestry, I'd have a multitude of records housed in America to reach all the way back to colonial times. Not so with my father's lines. Both his parents came to the United States as children. Right away, researching those roots means immersing myself in what it means to be Polish: to be from a place with a distinct culture, language, and heritage attached to a land which often belonged to someone else.

To begin with, the records I seek for these ancestors were not drawn up in English. Nor, for the most part, were they written in Polish. So when I introduce my focus for November's Twelve Most Wanted, my second great-grandfather, I'm introducing someone whose birth record in Latin likely identified him as Franciscus—or, thanks to the Latin syntax recording his 1854 marriage, as Franciscum. Back in his hometown of Żerków in the old Prussian province of Posen, his neighbors probably called him Franciszek  But if he were to migrate to New York, like his daughter Marianna did, we'd probably just call him Frank.

Franciszek never made it to New York, though he lived long enough to see two of his daughters leave home for the New World. Marianna, my great-grandmother, married at sixteen, and became mother to four children. She followed her husband to New York after their youngest child, a son, died in infancy like so many other children in their extended family during that time period.

My grandmother was three months shy of her fourth birthday upon that journey from Hamburg to New York. If she remembered her grandparents at all, it would be with the dim memory of childhood. Any stories that might have been told about family members left behind apparently have not been passed down to any of my older relatives—at least, not that they've been able to recount to me.

It is into this void that I push through to find any token of Franciszek Jankowski's life through the scant documentation left behind as acknowledgement that he ever existed. Far more than a connect-the-dots challenge, we'll need to rely on records of the area's history and geography to re-imagine what life must have been like for the relatives who were left behind when Marianna, her two sons, and her daughter Sophie took that final journey so far away from home. 

Jumping Tracks

 

Despite best laid plans, sometimes our research objectives cannot be achieved within the set time frame. Such is the case with Susanna Radomska, my second great-grandmother from the Pomeranian town of Lubichowo. Earlier this year, I had thought her data might have been reachable, considering she likely died in 1909, according to a transcription posted online at the Pomeranian Genealogical Association. Though finding her parents' identity was quickly accomplished, my hopes for finding more about her roots—or even my secondary wish to learn anything further about her husband, Jan Puchała of my father's patriline—did not materialize into solid evidence.

With that disappointment, I've decided to jump tracks. We'll begin early with the November selection of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026. This will involve redirecting our attention from Pomerania at the northern reaches of Poland to a more central region of the former boundaries of Prussia, a province then known as Posen.

In the coming weeks, we'll zero in on the town of Żerków, home of my second great-grandfather Franciszek Jankowski. This change also signifies a shift from my father's paternal side to that of his mother—specifically to her maternal grandfather.

With the spare time gained by this month's research loss, we can also linger a bit over such details as geographical significance and impact on the daily life of these ancestors in Żerków. Sometimes, in researching ancestors so far removed from the familiarity of the places we now call home, we lose sight of what daily life might have been for them. Assuming every ancestor was simply a farmer tied to the land paints a rather lifeless family story, indeed, when life for our relatives from previous generations was likely far from the few facts we can find on the faded pages of governmental or church records.

Despite this luxury of added time to explore, we still need to start with a proper beginning. With that, tomorrow will bring introductions to Franciszek Jankowski, his wife and as many of their children as I've been able to find.

. . . 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.