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.

A Fresh Start for Family Finds?

 

In moving to a different realm of my family tree—for these last three months of the year, it is always my father's Polish ancestors—I'm always hopeful that a fresh start will produce increased family finds. That, as I saw today in checking the past two weeks' progress for my biweekly count, is not always the case.

Researching Polish ancestry can make one feel like the voice crying out in the wilderness. Will anyone hear? There are plenty of researchers clamoring to find their Irish ancestors, as I've witnessed while working on my father-in-law's lines during the summer. Judging from what I hear from fellow researchers in my genealogical society or in the classes I teach, the same can be said for researching any roots from the British Isles. Add in places like Germany or even Italy, and you'll find a crowd of researching companions. But Polish? Not so many.

I've been happy to find the few Polish ancestors I've located this past week. Records at FamilySearch.org and websites actually located in Poland have been helpful. And I'm certainly glad to have been able to begin building out the descendant lines of those ancestors' collateral lines, a step I always take in hopes of locating the nexus with those mystery DNA matches.

The pace of progress, however, has still been slow. I suspect that will be the case as I move backwards in time, no matter which ancestor I choose to trace for my Twelve Most Wanted.

In the past two weeks, I've located and documented forty seven new family members related to my father's patriline. That brings my tree count up to 42,026. Admittedly, that's not many new finds—a situation which makes me begin to feel boxed in. The farther back we go in time, no matter which ancestral origin we choose to trace, the harder it becomes to locate records to confirm that familial connection. But the farther forward in time we hope to track their descendants, the more we realize there is another roadblock facing us. 

In my case, that Polish roadblock is apparently limited by the most recent dates of the Prussian records digitized and indexed through FamilySearch.org. Prussia being one of those national entities no longer in existence may be one factor in this challenge, but another is the privacy concerns—and legislation—dictating availability. Sometimes that limit reaches to the previous hundred years. Or the century leading up to the last time this issue was revisited by policy makers.

At any rate, my next step in trying to locate descendants of those Polish ancestors will be a winding route from transcriptions provided at Polish websites to their link leading to archival holdings. The website hosted by PTG, for instance, has led me to some records as recent as the 1940s (though that is rare). The challenge means a slow-down for research progress.

As I set aside my in-laws' research questions for another season, their tree remains frozen at 44,402 individual listings. I anticipate it will remain in that condition, barring any marriages or births of cousins' grandbabies between now and when I pick up the in-law research in the spring of 2027. And with the time flying as quickly as it does over the winter holiday season, that may be sooner than we expect.

As Promised, Another Update

 

Somehow, in the back of my recent memory, I recalled seeing a notice from Ancestry.com mentioning that they would soon be releasing an update to their DNA ethnicity report, which they call Origins. Since I usually reserve the weekends for checking my DNA matches, I thought I'd pop over there after attending to a few details regarding the descendants of my Radomski ancestors.

Nothing, however, is ever easy. I found yet another sibling of Susanna, my second great-grandmother, who had married and had several children—some of whom actually lived to adulthood, a feat which I'm realizing was a rare occurrence back in my paternal ancestors' homeland.

That brought on a back-and-forth process of gleaning the data from the PTG website, adding it to my Ancestry tree, then stepping over to FamilySearch.org and adding the same name and date to my tree there, then scouring the resources there in search of any documentation.

There was plenty to keep me busy.

At the end of the session, I thought, "I'll just take a quick look over at my ThruLines for this surname," and jumped back to Ancestry. The minute I clicked on the "DNA" tab, I knew it wasn't going to be a quick look. The drop-down menu sported a green "updated" sign right next to "Origins." It was just what I was waiting for. And sooner than I expected.

Since I am currently working on my father's roots, that became my first stop. Part of this update is apparently the addition of a section devoted to origins by grandparent, information imputed by them without need for any further testing on my part. This, Ancestry has accomplished partly by looking at a person's matches which have already been identified by side of family—which is why they mentioned that this may not be possible right now for those who only have a few matches. 

In addition, Ancestry has apparently expanded their Polish subregions, enough so that I believe I can already discern which paternal grandparent contributed which subregion of Polish heritage to me. The line I'm working on this month—my paternal grandfather's side—is centered mostly in Pomerania, which Ancestry is simply labeling as "Northern Poland." Apparently, at some point, I will be able to fill in the line labeled "edit label" to identify Grandparent 2 as my father's father. But for now, the "coming soon" disclaimer tells me I'll just have to wait.

With that, I'll pass that waiting time by going back to the original task I had planned for today: checking out ThruLines to see whether anything new showed up for matches on my Radomski line. 

Considering a Few Record Keeping Details

 

As I'm explaining the collateral lines I've found for the Radomski family, you might be wondering, "Why is it Susanna Radomska when her dad's name was Radomski? To answer a question like that, we may need to step away from our story for a process break to consider a few details.

Now that I've moved away from my father-in-law's Irish ancestors to spent the last three months of this year on my own father's Polish roots, it would help to remember a few items we learned when we studied this part of my family in past years. 

Among other things, one of the most obvious differences, now that I'm recording Polish family names was seeing the change in surname endings. Particularly for the quintessential Polish names ending in "-ski," we will see those endings change, depending on whether the ancestor we're referring to was a man or a woman. Women's surnames ended in "-a." With that simple explanation, we know that Susanna and her sisters would always have their maiden name represented as Radomska, even though their father was actually named Andrzej Radomski.

Another detail to grapple with: documentation. In English-speaking countries, we often can rely on multiple documented sources in the same language for tracing our ancestors. Through most of the past century, we had birth records, marriage certificates, or death notices—all completed in the same English we speak every day.

Not so in Poland. Depending on which entity was in charge of the government, a person's records might have been recorded in Polish, or they might have been entered in German, complete with the complicating factor of a handwritten script which few people now even know how to read. Yet, not all records were provided by the government—or survived the devastation of the years following our ancestors' lifetime.

Some of the records left to us were those drawn up by the church of that time period—in my ancestors' case, the Catholic church. That church brought with it the tradition of recording all information in yet another language: Latin. 

With that litany of differences, I as a researcher am left with a decision: should I record the names as I find them in the Latin records of my ancestors' religion? Or should I list them as they surely were known colloquially, in their own lifetime and surroundings? 

To answer that question, I not only have chosen to record my ancestors by the Polish tradition of matching the surname to the ancestor's gender, but to list them by the Polish version of their given name. Thus, for Susanna's father, I enter him into my family tree not as Andreas, which is how his church record would have identified him, but as Andrzej, as his peers might have called him.

Likewise, when I encounter a name which includes a letter which, in Polish, would include a character not recognized in the English alphabet, I chose to represent that letter as it would have been recorded in the person's native land. Thus, when Zuzanna became the bride of Jan, I recorded his name using the diacritical mark, "ł" for Puchała.

Finding and entering those unusual characters in records using my American-made computer with its English speaker's keyboard can seem to be somewhat of a challenge to record all these foreign names correctly. And yet, even with the limitations of not having purchased my keyboard in Poland, I've found an easy work-around. Sure, I can also memorize the ascii codes for each symbol, but who am I kidding? I don't have that great a memory. Instead, I use Google Translate to create, cut and paste the diacritical marks I need into my text. 

Simply go to the Google search page, click on the nine dots in the upper right corner, and select "translate" from the drop-down menu. Then, select the language needed, look for the keyboard icon to "Turn on Virtual Keyboard," then hit the "ctrl+alt" key to select the special characters for that language whenever you need to add a diacritical mark to the word you wish to enter.

I then copy the word and paste it where I need it. I'll paste it in a document I'm writing, or on a blog post, or I'll even add it to the name field for my family tree on Ancestry.com or other tree-building service. With relatively little effort at all, I then can include my ancestors in my tree using the name they were known as, back home in their native land.