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.

From Jan to Johan to John: Let's Assume

 

Earlier this month, I had taken a peek at my only DNA match sharing the ancestral surname Olejniczak from the brother of my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak. This cousin match, although distant at an estimated third cousin once removed, claimed as his direct ancestor someone named John Olejniczak. That John, born in 1869, had supposedly emigrated from Poland and ended up in the United States in the unlikely location of Harrison County, Ohio.

When he first showed up in American records, he had reported his name as Johan. Indeed, the three eldest of his children actually were born in Germany, according to the 1920 census, so perhaps he had come to this country by way of Germany, even if he had been born in Poland, where friends and neighbors would have been more likely to have called him Jan.

Of course, on my end, I am thinking about the son of Franziska's brother Bartholomaeus, whom he named Jan—or, as the Latin version of church baptismal records would put it, Joannes Olejniczak.

The difficulty in trying, from my end of the research puzzle in late 1800s Poland, to document my way forward in time from that baptismal record is far greater than retracing this DNA match's steps from his own parents back to his connection with his Olejniczak roots. Though his public tree posted online is supported with few records, let's assume that while this may seem like a doubtful jaunt down a rabbit trail, it may become a worthwhile chase, and begin the hunt.

It takes several steps to follow the documents to see that the name our immigrant of interest used at the point of his death in 1963—John Olenzak—still represented the man who for his naturalization records had reported his name as Johan Olejniczak. Yet the final reporting of his date of birth—June 8, 1869—lines up perfectly with our Joannes Olejniczak's baptismal record. And while a Belmont, Ohio, transcription of Johan's citizenship records indicated his place of birth in Poland was called Michałowo—a place which in today's maps looks to be on the other side of the country, certainly too far away for his family to get to Żerków for his baptism two days after birth—a quick consulting of the map at Meyer's Gazetteer shows us a likely village within walking distance of the church parish. And eases my mind that we are talking about the right person and the right place.

Next step: to build a tentative tree to test the connection between the Olejniczak lines.

Image above: Inset from map of Żerków showing Michałowo toward the top left side; image courtesy Meyers Gazetteer entry for Żerków (click tab labeled "map" on website for full image).

Back to the Question at the Beginning

 

I'm watching October run quickly through its last few days, which reminds me that I still haven't answered a question I stumbled over at the beginning of this month. In probing to see if I could learn anything more about the roots of my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak, were there any of her siblings or cousins who also left Poland for a New World?

Since the only sibling I could find was her brother Bartłomiej, dutifully recorded in Latin in church documents as Bartholomaeus, I looked at each of his children that I could find through online resources. Despite finding records for six children—and quite a few grandchildren who survived to adulthood—none seemed to have left the country for brighter prospects abroad.

Except for one.

That one left only a Catholic baptismal record under the Latin version of his name—Joannes for Jan—back in his hometown of Żerków. And then?

Best I could tell, it seemed as if Jan Olejniczak had disappeared. True, so many of the other descendants of my Olejniczak line seemed to disappear from available digitized records sources, too, so I can't put too much stock in noticing that absence.

There was, however, another tantalizing hint: a DNA match with someone whose roots included a surname which morphed from Olejniczak to Oleyniczak to, eventually, Olenzak. The immigrant's given name? John.

The DNA connection was a mere sliver of a segment—far too small to take seriously—but linked us to yet another DNA match on that side of my family who was far more closely connected.

Could this DNA match's ancestor have been the missing Jan Olejniczak, son of Bartholomeus—or Bartłomiej—my second great-grandmother's brother? It certainly will be worth a try to rebuild this match's tree in these last few days of the month, before we move on to another of my father's ancestors for November. There certainly is a gap in this potential immigrant's journey calling for further explanation.

With a Little Help From Some "Friends"

 

One good point about posting a family tree in more than one public place is that some genealogy resources come with "friends" who provide additional help.

I'm often amused, after posting yet another Polish name on my tree at MyHeritage, to receive their almost breathless announcement that they have found that same ancestor listed on another family tree. "Hurry, come look and see if this is your relative," the email bids me—and I look, only to discover the amazing discovery is no more than a report that, yep, it was I who just posted that ancestor to one of my several trees.

In this case, however, that wasn't so. Having clicked through the provided link to examine the discovery, I realized what might have triggered the issue. Researching my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak's extended family, I had been using documents retrieved from church records, not civil records. Those church records having been drawn up in Latin, not the native language, had yielded an entry for Franziska's daughter-in-law, Catharina Orszulak—but the bride's actual given name, at least for my Polish forebears, would have been Katarzyna. 

What I had no way of knowing was that while her 1863 marriage record in Żerków was entered in Latin, her 1845 baptismal record from that same parish provided the Polish version of her given name.

That baptism occurred exactly one hundred seventy nine years ago today, a serendipitous observation that was not lost upon me. Still, the near-miss of it all gives me pause to reflect: what else do we miss by not trying more than one way to search for an answer?

Thankfully, the AI assist churning away in the background, courtesy of my account at MyHeritage, spotted the possible discrepancy and reported the connection to me anyhow, despite differing versions of the given name. That AI notification led me to someone else's tree at FamilySearch.org, and the opportunity to consider the source document for myself.

Still, there are other challenges, one of which I've already encountered in tracing these Polish roots: the fact that so many villages are identified by the same name. Take Katarzina's marriage record, for instance, which identifies her as being from Michałów. Great—but which one? According to Wikipedia, there are more than thirty places claiming that same name. I had to pull up a map program to explore the possibilities and find which town by that name would qualify as the closest Michałów to the church in Żerków where Katarzyna had married Bartholomeus Olejniczak—and where she was likely born.

It was thanks to the assist of some AI "friends" that my attention was directed to a document which I might otherwise have overlooked. I expect there may be many more such fortunate discoveries over the years as I tackle these Polish records. After all, a machine which never tires of reviewing documents—perhaps even around the clock—can certainly multiply the effort of us mere mortals who must take some rest from time to time. I certainly appreciate the help. 

Putting On the Brakes

 

There is nothing that can put the brakes on genealogical progress like entering into hitherto unexplored regions. For me, that unexplored region—still!—is Poland. There is so much yet to discover.

No surprise, then, that taking stock of my progress in the past two weeks showed a less vibrant count than I've seen when documenting, say, my roots reaching farther back in America's history than the starting date of this country's establishment. Yes, "Poland" (or its previous iterations throughout history) has been around for far more centuries than the United States, but finding the records for all the people living there is much more of a challenge.

So, how did I do, having shifted my research course this month to chase my father's Polish heritage? While I now have 38,526 documented individuals in my family tree, only sixty nine of them were added to that list in the past two weeks. Between jumping from website to website, trying to patch the record gaps in available digitized documents, then adding that information to four separate trees online, progress has been far slower than in the past.

Still, I feel good about what's been done this month. For one thing, realizing that sharing is part of the challenge—hey, I'm all for "cousin bait"—I want to put those names of newfound ancestors out there where others can find them, too. Who knows? Maybe my second great-grandmother was your second great-grandmother, too. Now, I can point the way to a little-known website which provides scans of the records we both are seeking.

Not that I haven't given up on my in-laws' tree. Even though we made the shift from my father-in-law's Irish roots at the beginning of October, I still had some research business to wrap up on his lines, plus some details on my mother-in-law's family that I stumbled upon this past week. For my in-laws' tree, just ten more names were added and documented, but no matter how small the increase, every one represents a research victory I'm glad to celebrate. My in-laws' tree now includes records for 36,853 ancestors and collateral lines. Maybe some of them are distant cousins of yours, too.

In less than a week, we'll move into another month, and the chance to research another branch of my Polish ancestry. Progress will undoubtedly be just as slow as it's been this month, but I count this as yet another opportunity to become a trailblazer, in hopes a cousin here—or somewhere else around the world—will realize our connection. 

An Unheralded Star

 

Some changes arrive with much fanfare. Others slip in, almost unnoticed. The star I spotted today was one of those latter unheralded entries.

While working on my Twelve Most Wanted project for this month—finding more documentation on my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak—behind the scenes, I've also been updating all the records linked to each of her descendants. Working my way down the line of descent from her daughter Marianna, I suddenly realized there was this little star next to Marianna's name.

That's funny, I thought. I hadn't noticed that before. I certainly didn't put it there. Hovering my cursor over the star, I noticed the words pop up, "Prioritize this person."

Not wanting to find myself in the position of Alice in Wonderland, staring at the little cake labeled "eat me," I was disinclined to click on that recently-appearing star. I did a search to see whether Ancestry.com had recently posted any announcements about that change on their blog. 

Nothing. 

I poked around my own tree and realized that if I clicked on the icon for adding labels—a change at Ancestry which has been around for a while now—among the many choices for "My Tree Tags" was a group called "Research Status Tags." And—you guessed it—within that cluster was a choice labeled "Prioritized Person."

It took a bit more exploration before I could find an additional explanation. Still, that announcement arrived almost accidentally as I continued my work on those Olejniczak descendants. A pop-up window advised, "Prioritize up to ten people in your tree that you're most interested in learning about." I can't even recall how I first spotted that notice, but suddenly, there it was.

After mentioning that the ancestor so marked will display a star icon, the explanation continued, "We'll put special focus on finding hints about them." The entry concluded with a "Got it" button at the bottom of the window.

Special focus on finding more hints? I'm game to see what will happen. However, I already know that Ancestry.com's collection is rather sparse when it comes to Polish records for the region and time period specific to my own ancestors. Granted, with the changing boundaries—and languages—of that geographic area, I'm facing even more challenges, but if a simple star next to Franziska Olejniczak's name can lead me to more information, I'll eagerly look forward to seeing it.

Just Where is That Place, Anyhow?

 

Genealogy can sometimes become a strange mix of mysteries and the mundane. Now that I've found a resource—the Polish website BaSIA—from which I can pull up scanned documents to verify births of my Polish ancestors' extended family, I've been working through the descendants of each collateral line of my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak, and then the collateral lines of my great-grandmother Marianna Jankowska, to add links to each individual's verifying documents. That can be the kind of dull undertaking that makes even the most dedicated genealogist's eyes glaze over.

Predictably, many of those documents confirmed that the extended family lived in Żerków, just like my own direct line ancestors did. Even moving further in time through the generations on those collateral lines, I'd see records confirming that same residence in Żerków, long after my own ancestors had left the country. But then, as I worked through the process with each descendant, I looked closer at the birth records and realized there was another location mentioned in the documents. The problem with that was: the country had more than one town with that same name—many more such towns. Now what? Just where was that place I was seeking, anyhow?

The trouble began when I decided to be too smart for my own good. I realized the documents I was reading were written not in Polish, but in German. Equipped with my trusty Google Translate, I decided to spot check some of those foreign words, like "wóhnhaft."

In case you don't speak German—I don't, so you're in good company—"wóhnhaft" means "resident," as in "resident of ...." In this family's case—say, the record for Cecilia Karcz, daughter of my great-grandmother's sister Antonina—the town in question was called Lisewo.

Great, I thought. I'll just look that up. 

Not so easy, it turns out. According to Wikipedia, there are at least eight different locations in Poland which go by that same name. Many of them, it turns out, are part of another region of Poland, known as Pomerania.

Thankfully, I already know from my paternal grandfather's branch of the family that those Pomeranian locations would not apply to my paternal grandmother's side of the family, so I eliminated most of the list that way. The rest, though, I'd have to sift through by another process of guesswork reasoning.

As it turned out, two of the remaining same-named towns were part of what is known as the Greater Poland Voivodeship, a province which is also known as Wielkopolska. So, my next step was to turn to Google Maps to see which one of those two contenders might be closer to Żerków.

Fortunately, there was one clear winner in that competition, a town located within the right province, in the county called Września. That Lisewo was a mere eleven kilometers east of Żerków, as opposed to the alternate location eighty kilometers away, which in modern terms would have required a drive of over an hour.

Still, there was something which bothered me about accepting these handy explanations. For one thing, those hundred year old documents sometimes spelled the family's residence as Lissowo, rather than Lisewo. Was that the same place? A case of messy handwriting? Or another example of the Germans attempting to wipe all signs of the conquered heritage off their maps?

I tried one more exploration: what would happen if I searched for "Lissowo" rather than "Lisewo"? While the search result which caught my eye is not exactly for the same Lisewo as the one I believe was my family's home—this entry was for a Pomeranian town—the website called Kartenmeister reported some alternate names for a town they catalogued by the German name Lissau. Note the alternative names: Lissowo (dated 1789, but spelled just as the late 1800s documents I found had indicated) and, under the heading, "Polish/Russian name," Lisewo.

Given all that, I'd say I just found the right place for those ancestors to call home.

Look, Pa! I Can Read Polish!

As I struggle my way through documents with unpronounceable words, I realized something. After several years of banging my head against the brick wall blocking my paternal grandfather's story, I must have developed a knack for learning Polish by osmosis. Not that I can read Polish, exactly, but I'm starting to get the hang of it.

Take my current struggle with finding documents for the Olejniczak branch of the family. The transcriptions for several family members are at BaSIA, but to see the actual scans of the documents, I need to click through to szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl.

Of course, once I got to that website, I realized the entire thing was written in Polish. Well, what did I expect, right? But somehow, looking at choices like this didn't baffle me for long.

Or how about this one?

Incredibly, I guessed right on both of these. So I've spent my days happily clicking on "link do skanu" to produce URLs like the one above—which, by the way, extends far beyond what is showing in the little white box with the archive's web address—and then clicking on "kopiuj link" to harvest and paste the document's specific address into my family trees, or wherever I want to preserve that address for future reference.

I realized that, repeated often over years, a few words from other languages can sometimes become far less intimidating than they at first seemed. Of course, it helped that about five years ago, it occurred to me to learn how Polish phonics work—especially given their use of diacritical marks—and I created a blog post with links to help me remember for the next time I visited this research challenge. Websites like this one on the Polish alphabet and a companion site guiding me on pronunciation became indispensable cheat sheets for future work. 

Now that I'm deep into Polish research once again, I'm finding more resources to add to my Polish toolkit. For instance, I found this charming article helpful in navigating the very different world of Polish names of months—which also made me realize how so many of the Western European heritages follow the same conventions for names of the months. Not Poland, once again, which makes researching Polish ancestors so very different.

While Polish is a language far more difficult than I think I could ever learn, with a little help, it is possible to gain a working knowledge of the terms we researchers are most likely to encounter in our exploration of birth, marriage, or death records. And given Poland's predominant religious heritage as Catholic, many documents were drawn up in Latin—a more universal language to conquer. Then, too, with their political history as part of the dominion of other nations—producing some records, for instance, in German or Russian—a working knowledge of such other languages may make research progress a bit easier...or harder. But with the advent of computers, a little morphing from the dominant language of many programmers—English—can yield a little creative "Polish-izing" which can be deciphered by even someone like non-Polish me.

Still, knowing all that about researching Polish ancestors leads us to develop toolkits and cheat sheets to tap dance our way through multiple languages and handwriting styles. Perhaps that is the only way we can move forward in researching our Polish roots. But after several years of doing so, it is rather refreshing to realize, hey, we can do this, after all. 

Don't Discount the Journey

 

When we are deep in the midst of tracking our elusive ancestors and holding fast to each twist and turn in the race to find all the family details, perhaps it is easy to forget to sit back and enjoy the journey. Don't discount that journey. While we may be tempted to label that journey as a slippery slope—or (gasp) even a rabbit trail—we may as well enjoy the trip. After all, we may be back on this trail once again, so learn to recognize the sign posts of the scenery.

It was on the trail of each of the descendants of my third great-grandparents Nikolaus Olejniczak and Josefa Grzegorczyk (try saying that one three times, fast) when I got stuck on one particular relative. Their great-granddaughter Marianna Banaszak had married a man with another tongue-twister name, Kazimierz Szczepański, and I had found not only their 1923 marriage record, but the 1928 death record for their three week old daughter Cecylia.

But then something else popped up. As I scrolled through the listings for Marianna's married surname, looking for entries with more recent dates, listings for Kazimierz started being linked to the name of another woman: Jadwiga Banaszak, not Marianna Banaszak. I wondered if this were the point at which the index had made a shift from church records based in Latin to civil records in the contemporary language. After all, I had seen Marianna's uncle Walenty listed in church records as Valentinus and, of course, Jan showing as Joannes in Latin and Johann in German. Was there a Polish equivalent to Marianna that I didn't know about?

That's when the journey began: taking the detour to learn more about Polish names. The FamilySearch wiki provided more information than I ever thought possible on every aspect of the very different world of Polish names, both given names and surnames—as well as the grammatical effect of the Polish language conventions on Polish names. And if that weren't enough, Wikipedia provided another entry on the topic of Polish names.

Since I had already discovered some of the surprising differences between Latin and Polish versions of given names—like the Latin Adalbertus becoming Wojciech in Polish—I was ready for any such further surprises. But as far as Marianna went, according to the index to the Słownik imion—or Dictionary of Names—Marianna in almost every European language was...Marianna.

So what about Jadwiga? This was the crux of the journey, and a great introduction to Polish history. Apparently a name holding cultural significance—and recent resurgence—in Poland, it calls to mind the first woman to be crowned as monarch of the Kingdom of Poland. In case you don't recall it, that event occurred in 1384, but her name has lived on over the centuries in Poland—a little something I hadn't known until stumbling upon this puzzling entry for a different wife's name for Kazimierz Szczepański.

What I don't yet know is whether there were two men by the same name living in the area surrounding Jarocin, Poland, with one married to Marianna and the other to Jadwiga—or whether that signified the death of Kazimierz's first wife before those entries in 1934 and 1935 containing Jadwiga's name. While I certainly have further to go to catch up with that answer, I can continue to enjoy what I'm discovering while I'm still on the journey.

 

Cracking the Door Open Just a Tiny Bit More

 

Finding documentation for the ten children of Józefa Olejniczak and her husband Michael Banaszak was far more than I had expected for the limited access I have to Polish records of the early 1900s. Each time I return to this project of researching my paternal grandmother's roots, the closed door seems to crack open just a tiny bit more, for which I am thankful.

I'm thankful, particularly, for the additional records being linked to the transcriptions listed at the Polish website BaSIA. Without their help at those websites, there would have been very little available to me in the U.S. to find.

Now that I've found Józefa's family, my next step is to research the newly-found surnames of her married children. Again, another tour of the BaSIA entries, leading to another set of documents and entries in multiple trees, complete with links listed back to the specific archival scans serving as source documentation.

With each of those discoveries made, as well as the ones yet to find, I feel the need to post those names and dates to each place where I am keeping a family tree—not just on my primary tree at Ancestry, but also at FamilySearch, MyHeritage (good connection to international researchers), and WikiTree. It's so important, having discovered a resource, to point the way for others, so I make sure to paste the link to the actual documents on each entry I make in those trees. Since they are all public trees, hopefully someone else will spot these details and follow the trail to the sources I've discovered.

The process isn't quick, and it certainly isn't easy. It's downright tedious, admittedly, but the process is worth the persevering. I think of the possible cousins who might find this helpful—and, if helped, will take the time to at least drop a line and connect.

In genealogy, we are all in this together. While your part of "together" may come from an entirely different part of the world—hey, I grew up being told I was Irish!—you may someday discover you need to know more about this hidden corner of the world, as well. And the places where you are researching your roots may well become the source of help or encouragement for a distant cousin you haven't even met—yet.

Józefa: Moving Beyond the Expected

 

By the time my research arrived at the fourth daughter of Bartholomaeus Olejniczak, I was already primed to not expect much from the few Polish records already available online. For Józefa's older sisters Franziska, Marianna, and Catharina, I had found—for the most part—very little. The baby of the family, however, was different.

Born February 3, 1876, by the time Józefa turned one year of age, her mother had died. By the time she became twenty three, Józefa was married. Her intended, Michael Banaszak, moved his bride from her family's home in Żerków to nearby Jarocin, where the records of births and marriages over the following years moved far beyond the limited dates I had come to expect. Unlike what I observed of the records in Żerków, as I kept stretching the search parameters to later and later dates for this family in Jarocin, the information kept appearing in the readout at BaSIA, the Polish website I've been using to search this branch of my family.

All told, I was able to find records for Józefa and Michael Banaszak in Jarocin dating from the birth of their oldest child, Waclaw, in 1900, all the way to marriage records for their daughters Marianna (to Kazimierz Szczepański in 1923) and Johanna (to Ignacy Frankowiak in 1931). 

Like clockwork at almost one child for every two years, Michael and Józefa welcomed ten Banaszak children into the world. Of course, there were the not-unusual sad spots when they lost their children Czeslaus in 1906 as a three year old, and Wojciech in 1915 as a one year old infant. But looking at the birth year of their youngest daughter Wladislawa, born in 1916, I wondered how much more heartbreak the family was about to face as they endured at least one World War, and possibly two—if they lived long enough to see it.

With these freshly-found discoveries about Józefa Olejniczak, I need to enter the information in my trees at FamilySearch, MyHeritage, and Ancestry, as well as include links back to the actual documents identified by my search through the BaSIA transcriptions. Perhaps those entries will flag even more digitized documents housed at any of the other websites. One can hope. But for now, I'm satisfied to know I've been able to reach beyond the turn of the century and into the 1900s with at least this one branch of the Olejniczak family. Perhaps that will be a close enough hook for a Polish DNA cousin to find me now.

When Everything Gets Translated

 

What do you do when every document involving your ancestors is in a foreign language you don't speak? You use Google Translate, of course.

What else was I supposed to do, when one of the few hints on Ancestry.com that popped up for my Polish family said: 

W Styczniu 1919 R. Wstąpił Jako Ochotnik Do Pleszewskiej Kompanii Powstańczej, Którą Dowodził Ppor. Pamin. Brał Udział W Walkach Pod Kobylą Górą, Czarnymlasem, Mijamnicami I O Miasto Kępno. Po Zawarciu Rozejmu Powrócił Do Domu.

Do you understand that? I didn't think so; neither do I.

The family member in particular was the son-in-law of one of Bartholomaeus Olejniczak's daughters, Franziska, whom we discussed just the other day, so I really wanted to know what those words meant. Finally—and quite unexpectedly—after poking around the details on this collateral line of my second great-grandmother, I had finally broken through the brick wall keeping me from twentieth century information—and I couldn't understand even one word of that information.

The route for the family connection was this: from Bartholomaeus, my second great-grandmother's brother, I examined what could be found on each of his children. We've already discussed how I had no clear leads for either of his sons. Right now, I am in the midst of exploring what can be found on each of his four daughters.

From the eldest daughter—Franziska, possibly named after my second great-grandmother—I found two marriage records. From the first marriage, to Adalbertus Kondoła (or possibly Kondeła), I then found a baptismal record for their daughter Catharina Agnes, which included an added line noting Catharina's subsequent marriage.

When I looked up the name of Catharina's husband, Joannes in church records, I again was treated to more information: that he was the son of Stanislaus Zajdel and a woman whose maiden name was by now quite familiar: Julianna Mikołajczak. I transcribed his parents' names and his date of birth—May 16, 1885—into my trees at Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, and MyHeritage.com. 

Then other hints began popping up, finally bringing me into the world of records for the 1900s. Billion Graves gave the date of death for Jan Zajdel as October 26, 1969, with his date of birth in agreement with the record I had found previously. Billion Graves also mentioned that Katarzyna Zajdel died in 1961, and provided a date of birth in harmony with the date I had found for Catharina Kondoła, granddaughter of our Bartholomaeus Olejniczak.

Being careful to enter all this newfound information into each of my trees, I then returned to Jan's entry at Ancestry.com, and discovered another bonus in the hints there. It was the readout in Polish I had printed above. Since I had no idea what any of that passage said, I copied and pasted the entire paragraph into Google Translate, and learned something new about this small branch of my third great-grandparents' line. 

According to the translation, here is what the link at Ancestry was telling me about Jan Zajdel:

In January 1919, he joined the Pleszew Uprising Company as a volunteer, commanded by 2nd Lt. Pamin. He took part in the battles of Kobyla Góra, Czarnylas, Mijamnice and the town of Kępno. After the conclusion of the Armistice, he returned home.

Of course, I had no idea what the Pleszew Uprising Company might have been, so once again, I took my question to Google, and found this entry at Wikipedia, in which this particular uprising was noted to have been one of the two most successful uprisings in the long history of occupied Poland. For this, according to the hint at Ancestry.com, among others, Jan Zajdel became a recipient of the Greater Poland Uprising Cross.

That unexpected foray into one branch of my Polish roots finally brought me as close to present times as I had ever managed to go. While I certainly have a long, long way to go to find the rest of the family's story—let alone any Polish DNA cousins—it is encouraging to have found at least one token of what became of my ancestors' family members who chose to stay behind in Poland.

 

Polish Genealogy: Not "Plug and Play"

 

In today's genealogy world, perhaps those of us seeking ancestral secrets have become spoiled. We can tap into an online subscription service like Ancestry.com or MyHeritage.com—or, for the "free is me" among us, FamilySearch.org—and, with a few taps on the keyboard, conjure up a document verifying the birth, marriage, or death of grandparents, great-grandparents, or beyond.

That "plug and play" mindset, while simplifying searches for those of us fortunate enough to have multiple generations in North America, may perhaps coax us into a research laziness which doesn't benefit us when we must strike out into the unexplored regions of the genealogical world.

Take my current research struggles with my paternal grandparents' roots in Poland. FamilySearch.org has some records for the parishes that are of interest to me—but not all. So I jump between that website and BaSIA—and keep looking for other new-to-me resources, just in case those sites fail me.

Keeping track of where I found everything in this manner can be challenging. Any record found on FamilySearch can easily be plugged into my entries on the tree there. But then I need to also remember to keep my research log at Ancestry and MyHeritage up to date as well. Thus, lacking any document at those websites, I end up editing notes by adding links from other websites to my timeline on the paid subscription site.

While tree building in this manner might not add up to the speed of a plug-and-play interface, it does achieve my purposes. I want to verify names, dates, and events where each tree is kept, even if that is not where the digitized copy of the document is stored.

Someday, perhaps, research for those descended from the Polish diaspora will become more streamlined. Until then, I'll need to be satisfied with mounting my own learning curve, from understanding diacritical marks and learning Polish phonics to acquiring a rudimentary knowledge of the Polish terms likely to be found on documents of genealogical interest. At the very least, I'll become facile at leaping from website to website as I reconstruct the picture of my Polish family's history.  

Catharina Makes Connections

 

Bartholomaues Olejniczak's third daughter Catharina—whom I suspect was actually called Katarzyna anywhere other than in Catholic Church records—ended up surprising me with connections by marriage to another member of her family tree. Although I can find some, but not all, Polish records at FamilySearch.org, this discovery came to me, thanks to the links at the Polish genealogy website, BaSIA.

The only reference I could find to Catharina was a mention of her 1897 marriage. Unsurprisingly, that event took place in Żerków, apparently the family's longstanding home in Poland. Her intended, Martin—make that Marcin in Polish—was the son of Marianna Smołka and her husband Stanislaus Mikołajczak.

"Wait a minute," I thought. I've seen that long, consonant-studded surname before. Long and unusual names complete with diacritical marks not part of my American lexicon can catch my eye like that.

Sure enough, I had seen that name before. Mikołajczak turned out to already be a surname figuring in my ever-expanding family tree. In fact, Stanislaus and Marianna Mikołajczak had another child who had married into this same Olejniczak family: their daughter Franziska.

Before you groan over yet another Franziska being added to this family saga, let's pause and consider just how few records I've been able to find on this family through the "usual" means. I'm celebrating every small victory I can find. And this Franziska we had already met when talking about the bride of Catharina's older brother Walenty—or Valentinus.

Thanks to the finding aid at BaSIA, I now have a digital copy of the 1897 marriage record for Catharina Olejniczak and Franziska's brother, Martin Mikołajczak.

What I couldn't find, though, were any records of birth for the couple's children. At this point, that lack could be the result of destroyed records, or records not within the dates of the collection at hand. Or that could mean that the couple moved out of the area, whether to another part of Poland or Europe—or even emigrating to America. Without a more thorough search, at this point I cannot say. But I'll keep looking.

Second Sister Marianna

 

Sometimes, research forays bestow some positive benefits, even after years of struggle. After having had past difficulties finding records verifying the collateral lines of my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak, it turns out that her brother's daughters have all showed up in now-digitized documents. Yesterday, we discussed Franziska's niece of the same name; today we'll look at the second-oldest of the sisters, Marianna.

In the case of this daughter of Bartholomaeus Olejniczak and his wife Catharina Orszulak, I actually found her name in two records. At her baptism at the Catholic Church in Żerków, Marianna's date of birth was recorded as July 27, 1871—seven years after the arrival of her older sister Franziska.

Almost like clockwork, twenty years later on November 16, 1891, Marianna Olejniczak married Adalbertus Marecki. Though not unusual for that time period, he was a man ten years her senior. As we've already learned from Marianna's older sister, who also married someone named Adalbertus, Marianna's husband was more likely called Wojciech at home, a far different name than that rendered in his Latin church records.

Unfortunately, unlike her sister's marriage record, this later version from their home church's marriage records did not include the name of the couple's parents. What appeared to be an entry listing the witnesses included one named Franz Jankowski, who would have been husband to Marianna's paternal aunt.

Piecing together documents and transcriptions from various Polish websites, I was able to find mention of eleven children for this couple, who were born between 1893 and 1910. Among those many children were at least two who died in infancy and another daughter, Josepha, who died as a teenager. My next task for this branch of the family is to pursue any sign of documentation for those children of Marianna and Wojciech Marecki who lived to adulthood, married, and welcomed in another generation of the extended Olejniczak family, presumably all still living in Poland into the early 1900s.  

Finding Another Franziska

 

Working through the line of descent from ancestors and then combining that with a search through all the family's collateral lines can begin to reveal patterns. I have yet to determine just who it was whose name Franziska echoed down through namesakes in the generations of my paternal grandmother's matriline, but I am finding that name repeated. Surely this is a sign that someone, somewhere in my family's past, had a favorite ancestor to be honored that way.

Whether Bartholomaeus Olejniczak decided to honor his sister—my second great-grandmother—by naming his oldest daughter after her, I can't yet be sure. Perhaps Bartholomaeus and his sister Franziska had a grandmother by that name—a generation which is, so far, beyond my research reach.

Thankfully, Bartholomaeus' daughter Franziska can be traced through a couple records from the now-nonexistent country of Prussia. According to a transcription found at the Polish website BaSIA, I was led to the scan (#86) of the actual 1889 marriage document for a twenty-five year old Franziska Olejniczak, daughter of Bartholomaeus and Katharina Orszulak Olejniczak.

In that record, I learned that this Franziska's husband was known by two possible surnames: either Kondoła or  Kądala. To complicate matters, his given name—Adalbertus in Catholic church records—was not exactly a Polish name. That Latin version appears to have been the substitution of choice for Prussian sons known in Polish as Wojciech. Thus, the search for the couple's seven (or more) descendants gets complicated—until, of course, Franziska's husband died and she married, next, a man known as Anton Bogaczyński, with whom she had three more children.

Did any of these ten children live to adulthood? So far, I know that at least one child did. Born to Franziska and her first husband on March 22, 1892, in Ludwinow, the child was baptized Catharina. A note below her record on the top line of the page in the register for the parish in Żerków revealed that her full name was Catharina Agnes Kondoła and that she was subsequently married to Joannes—or Jan—Zajdel.

Following documentation and links on various online resources led me to the Billion Graves website, where an entry for someone with that same identity—Jan Zajdel, born May 16, 1885—showed his death on October 26, 1969, and burial in western Poland in Grodzisk Wielkopolskie. 

That makes this the first person related to descendants of my father's Polish line whom I've been able to trace into relatively modern times. Whether he was indeed the husband of Catharina, and whether this couple ever had children, I have yet to discover—if I find out anything at all.

Progress for such a research goal—finding descendants of my Polish ancestors' collateral lines—seems so incremental and piecemeal. Here a little, there a little, each breadcrumb of information preserved eventually will add up to substantial information. But so slowly it unfolds.

Finding Four Sisters

 

When struggling to find information on a brick wall ancestor, I turn aside to the mystery ancestor's collateral lines. In that way, I often can coax out information on my direct line which might not otherwise become apparent. Yet I generally find more success in that method when I look to the brothers in any given line—not the sisters. But in the case of my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak, when I sidestepped her line to explore her brother's line, it was his four daughters who led me to additional records, not his two sons.

Finding those sisters of the less-than-helpful brothers may have been easier for many reasons. Perhaps, in a place with such a history as war-torn Europe, the brothers might have been drafted to do what young men are expected to do for their country. Or perhaps they just died young, yet left no paper trail for me to find.

Regardless of the cause, I'm glad to have the opportunity to trace the family of this collateral line of my second great-grandmother. Cousin bait, remember, can lead me to possible DNA matches, those descendants of such mystery ancestors who are living in our current time.

With that, I have four options to pursue. Bartholomaeus' eldest child, a daughter with that now-familiar family name Franziska, was born about 1864, as I gratefully discovered through transcriptions at one Polish website, BaSIA. After Bartholomaeus' two sons were born, Franziska finally got a sister: Marianna. Again, thanks to Polish websites, I learned her date of birth was July 27, 1871. Third daughter, making her appearance on November 6, 1873, was Catharina. And the apparent baby of the family, Josepha, arrived on February 3, 1876.

The good news—at least for my DNA testing purposes—was that each of these sisters eventually married, producing documentation which enabled me to follow their stories a bit further. And in that continuing story, some of their children also helped point the way for me through their own baptismal records.

Is that as much as I'd hoped? Of course not. I'm still wrestling with a gap in records, falling far short of any privacy protections that might have been instituted on behalf of the living. But at least with these lines of descent from my second great-grandmother's brother, I can begin to trace connections.

We'll take some time this week to trace each sister's family connections, just in case that leads to any future serendipitous encounters with long lost family. Cousin bait candidate number one: Bartholomaeus' eldest daughter Franziska.

Breathless Breakthroughs and Puzzling Polish Ancestors

 

The other day, I got one of those breathless emails from MyHeritage, the kind that heralds one of those big breakthrough discoveries of documents for mystery ancestors. They had found signs of my puzzling Polish ancestors, the Olejniczak family.

That might have been good news. After all, it was MyHeritage which unearthed the legal notice in a New York City newspaper announcing the fait accompli of my paternal grandfather's name change—finally, a fact I can list as duly documented instead of merely family legend.

But in this case, the discovery of Olejniczak documentation was simply the addition of those same family members in someone's family tree. Only problem was: it was my family tree!

Since I've been jumping back and forth between several tree-building services in my process to add the facts from Polish websites to my American trees, I've decided I can't simply lock those details behind the paywall on my one favored genealogical company. Thus, I've been careful to add what I'm finding to my branches of the universal tree at FamilySearch.org—which is where MyHeritage spotted the entry. In addition, I've also been building those details into my tree at MyHeritage—which prompted them to send me the notification. It goes without saying that, ditto, I've done the same at Ancestry.com. Still waiting, but soon to be accomplished, will be the same process on WikiTree. If anyone is out there—a distant cousin just waiting to be discovered—I want that fellow family history researcher to find me. We need to compare notes.

It sometimes leaves me awestruck to realize that apparently not many people—translation: no people I can find—have been researching these family lines. I wonder: did those that stayed in Poland get wiped out in the 1939 Intelligenzaktion? Or did their sons and grandsons get drafted to the other side of two of the worst wars the world has known in modern history?

As I've worked my way through the collateral lines in the Olejniczak family, I've run full speed into an invisible brick wall—not just for one person, but for a time frame after which records are simply not available to me. Perhaps, if I were able to read the Polish language, I could find my way around this records silence by searching for family names in local newspapers, but that skill is far beyond me.

In the meantime, I'm rounding out what few details I can find for each collateral line by putting them in each of these online tree-building services, linking them to any records or transcriptions I can find. While that may be a small step, it is indeed a step. Small cousin bait, of course, but something. I'm already beginning to see signs of possible Polish cousins in newer DNA matches and tree entries. The process may feel like trying to walk in hip waders with fifteen additional legs attached, but at least I'm walking forward through the muck and the mire of forsaken old records.

Rescuing Disappearing Generations

 

A horrible thought struck me this past week while tying together the names which belong in my father's family tree: by doing this work, I am essentially rescuing names from what would otherwise be disappearing generations. For those of us whose parents or grandparents came to this country feeling less than welcome upon their arrival, I can understand why they might have wished to conceal their family background: it helped them get ahead—or at least avoid more discrimination—by acting like someone whom they weren't. 

What they've left for us, however, is a blank slate when it should have been a pedigree filled with names from faraway places. And it is our job now, with the tools we have, to recreate those ancestral stories—the stories which should have been, but weren't presented to us as part of our heritage.

This month, as I work on my goal of discovering more about Franziska Olejniczak, my second great-grandmother, I want to counter-balance that secrecy by putting her family's names out there in as many places as possible. I've been jumping from tree to tree, in the several websites where I've posted information on my family, to ensure that she and her family are represented, despite the difficulty in finding documentation.

It's been slow going. Since today is the time for my biweekly count, I realized that these two weeks straddle my goal last month—focused on my father-in-law's family—and this month's quest for my own father's roots. Still, a gain of thirty six new family names is not that bad. My family tree stands at 38,457 with that small advance.

Yes, there were some additions to my father-in-law's tree, as well, coming in at the tail end of the previous month. Forty four new names in my in-laws' tree grows their tree to 36,843 documented individuals.

I am fairly certain the growth spurt from earlier this year will come to a near halt with the difficulty of researching my Polish ancestry, but it will keep moving forward, nonetheless. As we tackle the collateral lines of the Olejniczak family next week, we will hopefully make some gains right then—and explore online resources in Poland which can help move progress further.

No matter how progress seems to bog down during this month, the main goal is to keep focused on the bigger picture: rescuing the names and dates of family members who would otherwise be lost to time. If it sounds like I am on a mission, that is indeed so. There are currently gaps in records from some countries. There are some problems with access through distance or difficulties with languages. But it is still possible to at least do something. And that is what I intend to do.

Ancestry's "Largest Ever" DNA Update

 

Just as I was musing over my DNA matches and wishing I could find a way to connect with more Polish cousins—especially those who could explain my Olejniczak roots—here comes another AncestryDNA update. Though many of the changes involve ethnicity estimates—an always evolving segment of the science—the changes come with a fresher look.

At the top of my reading list yesterday was John Reid's announcement in his blog, Anglo-Celtic Connections, of Ancestry's latest changes. I followed the links to get more of the story. The Ancestry corporate blog provided the big overview, complete with a description of the "new user experience" on this "largest ever update." Apparently, Ancestry incorporated more individuals into each of the reference panels they use, which resulted in the addition of twenty four new ancestral regions from around the world.

Those additional regions include eight in Africa, five in Europe, three in west Asia, and eight more in south and Southeast Asia. Besides that, a companion release details what Ancestry calls "subregions," including fifty four specific to Europe with this current update.

With all the changes and additions—not to mention alterations in the terms we've become used to at Ancestry—the company has included a one-page summary of what is involved with this latest update. And for those of us who are more curious than the average customer, Ancestry has provided links to white papers to explain the science behind their "ancestral regions" and the changes in terminology—such as relabeling Genetic Communities as Ancestral Journeys—and more features of this revision.

Will this help me better address how to figure out the connections to my Polish ancestors? Hardly. After spending a good chunk of the day reviewing the new material and changes in my personal account and those of family members for whose DNA tests I serve as administrator, that aspect of my Polish ancestry looks to be unchanged. No big "aha!" moments for those ancestors in my father's roots—just a big call to keep seeking out sources for Polish records for the regions which they once called home.

For some, I imagine the expanded regions and journeys topics will help guide their future research. And we want a company dedicated to periodically upgrading their DNA services. What I'm hoping for now is that more people who still live in those regions will begin testing their DNA so that they show up as matches for the rest of us who are curious about our connections in those far-flung places. 

Building a Ladder of Connection

 

It may seem odd to watch someone research the family history of the grandchildren of a second great-grandmother's brother, but this I do with one specific purpose. I'm building a ladder of connection between the generations in hopes that someone may reach up and grab on to the rung I've been dangling out in space, in hopes someone will catch on and climb up another generation, too. 

Using another analogy, that's what we call "cousin bait." I'm dangling the "bait" of ancestral names, and I'm hoping others out there will come fishing for that specific family name—a name which fits into both my tree and theirs. Hopefully, I'll provide the missing link which will help others move one step further in their own research progress on their direct lines.

Each time I go through this process, I inevitably hit a brick wall. Last time I revisited this stuck genealogy project, all I had was my second great-grandmother's name, Franziska Olejniczak. And that was only thanks to her daughter Marianna's 1879 marriage record, recorded in Żółków, then a town in Prussia. Since then—and discovery of such new documents seems to come in waves—I've found more on the Olejniczak family.

This time, researching the collateral line of Franziska's brother Bartholomaeus—or Bartłomiej in Polish—I've worked my way through records for one son, Walenty, and another possible son, Jan. But there the record sources dried up, and I am stuck at this new stopping point. If I am willing to revisit this research question again in a couple more years, more records will likely surface and I can push the generational line forward another step or two.

While trying my best to find more on Walenty's children ended in frustration, there are certainly other collateral lines to explore. After all, Walenty himself had four sisters whose records might already be available online. We'll explore those possibilities next week. In the meantime, whether that exploration brings success or not, I'll focus on the fact that every name added to these collateral lines will either help surface another distant cousin seeking the same roots, or at least help me make more connections, once additional records become available for researchers. It's all part of building a generational ladder of connection through collateral lines.

. . . But There are Others

 

While Jan Olejniczak may have me stuck, wobbling on whether his identity is one and the same as American immigrant John Olenzak, I can always look for information on the rest of the family. After all, there are others among the children of Bartholomaeus and Catharina Olejniczak to research. Perhaps information on one of these siblings of our Jan will help shine a light on the whole family's story.

Bartholomaeus and Catharina had at least one other son besides Jan—or Joannes, as his Catholic baptismal record dubbed him. Though he may not have emigrated like his younger brother, Walenty—or Valentinus, as his baptismal record described him—was at least easy to find in websites featuring Polish records or transcriptions. At this point, that is all I'm seeking.

Let's take a look at what we can find. In the baptismal record for Valentinus—remember, this is the Latin version of his Polish given name—we discover he was born in Micholowo, the same place where immigrant John Olenzak stated his birth to be, according to his naturalization record. Valentinus, or Walenty, was born on January 31, 1867, and was baptized only a few days later in Żerków, home to many of my father's ancestral connections.

Fortunately, from that point, there is further information on Walenty. In November of 1897, he married twenty one year old Franziska Mikołajczak, daughter of Stanislaus and Marianna (Smolka) Mikołajczak. Thanks to the index at the Polish website BaSIA, I was directed to this website page to view scan number 108, showing their marriage information. The record was registered at Jarocin.

Shortly after that point, Walenty and Franziska welcomed their first child, a daughter whom they named Katharina. Hers was not a long life, I discovered by thumbing through records bearing her parents' names, for she died in the same year in which she was born. This was followed by more such news, according to records I found on FamilySearch.org. Their son Adam died on the day of his birth, April 27, 1911. Once again, a daughter Ewa, born on December 4, 1913, died within hours of her birth.

These are the type of sad stories I have encountered while researching others in my father's ancestry, hinting at the poverty these Polish forebears may have endured as an ongoing burden throughout their lives, whether short or long. But there were others, too, as I joyfully discovered when I switched to search the transcriptions at the Polish website BaSIA. All told, putting that website through its paces by naming the parents, Walenty and Franziska, I found eight additional children for whom no death record followed their registration of birth—yet.

At least until I can find further information, I now have a third generation descending from my third great-grandfather Nikolaus Olejniczak through his son Barthothomaeus' other son Walenty. The possibilities for DNA connections could be descendants of any of these eight: Ignatz, Marianna, Agnes, Kasimir, Stanislawa, Johanna, Stanislaw, and Pelagia. Discovering more details about their own identities will help make connections with DNA matches a bit more likely.

Does Jan = John?It Depends

 

Take a name as common as John—or, if you are researching ancestors in Poland, Jan. Could that ancestor, having emigrated from Poland to an English-speaking country, have changed his given name? Most likely, I'd assume.

If that is so, would he also have changed his surname? After all, our Jan—or Joannes in his Catholic baptismal record in Latin—carried a most unlikely surname for blending into life in the United States. Could Olejniczak have morphed into Olenzak?

That's the type of questions I'm rehearsing in my mind as I trace the ancestor of one DNA match I've discovered. Given the tiny size of the matching genetic segment, the result could simply be telling me, "Yeah, they're both Polish." Or this could be a distant cousin.

Comparing the records doesn't help as much as I'd like. For one thing, the only record I've been able to find in Poland is the 1869 baptismal record giving Joannes' date of birth as June 8.

Looking at the possible ancestral link in my DNA match's tree, I'm starting from the most recent dates and working my way backwards in time. First record I can find is John Olenzak's 1963 obituary, published in the Massillon, Ohio, Evening Independent. 

This does not make for a smooth start. Right away, I notice John was said to have been born in Germany, having emigrated in 1895 to settle in Belmont County, Ohio, subsequently in Harrison County, then eventually settling in Massillon. Our Jan was baptized in the town of Żerków in Poland—not quite the same information. Still, due to geopolitical changes in the European map over the decades, this territory was indeed sometimes considered to be part of Germany. I decided to look further for more documentation.

John Olenzak's obituary provided names of family members. While it is unfortunate that no siblings or parents were mentioned, at least we know John's wife was named Pelagia, and that she died in 1924. In addition, three daughters were mentioned by their married names, as well as two sons, Kazmer and Sigmund.

With that, I was able to find John's entry in the 1920 census—and was encouraged to see the enumerator's handwriting clearly outlined the name as Olejniczak, not Olenzak. At the time, John and his family were living in Harrison County, and both his sons, Kazmer and Sigmund, could be spotted, along with his wife Pelagia and daughters Louise, Lottie, Gladys, and Wanda. I could see from the census that both John and Pelagia were noted to have been born in Poland, but the interesting detail was that all but the three youngest children were born in Germany.

The 1920 census noted that the family arrived in the United States in 1905 and that they were naturalized in 1913. That was good news, leading me to discover, in the citizenship records of Belmont County, Ohio, an index card showing September 4, 1913, as the date of naturalization for Johan Olejniczak.

An added bonus given in that index card: Johan was born in Michalowo, Poland. The bad news? The date of birth given in that record was July 8, not June 8. Worse, Johan's place of birth, given as Micholowo, could have been one of three different towns, all equidistant from our Joannes' baptismal location of Żerków. Granted, the distance, at least in today's economy, would be about a forty minute drive, but that is only provided Johan's birth was in one of those three villages. There is a fourth place with the same name which is, in today's terms, a five hour drive to the east.

The question then becomes: what if this wasn't the right immigrant John Olejniczak? What if our Jan didn't emigrate from his homeland at all? Or, considering another possibility, what if he did leave Poland for the United States, but settled somewhere else? There are actually several immigrants by that same name who arrived in America, including this possible John Olejniczak whose obituary ran in the same year as John Olenzak's—1963—but who settled in a location where others of my father's Polish ancestors also immigrated: to Buffalo, New York. What if my Jan Olejniczak did emigrate, but went to a more likely destination?

In the end, I did find that John Olenzak's Social Security information righted that birth date to June 8, 1869. Was that my Jan Olejniczak? At this point, the answer remains: it depends. If I pick and choose the right records, the documentation can look convincing. But in my case, I won't feel comfortable making that my conclusion until I find more documentation to fill in the blanks in this person's story. A lot more documentation.

When Unusual Mixes With Common

 

What happens when you combine the unusual with something common? In the case of this month's quest to discover more about my father's Olejniczak great-grandmother, I am beginning to realize that combining that surname with a given name as common as John puts the brakes on research progress.

How common is a name like Olejniczak? In all my life, I don't ever recall meeting anyone with a name like that. Even considering, with Polish phonics, that name is pronounced far differently than it looks to American eyes, I don't believe I've ever heard anyone mention that name.

To me, that is always a good sign. To look for an unusual name can mean an easier route to finding the right person for the name—so how common is a surname like Olejniczak? Here in the United States, compared to all other American surnames, Olejniczak ranks well below the twenty thousandth mark, showing up only 1,592 times in listings of all the surnames in the country in a recent tally.

But how does the surname rank in the country of its origin? One surname distribution site ranks Olejniczak 139th of all Polish surnames, with well over twenty thousand residents of Poland claiming that as their surname—a far different picture than we see in the United States or any other non-Polish country.

Not quite rare, but at least unusual: that's how I'd classify that surname. But what happens when we combine that search edge with a given name as common as John? My guess is that the uniqueness of the search term plummets—both in Poland, where I'd be looking for Jan (or, in church records, Joannes), and elsewhere for an immigrant named John. Suddenly, the uniqueness evaporates. Combine that with an immigrant's possible decision to modify that foreign-sounding surname, and the search terms get thrown wide open.

As it turns out, our Franziska Olejniczak, my father's great-grandmother, had a brother. In church records, his name appeared in its Latin version, Bartholomaeus. There, it was fairly easy to find the names of his sons, including that son with the common name Jan—or Joannes in church records, where we find him baptized in June of 1869 in the same town where I've found so many of my father's other Polish ancestors.

It just so happens that, of all my thousands of DNA matches, there is one—and only one—who connects with me through the Olejniczak grandparents of this Joannes Olejniczak, son of Bartholomaeus. It's a very small match, to be sure, but it is there, calling for attention.

Not happy to just take things at face value, that did grab my attention, and I looked. Despite hopes that this would be a workable match and a documentable line of descent, I found it to have rather disappointing support. While the tree of this DNA match showed this immigrant John Olejniczak to be born in 1868, there were very few documents to support the timeline for that tree. Reports of birth in "Germany," while possibly a politically correct label for the time period, may indicate a different person with that same common name of John, despite the unusual surname. And a morphing surname evolving over the years to help this immigrant fit into American culture did not help, either.

This will obviously call for examination of records, both to trace any clues of this other John Olejniczak's identity and family history and to search for more details on my own "John" Olejniczak, wherever he might have ended up. We'll jump into that chase tomorrow.

A Brother for Franziska

 

A genealogical chain of events is finally unfolding, now that I've tapped into church records for the Olejniczak family of my father's great-grandmother Franziska. It seems challenging enough, trying to find records of one's Polish ancestors from thousands of miles away—not to mention, inability to speak the language. But Catholic Church records, whether drawn up by a priest in America or in Poland, are all written in the same language: Latin. And I can find my way around Latin far easier than I can decipher Polish handwriting.

Having discovered Franziska's maiden name—which I presume is the rather unusual name Olejniczak—I realized I have several distant DNA matches who have that same unusual surname in their family tree. Only problem: their Olejniczaks and mine do not share any given names. This leaves me with one guess as to how to proceed: figure out whether these DNA matches descend from any possible brothers of Franziska.

Fortunately, though I wish I had found more, I did find a record for one brother for Franziska. His name, according to church records, was Bartholomaeus. That, presuming it was the Latin form of his name, might yield Bartłomiej in his native Poland.

Bartholomaeus Olejniczak was apparently born on August 16, 1838, in the area which soon became the Province of Posen in Prussia. Born to Nicholas Olejniczak and Josepha Grzegorczyk, he was a full sibling to Franziska. 

I followed Bartłomiej's paper trail to make sure he wasn't one of the many Polish family members I've traced whose end followed his beginning by a matter of mere days—a fate that seemed to be a common occurrence among the children of my father's ancestors. And once again, I found his latinized given name, Bartholomaeus, entered in a ledger in 1863, on the occasion of his October 26 marriage to Catharina Orszulak.

Within the year, at least according to transcriptions of records posted on volunteer-driven Polish websites, Bartłomiej and his wife—most likely called Katarzyna by her Polish kin—became the proud parents of their first daughter. First of at least four daughters, this child also eventually became the big sister to two brothers. And those brothers potentially became eligible to be the one who passed down the Olejniczak surname to some of the DNA matches I have today.

The catch is that, while I was able to find documentation for the birth of one of those Olejniczak sons, I can't be entirely sure the descendants who claim him as their ancestor are indeed connected to the same man as the one I found in Polish baptismal records. We'll take a look at the details—and how they don't quite jibe—in tomorrow's post.

When the To-Do List Piles Up

It seemed like a reasonable plan: I'd limit myself to researching one ancestor per month. That way, I could focus on one specific research question, having the luxury of at least thirty days to struggle from unsolved mystery to documented answer.

You know that plan never quite works out in just the right amount of time.

Despite the best of intentions, at the end of each month, that almost-in-reach answer taunted me so much that I made an exception. I promised I'd keep on the trail of that ancestral quest—only I'd do it behind the scenes, not including it here in what has become my genealogical journal of research progress. In other words, those monthly research leftovers found themselves added to my to-do list. And that research to-do list has piled up to an unmanageable level.

Today, I thought I'd brace myself and take a tally of all the tabs on my computer marking tasks yet awaiting completion. Reaching back to January, there's the question about my fifth great-grandfather John Carter: did he have two wives or three? And which of his children belonged to which mother? Could we devise a DNA project to resolve that mystery?

Piled up with that Carter question, I had promises made to myself from previous years to continue my search for all Broyles descendants from the second Germanna settlement, since I've since met several distant Broyles cousins both online and in real life. "Are you my cousin?" became an oft-repeated question this year, and I simply needed to find a way to answer that. Hence, a research project behind the scenes which has stretched well over a year now.

A DNA match mess over genetic cousins from my maternal grandfather's Laws family—which I haven't written about in years—has kept me playing "what if" games with data from those matches off and on. I need to approach the "off" side of that equation soon. Perhaps this needs to be a Twelve Most Wanted target for next year—for once and for all.

On my mother-in-law's side of the family, several projects await my attention. It seems each time I work on one of her ancestors, a multitude of DNA matches appear in my husband's accounts and call me to add dozens of collateral lines to her tree. I've got tabs open on my laptop to keep me working on her Snider, Metzger, Ijams, Howard, Flowers, and Gordon lines.

And oh, now that I think of it, even last month closed out without my escaping those lingering to-do wishes. After piecing together James and Mary Kelly's story from my father-in-law's family in every which way I could, I tried tracing all their known descendants. I am not done with that process. Add yet another task to the ever-growing to-do list.

Perhaps it will be time to play catch-up. Or harvest all these notes to help in creating my Twelve Most Wanted projects for 2025. I'd say there are enough of them to last me another year. And then some.

Some Pre-Thanksgiving Thanks

 

We may be weeks away from what is usually considered the "holiday season," but I've lately had some thanksgiving thoughts. Perhaps it was because I was recently wandering the aisles of a go-to gift store, noticing not only the Halloween decorations, but everything one would need to prepare a home for Christmas, as well. Or perhaps it is simply because I know our neighbors to the north will soon be settling in for their own Thanksgiving dinner in Canada in little more than a week.

Truth be told, what really inspired my thankfulness was the effort I've had to expend on finding those Polish ancestors of my father. If I didn't know so much about how difficult it is to research Irish ancestry, I might have wished my paternal grandfather's made-up tale about his descent from the Emerald Isle were the true one, not the secret we cousins unearthed about his true roots in Poland.

In pursuit of the truth, my task is now to toggle between three online genealogical services—Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, and FamilySearch.org—to piece together records to confirm just one of my Polish ancestors, Franziska Olejniczak. You'd think a surname as unusual as that would give me a shining green light pointing the way through the genealogical darkness. But no, solely because the resources are so lacking. And that's where the thankfulness comes in.

I've had ample opportunities to research my mother's made-in-America lines, going back for centuries with hardly a hiccup compared to the difficulties I've encountered with Polish research. Granted, networking with others who are researching their Polish records has pointed the way to some websites hosted in Poland, such as the Poznan Project and BaSIA, the Database of Archival Indexing System. These are available, for the most part, because of volunteers who are over there and can access and transcribe the records that I can't access because I am thousands of miles away. For that, I am thankful.

Even though I am currently frustrated at what seems to be the lack of access to records—or perhaps the lack of records, themselves—this dearth points me to the thankfulness-worthy realization that, in America, we have such a tradition of record keeping that we can, if we so choose, trace our family lines back through so many generations. While we may grumble about bureaucracy or government intrusion into private lives, we still have had the benefits of stability which enabled us to preserve such records safely against the ravages of time, tumult, and terrors.

I may grumble while I jump from website to website, trying to reconcile records and locations while using online translation services, but deep down inside and despite the frustration, I'm reminded there is still a lot a genealogist can be thankful for. Though the going may be far slower—and definitely more awkward—it is still possible to garner the records and piece together a family's story. In North America, sure. But also in the places our ancestors once called home.

Stepping Back Before Moving Forward

 

For a family history researcher working from the United States, it is sometimes difficult to access records from other countries. My problem this month lies in my choice to focus on my father's great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak, who was born in Poland, and likely spent her entire life there. I also know that I have several DNA matches whose trees include the surname Olejniczak. By a brilliant process of deduction, I thus observed that I will somehow need to first find more information on Franziska's father—and likely also a listing of any brothers she might have had.

Thus, before we move forward to look at descendants of this family, we need to first take a step backwards in time. Fortunately, I was able to locate a transcription of Franziska's own marriage record from February 13, 1854, when as an eighteen year old daughter of Nicolai—likely Mikołaj in Polish—and Josepha Grzegorczyk Olejniczak, she married Franz Jankowski. Again, at the end of her life, her July 12, 1908, burial record confirmed those same parents' names, although the spelling of her mother's maiden name of Grzegorczyk was understandably mangled by what I'd assume was a non-native speaking priest.

Finding Franziska's parents opened the door for me to search for any possible siblings, especially brothers. Remembering that I have DNA matches carrying the surname Olejniczak, my next step will be to locate any brothers of Franziska and trace their line of descent. If that doesn't work, that means pushing back yet another generation. Hopefully the first step will yield us some answers when we resume this search next week. 

Catching Up With Matches

 

Out there, taunting me, are a handful of DNA matches who feature a surname as unusual as Olejniczak in their pedigree chart. It just so happens that this is the month which I've dedicated to learning more about my father's great-grandmother, Franziska Olejniczak. Coincidence? I can't make it any more specific than that—unless I can find a way to uncover the rest of the birth and marriage records for this family back in Poland.

Among those promising DNA matches are eight cousins of various relationship levels at Ancestry.com and seven more at MyHeritage. More promising is the fact that those MyHeritage matches all come from France, the United Kingdom, Poland, or other undesignated European locations, based on information provided by the matches. My challenge is to figure out a way to build a family tree that traces the descendants of Franziska and her husband—Franz Jankowski—who remained in Europe.

At this point, my information is spotty. Of course, it is far easier to trace those of the couple's children who migrated to the United States. And, given the gaps in age between the three I've found so far, I am surely missing some of the couple's children. Besides, since some DNA matches claim the same surname as my research target's maiden name, I will perhaps have to reach back yet another generation to find brothers who would have carried that surname forward through generations.

The first test is to see what records can be found online. Though I have a "World Explorer" subscription to Ancestry.com, I haven't found as many foreign records as I would like to see there, so I've switched most of my searching for this month's project to FamilySearch.org. Still, it's amazing to see how many people have exactly the same name, even coupled with other limiting search terms. Progress has been slower than I hoped, given the risk of chasing after incorrect name twins.

Since all I've had to work with in past years was the wonderful transcription websites built, in some cases, through volunteer efforts in Poland, the first step is to see what, of the information I had already found, can be corroborated with copies of actual documents. For this, I'm turning to FamilySearch.org, where, bit by bit, I'm connecting records with those previously-found transcriptions.

For Franziska and her husband—whom I had listed as Franz Jankowski—I had found three daughters last year: my direct line ancestor Marianna, her sister Stanisława, and the presumed youngest sister, Antonina. I have already researched the descendants of the elder two sisters. Now is my chance to explore what can be found online for Antonina and her own family. These may be the most likely ancestral sources for those foreign-born DNA matches who have me puzzled. If not, I'll next need to reach back another generation to Franciska's own possible Olejniczak siblings, whoever they might be.