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.