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.