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.