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.