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.