From Jan to Johan to John: Let's Assume

 

Earlier this month, I had taken a peek at my only DNA match sharing the ancestral surname Olejniczak from the brother of my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak. This cousin match, although distant at an estimated third cousin once removed, claimed as his direct ancestor someone named John Olejniczak. That John, born in 1869, had supposedly emigrated from Poland and ended up in the United States in the unlikely location of Harrison County, Ohio.

When he first showed up in American records, he had reported his name as Johan. Indeed, the three eldest of his children actually were born in Germany, according to the 1920 census, so perhaps he had come to this country by way of Germany, even if he had been born in Poland, where friends and neighbors would have been more likely to have called him Jan.

Of course, on my end, I am thinking about the son of Franziska's brother Bartholomaeus, whom he named Jan—or, as the Latin version of church baptismal records would put it, Joannes Olejniczak.

The difficulty in trying, from my end of the research puzzle in late 1800s Poland, to document my way forward in time from that baptismal record is far greater than retracing this DNA match's steps from his own parents back to his connection with his Olejniczak roots. Though his public tree posted online is supported with few records, let's assume that while this may seem like a doubtful jaunt down a rabbit trail, it may become a worthwhile chase, and begin the hunt.

It takes several steps to follow the documents to see that the name our immigrant of interest used at the point of his death in 1963—John Olenzak—still represented the man who for his naturalization records had reported his name as Johan Olejniczak. Yet the final reporting of his date of birth—June 8, 1869—lines up perfectly with our Joannes Olejniczak's baptismal record. And while a Belmont, Ohio, transcription of Johan's citizenship records indicated his place of birth in Poland was called Michałowo—a place which in today's maps looks to be on the other side of the country, certainly too far away for his family to get to Żerków for his baptism two days after birth—a quick consulting of the map at Meyer's Gazetteer shows us a likely village within walking distance of the church parish. And eases my mind that we are talking about the right person and the right place.

Next step: to build a tentative tree to test the connection between the Olejniczak lines.

Image above: Inset from map of Żerków showing Michałowo toward the top left side; image courtesy Meyers Gazetteer entry for Żerków (click tab labeled "map" on website for full image).