From Known to Unknown

 

It's a long, unwinding chain that leads us from our known ancestors to the next step beyond—at first, an unknown next step. That's where I am in seeking information on my father's great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak. Here's what I know about her so far, mostly thanks to details sprinkled throughout the records of the children she left behind.

Franziska was born in Poland and, as far as I can tell so far, though some of her children did, she never left her homeland. It was only because of a daughter who did leave—Marianna—that I even knew what her name was. From a granddaughter she never met, I had the first clue of what her name might have been, further supported by what I could find on her daughter Marianna's records.

It was Marianna's own marriage record which confirmed her mother's maiden name—if, that is, you could actually read the handwriting on her marriage document. According to that 1879 record, Marianna's parents were Franz and Franziska Jankowski—with Franziska noted to have been born an Olejniczak.

Thanks to records at the Poznan Project and BaSIA, the Database of Archival Indexing System, I learned that Franz and Franziska had at least two other daughters: Stanisława, who, like Marianna, left for America, and Antonie, who didn't. There may be other children in this Jankowski family, but I have yet to find any documents to guide me on that issue.

Home for Franziska was the tiny town of Żerków in the central region of Poland. If it weren't for the few transcriptions and document scans shared online in those two websites mentioned above, I would have had no further way to trace her family. It was only through exploring those websites that I found information on Franziska's other daughters—and likely, this will be how I will find anything more on the family.

However, that will not stop me from exploring further on the one website which has been known to include digitized records from around the world: FamilySearch.org. Thus, one must-see stop I'll be making early in this month's exploration will be to check availability of records in Żerków for any further members of this family—and for any possible descendants who might have become my own mystery DNA matches.