Polish Genealogy: Not "Plug and Play"

 

In today's genealogy world, perhaps those of us seeking ancestral secrets have become spoiled. We can tap into an online subscription service like Ancestry.com or MyHeritage.com—or, for the "free is me" among us, FamilySearch.org—and, with a few taps on the keyboard, conjure up a document verifying the birth, marriage, or death of grandparents, great-grandparents, or beyond.

That "plug and play" mindset, while simplifying searches for those of us fortunate enough to have multiple generations in North America, may perhaps coax us into a research laziness which doesn't benefit us when we must strike out into the unexplored regions of the genealogical world.

Take my current research struggles with my paternal grandparents' roots in Poland. FamilySearch.org has some records for the parishes that are of interest to me—but not all. So I jump between that website and BaSIA—and keep looking for other new-to-me resources, just in case those sites fail me.

Keeping track of where I found everything in this manner can be challenging. Any record found on FamilySearch can easily be plugged into my entries on the tree there. But then I need to also remember to keep my research log at Ancestry and MyHeritage up to date as well. Thus, lacking any document at those websites, I end up editing notes by adding links from other websites to my timeline on the paid subscription site.

While tree building in this manner might not add up to the speed of a plug-and-play interface, it does achieve my purposes. I want to verify names, dates, and events where each tree is kept, even if that is not where the digitized copy of the document is stored.

Someday, perhaps, research for those descended from the Polish diaspora will become more streamlined. Until then, I'll need to be satisfied with mounting my own learning curve, from understanding diacritical marks and learning Polish phonics to acquiring a rudimentary knowledge of the Polish terms likely to be found on documents of genealogical interest. At the very least, I'll become facile at leaping from website to website as I reconstruct the picture of my Polish family's history.