Some Pre-Thanksgiving Thanks

 

We may be weeks away from what is usually considered the "holiday season," but I've lately had some thanksgiving thoughts. Perhaps it was because I was recently wandering the aisles of a go-to gift store, noticing not only the Halloween decorations, but everything one would need to prepare a home for Christmas, as well. Or perhaps it is simply because I know our neighbors to the north will soon be settling in for their own Thanksgiving dinner in Canada in little more than a week.

Truth be told, what really inspired my thankfulness was the effort I've had to expend on finding those Polish ancestors of my father. If I didn't know so much about how difficult it is to research Irish ancestry, I might have wished my paternal grandfather's made-up tale about his descent from the Emerald Isle were the true one, not the secret we cousins unearthed about his true roots in Poland.

In pursuit of the truth, my task is now to toggle between three online genealogical services—Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, and FamilySearch.org—to piece together records to confirm just one of my Polish ancestors, Franziska Olejniczak. You'd think a surname as unusual as that would give me a shining green light pointing the way through the genealogical darkness. But no, solely because the resources are so lacking. And that's where the thankfulness comes in.

I've had ample opportunities to research my mother's made-in-America lines, going back for centuries with hardly a hiccup compared to the difficulties I've encountered with Polish research. Granted, networking with others who are researching their Polish records has pointed the way to some websites hosted in Poland, such as the Poznan Project and BaSIA, the Database of Archival Indexing System. These are available, for the most part, because of volunteers who are over there and can access and transcribe the records that I can't access because I am thousands of miles away. For that, I am thankful.

Even though I am currently frustrated at what seems to be the lack of access to records—or perhaps the lack of records, themselves—this dearth points me to the thankfulness-worthy realization that, in America, we have such a tradition of record keeping that we can, if we so choose, trace our family lines back through so many generations. While we may grumble about bureaucracy or government intrusion into private lives, we still have had the benefits of stability which enabled us to preserve such records safely against the ravages of time, tumult, and terrors.

I may grumble while I jump from website to website, trying to reconcile records and locations while using online translation services, but deep down inside and despite the frustration, I'm reminded there is still a lot a genealogist can be thankful for. Though the going may be far slower—and definitely more awkward—it is still possible to garner the records and piece together a family's story. In North America, sure. But also in the places our ancestors once called home.