The Unfinished Work Behind, the New Challenges Ahead

 

Despite a tidy research plan—my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors, one designated for each month of the year—the end of one month often leaves me in this same difficult position: with a pile of unfinished work I'm about to leave behind as I step into the new month's puzzle. With the start of November, I say goodbye to the family of my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak, and greet the incoming research puzzle embodied in the story of a different second great-grandparent, Mateusz Laskowski.

Franziska and Mateusz were related only by marriage, as Franziska's daughter Marianna Jankowska married Mateusz's son Antoni Laskowski. Perhaps Franziska and Mateusz knew of each other from associations through their church parish in the Polish town of Żerków, though Mateusz was already a teenager by the time Franziska was born.

With this new month, while we'll hopefully learn more of the details of the Laskowski side of my family, I can't just set aside the unfinished business on the Olejniczak family. After all, I just settled it in my mind that Franziska's nephew Jan Olejniczak may well be the Polish immigrant who settled in Ohio, and came to be known in his adopted country as John Olenzak. With a DNA match to guide me, I will be building a family tree behind the scenes as I continue the search for records to illuminate the possibility of this family match. With lots of work on that project, I may be sharing news of progress occasionally, before we close out the year of 2024.

Next week, we'll review what I've already gleaned on Mateusz Laskowski and his immediate family. As we've already seen from our exploration of the Olejniczak line last month, there are many more resources online now for finding Polish documents to confirm names, dates, and family relationships for these immigrants from Żerków, Poland. Piecing these together, we'll see whether we can push back the brick wall another generation or two before the month of November comes to a close.