When it comes to my Puchała line, I guess I've got to admit I'm stuck. I can't move that line backwards one more generation from my second great-grandfather Jan Puchała, and it sure looks like I can't even push forward in time to discover anything more about his son Thomas, my great-grandfather.
Stuck: I hate to admit it. Worse yet, I can't find any explanation for what became of Thomas Puchała. He simply seems to have disappeared. Thomas' wife Anastasia Zegarska traveled with her two surviving children, eventually ending up in that vast entry point for countless immigrants, New York City—but she certainly didn't appear to arrive under that same married name.
When Anastasia arrived in New York, the first appearance I can find for her is a woman with a different married name. That name was so different that it seemed to stump the local enumerator for the 1910 census, who simply wrote it as "Annie Kusfkr."
Whatever Anastasia's name had become, it was clear that it was a different married name, certainly not any variation on Puchała. It wasn't until I followed a long and winding trail for her daughter—now going by the shortened given name Rose—who had also apparently married by 1910.
From married names "Muller" to Kober to Hassinger I followed Rose. Somewhere in the middle of that chase, when Rose was still married to George Kober and Anastasia was "widowed" and living with them, one devastating morning Rose found that unusual married name blurting out from her trembling lips when she called for help after discovering that her mother had taken her own life. Whatever that name was from the 1910 census, I found it—or at least a closer approximation—in Anastasia's death certificate, even though the accompanying news report from her residence in Queens borough in New York City identified her as Anna Kraus.
One thing was clear, though, from tracing Anastasia from her maiden name to Puchała, to Krauss, and to Kusharvski: something must have happened to Thomas Puchała long before Anastasia took her two children, Rosalia and Teodor, aboard a boat sailing for America. That record will still be on my research list for a long time, I suspect.
In the meantime, there is much more that can be done on this extended Puchała line. For one thing, I have the aggravation of cleaning up resources and plugging them into the universal tree at FamilySearch.org, complete with proof arguments to explain the convoluted story of what's been found. Rose, in her own several permutations, has appeared in at least two other family tree identities, though in none of them does she show any descendants of her own. Anastasia, as well, could use some explanation, at least for the missing marriage records, wherever those events occurred.
In addition to that, since one goal this month was to examine my paternal grandfather's patriline, that calls for seeking DNA matches who connect to that line. The difficulty is in finding the connections to those descendants who still remain in Poland—or even those who may have emigrated, but now have descendants in other European countries. The DNA may reveal some clues, but the documentation, once again, will be key—if I can find it.
While we're stuck in this tight loop, searching for missing documentation, I'll take some time to examine what can be found through DNA tests, especially at the one resource for the most international test results: MyHeritage.com.
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