Cousin Connections

 

Despite when work seems to barely move forward on family history discoveries, groundwork for the most significant discoveries may actually be happening behind the scenes. That, at least, is what I'm hoping as I review the progress made on my paternal grandfather's ancestors.

These past two weeks have all been about making cousin connections. The first goal in that arena has been to review my grandfather's maternal Zegarski line, of which those who left their roots behind in Poland also left an abundant family heritage in the United States. With quite a few DNA matches at both Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com, this Zegarski line has provided me with ample opportunities to reach out and make cousin connections.

In the process of adding those lines of descent to my family tree—ninety five new entries in the past two weeks—my tree has grown to 40,395 documented individuals. Most of those newly added names represent American children of the immigrants, the less challenging of this month's Zegarski quest.

Still to come will be children of the Zegarski siblings who remained in the Pomeranian villages of Lubichowo and Czarnylas back in the 1880s and beyond. That effort will be more challenging, for the search removes us from government documents recorded in English to church records in Latin or Prussian governmental records in old German script. With only one week remaining for this month's research challenge, I may need to return to this task in a future year.

Though I only gained three new DNA matches over the past two weeks, I now have 2,686 matches who are my fourth cousin or closer. From this total number, I'm still on the search to identify each Zegarski cousin and link them to their proper place in my family tree. At the same time, I've reached out to one cousin match who is also a prolific researcher, and we have begun collaborating on this Zegarski line of questions. Collaboration often accelerates research progress, so I am looking forward to reaping more discoveries with this process.

Since my focus has now been on my father's side of the family tree, it will probably come as no surprise to learn that my in-laws' tree only grew by thirteen additional documented profiles in the past two weeks. Still, that tree now holds 41,826 documented profiles from my husband's ancestors. I will likely not return to work on that tree until next spring, but there are the occasional discoveries, questions, or cousin contacts which prompt me to step to that side of the family branches and add some information. This biweekly report brought me one such time.

There are still several Zegarski cousins to plug into this family tree from my list of DNA matches, so that will be the task this next week holds for me, as we wrap up another month of seeking one of my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors from the paternal side of my family.