Sometimes, I just need to send a research problem deep into the future. That's when I write a note to my future self, explaining what I need to do the next time I grapple with this ancestral brick wall. For Thomas Puchała, today is that day. I'm packaging up my Puchała roots and putting them on the launch pad to send into a future year. Here's what I need to remember for next time.
First, patience is in order, if only for the frustration of searching for a name containing diacritical marks. Puchała, as I've discovered, is a name that comes packaged in many forms, thanks specifically to the "ł" as written by Prussian governmental drudges and Catholic priests from many European backgrounds who nevertheless must record their flock's life passages in the quite-dead Latin language. For this, I've found the Puchała surname rendered as Puchata—or even Puchatta—as well as variations on Puchała without the diacritic designation, such as Puchala and Puchalla. All this, combined with many search results serving up transcriptions of the actual records; to see them with my own eyes might reveal the original was written correctly all along.
I did, however, manage to find some records for Thomas' father, whom I suspect his fellow countrymen called Jan, though church records listed as Johann. Along with that, I found three sisters and two brothers for Jan. The next time the Puchała family becomes a focus of my Twelve Most Wanted, I need to pursue whether any of those siblings did indeed survive to adulthood, marry, and have children—descendants whose progeny might be among my Polish and European DNA matches at MyHeritage. While at this point, it seems most of those siblings died in childhood, it may be possible that at least his sister Marianna was married. Though one record's transcription indicated her age at marriage was fifteen, I noticed the ceremony was conducted in 1858, later in the same year in which her father had died. Perhaps that was a move of desperation for the bereft family.
Still missing is any record of what became of Thomas, himself. With a birth year of about 1844, it is certainly safe to say the man is deceased—but when, I can't determine. It is likely after my grandfather's birth in 1876, but I can't really be sure. If this man was indeed my grandfather's father, he could even have died toward the end of 1875. Whatever the actual date of death was, it is certain his widow Anastasia married again. Though I have no record for either of her supposed subsequent marriages, it is clear that she represented herself by two additional surnames, at least when she emigrated from her home in Poland to the United States.
Also on my to-do list for this family will be clarifying the three marriages for Thomas' daughter Rosalia. Along with that goes writing a proof statement so others can follow that chain of events in her life, including re-organizing the entries for the various names of Rose in the FamilySearch universal tree.
Someone needs to tell these stories. They are tales which take more than one paragraph to explain—and certainly several documents to piece together the full story. Rose's tale is not unusual; tomorrow, I'll explain another such research twist I've been following from another project, where it takes piecing together several records to identify the same woman through the name changes in her life.
With that, we'll launch Thomas Puchała's research questions into the future for a subsequent try. Hopefully, by then, more records will be digitized and accessible on the Polish end of the equation, enabling Thomas and his forebears to be discovered and documented. And with the arrival of a new month, next week we'll step from one of my father's ancestors to someone on another branch of his family.
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