Pursuing the Patriline

After visiting with genealogy friends who are pursuing their American Revolution Patriots—or, even more impressive, their Mayflower roots—spending a month to discover more about my father's own grandfather seems rather uninspiring. After all, many people have even met their own great-grandfather in person, but I'm still wandering through a paper maze, trying to learn who this person is.

For this month's goal from my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025, I'll make the switch from a summer season of exploring my father-in-law's roots to discovering more about my own father's ancestry during this fall. This, however, is not an easy task; remember, this was the man who was tight-lipped about his background. Like father, like son, it's been said, and in this case it applies well: my father had his own father as an example of how to keep a family secret.

In past years, I've worked on this patrilineal puzzle. Five years ago, Thomas Puchała claimed the featured spot for my goal in November, and the following year, I explored records showing his father to be either Johann Puchała—according to church records in Latin—or, more likely, Jan Puchała in the vernacular.

Though I have discovered Thomas' father's name, thus pushing the patriline back another generation, there is still so much to learn about this branch of my family. I have found that Thomas once lived in Lubichowo, a small village in Pomerania, where he was likely born in 1844. I also have found mention of his marriage to Anastasia Zegarska in 1868 in the nearby village of Czarnylas, also in what was at that time the country known as Prussia. The difficulty is that those details only came to me, thanks to transcriptions of documents posted on websites in Poland. I have yet to locate and download copies of the actual documents, a task to include in this month's research goals.

In pursuit of this patriline, thankfully I've had some DNA help, mostly through my brother's willingness to take a Y-DNA test, but also through the few matches we've found through autosomal testing. This month will call for closer examination of the updated cousin matches as well as ethnicity updates due out this month at Ancestry.com. And I'll still keep a close eye on those Y-DNA test results, in case an exact match pops up in a timely manner for this month's exploration.