Advertising for Connections

 

The grunt work has begun: scouring documents and transcriptions of records at both FamilySearch.org and the database of PTG, the Pomeranian Genealogical Association. My end goal is to see how far I can go in building a diagram of all the descendants of my third great-grandparents, Marcin Wojtaś and Anna Szczygielska, now that I've actually discovered their identity. While I've already worked on my own direct line, that of their daughter Marianna, my next goal is to build the line for Marianna's sister Franciszka.

Franciszka was born in Poland about 1817, and as far as I can tell, she remained there for the rest of her life. On October 1, 1838, she became the wife of Andrzej Chmielecki in a church ceremony held in her home parish of Pączewo in the region of Pomerania.

If it weren't for the transcriptions of Pomeranian records at PTG, I doubt I would have found further information to confirm Franciszka's children. I learned through those transcriptions that the Chmielecki family eventually included five sons and six daughters. Born to them in the married couple's home parish of Czarnylas were: Marianna, Andrzej, Franciszka, Paulina, Józefina, Anastasia, Jan, Józef, Anna, Franciszek, and Izydor.

While the next genealogical step for me will be to find a way to locate actual documentation for each of those children, I also have a DNA goal to keep in mind: I want to find cousins. Thus, it is key for me to get the word out there that these people are somehow related to my Wojtaś line. How do I do that? Simple: I advertise for connections by placing those newly-discovered collateral relatives in all the public-facing family trees I have built online.

Thus begins another behind-the-scenes project of plugging in these names to multiple trees. First, on FamilySearch, to find possible documentation, allowing me to verify the names as I add them to my part of the universal tree there. From that point, adding those same document links to my notes for each individual on my tree at Ancestry.com, and adding those names and dates to my tree at MyHeritage where, hopefully, a Polish cousin and I might bump into each other digitally. And finally, I'll make a note of each connection on my mere stub of a tree at WikiTree.

Not that I've been a paragon of virtue in building those other trees; my main reason to spread myself so thin is simply to get the word out. Yes, I'm shamelessly shouting from the rooftops my one question, "Are you my Polish cousin?" If I can't travel to Poland—and face it, even if I could, who would understand this English-speaking genealogist?—advertising for connections on the digital spaces where family history fans gather will be my next option. Though it involves a tedious process in preparation, it's certainly worth the try.