Finding the Family Connections

 

DNA testing can point us back to the ancestral place where we had previously failed to locate records and confirm the connections we cannot yet see. Better yet—at least in my experience—DNA testing can lead us to see the family connections we previously had no idea even existed. That certainly was the case with my paternal grandfather's roots.

Last week, I mentioned finding the baptismal record for Marianna Wojtaś, my second great-grandmother. Of course, that was a name I would never have known if it weren't for clustering DNA matches at MyHeritage, where I apparently have a good number of Polish cousins. But it wasn't even the Polish cousins who had shown up in that AutoClusters readout I had tried, now so many years ago; at first it was the cousins from Milwaukee who at first had had me stumped, but then led me to the truth about my grandfather's secret origin.

Now, moving forward, I've placed most all of those DNA cousins in their proper place in my family tree, but reconstructing the roots of these collateral lines still challenges me. For one reason, I can look at records from one online resource, and discover that there is no comparable document listed at another online resource for the same geographic area.

Having found the baptismal record for Marianna Wojtaś, I learned she was likely born sometime in June of 1815. After all, with the prevalence of infant deaths during that era, parents didn't dally in getting their children baptized. Marianna's record showed the sacrament was performed on June 29 in a parish then called Ponschau, but now known as Pączewo in Poland. The church record also noted the Wojtaś family's home to be located in nearby Wolental.

However, when I went to the website of the Pomeranian Genealogical Association (PTG) to cross-check the records of Marianna's possible siblings, while I could find other children of Martin and Anna, there was no listing for Marianna, herself.

Still, I decided to pursue these other siblings, starting with the Wojtaś sibling whose many children ended up emigrating far from their home in Poland: Marianna's sister Anna.

From the transcription at PTG, I learned that Anna was baptized at Pączewo in 1821. FamilySearch.org became my next stop, where I learned Anna was married on January 17, 1848. The marriage was conducted not in Pączewo, but in Schwarzwald (Czarnylas), perhaps because, by that point, Anna's sister Marianna was living there with her own growing family.

I've been able to find several baptismal records for the children of Anna Wojtaś and her husband, Jan Krzewinski. It was several of the children, rather than Anna herself, who moved away from their native Poland to settle in the United States, in the city of Milwaukee in Wisconsin.

Though Anna's sons Piotr and Andrzej became Peter and Andrew in their new American identities, all of Anna's emigrating children—Izydor, Marianna, Piotr, and Andrzej—kept their Polish surnames up until their deaths during the era of the first World War. While some of their children or grandchildren opted for more Americanized surnames in subsequent generations, I've been able to connect their lines of descent with the many DNA cousins I've found through testing at all the major DNA companies working with genealogists.

Finding those DNA connections, first through the AutoClusters program at MyHeritage.com and then exploring the connections through matches at other companies, has been quite an experience. Yet, confirming those discoveries was also aided by the relative ease with which we can retrieve historic records in this country.

What about researching those Polish DNA matches who didn't descend from Wojtaś family members who immigrated to Wisconsin? That's the challenge I'll be working on this week.