No matter how fascinating it might seem to pursue those mystery family roots into antiquity, the tasks involved can often turn tedious. Right now, it may seem glamorous to think I'm tap dancing through the story of my family's past, but bouncing between three separate resources, double and triple checking each step, can become monotonous.
Starting with my second great-grandmother, Marianna Wojtaś, I'm mapping out the lines of descent for her siblings. The goal is to build a tree with collateral lines of descent, specifically to connect the dots between my DNA matches and their ancestral connection to my family. Working with Polish roots, however, means seeking records from sources other than those most familiar to North American researchers. It becomes a case of a little bit here, a little bit there. At least I'm happy about the progress, though it's not much to write home about; the going is going slowly.
As if to urge me on, among the messages in my inbox today was news that MyHeritage has just completed a major update to their Theory of Family Relativity. For international DNA matches, my best resource for Polish cousins has been MyHeritage, so I jumped over there to look for any promising new leads.
In fact, my tree at MyHeritage is so focused on those Polish lines that I only posted the paternal branch of my family tree on that website. Imagine my surprise, then, to see that most of my Theory updates were for people connecting to my mother's side of the family. There were only a few new Polish DNA matches to review, each of them seemingly standing on the opposite side of a gigantic document chasm separating us. I have yet to find many trees at MyHeritage which contain supporting documentation.
Granted, it's hard to find such documentation. Just having to tap dance between record sources to piece together this family's story has demonstrated that. I'm snagging record transcriptions from FamilySearch and from the Pomeranian Genealogical Association in Poland to piece together the picture of how those Wojtaś collateral lines fared over the generations—and even then, at some point in the early 1900s, I know even those sources will dry up.
Just in case, though, I reviewed the lines I've already put in place in my tree at MyHeritage, adding this week's updates from newly-discovered descendants from those collateral lines. Hopefully at some point, those new entries will match up with others whose trees are posted at MyHeritage. In fact, I'm already getting email alerts that MyHeritage has made some connections for me, information from researchers whom I can follow as trailblazers along this family history path in that new-to-me Polish territory.
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