Welcome to December, the last month of the year, filled with holidays and celebrations. In my case, I hope to celebrate some discoveries about my second great-grandmother, Elżbieta Gramlewicz, her siblings and parents.
I named Elżbieta the last of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025. As I outlined in my research plans nearly a year ago, I hope to learn more about not only Elżbieta herself, but her siblings and parents, as well.
Before we begin this month's search, though, here's an overview of what I've already uncovered about this Polish ancestor. Like many family history researchers, I first learned of Elżbieta's name courtesy of the 1935 New York City death certificate of her son, Antoni Laskowski.
Though I had sent for my immigrant great-grandfather's death certificate the old "SASE" way years ago (if you know, you know), it wasn't until recently that I've been able to retrieve further family information through online means, both in New York City and back in Poland, the land Elżbieta never left. Thanks to FamilySearch.org, I can now view her January 22, 1844, marriage record to Mateusz Laskowski in their home parish in Żerków.
According to that Żerków marriage record, Elżbieta was noted to be twenty four years of age, putting her estimated year of birth at 1820. However, I have yet to locate any baptismal or birth records for her. The only other detail I've been able to find is courtesy of one website in Poland, which then pointed me to online records from a Polish archive, confirming Elżbieta's 1886 death in the same town where she was married.
To find Elżbieta's siblings will mean locating that birth or baptismal confirmation to first uncover the names of her parents. These details will help me to confirm a number of DNA matches, both at Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com especially, due to the latter's high number of customers from European countries. That puts this as job number one for this coming week, but while I'm looking for further details on this Gramlewicz family behind the scenes, we do need to talk about the one connection I had made with this family, back in New York City, the same place where Elżbieta's name first appeared during my earliest search for her identity.