Cleaning Up the Loose Ends

 

Sometimes, what's left after a big discovery—or even a small but significant one on the family tree—is nothing more than a big list of loose ends to clean up. As I'm wrapping up this last month's challenge from my Twelve Most Wanted for this year, that is exactly what I'm seeing.

I realized early on in researching my brick wall second great-grandmother, Elżbieta Gramlewicz, that if I were to make any progress on her branch of the family, it would most likely come through some careful examination of records for her collateral lines. And yet, encountering documents for several of her siblings, I also noticed what must have been a stark reality of life in mid-1800s Prussia: a lot of childhood mortality.

With Elżbieta's line, only two of her siblings lived to adulthood—and even one of them, Apolonia, apparently died in childbirth, losing her infant daughter as well. The remaining sibling who lived to adulthood, Katarzyna, had several children with husband Wincenty Cichocki, yet I'm still pursuing the twists and turns of this family through online records in Poland.

At this late date, I have one more day to continue that task of cleaning up the loose ends on Elżbieta's sister's line, then I'll need to draw up research plans for the next time I revisit this research question. At that point, even if I do make any significant discoveries, there will only be time to write down those conclusions as a springboard to launch us into a future year's efforts on pursuing this Gramlewicz family.

Then, we'll be on to some time for celebrating the holidays, after which we'll grab those "twelve days of Christmas" to plan for next year's research challenges.