Some Things Just Take Time

 

There are some times, when it comes to my biweekly checkup, that I just seem to race through the records, finding new relatives to add to the family tree at every turn. That usually means I'm working on my mother-in-law's intermarried Catholic families from Pennsylvania and Ohio, where including collateral lines in their tree means adding eight to twelve children per each relative family. This time, however, I'm uncovering the secret of my own father's roots, a process shrouded in records illegible—if they can be found at all. 

Looking at the numbers after the last two weeks of searching for records in a country which once was known as Prussia reminds me: some things just take time. And researching any branch of my father's family is going to bring me face to face with that dilemma.

For instance, over the past two weeks I've only been able to add fifty one new names to my family tree. Most of those are collateral lines descended from siblings of either this month's research focus—Elżbieta Gramlewicz—or my search at the end of last month for siblings of my second great-grandmother Marianna Wojtaś. That's a far cry from the hundred or so new names I could glean by focusing on my in-laws' missing relatives. This kind of search means cranking through many records that turn out to be false leads.

Still, that tree includes 40,617 researched individuals. I can't lose sight of that. It's progress, day by day, over years of effort that can add up to a substantial—and encouraging—amount. Looking solely at the numbers for a two-week effort will never tell the story over the long haul. Genealogy takes patience, and progress is simply something we can see only when we keep at the effort with diligence.

If there was somehow a magic potion I could pour over the archives which once held the records naming my father's ancestors, I'd love to see those disintegrated papers reappear for the benefit of all of us who have Polish roots. But it simply isn't going to happen. Diligent inquiry, alertness to new record sources, willingness to explore new resources in other countries which may hold those missing records of Polish ancestors, and the ability to draw inferences from what we can find is all that is left to us. Knowing this, it is sometimes surprising to see that I've been able to find even fifty relatives to add to my tree over that two week period.