Taking in the Broad View

 

Sometimes the research task bids us keep our nose close to the ground, sniffing out every hint, gobbling up every clue. When our focus gets that nearsighted, it helps to pick up our head to reorient ourselves with the broader picture. At the close of this month's research project, I did just that. I needed to take in the broad view—and it was worth the encouragement I gained. 

The last task for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025 was to learn all I could about my second great-grandmother Elżbieta Gramlewicz and her family. I can say that I almost certainly did confirm her parents' names—Andrzej (Andreas) Gramlewicz and Katarzyna Nowicka—though I did encounter some rough spots concerning her mother's true identity.

From there, I reverted to that necessary step for connecting the dots with all those unidentified DNA matches: I worked through each collateral line and documented that person's descendants back toward the present time, as far as I could go through the generations.

That's when I decided to lift up my head and take in the broad view. Using my family tree at Ancestry.com, I constructed a vertical tree with Andrzej and Katarzyna as the head couple. From there, I added all available children listed in my tree, clicking through as far as I could go through the generations.

Though I have a long way to go before I finish adding to my tree all the descendants for each branch of this Gramlewicz family, one thing I spotted was worth the effort to draw up this chart: for some lines of the family, I have already charted down to the sixth great-grandchildren of Andrzej and Katarzyna. I had no idea there were this many generations documented in my tree for this couple.

Included in this month's goal was my quest to figure out just how Annie Gramlewicz was related to my second great-grandfather Anton Laskowski, Elżbieta's son. Though I did plot her ancestry to about the same generation as Andrzej Gramlewicz, I could not document any familial connection, despite both families living in the same small town of Żerków in what is now part of Poland. And yet, there were ample records available online to allow me to chart Annie's family tree from her own ancestral couple down to the present time.

One thing I noticed, whether tracing my own Gramlewicz line or that of my mystery cousin, was the availability of online records for most of the 1800s. That enabled me to build out both trees. Records from the earliest years of the subsequent century are also starting to make their appearance, so one step to take the next time I revisit this research project is to see how many of the subsequent generation I can add to my records.

A sticking point in following these generations is whether they remained in Poland or emigrated. For those who settled in North America, it was far easier to find their records than it had been to trace family members in the war-torn years of the 1900s in Europe. And a surprise lesson learned from the ravages of those same years was that a number of survivors in Poland took up the offer to be relocated to Australia, a detail I hadn't known anything about prior to discovering Gramlewicz DNA cousins in that country this month.

Hopefully, more records of Polish heritage will be added to online collections, whether by American genealogical organizations or by researchers in Poland. I'm especially keen to find records predating the 1800s, my current brick wall era. I keep thinking it will be "just one more" generation and then I'll find my answer concerning the connection between Anton Laskowski and his "niece" Anna Gramlewicz. Perhaps given a year or so to add to the collections, whether here or overseas, and I'll know.