Taking a List, Checking it Twice

 

When stuck on a research project, it isn't a bad idea to go back and check all that work twice. I know, I know: it's a lot of drudgery. But so is getting stuck.

For my Twelve Most Wanted for each year, I take a whole month to focus on one specific ancestor, typically someone who presents me with a research problem, a.k.a. "brick wall." Sometimes, I end up repeating the same featured ancestor in subsequent years. After all, I've been doing this routine for years now, and sometimes a solid month of research still won't get me unstuck. So I revisit some of those challenging ancestors.

This month's challenge—reviewing my second great-grandmother Elżbieta Gramlewicz and her connection to a Gramlewicz woman who ended up in New York City in Elżbieta's son's household—involves some relatives I've researched before. When I finish out a month without achieving my research goal, I write up the details describing where I'm stuck, complete with suggestions about where to look next, as well as a review of what I've already accomplished.

When I covered a related family last winter, I made a note to return once again to do a thorough search in one particular record set I had found on FamilySearch.org. I saved not only the link to the specific collection, but the URL preserving my specific search terms for the Gramlewicz family in their home town of Żerków, Poland. I make it a practice to save such notes in an electronic file, so I can easily return to the spot where I left off last time.

That specific note from 2024 allowed me to zero in on a collection at FamilySearch.org labeled "Germany, Prussia, Posen, Catholic and Lutheran Church Records, 1430-1998." While the label may seem too broad for my specific purposes, setting up the parameters I needed allowed me to narrow down the search from 34,601 hits to entries for one surname only: Gramlewicz.

I had made a note last year telling me precisely which page to return to in the results, for the next time I visited this problem. And this year? I clicked through to that specific link and did exactly that.

Now that I've made my way through all Gramlewicz entries in that list of baptisms, I'll next check in that same record set for the surname that Elżbieta married into: Laskowski. From that point, I'll review all the collateral lines added to my family tree based on this search, and repeat the same process for each of those other surnames.

The main reason for reaching out to these collateral lines is that somewhere down through the generations there are descendants who decided to take a DNA test. And I suspect a good number of these matches don't even know they are related to a Gramlewicz ancestor. Thus, neither they nor I have any idea why we show up as DNA matches. By examining these collateral lines from the generations of my great-grandparents and their parents, I'm hoping to clarify the path that connects us. This week, we'll hopefully make some discoveries through that process.