Another Daughter Leaves Home

 

Sticking to one's research protocol may be a wise approach, but it doesn't always keep us busy for as long as we presumed. The end of the road came up so quickly when I stuck to my plan of following the one Jankowski daughter remaining in Poland. The task brought me to the early 1900s, following the documentation I could obtain through guidance from the Polish website BaSIA. In fact, Franciszek Jankowski's daughter Antonina gave birth to her youngest son, Victor Karcz, in 1913. And that was the last document I could find in the archival collection for that Jankowski daughter.

Finding Polish descendants still living in their native land is only one part of my goal for this coming month, though. Franciszek Jankowski actually had two other daughters who did emigrate. One, of course, was my own great-grandmother, Marianna, who left her home for New York City in 1889. The other daughter married and also sailed to New York, though that daughter headed for upstate New York and the western region around Buffalo.

That other immigrant daughter was Stanisława. Eight years younger than her sister Marianna, Stanisława married Franz Janczak in 1894, according to records kept at the government office at Żerków. Two of their children were born there, as well: Leon in 1899, and Władysław in 1901.

And then, they left home for America.

Tracing the Janczak branch of the Jankowski family has been far easier than seeking those descendants who remained in Poland. There was no telling what the Janczak family would face upon their decision to leave home—but then, there was no way of knowing what would befall those who stayed behind. When I fail to find any records for the Jankowskis remaining in Poland, my mind plays through all the possible results. Early death, succumbing to the many diseases which seemed to fall on so many of the young ones? Possible death through ravages of war, either before 1918 or in the 1940s? Deportation to work camps somewhere else in the region or even farther removed? (Hey, I just found a DNA match who lives in Uzbekistan!)

I'll still be pondering that question, searching for possibilities in newspapers and in DNA matches. But for now, I'll be considering the Janczak branch of the family, up in Buffalo, New York. Perhaps they weren't the only family members to migrate there.

Sticking to the Protocol

It's when we are deep within the tedium of a genealogical search that it seems as if we are cast into a vast vacuum. Like in outer space, there is no grab bar to reach for to steady our floundering steps. We are floating free, unanchored to any orienting document. And it's those documents we are so desperate to find.

As I walk my way through the process of searching for signs of documentation for the extended family of Franciszek Jankowski, I realize I do have one anchoring token. It is a process I adopted years ago, when I realized that adding descendants of collateral lines would help me place DNA matches in their correct family constellations. Starting with the chosen ancestor, I would first work on documentation for that ancestor's firstborn child. When marriages occurred and children were eventually born to that now grown firstborn, I added each one in order. 

Rather than skipping from firstborn immediately to second born of the target ancestor, I then slid down the ladder of that firstborn child's own children, then grandchildren, all the way to the present date, before moving back to the ancestor's second born child. I'd repeat the process for that firstborn child's own children, handling that child's firstborn all the way down the generations before coming back for the next-born child.

Now that I'm working my way through Franciszek Jankowski's nine known children, looking for confirming documentation through the BaSIA website in Poland, I'll be sticking to that same protocol. Granted, with so many of the Jankowski children dying in infancy, the process won't be as tedious as it sounds. (So far, I only have three Jankowski daughters identified as marrying and having children.)

The process, however, still will take time. Every person needs to be accounted for, whether through the baptismal and marriage records I found through FamilySearch.org, or by using the index at BaSIA to locate archived civil records in Poland.

There is nothing so helpful as seeing the digitized copies of records from the 1800s in Poland, something I could never hope to accomplish in person by myself. I'm grateful for the opportunity, but nearly holding my breath as I work my way through the process, hoping not to miss a single step through this extended family tree.

Let the Process Begin

 

Equipped with the index of Polish vital records at BaSIA, coupled with Google Translate to help me bounce back and forth from German language records to marginal notes in Polish, I've begun my quest to find civil records documenting the descendants of my second great-grandfather Franciszek Jankowski. The end goal is to trace all the lines of descent that I can find for this ancestor and his collateral branches. The reason for such an expanded search is that I want to be able to connect with possible DNA cousins linked to this family.

While that process has barely begun, I can already see it will be a tedious one. Thankfully, the steps at BaSIA to move from the index to the actual scans are straightforward. But taking the time to find each individual in each generation of the family, then confirming the details on that person by reading the document—who knew I could stumble my way through old German text?—and entering the information in my family tree is indeed time consuming.

Being painstakingly thorough is the goal. I'm surprised at the notes which sometimes pop up in the margins, with stern, hundred-plus year old German script in the body of the document embellished with the more rounded handwritten addenda entered alongside in Polish, capturing later details about the person's life.

As I had hoped, the records at BaSIA reach much further into current times than what I had been able to find at FamilySearch.org. This is helpful on two counts. First, these digitized documents are civil records, not church records, also offering the actual scanned document rather than simply a transcription. This allows further inspection into details, such as the specific village where the child was born, rather than the diocesan headquarters where the baptismal records were kept. Second, the more recent records help me push forward in time to closer family connections, guiding me in guessing the nexus with DNA cousins. When I finally uncovered a family record dated in the mid 1920s, it really hit me how helpful this approach may become.

I've seen so many of these Prussian forms in the old German script that I almost want to draw up a translation of the pre-printed material as a guide. I certainly don't speak German, myself, but would like to know the specifics of the routine portions. Reading the handwritten portions is also challenging, but spotting names and dates is not much of a problem—unless the person in question is known by an alias.

Bit by bit, I'm working my way through the available records. So far, I've found a couple birth records for which I've not been able to find any baptismal record back at FamilySearch.org, perhaps lost in the transcription process at FamilySearch but thankfully flagged by native-speaking volunteers at BaSIA. Even finding a few confirmations like that are helpful, making me more determined to continue the step-by-step minutiae of the process. Not much to report on while in the midst of doing it, but rewarding to realize it is a more thorough approach.

Tedious But Necessary

 

There are some aspects of family history research that are, let's say, less than glamorous. No, let's put it more clearly: they are downright tedious. That's the rut I've been stuck in lately.

Now that it's time for my biweekly count, the numbers will be quite telling—but that isn't to say I haven't been researching. On the contrary, I've been scrolling through documentation at multiple websites, seeking  proof of those vital specifics of birth, marriage, and—sometimes far too early—deaths. The documents which confirm that story for my ancestors and their collateral lines are necessary, but finding the documents can be tedious, especially when the repositories which store them can be hard to access.

So, for the past week, and on into the future month, I'll be walking through a process of locating transcriptions of such documents for my Polish ancestors' descendants, then following the links or reference notes to confirm those details with my own eyes—preferably with a copy of the actual digitized document saved to my own computer.

The numbers on my biweekly count tell the story of this process rather starkly. In the past two weeks, while giving up closing out the search for my second great-grandmother Susanna Radomska's line and beginning that same task for second great-grandfather Franciszek Jankowski, I've managed to increase my tree to 42,030 documented individuals. Sound impressive? Not really: that means I only found four new names to add to my family tree in the past two weeks. This process is indeed moving along s-l-o-w-l-y.

With a pace of that speed, it will seemingly take an eternity to catch up with my in-laws' benchmark of 44,402 individuals, which has been holding steady since I wrapped up this year's search for my father-in-law's Irish forebears back in September.

Still, the process is necessary. There is no single place where I can go to both download actual digitized records and display my family tree. Not for Polish ancestry.

I want the online tree. But I also need to support every assertion that appears on that online tree. And those Polish records are not always readily available to descendants like me, whose ancestors left Poland generations ago. But I can't let that deter me. It may be tedious, but it is still necessary to document each assertion in that tree. If it means importing digitized copies of supporting documentation to my family trees, then that's what I'll need to do. 

Tracking DNA When the Trail Isn't Clear

 

Using DNA to point us in the right direction beyond the ancestral line we already know seems to be a logical step...until we hit a brick wall. When I work on my father's Polish ancestors, I already know I'll have that challenge. I've seen it this month as I worked on my second great-grandmother Susanna Radomska, and I'll be running into the same challenge, now that we're making an early transition to the November challenge for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, Franciszek Jankowski.

Franciszek, my second great-grandfather on my paternal grandmother's mother's line, is yet another of those ancestors for whom I have very little documentation. In other words, the trail to that man's ancestry is not clear to me. Tools like Ancestry.com's ThruLines won't help much, despite the chart showing I am connected to the DNA tests of ten other subscribers who also claim this ancestor. 

There was a slight stroke of good fortune in even finding that detail. On the transcription for the 1854 marriage record of Franciszek and his wife, Franciszka Olejniczak—whom we'll be studying for the last month of this year—both the bride and groom had their parents' names listed. So technically, when I say I have ten results on my ThruLines for the Jankowski family, I'm really looking at ten people who also claim Franciszek's father, Jan, as their ancestor. 

But clicking through to see who those ten DNA cousins are, I don't see anything particularly helpful. Why? Those ten people are relatives who are much closer than the anticipated third or fourth cousins linked to Franciszek or his father. I already know who those people are. They are relatives who are more immediately connected to me as descendants of cousins or even half-siblings.

How to find DNA matches who descend from, say, third great-grandfather Jan Jankowski, is the real question. No one else has shown up on Ancestry's ThruLines. At first, this made me wonder whether those diseases and wars that cut short the lives of so many descendants in the Jankowski family—in fact, most of the rest of my father's Polish ancestors—had made a thorough job of the demolition of these people groups.  But I'm finding signs that there were, somehow, additional survivors.

In a zigzagging route from one DNA match to shared matches, and then beyond to their shared matches, I'm finding distant cousins whose immigrant ancestors settled in places like Chicago or Michigan or Wisconsin, much like I had found when researching other parts of my paternal line. Seemingly disconnected from the rest of their family—or perhaps without any concept of how large the distance between one American city and another for these immigrants—these immigrants began life after their journey and stayed in that one place for generations.

The trees of their descendants show such a story, but rarely seem to explain how they connect back to Poland. I'm wondering whether DNA will ever be able to explain the story. In combination with the use of multiple Polish websites, partnered with what can be found at FamilySearch.org, double-checking the assertions and assumptions displayed on each match's tree may be one way to find the answer. But with such small matches, the risk of telescoping results—is it this fourth generation which produces the match, or one even farther beyond that?—makes me heed the warning to proceed with caution.

Hopefully, a first step this coming week of cross checking family records at FamilySearch with archival records linked to the BaSIA transcription project will shed some light on missing generations in the Jankowski lines of descent.

Where to Look

 

It definitely helps to know where to look when you're researching your roots in Poland. This country presents some research challenges, being a prime example of what I mean when I say that genealogy can no longer be a case of one-stop shopping.

I found that to be especially true while I was working on my paternal ancestors from Pomerania, that northern region stretching across both Germany and Poland. While working on the Radomski line this month, I've relied on one particular website which zeroed in on records from Pomerania. That website, hosted by the Pomeranian Genealogical Association—the acronym PTG referring to the organization's name in Polish—held a database of transcriptions having one unifying detail in common: they all were records from the region of Pomerania.

While countrywide resources like Geneteka may be helpful in finding your Polish roots, I've come to appreciate the specialization of such a narrow scope as I find at PTG. But now that the coming month's research focus moves us away from Pomerania to the old Prussian region, then called the Province of Posen (the Germanisation of the Polish place name Poznań), I'll need to switch to another regional resource.

Actually, over the years, I've used two different websites for my long-distance quest to discover more about my Polish ancestors. At first, I began checking transcriptions of marriage records through the Poznań Project website. That resource was helpful, but left out details cataloguing the rest of life. To find birth and death records, as well as marriage details, the Poznań Project pointed me to BaSIA.

BaSIA—the website's Polish name is translated as Database of Archival Indexing System—provides indexed material from what was once called Greater Poland, from the eighteenth century onward. Significantly, records stretch well into the 1900s, which will help me with my upcoming goal to trace the lines of descent for all the Jankowski children.

The BaSIA system, powered by volunteers, gleans key details from both church and governmental archived records from the region, which is then put into a searchable system online. From those entries, links to the actual archived records enable a researcher to pull up the corresponding images, which can then be downloaded to the user's own computer.

While I've been able to access many records from this region for my Jankowski family through digitized records, there have been several children in that line for whom I can find no record at FamilySearch.org, my primary resource for Polish research so far. The process from this point forward will be to cross check what I've found—or not found—at FamilySearch with what I can access at BaSIA. A tedious process, indeed, but a necessary one to fill in the many blanks on this branch of my family tree. With access to records up into the twentieth century, I'm hoping the process will enable me to push forward another generation on this family group. 

Branching Out

 

Looking back to the beginning of January when I planned my research goals for this year, my intention in selecting Franciszek Jankowski as my focus for November was to branch out and see what became of each of his nine children. Since I've begun that process, I already know that at least two of his daughters left their home in Poland to raise their own family in the United States. What became of the rest of these children, I still need to uncover.

Since Franciszek was my second great-grandfather, any of his descendants in my generation would be third cousins. For those accustomed to using DNA testing for genealogical purposes, you already know that is a reachable match relationship.

With that in mind, I've tested at all the major DNA companies offering such details. However, I have yet to stumble upon many DNA matches who lead me back to this Jankowski ancestor. Now that I've outlined all I can find on each of Franciszek's children—believe me, there is still so much to uncover—I've realized some of the reasons for this lack of telltale matches.

First among those reasons is that not all of the Jankowski children survived to adulthood. My introduction to that fact occurred right away with his firstborn son, Anton, who died only a few months after his parents' first wedding anniversary in 1856. His was not the Jankowskis' only loss. As I work my way through the rest of the baptismal records for this family, I've found more.

Complicating matters is that for some of the other Jankowski children, I can find no further records at all. That could make sense for Franciszek's namesake son, born in 1874, who might have found a bride outside his immediate community—if we consider the possibility that not all records of that time period survived to our current day. But what of all the daughters?

There were two other daughters whom I did manage to trace. One was Stanisława, a younger sister of my great-grandmother Marianna, who married Franciszek Janczak in 1894, then moved to Buffalo in upstate New York to raise her family. The other sister was the baby of the Jankowski family, Antonina, who married but apparently remained in Poland. It is with this youngest Jankowski sister that I am currently struggling to trace descendants.

DNA tells me there must have been surviving Jankowski relatives in Poland, for on MyHeritage, I have several matches still living there whose posted family trees at least include an indication of a connection to that surname. Unfortunately, most of those trees are listed as private trees. Though I've requested permission to view those trees, I've not received any answer. I wouldn't be surprised to discover we may be in a tight loop, with neither of us knowing how to communicate in the other match's language, a dilemma I've yet to overcome.

However, over at Ancestry.com's DNA program, I also find matches linked to the Jankowski line. Thankfully, those matches have included a public family tree—with the added bonus that we each speak the same language. Tracing those Jankowski lines has been relatively straightforward. 

That, however, would not suffice as the research challenge for this upcoming month, so we'll be heading back to Poland—at least on paper and in cyberspace—to see if there is any other way to trace those missing descendants.

The answer to that, in fact, will be yes. There are a few ways to trace those missing Polish ancestors. That, though, requires a multi-step process relying, first, on transcriptions provided by volunteer genealogists, then links to online repositories. We've visited those websites in previous years, but with the passing of time, things have changed, and it might do us good to review the website updates before diving in to the tedium of such ancestral documentation.

Back Home With the Jankowskis

 

I probably wouldn't have known much about my second great-grandfather Franciszek Jankowski if it weren't for his daughter marrying and then leaving home with his three remaining grandchildren. That his daughter Marianna didn't suffer the fate of so many young people growing up in the old Prussian town of Żerków was unusual enough. I'd already noticed the finality of multiple extended family members having laid their young children to rest. Though it might have seemed young, Marianna's marriage at age sixteen may have been her ticket away from the doomed future which befell so many of her family members.

When Marianna left home to follow her much older husband to New York City, she left behind the small town of her parents' generation. By the time of her 1889 departure, her father would have been closing in on sixty years of age. Her mother, Franciszka, would have been in her early fifties. The Jankowskis' youngest child, Marianna's sister Antonina, would barely have turned eleven.

Thankfully, when Marianna's parents were married, marriage records of that time period included information on the parents of both Franciszek and his wife Franciszka. Though I have yet to access the actual document at a FamilySearch Library, the main details from that February 13, 1854, marriage record tell me several details about Franciszek.

For one thing, his age given in the marriage record provided the estimate of a year of birth in 1830. More helpful than that was the provision of his parents' names, likely Jan Jankowski and Anna Stajeska in their native Polish tongue. Franciszek's wife, Franciszka, was the daughter of Nicolai (likely Mikołaj in Polish) Olejniczak and his wife Josepha. Franciszek's mother-in-law came with a bona fide Polish tongue twister for a maiden name: Grzegorczyk (though that run of consonants only serves to puzzle those who haven't taken the time to learn how to pronounce Polish phonics).

All told, I've been able to account for nine children for this couple, though as far as I can tell, many of them died in infancy or early childhood. Tracing documents for these family members requires not only relying on the digitized records available at FamilySearch.org, but also by venturing out online to websites in Poland, where volunteers dedicate themselves to posting transcriptions of digitized records from Polish archival sources.

Documenting who those many children are will require bouncing between three or four websites, juggling with verbiage in two different languages (neither of which are Polish), and posting those sources in all the places where I keep family trees.

As I mentioned earlier this year when I set up my research plans through my Twelve Most Wanted program, my main goal in zeroing in on Franciszek Jankowski is to trace the lines of all survivors in the hopes of pinpointing the shared ancestral couple linking me with several DNA matches I have at the major genetic genealogy websites. Expanding the Jankowski branch of my family tree may be challenging, especially for those descendants remaining in what eventually became war-torn Europe in the 1900s. As research resources become more available online, helpful tools may make this more of a possibility than in years past.

If He Were Here, We'd Call Him Frank

 

If I were researching my mother's ancestry, I'd have a multitude of records housed in America to reach all the way back to colonial times. Not so with my father's lines. Both his parents came to the United States as children. Right away, researching those roots means immersing myself in what it means to be Polish: to be from a place with a distinct culture, language, and heritage attached to a land which often belonged to someone else.

To begin with, the records I seek for these ancestors were not drawn up in English. Nor, for the most part, were they written in Polish. So when I introduce my focus for November's Twelve Most Wanted, my second great-grandfather, I'm introducing someone whose birth record in Latin likely identified him as Franciscus—or, thanks to the Latin syntax recording his 1854 marriage, as Franciscum. Back in his hometown of Żerków in the old Prussian province of Posen, his neighbors probably called him Franciszek  But if he were to migrate to New York, like his daughter Marianna did, we'd probably just call him Frank.

Franciszek never made it to New York, though he lived long enough to see two of his daughters leave home for the New World. Marianna, my great-grandmother, married at sixteen, and became mother to four children. She followed her husband to New York after their youngest child, a son, died in infancy like so many other children in their extended family during that time period.

My grandmother was three months shy of her fourth birthday upon that journey from Hamburg to New York. If she remembered her grandparents at all, it would be with the dim memory of childhood. Any stories that might have been told about family members left behind apparently have not been passed down to any of my older relatives—at least, not that they've been able to recount to me.

It is into this void that I push through to find any token of Franciszek Jankowski's life through the scant documentation left behind as acknowledgement that he ever existed. Far more than a connect-the-dots challenge, we'll need to rely on records of the area's history and geography to re-imagine what life must have been like for the relatives who were left behind when Marianna, her two sons, and her daughter Sophie took that final journey so far away from home. 

Jumping Tracks

 

Despite best laid plans, sometimes our research objectives cannot be achieved within the set time frame. Such is the case with Susanna Radomska, my second great-grandmother from the Pomeranian town of Lubichowo. Earlier this year, I had thought her data might have been reachable, considering she likely died in 1909, according to a transcription posted online at the Pomeranian Genealogical Association. Though finding her parents' identity was quickly accomplished, my hopes for finding more about her roots—or even my secondary wish to learn anything further about her husband, Jan Puchała of my father's patriline—did not materialize into solid evidence.

With that disappointment, I've decided to jump tracks. We'll begin early with the November selection of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026. This will involve redirecting our attention from Pomerania at the northern reaches of Poland to a more central region of the former boundaries of Prussia, a province then known as Posen.

In the coming weeks, we'll zero in on the town of Żerków, home of my second great-grandfather Franciszek Jankowski. This change also signifies a shift from my father's paternal side to that of his mother—specifically to her maternal grandfather.

With the spare time gained by this month's research loss, we can also linger a bit over such details as geographical significance and impact on the daily life of these ancestors in Żerków. Sometimes, in researching ancestors so far removed from the familiarity of the places we now call home, we lose sight of what daily life might have been for them. Assuming every ancestor was simply a farmer tied to the land paints a rather lifeless family story, indeed, when life for our relatives from previous generations was likely far from the few facts we can find on the faded pages of governmental or church records.

Despite this luxury of added time to explore, we still need to start with a proper beginning. With that, tomorrow will bring introductions to Franciszek Jankowski, his wife and as many of their children as I've been able to find.

. . . and I Alone Have Escaped to Tell

 

There is a passage in the Bible, contained in one of the oldest stories in that book, concerning the many tragedies which befell a man named Job. One by one, devastation caused the destruction of his business ventures, his home, and ultimately, the loss of all his children. With each tragedy, a breathless runner brought the news to him, then added, "...and I alone have escaped to tell."

Those lone reporters remind me of what I'm discovering, now that I'm searching for signs of any surviving lines of my paternal grandparents' ancestors. At first, reviewing my DNA matches, I found third and fourth cousins from a few lines, but those were all descendants of other siblings of another great-grandmother, who had also emigrated from Poland in the late 1800s. When it comes to looking for signs of my Polish ancestors, those who migrated to America became much like those reporters of bad news in the biblical account: "and I alone have escaped to tell."

This becomes far more understandable when we look at what survives of Prussian records for the provinces my ancestors once called home. In the case of the Radomski family—both for Susanna's own generation and that of her children—so many of the children died young. True, there may still be cases of lost records and the hopeful future discovery of family connections over the generations. But I doubt I'll find many more than I've already identified. The DNA of those unfortunate cases of infant mortality were not among the few who did manage to escape to tell of their generation.

As I look ahead to the next Polish ancestor I'll be researching—likely with an early start to the November selection of my Twelve Most Wanted—I see much the same pattern repeated. Though this ancestor lived and died in a different region of the old Prussian domain, many of her children suffered that same fate. Very few of those descendants escaped the scourges and diseases which plagued my ancestors of that region, as well. Their DNA did not live to tell of that generation, either.

Perhaps, as is sometimes mentioned in DNA classes, I just need the patience to wait until that missing perfect DNA candidate tests. That, I would love to see. But as I look over the records I have been able to find, the ones which reveal the Prussian story for my family, it becomes quite obvious that there were many from those ancestral generations who never lived to tell of their roots. They never escaped what befell them to pass their genetic story to future generations.

Regarding Sloppy Handwriting

 

Family history researchers who have pursued ancestors from foreign countries may have caught themselves muttering under their breath about the sloppy handwriting of the clerks and clerics tasked with pinpointing those forebears in history. As I work through the generations preceding my paternal grandparents, I certainly know I have—if, that is, I've been able to find any documents at all.

The reason for the difficulty in finding documents lies partially with the fact that some of the usual online genealogical resources lack access to actual documents from my Polish roots. I've had to look elsewhere for many of my discoveries, and there is one significant drawback to that.

Many Polish genealogy websites began as indexing or transcription services. While I'm grateful for that resource—it's better than no resource at all—such a situation simply shifts the onus for deciphering impossible handwriting from my own two eyes to the capabilities of a proxy reader. I'm glad for those volunteers, of course, but I also realize what a challenge it can be to read a sloppy hand, even if it is a native Polish-speaking volunteer who is attempting to catalog the records.

Now that I'm pondering whether to give up on October's research focus for my Twelve Most Wanted, I spent last night exploring what records are available for the upcoming featured ancestor. In this case, we'd be shifting our attention from the northern region of Pomerania to a province somewhat to the southwest.

It's been nearly a year since I last researched family members from this line, but I was surprised to discover, in exploring documents at FamilySearch.org, that instead of merely finding transcriptions of records (plus, in some cases, a notice that the record can be viewed only by personally researching at a designated center), the document itself was available online. 

This is a welcome bonus for several reasons. First, I know the names I'm seeking, and in many cases, I know who those names should be attached to. I also know the appropriate diacritical marks that should accompany the surname, and am familiar with the usual way that a quick hand might confuse the issue. But most important, I can double-check what an indexer, weary from reading pages and pages of documents, might have read as one letter, when in fact the letter in question might clearly be different. 

If only we have the eyes to see that handwriting—no matter how sloppy—we can double check what others perceived, possibly incorrectly, and find that "missing" document which referred to our brick wall ancestor. Being allowed to access that document for ourselves can make such a difference.

It almost convinces me to stop my complaining about how sloppy that handwriting really was. At least, with a digitized copy of the actual document instead of only a transcription, I can see for myself what that entry actually reads.

Crossing the Chasm

 

While there may be facetious remarks in family history circles about "leaping across the pond," I'm convinced that connecting some immigrant ancestors to their roots is more like attempting to cross a chasm. That, at least, is how I'm feeling, now that I've run across a DNA match whose roots lead back to relatives of my third great-grandmother, Mariana Nierzwicka.

That, in fact, is all I know about her: her name. I found that little detail on the baptismal record for her daughter Susanna Radomska. Finding anything further, though, has been an effort taking much time for minuscule results. 

Looking at this match's tree, I can see how the Nierzwicki line was traced back to the start in the immigrant's adopted home in the United States. But the few documents producing details about the immigrant's origin in Poland are reports which I cannot corroborate, despite searching on three different databases.

And yet, there's the DNA. We certainly are connected in some way. The question is how. And the answer must rely on documentation. Yet, arriving at the records to confirm what seems to be true is a journey with no destination. There's an uncrossable chasm separating each of us from the answer we are both seeking.

Perhaps it helps to take on a philosophical air and accept that some things we will never know. In my case, it takes on more of an itch that, whether scratched or not, merely gets itchier, no matter what choice of action is taken. At halfway through this month and the immediate answer to my research question in hand—finding Susanna Radomska's parents—the question becomes whether to continue the research path to the past, or acquiesce to the obvious. Perhaps adding Susanna's siblings to the tree should be satisfaction enough for this year's attempt at the Radomski line.

Probing Further for Clues

 

I've resorted to speed-reading my DNA matches. I've examined them from every angle: using ThruLines at Ancestry.com; checking my tests at MyHeritage, Family Tree DNA, 23 and Me; searching key surnames in matches' trees at all these sites. But nothing promising has shown up.

I'm truly playing the role of the genealogy guinea pig this month as I probe further for clues about the roots of my second great-grandmother, Susanna Radomska. I have a fairly decent grasp of the availability of Polish record sets for the time period in question and general location of Lubichowo in Pomerania. But that doesn't mean I know everything—or even have it all at my fingertips.

Sometimes, lacking access, it helps to noodle things out. (That's my technical term for writing notes to myself in thinking through why I'm stuck.)

Here are a few details I realized:

• Some distant Radomski cousins won't be found because the record sets in Poland are not accessible for more recent years.
• Some descendants of Susanna's siblings who remained in Poland over the subsequent generations may have been relocated due to the turmoil of war or, after the war, forcibly removed to labor camps far from their home—perhaps even in a different country during post-war Soviet occupation.
• Some lines of descent for those remaining in Poland may have died out in earlier generations, due to disease, hazards of life, or acts of war.
• Some of these distant cousins may indeed have migrated, but not to what I'd consider an obvious destination; I apparently have DNA matches from my paternal side living in England, Wales, Germany, and Scandinavian countries whose ancestral origin, like mine, was in Poland. 

With that, I turned to DNA matches for one last whirlwind inspection. With Susanna Radomska being my second great-grandmother, the closest DNA matches I could hope for would be third cousins, but oftentimes, the result could be much more distant than that. Indeed, among the 48,758 total DNA matches linked to me at Ancestry.com alone, those who are fourth cousin or closer (2,831) represent a marginal tip of the genetic iceberg. Those are a lot of small matches to consider.

And yet, reiterating the several approaches I've already tried this month—though this time looking even farther—I did run into a puzzling discovery. A distant DNA cousin I found turns out to be one of those few who not only maintains a tree—complete with that often rare link to their own position in the tree—but who had a tree of considerable size. In fact, this match had even included my paternal grandfather's name in two versions: the Polish version, and his Americanized name.

As you might expect, I wasted no time in sending a message. I want to compare notes. But this discovery prompted me in one more area to research. Not only do I need to research the lines of Susanna Radomska's siblings, but—if I can—I need to push back yet another generation and see whether there is anything that can be found on Susanna's parents' siblings.

Whether Home or Abroad

 

When researching the family of our ancestors before they became the immigrants to our country, I always wonder about their siblings. Did they remain at home? Or did they follow the lead of my ancestor and travel abroad—maybe permanently?

So far, I've documented as many as I can of the siblings of my second great-grandmother, Susanna Radomska. For each of those surviving siblings, I've traced their spouses, then children, and moved to the generation of their children. In some cases, I have been able to continue the line of descent up until the early 1900s—all still living in Poland.

But what of the others? When I can't locate any explanation for their continued life, or even death, in Poland, I wonder whether they, too, decided to heed the call to a more promising life across the ocean, especially if they were following a sibling or cousin who had already done so.

Finding signs of such adventure, however, has eluded me so far. I do watch for the same surnames in North American records, and even in documents from Australia, as I've discovered DNA matches from that country, as well. Documents like death records or Social Security reports might provide names of the deceased's parents, if anyone from the new country was still remaining to remember those details from the old country—or worse, could manage to spell those challenging Polish names correctly.

Yet, even trying my best to think phonetically rather than literally, I haven't yet found any sign of Radomski descendants heading for America. Approaching this month's research challenge from the records standpoint, I may have exhausted the supply of digitized resources.

However, knowing I have several unexplained DNA matches whose roots point back to Poland, this will require some inventive approaches. Who knows? Perhaps I'll need to try my hand at sending a Polish mystery cousin an email in a language I don't even speak.

It's the Little Steps

 

While it may be discouraging to find that there aren't too many digitized records—or even transcribed records—available for researching my father's Polish roots, I have to remind myself that it is the little steps that may matter the most this month.

Yesterday, for instance, I spent most of my research time taking lots of those little steps, just as I had done in the previous week at PTG. This time, I logged on to a different Polish website—this time, it was Geneteka—to see if I had missed any of the birth, marriage, or death records for any of the descendants of Andrzej Radomski, my third great-grandfather in the Pomeranian village of Lubichowo.

Of the six children I've been able to find for Andrzej and his wife, Mariana Nierzwicka, only a few lived to adulthood and married—at least, those I can find at this point. Of those siblings of my second great-grandmother Susanna, I've begun tracing their lines of descent.

In this process, I'm hoping to find 1) possible DNA matches, or 2) immigrants to the New World. So far, the first option has yielded me zero leads, and the second option is not far behind.

In the meantime, I'm continuing those little steps I had begun taking at PTG. Yesterday, I searched Geneteka to see if there were any further discoveries on the children or grandchildren of my third great-grandparents. As I worked through that process, I made sure that each line of descent was recorded on my trees at Ancestry and FamilySearch. Eventually, I'll replicate those baby steps on my trees at MyHeritage and WikiTree. I see them as tiny voices crying out for matches: cousin bait for the relatives I don't even know I have. Yet.

"How Far Back Can You Go?"

 

In researching ancestors, I've generally preferred chasing after those family members who lived in North America, especially when it comes to those who were alive in the 1700s and even 1600s. American records can help us push back through the generations far more reliably than I've experienced for the homelands of those immigrant ancestors whose arrivals dated in later centuries.

Now that I'm working on my father's Polish great-grandparents' lines, I frankly haven't held out too much hope for making progress back through earlier generations. But since Randy Seaver recently asked, in a comment, "How far do the records go back?" I thought it might be an interesting diversion to actually take a look.

For a quick and dirty sketch of possibilities, I turned to the website of the Pomeranian Genealogical Association—or, as they put it in their native Polish, Pomorskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne. (You can see why I call it PTG for short.) Granted, the bulk of that website, as far as I can see now—there are several articles on that site for which there are no translations into English—involve volunteers transcribing records held at regional archives. Searching their database produces results from their transcriptions.

At the PTG website, I simply constructed a search using as wide open a request as possible. Basically, I repeated the search I had done the other day, asking for all records for the shortened surname "Radom." I didn't select any specific regions, nor delimit the results by date.

My very simple search provided an overload of information: 2,602 birth records (most of them, I suspect, being baptisms), 780 marriages, and 1,039 deaths. Naturally, not having set stricter parameters, it was then up to me to scroll through the results. Fortunately, the database arranged itself by date, allowing me to quickly answer Randy's question.

The earliest records noted, by that search method, were for births from Chełmno, a town about sixty five kilometers south of Lubichowo, a journey in my great-grandparents' time of about fourteen hours, so not likely a location featuring any of my ancestors. And that search was additionally limited by the use of one surname, while previous generations might yield results by checking the as-yet-unknown maiden name of an ancestor's mother.

Still, one never knows. After all, those earliest records from Chełmno dated back to 1683. If I am so lucky as to find such old records for any of my ancestors, I'd say I'll be making quite a bit of progress on my brick wall Polish kin.

If, however, I employ the specific field labeled "Civil Registry Office/Parish" and select "Lubichowo kat." for the Catholic Church records of the village where I found the Radomski family, the earliest date available was for births in 1801. Marriages in that village ranged from 1828 through 1941 for that "Radom" surname search, introducing the possibility of reaching for more recent descendants of collateral lines in hopes of figuring out those Polish mystery DNA matches I've found at MyHeritage.com. The deaths entries for this surname stub ranged from the mid to late 1800s, an uninspiring option for expanding that family line.

Of course, if any of my father's Pomeranian ancestors moved to Lubichowo from neighboring villages, perhaps there would still be a chance for me to push through that stalled scrimmage line and gain new ancestral territory. That will remain a puzzle for me to ponder for the rest of this month's research task.

A Fresh Start for Family Finds?

 

In moving to a different realm of my family tree—for these last three months of the year, it is always my father's Polish ancestors—I'm always hopeful that a fresh start will produce increased family finds. That, as I saw today in checking the past two weeks' progress for my biweekly count, is not always the case.

Researching Polish ancestry can make one feel like the voice crying out in the wilderness. Will anyone hear? There are plenty of researchers clamoring to find their Irish ancestors, as I've witnessed while working on my father-in-law's lines during the summer. Judging from what I hear from fellow researchers in my genealogical society or in the classes I teach, the same can be said for researching any roots from the British Isles. Add in places like Germany or even Italy, and you'll find a crowd of researching companions. But Polish? Not so many.

I've been happy to find the few Polish ancestors I've located this past week. Records at FamilySearch.org and websites actually located in Poland have been helpful. And I'm certainly glad to have been able to begin building out the descendant lines of those ancestors' collateral lines, a step I always take in hopes of locating the nexus with those mystery DNA matches.

The pace of progress, however, has still been slow. I suspect that will be the case as I move backwards in time, no matter which ancestor I choose to trace for my Twelve Most Wanted.

In the past two weeks, I've located and documented forty seven new family members related to my father's patriline. That brings my tree count up to 42,026. Admittedly, that's not many new finds—a situation which makes me begin to feel boxed in. The farther back we go in time, no matter which ancestral origin we choose to trace, the harder it becomes to locate records to confirm that familial connection. But the farther forward in time we hope to track their descendants, the more we realize there is another roadblock facing us. 

In my case, that Polish roadblock is apparently limited by the most recent dates of the Prussian records digitized and indexed through FamilySearch.org. Prussia being one of those national entities no longer in existence may be one factor in this challenge, but another is the privacy concerns—and legislation—dictating availability. Sometimes that limit reaches to the previous hundred years. Or the century leading up to the last time this issue was revisited by policy makers.

At any rate, my next step in trying to locate descendants of those Polish ancestors will be a winding route from transcriptions provided at Polish websites to their link leading to archival holdings. The website hosted by PTG, for instance, has led me to some records as recent as the 1940s (though that is rare). The challenge means a slow-down for research progress.

As I set aside my in-laws' research questions for another season, their tree remains frozen at 44,402 individual listings. I anticipate it will remain in that condition, barring any marriages or births of cousins' grandbabies between now and when I pick up the in-law research in the spring of 2027. And with the time flying as quickly as it does over the winter holiday season, that may be sooner than we expect.

As Promised, Another Update

 

Somehow, in the back of my recent memory, I recalled seeing a notice from Ancestry.com mentioning that they would soon be releasing an update to their DNA ethnicity report, which they call Origins. Since I usually reserve the weekends for checking my DNA matches, I thought I'd pop over there after attending to a few details regarding the descendants of my Radomski ancestors.

Nothing, however, is ever easy. I found yet another sibling of Susanna, my second great-grandmother, who had married and had several children—some of whom actually lived to adulthood, a feat which I'm realizing was a rare occurrence back in my paternal ancestors' homeland.

That brought on a back-and-forth process of gleaning the data from the PTG website, adding it to my Ancestry tree, then stepping over to FamilySearch.org and adding the same name and date to my tree there, then scouring the resources there in search of any documentation.

There was plenty to keep me busy.

At the end of the session, I thought, "I'll just take a quick look over at my ThruLines for this surname," and jumped back to Ancestry. The minute I clicked on the "DNA" tab, I knew it wasn't going to be a quick look. The drop-down menu sported a green "updated" sign right next to "Origins." It was just what I was waiting for. And sooner than I expected.

Since I am currently working on my father's roots, that became my first stop. Part of this update is apparently the addition of a section devoted to origins by grandparent, information imputed by them without need for any further testing on my part. This, Ancestry has accomplished partly by looking at a person's matches which have already been identified by side of family—which is why they mentioned that this may not be possible right now for those who only have a few matches. 

In addition, Ancestry has apparently expanded their Polish subregions, enough so that I believe I can already discern which paternal grandparent contributed which subregion of Polish heritage to me. The line I'm working on this month—my paternal grandfather's side—is centered mostly in Pomerania, which Ancestry is simply labeling as "Northern Poland." Apparently, at some point, I will be able to fill in the line labeled "edit label" to identify Grandparent 2 as my father's father. But for now, the "coming soon" disclaimer tells me I'll just have to wait.

With that, I'll pass that waiting time by going back to the original task I had planned for today: checking out ThruLines to see whether anything new showed up for matches on my Radomski line. 

Considering a Few Record Keeping Details

 

As I'm explaining the collateral lines I've found for the Radomski family, you might be wondering, "Why is it Susanna Radomska when her dad's name was Radomski? To answer a question like that, we may need to step away from our story for a process break to consider a few details.

Now that I've moved away from my father-in-law's Irish ancestors to spent the last three months of this year on my own father's Polish roots, it would help to remember a few items we learned when we studied this part of my family in past years. 

Among other things, one of the most obvious differences, now that I'm recording Polish family names was seeing the change in surname endings. Particularly for the quintessential Polish names ending in "-ski," we will see those endings change, depending on whether the ancestor we're referring to was a man or a woman. Women's surnames ended in "-a." With that simple explanation, we know that Susanna and her sisters would always have their maiden name represented as Radomska, even though their father was actually named Andrzej Radomski.

Another detail to grapple with: documentation. In English-speaking countries, we often can rely on multiple documented sources in the same language for tracing our ancestors. Through most of the past century, we had birth records, marriage certificates, or death notices—all completed in the same English we speak every day.

Not so in Poland. Depending on which entity was in charge of the government, a person's records might have been recorded in Polish, or they might have been entered in German, complete with the complicating factor of a handwritten script which few people now even know how to read. Yet, not all records were provided by the government—or survived the devastation of the years following our ancestors' lifetime.

Some of the records left to us were those drawn up by the church of that time period—in my ancestors' case, the Catholic church. That church brought with it the tradition of recording all information in yet another language: Latin. 

With that litany of differences, I as a researcher am left with a decision: should I record the names as I find them in the Latin records of my ancestors' religion? Or should I list them as they surely were known colloquially, in their own lifetime and surroundings? 

To answer that question, I not only have chosen to record my ancestors by the Polish tradition of matching the surname to the ancestor's gender, but to list them by the Polish version of their given name. Thus, for Susanna's father, I enter him into my family tree not as Andreas, which is how his church record would have identified him, but as Andrzej, as his peers might have called him.

Likewise, when I encounter a name which includes a letter which, in Polish, would include a character not recognized in the English alphabet, I chose to represent that letter as it would have been recorded in the person's native land. Thus, when Zuzanna became the bride of Jan, I recorded his name using the diacritical mark, "ł" for Puchała.

Finding and entering those unusual characters in records using my American-made computer with its English speaker's keyboard can seem to be somewhat of a challenge to record all these foreign names correctly. And yet, even with the limitations of not having purchased my keyboard in Poland, I've found an easy work-around. Sure, I can also memorize the ascii codes for each symbol, but who am I kidding? I don't have that great a memory. Instead, I use Google Translate to create, cut and paste the diacritical marks I need into my text. 

Simply go to the Google search page, click on the nine dots in the upper right corner, and select "translate" from the drop-down menu. Then, select the language needed, look for the keyboard icon to "Turn on Virtual Keyboard," then hit the "ctrl+alt" key to select the special characters for that language whenever you need to add a diacritical mark to the word you wish to enter.

I then copy the word and paste it where I need it. I'll paste it in a document I'm writing, or on a blog post, or I'll even add it to the name field for my family tree on Ancestry.com or other tree-building service. With relatively little effort at all, I then can include my ancestors in my tree using the name they were known as, back home in their native land.

Susanna's Siblings

 

For anyone wishing to find distant cousins useful in pointing to a specific shared ancestor, DNA is the best bet. However, where those cousins live and where they tested may signify the best possibility for testing companies. In my second great-grandmother Susanna's case, unless I find any more emigrants among her Polish siblings, the best likelihood for discovering distant cousins would be the most international of the major genetic genealogy companies. Hence, I'll be spending a lot of time at MyHeritage, scouring the match lists for descendants of Susanna's siblings—if, that is, those siblings lived to adulthood and had children of their own.

One dismaying detail about researching the collateral lines for my newly-discovered Polish ancestors was seeing how many of those family members died young. After reviewing the multiple tragedies of loss experienced by Susanna, herself, I braced myself in preparation for looking to the children of the previous generation. The 1850s, at least, were a rough decade for Susanna's family. What more could go wrong in the generations preceding that?

From what I'm seeing at this point, I may yet discover some distant cousins descending from that generation of the Radomski family. Though I am not yet done documenting Susanna's siblings, so far I've found transcriptions of baptismal records for Katarzyna ("Catharinam") in 1821, Susanna's younger brother Simon (likely Szymon) in 1826, Francisca (Franciszka in Polish) in January of 1828, and her apparent twin, Anna, also baptized at that same date. 

Bracing myself for the inevitable—after all, Susanna's own children didn't fare too well in that rural northern region of Poland known as Pomerania—I expected to find each sibling's baptism followed soon afterwards with a record of the baby's burial. So far, no. In fact, I'm finding some marriage records for those siblings, as well. Not only that, but I believe I've found a marriage record for Susanna's own parents in 1814.

Now to move on to mapping out the possible descendancy of those collateral lines. There may be a DNA match from among my Polish cousins, after all.

Straight to the Next Generation

 

Pursuing the details on some ancestors may leave us chasing empty promises, buried among the myriad pages of recorded history. Other records, thankfully, are rather straightforward in providing the details we seek. While I can't say there are even any promises in view for my second great-grandfather Jan Puchała, fortunately I've found information gleaned from a document on his wife.

The information listed in that one record I found was rather straightforward. Baby's name: Susanna Marciana. Mother's name: Marianna Nierswicka. Father's name: "Andr Radom."

Well, almost straightforward.

I can presume that the "Andr" stood for the Latin name, Andreas. After all, this was a baptismal record from the Catholic church in Lubichowo, Pomerania. Or perhaps the cleric meant to enter the Polish version, Andrzej. But Radom for a surname? I wasn't sure this was quite what I had seen in Susanna's own marriage record, where her maiden name was listed as Radomska, the traditional feminine form of her father's surname, which would have been Radomski.

Keeping in mind that this record set, only available in transcription form online at FamilySearch.org, would need to be confirmed by viewing the digitized handwritten entry. Since for this, I would need to go to a local FamilySearch Center, I thought I'd first look for corroboration from another transcription-only website. So I jumped over to the PTG site for the Pomeranian Genealogical Association, and looked up records for anyone named "Radom" who might have been baptized in Lubichowo in 1824.

Sure enough, there was one entry for a Susanna Marciana, whose father was named Andreas Radomski. And just to make sure, I noted that the entry also included a mother listed as Marianna Nierzwicka.

Just like that, I pushed back another generation, exactly as I had hoped when I listed Susanna as one of my Twelve Most Wanted for this year. Armed with this information, it was all too easy to pursue the couple named as her parents to see what siblings Susanna might have had.

There is a reason for this secondary pursuit. Since Susanna was my second great-grandmother, finding DNA matches with whom I'm mutually linked to Susanna would, in theory, be possible. The genetic distance for a third cousin is certainly within reach. Once I know the line of descent for the children of Susanna's siblings, I could even possibly find fourth cousins among my matches.

There is, however, a catch with all of that hopeful pursuit of siblings. To see what my possibilities actually are, let's first take a look at who else was descended from Susanna's parents, Andrzej Radomski and Marianna Nierzwicka.

When Sue Met John

 

Well, actually it was when Susanna met Johann, according to the Latin in their 1842 marriage record. She was nineteen and he was...ahem...thirty three, an age disparity which, in my in-laws' era, would prompt the local officials to alert the newspaper editor, "don't publish ages" in the legal notices.

But it wasn't even Susanna and Johann, I suspect, back in their home town of Lubichowo, where their native Polish tongue would likely have labeled them Zuzanna and Jan. 

The two of them tied the knot on January 24, 1842, bringing together two families from the same village, the Radomskis on the bride's side and the Puchałas—whoever they were—from the groom's side of the aisle. The sixteen years of their marriage—no surprise here to learn that, with the age disparity, Jan died in 1858—yielded the births of at least five children, though the tragedy of the time was that most of those descendants died in infancy.

After the birth of the first and second of the Puchała children (at least that I can find), an age gap was followed by the birth and subsequent loss of three infants: Andrzej in 1851, Franciszek in 1855, and Katarzyna in 1857, after which their father, himself, followed suit. There may, of course, be other children, but none that I've been able to find so far.

Of the other two, daughter Marianna and son Thomas, Zuzanna would eventually live to see several grandchildren, with almost all of them—at least if they survived childhood—remaining in Lubichowo. While I have yet to find a death record for Zuzanna, an entry at the PTG website indicated an eighty six year old woman by that name died in 1909. If that was our Zuzanna—or Susanna—she lived a long but tragedy-ridden life in the rural north of what is now Poland. Whether we can learn anything more about what life was like in the region around Lubichowo, I can't yet say, but I'll be digging until I find something to paint a clearer picture of this couple and their family.

Introducing Susanna

 

When you can't make any further progress on a brick wall ancestor—especially on the patrilineal side—what do you do next? In the case of my father's Polish ancestors, my first step is to look more closely at the woman who married that last patrilineal puzzle. 

That's why, this month, I'm introducing my father's great-grandmother, Susanna Radomska. When I selected her back in January as one of my Twelve Most Wanted to research this year, I realized I had never paid her much mind at all. For all the years I had used the Twelve Most Wanted system to organize my family history research, I had never once considered looking into the origin of one specific great-grandparent: Susanna Radomska. My focus had always been on her husband Jan Puchała, who has never since budged in his stubborn insistence to remain one of my brick wall ancestors. 

With that glaring exception to my research progress, we'll spend this month looking deeper into the roots of this great-grandmother, Susanna Radomska. I already know she was likely born in the small village of Lubichowo in the northern province of Pomerania in the country which was once called Prussia. Only back then, according to the Meyer's Gazetteer, the place was called Lubichow. Handily, as was noted in the gazetteer, the town claimed only one Catholic church. And thankfully, those church records are still in existence.

From those tiny details, I've cobbled together a research approach which first has me checking the transcriptions at PTG, the Pomeranian genealogical website I mentioned yesterday. Then, I'll be moving to FamilySearch.org to explore all the resources available at that website. Due to negotiations between that website and the foreign archives which hold the original documents, in many cases I will find myself having to travel to an actual FamilySearch library in order to view the documents rather than rely on someone else's transcription of the record. This, in some cases, may be absolutely essential, given varying writing styles, legibility after decades of fading ink and crumbling paper, and the inevitable mistakes that can occur when tackling hundreds of such records in the transcription process.

As it turns out, finding Susanna's parents was an easy task, thanks to her own baptismal record. Along with her record, the same church gets credit for numerous other documents containing the same parental names. Bit by bit, we'll discover more on this family from Lubichowo, in hopes of explaining distant cousins among DNA matches and other family mysteries, but the number one hope I have this month is to learn more about just how Susanna met and married Jan Puchała, that brick wall ancestor who became her husband in 1842. 

The Necessity of Multiple Resources

 

We may have become spoiled in the genealogy world, considering all the digitized records that can be accessed on websites like Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org. Finding so many records in one place gives the aura of one-stop shopping for family trees. When we step beyond our own country to explore our roots in those immigrant ancestors' place of origin, though, we shift to face new challenges.

No matter how much a website may promise an international purview, on a case-by-case basis, that promise may only be upheld to varying degrees. In the case of my paternal Polish ancestors, I've already learned I'll need to cobble together multiple resources to progress with my research plan.

Since this month's goal is to find more details—and documentation—for my second great-grandmother Susanna Radomska, I already know I will need to look for resources which specialize not only in the nation of Poland, but which look to the north and the region historically known as Pomerania.

Fortunately for me, there is a Polish website which focuses on vital records from this exact region in Poland. This volunteer-driven site, with a URL echoing the initials of its name in Polish—Pomorskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne—is known in English as the Pomeranian Genealogical Association.

The PTG database provides transcriptions of vital records for the region from the early 1800s through the earliest decades of the subsequent century. Each entry also indicates the resource from which the transcriptions were drawn, mostly local archival holdings, which are indicated by book and photo number for those wishing to obtain copies of the actual documents.

Granted, many of the ancestral collateral lines I've already researched were also available through records at the more familiar FamilySearch.org—but not all. I've had to bounce between PTG and FamilySearch to see which records were lacking at FamilySearch, then prepare a list to pursue through those archival avenues. And even if I can locate those birth, marriage, or death records online, I'll need to deal with reading the old German script in many cases, simply because Pomerania was, at the time of my ancestors, part of the Prussian domain.

That, alone, is a great illustration for why doing international family research demands access to multiple online resources. I've found myself bouncing back and forth between Google's Translate app and cheat sheets that provide listings of words genealogists are most likely to encounter, such as this old handy (though ad-ridden) treasure from the old RootsWeb days.

Now that I'm bouncing back and forth between several online resources, building out the Radomski family line, it's high time we give this month's featured ancestor from my Twelve Most Wanted an introduction. With that, tomorrow we'll officially meet Susanna Radomska and see how she ties into the family line.

Wandering as I Wonder

 

At the start of each month, I sit down to form a research plan. I often follow the same basic procedure, and over the years, the process does become somewhat routine. In the case of my Polish paternal ancestors, the approach can be limited, leaving me to wonder, "now what?!" As I went through my usual routine, though, I began wandering through the results of what I found, more as if I were lost in the maze rather than zeroing in on my goal.

Looking to genetic records of DNA cousins is especially limited for Polish connections, based on the small number of matches I've found despite testing at five major genetic genealogy companies. Even though that is one of my first steps taken, in the case of my focus for this month (my father's great-grandmother Susanna Radomska). I have only four ThruLines suggestions given by that Ancestry tool. Each of those four ThruLines candidates happens to be a niece, nephew, or grand-nephew—each of them relatives I already know.

I tried a different approach. Rather than look at ThruLines to discover any alternate connections to Susanna Radomska, I picked up on a lesson I realized last month: stick to simply searching for the surnames. Though no DNA matches popped up with Radomska or Radomski in their family tree, at least I tried.

A second approach was to revisit the tree I've built at FamilySearch.org. First task was to make sure everyone was updated there, based on what I've already attained at my tree on Ancestry.com. FamilySearch is rich with foreign documents while Ancestry is lacking in such records, so that also provides a way to verify connections for both trees. As I wondered about each child listed in that Radomski tree—and made sure to connect documents back to my Ancestry tree as well—I began making new discoveries.

Those new discoveries, in turn, caused me to wander. And wandering is not exactly part of the profile of the "S.M.A.R.T." objectives researcher. Each time I entered a new name in my Ancestry tree, accompanied with the inevitable hints, I looked at the suggested trees to see whether the tree owner happened to be a DNA match. I then looked at that person's Shared Matches on my DNA readout, wandering from one possible match to another until I spotted the surnames I was seeking.

In the end, while ThruLines might not have provided me any direct links to the right people, this sidestepping approach, wandering from DNA cousin to DNA cousin, did eventually narrow down my focus. Some aspects of our quest can be so nebulous that there really aren't any exact links to lead us to our goal. But in the face of that blank slate, as we wonder what to do next, a little judicious wandering may just lead us to some answers—or at least productive realizations.

Stuck at Another Great-Grandparent

 

With the arrival of fall, it's time to switch our focus from my father-in-law's Irish ancestry to researching my own father's roots. There is only one problem with this change: I'm just as stuck at the point of my own father's great-grandparents, as I was with those of my father-in-law. It seems researching American-born ancestors proceeds far more smoothly than tackling the legacy of those immigrants' forebears. 

My father's father, the one who secretly changed the family name, was born with a surname which, itself, kept morphing over the years. Eventually recorded in the United States as Puchalski—possibly because in America "-ski" was assumed to always be affixed to Polish surnames—he was baptized in Prussia with the surname Puchała. 

This man's father, my father's paternal grandfather, was also difficult to locate through documentation. Perhaps because of the transcription hazards of copying (or bothering to even use at all) Polish diacritical marks, my best chance at finding his name in records in his homeland was through his wife. His 1868 marriage to Anastasia Zegarska did indeed confirm that Thomas Puchała was a man—unlike his baptismal record in 1844, identifying the Puchała infant as a "weiblich."

That document, faulty as it was, did help identify the soon-disappearing Thomas' parents. His father, according to church records, was noted as Johann. His mother, with a given name Susanna, had a partial rendition of her maiden name provided in that birth record. Fortunately, moving back a couple years, another record confirmed the maiden name of Johann Puchała's wife: Radomska.

From the point of that 1842 marriage record in the village now known as Lubichowo in northern Poland, we can begin piecing together the story of my father's great-grandparents. Our focus this month will be on Susanna, but my corollary hope is that some details of her life might uncover an explanation of whatever became of her husband and family, as well.

Marrying Into the Patriline

 

As long as I can remember, my paternal grandfather's origin was a closely-held secret. Even my older siblings and cousins who knew him personally could not coax the story out of him. Years after his passing, when all of us still tried collectively to find clues, there was not much to uncover. Despite my grandfather's decidedly Irish surname—which we didn't learn until just recently was an official legal request—we knew there had to be a different history for his family.

When the first of direct-to-consumer DNA tests came out, I learned about the Y-DNA test. Tracing the specific line from a son to his father, then his father, and so on back through the family's history, this genetic test could be a powerful tool to reveal a family's origin. There was one catch, however: this test was only applicable to a male descendant's patriline—and it was most meaningful when the subject's test matches someone else's test.

Fortunately, to solve our paternal mystery, my only brother was willing to serve as the test subject. I say "fortunately," not because I doubted my ability to talk my father into doing his own test, but because the opportunity to do so was, by then, long gone; he had passed away years before genetic genealogy of any type was publicly available. Because my brother's only son had also died, the only possible subject would have been my brother. I'm glad he was willing to participate.

Testing was the first part of the process. The second part was waiting to see if we had any matches close enough to provide guidance on where my father's family originated. We're still waiting for that discovery. In the meantime—and mostly thanks to records digitized at FamilySearch.org—I have managed to trace my way from my father's father to his father and, eventually, back to Poland where some documents identified his father as Jan Puchała.

From there, progress stopped. I had figured out who my father's great-grandfather was, but I could move no farther back in time.

No matter which ancestor I'm tracing, I've long since learned that, when stopped cold at a research roadblock, learn to step sideways. If a direct line refuses to divulge any details about the past, look to a collateral line. Siblings are one example, especially when minute changes in record keeping laws or customs over a span of even a few years may yield the detail that was missing for that direct line ancestor. 

There is, however, another way to tackle those brick wall ancestors. If I can't find the information I need on that earliest node in my father's patriline, I can sidestep that man entirely and look to his wife. For this month's selection of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, as we transition to research on my father's side of the family, that is exactly what we'll do for October: see what we can find on Susanna Radomska, wife of Jan Puchała of Lubichowo in Poland's north region of Pomerania.

Simply Search for the Surname

If I had it to do all over again—and I will, the next time we revisit this puzzle of Johanna Falvey Kelly's roots—I would have first examined all the DNA matches whose family tree simply contained the surname Falvey. Of those, my husband has a genetic link to at least twenty nine others.

Interestingly, those twenty nine others are not necessarily the same ones that popped up when I used Ancestry's ThruLines tool to connect with Johanna, my father-in-law's great-grandmother. For one thing—and a very encouraging sign—the DNA cousins from this surname group match my husband at about twice the amount of genetic material as those ThruLines candidates I had previously checked.

Does that make this tree-based group closer relatives? Not necessarily. The connections are still rather distant. Yet that might be enough to help guide me back to the precise family in the right townland and parish of County Kerry.

This tree-based group comes from Falvey immigrants who settled in a wide variety of places. One group, as we discussed yesterday, left Ireland bound for New Zealand. A very small subset, I suspect, make up those who call Australia their home, possibly leaving for that destination after first landing in New Zealand.

Another very small set of DNA matches currently live in Canada, which is not surprising, considering the economic and political dynamics of leaving Ireland simply to relocate in another part of the United Kingdom, as their ancestors must have done during the 1800s.

Those Falveys who immigrated to the United States fell into three camps. Johanna Falvey herself came with her husband and children to Fort Wayne, Indiana. There are two other DNA matches who link to that family line. Another set of Falveys—whether closely related or not, I can't yet tell—headed to Massachusetts. A third set, which I'm having more difficulty tracing, made their destination the state of Michigan.

Each set of immigrating Falveys warrants their own attention. I'll be building out their family trees on my own to verify what each DNA match asserts in their own tree. Whether each one can lead me back to parish records in County Kerry, I won't know until I trace each immigrant family back to their homeland.

That, however, will be job number one for the next time I return to this research puzzle. Now that we're at the end of the month, it's time to move on to the next of my Twelve Most Wanted. Come October, we'll shift from a focus on the Irish and begin considering the first of three paternal ancestors from Poland. 

Assessing the (Diminishing) Possibilities

 

Finding the possible link between Johanna Falvey Kelly, my father-in-law's great-grandmother who had migrated to Fort Wayne from County Kerry, and the four DNA matches I've found in New Zealand promises to be a challenge. That is not simply because of the distance between North America and the South Island of New Zealand; it's the tiny amount of genetic material that these DNA cousins actually share.

Looking at the numbers, the possibilities for a more distant relationship stretch from third cousin once removed all the way to eighth cousin or beyond. That, at least, is according to calculations from The DNA Geek regarding a match of eighteen centiMorgans. You can get a snapshot of the hopeless probabilities from the "What Are the Odds?" diagram here.

To put it briefly, the closest of the four New Zealand Falvey descendants are two matches who each have one segment of eighteen centiMorgans in common with my husband. That's it. Each of them, as well as the other two with similar genetic connections—but divided into two or more segments, rather than one unified strand—descend from one of three daughters of Norah Falvey, the supposed relative of Johanna Falvey who had emigrated from County Kerry to New Zealand.

I have not been able to locate any documentation on a Norah Falvey in the Catholic parish where I had found Johanna's marriage to John Kelly. Nor has her location come close to the other supposed sister of Johanna, whose DNA matches also connect with my husband. The closest baptismal record I could find for a Norah Falvey was for a distant parish which, though still in County Kerry, would have required a walk of several hours.

My hunch at this point is that, though those New Zealand cousins are likely Falvey connections, the nexus between their specific ancestor and the ancestor of the American Falveys would be far beyond that of siblings. While I agree that it will be helpful to map out these New Zealand cousins' connection to each other through this Norah Falvey, the most recent common ancestor may well be two or three generations beyond Johanna's as-yet unconfirmed parents.

Beyond "Down Under"

 

One of the fascinating gifts of DNA testing for genealogy is being allowed a peek at how far our genetic connections can go. In the case of my father-in-law's Falvey connections, that line not only leads this American family back to Ireland, but it also provides us a link to distant cousins "Down Under" and beyond even that.

While it was a relationship as close as my father-in-law's great-grandmother who came from County Kerry, there are now third and fourth cousins popping up as DNA matches to my husband, who serves as testing proxy for my father-in-law who has long since passed away. I've tried my best to figure out these matches, but other than those direct lines descended from that great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey Kelly, I have yet to uncover the connection between the rest.

Pulling up ThruLines at Ancestry.com, I discovered there are four specific matches who supposedly descend from a woman called Norah Falvey. She, like Johanna, was said to have been born in County Kerry. But unlike emigrating Johanna, Norah's route took her even farther away than Johanna's journey to Fort Wayne, Indiana. For Norah, her destination—and final resting place—became the old settlement of Nelson on the South Island of New Zealand.

From those four specific DNA matches, I've discovered through Ancestry's ProTools that there are more than twenty other matches affiliated with that line in New Zealand. Obviously, I've found a lot of incentive to learn who this Norah Falvey might have been. Yet, try as I might, a review this past weekend shed no light worthy of "aha" moments. I cannot find any specifics on where in County Kerry this Falvey descendant once lived—none, at least, pointing out how she connected to Johanna Falvey.

While those many matches linked to Norah don't show up as a cluster in any reports at Ancestry, that doesn't mean I can't sketch out the connections between these distant cousins. While such an exercise might not inform my original research question concerning Johanna Falvey Kelly's origins and parentage in County Kerry, I can't help but remember that one line from Johanna's own obituary: that she had one sibling who had moved to New Zealand.

Someone in New Zealand obviously could claim a genetic connection to Johanna's own family line. Whether these DNA matches connect directly to that unnamed sibling, I can't yet determine, but keeping in mind this might be a years-long research pursuit, I may as well get started sketching out the connections I can find. That, if nothing else, will be a valuable addition to the Falvey research log for whenever I do alight on those elusive telltale records.

Missing the Connection

 

As frustrating as this seems—seeing we are nearing the end of the month, and thus time to move on to yet another of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026—I am having a difficult time making the leap from my husband's DNA connections in North America to their Falvey ancestors back in Ireland. Come to think of it, even the twenty of his DNA matches in New Zealand seem to be missing any connection to the parents of our specific Johanna Falvey Kelly. I'm beginning to wonder whether that sliver of matching genetic material is actually a persistent fragment passed forward from generations long before that time period.

Needless to say, this DNA puzzle has slowed down progress in adding another generation to my father-in-law's side of the family tree. In fact, not much of anything has actually been added to that tree. In the past two weeks, I've managed to find only thirty four individuals through tracing these Falvey connections, most of them through work on DNA matches. Truth be told, many of those new names hide within a "floating branch" of my father-in-law's tree, a token way to say, despite its presence, "I'm still not sure about this one."

Still, my in-laws' tree contains 44,402 documented individuals, which I'd consider a good start. Reviewing all the DNA matches yet to link to that tree, though, there is much work ahead, whether for the Falvey line or other branches of the tree. Other than what we might discover in the last few days of this month, we will need to move on to the next month's selected research subject.

With that shift, we'll also step from my in-laws' side of the family to my own. Not that that will be an easy transition; up next will be a leap from the dearth of documents in Ireland to the challenge of navigating foreign language records in the old dominion of Prussia. The last three months of the year will be the domain of the ancestral brick walls on the paternal side of my own family.

In advance of that move, in the last two weeks, I've had the opportunity to add ten more names to my own family tree. Most of those came, thanks to a recent email received from a distant cousin on my father's side of the family who shared some resources with me. In preparation for next month's move to research my paternal ancestry, that puts me at 41,979 individuals in my own tree.

Before we make that jump, though, we do have just three more days to muddle through some observations made evident by delving into those Falvey DNA matches which still stump me.

Don't Let Gone be Forgotten

 

I mentioned last weekend that I would be traveling for the next few days. A journey to northern California's wine country, setting of a conference my husband would be attending, somehow reminded me of the importance of keeping track of the details of our own history. Sometimes, that history can be a visible, and daily, reminder of our past. Other times, it can be gone—and soon after, forgotten.

There in beautiful Santa Rosa, I couldn't help but remember one significant building which, in an instant, was gone. The building was a red-painted round barn, built in 1899 as part of the winery established by the Fountaingrove community.

On a trip to Santa Rosa in the fall of 2015, my husband and I had stayed at a hotel situated right in front of the historic building. I was clueless about what lay behind us until we checked into our second story room and opened the drapes to take in the view. There it was, up on the hill behind us: a sixteen-sided piece of local history.

Two years later, it was gone, taken out by the devastating Tubbs Fire.

It has been almost exactly nine years since that loss, not just of one historic building, but of tens of thousands of acres of homes, farms, stores, medical centers, school campuses, and other community gathering places. When those buildings are gone and the years pass, for all except those directly impacted, we tend to forget what once, but for the inferno, had been there.

That becomes a reminder to me of all the visible signs of our family history. As I wrote after the loss, "Some things just aren't there anymore." The homes where we visited our grandparents, the school where an aunt or uncle attended, the store where Dad got his first job as a teenager: all these tangible signs of our family's past ultimately disappear from the scenery. Sometimes, when we return on that nostalgic trip to see things as we remembered them, even the roads have changed so much that we can no longer find our way.

It's only when we write down these details to preserve them—or sketch out the place as it once was, or label the photographs before we forget the names our grandparents told us—that we can keep that history fresh in our minds. Better yet, so we can pass those ephemeral details on to the next generation when it is their turn to keep the memories alive.

Above: Fountaingrove Round Barn, November 2015; photograph courtesy of Chris Stevens.

Not Even From "County Cherry"

 

This month has led us in circles as we wandered through ancestral records seeking the family of Johanna Falvey Kelly, my father-in-law's great-grandmother. Even pursuing Johanna's neighbors in Fort Wayne, Indiana—who tantalizingly possessed the same surname as her maiden name—couldn't yield us any clues, despite obituary mentions of Irish roots in "County Cherry."

You know how newspapers can go. I've bemoaned editorial errors ever since I started posting family stories on this blog. In the case of this extended search for the Falvey family's roots, "County Cherry" seems actually quite quaint, despite being an editorial blunder. But, despite decoding the entry, the location information still wasn't enough to solve my problem about where the Falvey family originated.

My focus for this part of the month-long search happened to actually be a neighbor of Johanna Falvey and her husband John Kelly. Living just around the block from the Kellys' home on Hoagland Avenue where they settled after immigration happened to be not only another Kelly family, but a Falvey family, as well.

While I still can't figure out how Timothy Kelly and his family connect to John Kelly, Timothy's neighbor Daniel Falvey also beguiled me. Living next door to Timothy Kelly on Brandriff Street, Daniel and his Irish-born wife, listed in 1880 as "Dabora," headed up a household of four young, American-born children.

Since Daniel's obituary leant little help in naming any siblings or parents—other than mentioning four children and "the wife"—I thought it might be helpful to trace that wife. Looking at her entry in the 1900 census, where she appeared as Abbie, I wondered if her true name might be the same as Johanna Falvey's likely sister, Gobnait. That traditional Irish given name, as we've already learned, often was shortened to nicknames like Debby or Abbie.

Since Abbie died in 1933, I looked for her obituary. Nothing. 

Building out her own family tree, I then looked for any reports on Abbie's siblings. The 1910 obituary for one brother, John, mentioned nothing about origins, but did list his siblings. Following those siblings led me to the 1920 obituary for their sister Johanna.

That's when I stumbled upon those editorial errors. Incorrectly (though admittedly charmingly), Johanna was said to have been born in "County Cherry." In fact, one sister, Elizabeth Moran, was said to still be living in "County Cherry" at the time of Johanna Sullivan's 1920 death in Fort Wayne.

Following the concepts of cluster genealogy, I tried my hand at figuring out just where Elizabeth Moran—and by extension, her siblings Johanna and Abbie, and possibly even Abbie's husband Daniel Falvey—might have originated. After all, many immigrants from the same community might travel in a group, especially when responding to the offer of a job, or the chain migration of following another relative who had already made the move successfully.

Still, try as I might to find any entry for an Elizabeth Moran from "County Cherry"—or even County Kerry—Irish baptismal and marriage records revealed no clues for any of Daniel and Abbie's roots in  townlands near the origin of my father-in-law's Falvey forebears. The two Falvey neighbors in Fort Wayne so far show no connections other than their coincidental nearby residences.