May as Well Make it a Couple

 

We're wrapping up the last selection of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026 as we close out on the traditional celebration of Epiphany, the last of the twelve days of Christmas. Most people have long since returned to work and the routine of their daily schedule, but focusing on these twelve days has always been my way to enjoy the Christmas holiday just a little bit longer each year.

For this last selection of my Twelve Most Wanted, I decided to close out the year with the wife of the previous month's selection. I'll be focusing on researching Franciszek Jankowski in November, so in the following month, we'll step over to research his wife, Franciszka Olejniczak. Each of these two ancestors were among my father's eight Polish great-grandparents.

Not that my father had known any of his great-grandparents. Although he did know their daughter Marianna, who was my father's maternal grandmother, as an immigrant to New York City, she most likely didn't speak much English. I do have one photo of the family, which I suspect included Marianna, but that family's decision to keep mum about their roots has hampered my generation's ability to truly know about the family's past.

Marianna's mother, Franciszka, was a woman she never saw again after her departure for a strange New World. That last moment together happened early in 1889. 

That was only the first of goodbyes. In 1907, Franciszka's second daughter left for New York, as well, taking a second set of grandchildren with her. As far as I can tell, a third daughter remained in Poland, marrying and raising a large family—if, that is, those children survived the harsh conditions that seemed to claim the life of so many children in that rural area of the country.

Hopefully, in exploring Franciszka's story, we'll discover what became of that third daughter and her family. In addition, thanks to the marriage record I had mentioned yesterday, we have a head start in learning the names of Franciszka's parents, allowing us the possibility of learning more about Franciszka's own siblings and their collateral lines. Of course, if we can push back another generation before that point, it will certainly be an added bonus for this last of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026—but we'll have to wait until December to find out how much we can learn about Franciszka Olejniczak this time around.