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.
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