Finding a DNA cousins thanks to a match at Ancestry.com was fortunate, but it serves to point out a few problems facing those seeking connections with relatives third cousin or beyond. The major drawback is that while DNA can show us our fourth, fifth, or even sixth cousins, it can't show us all of them. The reason is simple: after recombination of genetic material between the parents in each generation, some of those more distant relatives' genes may not make the cut. I may inherit some genetic material from my third great-grandparents Mikołaj Olejniczak and his wife Józefa Grzegorczyk, but that doesn't mean every single one of my Olejniczak fourth cousins will inherit the same strand.
Since right now, it appears that the one DNA cousin I mentioned yesterday is likely my only Olejniczak connection at Ancestry, that means it's time to turn back to Poland for help in piecing together the family trees for those other Olejniczak matches. But in doing so, I'll first take a different route to try to solve my research problem.
What I've already done has been to build out my own tree, based on actual documents I've been able to find through Polish websites like BaSIA. This process has its drawbacks. The prime roadblock is that the most recent record I've been able to locate on that website dates to the early 1930s. And that is only one. That is simply not close enough in time to connect with the several Polish DNA matches I have found on MyHeritage.com.
I have been able to look at trees on MyHeritage belonging to these Polish DNA matches, but many of them are evidently researchers whose great-grandparents' life span reached back to dates more recent than that lone 1930s document I was able to find. Realistically, most of the records I've found through BaSIA are from the first decade of the twentieth century, a far cry from these DNA matches' great-grandparents' lifetime.
I realize there are actually two different approaches I can take to try to resolve my dilemma. The first, of course, is to reach out to these matches and see if they would be willing to correspond and collaborate. There is a language barrier involved in this approach, unless my matches were star students in English class in high school—and how many people remember foreign language classes from when they were teenagers?
Granted, there is Google Translate, at which I'm becoming quite proficient, apparently. At the very least, I could send a message in English and attach the translation in hopes Google knew what they were doing when they set up the Polish option. And then there's one more drawback: to hope my matches actually pay attention to their in-box.
The second, and more immediate approach, would be to look to an intermediary genealogy source, a place where people dedicated to genealogy from all over the world assemble to help each other build their family trees: FamilySearch.org. For years, now, I've been building out the Polish branch of my own family tree there, and lately I've noticed some contributions made from others on FamilySearch with decidedly Polish names. Someone from the other side of the immigration divide is actually working on this family, too! Perhaps I can find others on FamilySearch who are working on these same Polish lines and collaborate with them, too.
The universal tree on FamilySearch is like one giant web. I can follow my ancestors from the vantage point of my tree, then trace the branches that have married in, and follow those branches down through the decades. Perhaps there, I can corroborate what I'm finding on places like MyHeritage, which is ripe with DNA matches from Poland, but lacking in the deepest of roots back to the homeland.
For the next couple of days, I'll be turning my attention back to FamilySearch and what I can find on collateral lines linked to the Olejniczak family. Then, I'll jump from that back to MyHeritage and see if the insights from FamilySearch can help guide me as I attempt to build out my DNA matches' trees from MyHeritage. It's an experiment, but hey, I'm the genealogy guinea pig, willing to try (almost) anything to see how it turns out.
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