When the Going Gets Slower

 

There are times, as I pause to do my biweekly count, when it seems I am rocketing through the collateral lines of my family's generations. Such is often the case when I am working on my mother-in-law's family, as I do each spring. But when it comes to my dad's Polish side of the family, the going gets slower. Much slower.

Today's numbers show that handily. Over the past two weeks, I've managed to add seventy three new documented relatives to my family tree. That number came with considerable effort, cross-checking records on two different websites in Poland, as well as three genealogical sites based in the United States.

True, I've managed to add links to each record, leading back to archival holdings in the region close to where my ancestors once lived in Poland, but checking corresponding documents for each member of the family has been a slow process. My tree now has 42,103 hard-won victories, comprised of difficult searches such as this, done over the past decade and then some.

Meanwhile, not a stitch of work has been done on my in-laws' tree. That work will wait until the spring months, when I'll take up my mother-in-law's line once again. Thus, that tree has been frozen in time at 44,402 documented relatives. Barring any close family changes—weddings and baby announcements being prime movers there—that number will remain static until April.

It's not for lack of effort, and certainly not owing to time that the research pace has slowed. It's just that some research projects are more challenging. Finding family in Poland, while not impossible, does present its challenges. The one carrot dangling in front of me and drawing me onward is the fact that there are actual DNA cousins among my matches, primarily at MyHeritage. I do want to benefit from the information these tests are providing. It's just that finding corroborating evidence is my current sticking point.

DNA testing may be a great resource for genealogy, but the paper trail provides me with the assurance I need to see the path that connects me with my genetic links in Poland. With time—and the addition of future digitized records in Poland, hopefully—this process will be worth both the work and the learning curve.