There's Always Time for a Detour

 

Just blame that beguiling email notice from Ancestry.com. It's almost like they said, "Pssssst! Here's a hint about your brick wall ancestor." Only in this case, it was a message telling me that they found a hint about my own mother—quite a detour from the person I've been planning to research this month.

Well, what's there to learn about one's own mom, right? You think you know everything about the parents you grew up with. But no, this message was too beguiling. I clicked through to discover my mother's entry in the New York City Voter Registers from the years when the high school graduate had arrived fresh from Ohio to seek her fortune in the Big Apple. 

I knew about her dreams, after attending acting school, to break into stardom somehow—stage, radio, movies. I knew about the various venues where she had worked. But cashier at a shop at Rockefeller Center? That entry in the official record wasn't in the plans she had recited to me. Perhaps when she registered to vote, she had run into a dry spell. Everyone has to make a living somehow.

While it was fun to see which party was named in her voter registration, or map out the route from her apartment on Lexington Avenue to her job at Rockefeller Center, the bigger gift of receiving that emailed hint from Ancestry was knowing that I now had access to the actual digitized registers, not just a transcription of key fields skimmed off the pages. Since this month's focus is on one branch of my Polish ancestors, I could now search through that same record set for the entries of all my other New York relatives, both direct ancestors and all their collateral lines from 1915 through 1958. A lot of work, to be sure, but what a treat for my researching curiosity.

While this record set is a new discovery for me, the treat is in the full access to the record, versus being begrudgingly satisfied with the mere transcription. Exploring the full record set allows me to satisfy my need to be nosy about my ancestors, to suck out the marrow of their daily lives' minutiae to somehow build a clearer picture of what was important to them in their day's routine.

New York has always been a difficult place for me to research, mostly on account of the long-time inaccessibility of their records. Both New York State and the city itself have been a problem for many other researchers, as well. I've got plenty of company when, for instance, I once again have an opportunity to cheer the Freedom of Information Act victories at Reclaim the Records, such as the searchable New York State Death Index, now available free online.

Every new addition accessible for free online is a plus for all of us. In this case, a little detour through the records of New York State now available online is a personal treat for me, even though it is a detour from my research plans for this month. Even though my research is now generations removed from that point, there's always time to go back and add more details to the profiles I've long since created for the closest of my near relatives.

A Direct Route

 

Researching the generations of our family whose life spans reached across the chasm of two world wars presents a challenge. Especially for those who lived in Europe during those years, the documents detailing their key life passages were sometimes blown up in the ravages of war. As I'm trying to piece together the chain of events reaching from my second great-grandmother Elżbieta Gramlewicz to the descendants of her siblings, I'm now plunging into that gap in the paper trail.

There is, however, one direct route to provide assurances that I'm on the right track: DNA testing. Even that, though, can present roadblocks. For instance, if I use my results at Ancestry.com, all the ThruLines results for my Gramlewicz ancestors point me to American cousins whom I already know—or whom I can adequately research. Searching through the entire collection of my DNA matches for others whose tree includes that surname—Gramlewicz—points me to only four of those same familiar cousins.

However, if I turn my attention to my results at MyHeritage.com, I can search through all my DNA matches for trees containing the surname Gramlewicz and get some promising results—matches who themselves may still be living in Poland, or have immigrated to another European location. Yet it is a rare tree at that company which includes linked documentation. It's all a mixed bag.

Still, adhering to my two-step shopping model, I can use the best of two different resources—or more, if I add in the generous collection of digitized Polish documents made available at FamilySearch.org. From what I've observed from my matches at MyHeritage, it is generally their parents and grandparents whose records seem to be missing from the FamilySearch collections—that same era of time blasted from the paper trail of those war-torn localities where my ancestors once lived. And, as most people personally knew their own parents and grandparents, ascertaining our connection could be as simple as connecting through an online message.

Contacting such cousins might be easy enough, if they were matches who spoke the same language as I do. But the majority of these matches do not. This means finding a way to create brief messages in a language I don't speak, and with the necessary cultural sensitivities appropriate to uninvited conversations between strangers. Somehow, I sense that protocol is an invisible aspect to cross-cultural communication that I'll need to consider.

Before I leap, crossing that chasm is one which will take thought, not just for logistics, but in the hope of making useful connections. DNA may seem to automatically connect us with "cousins" but it takes much more to bridge that gap between strangers than simply assuming we are both family.

Two Stop Shopping

 

When it comes to Internet resources for researching Polish roots, the typical places Americans use—with the exception of FamilySearch.org—have few Polish resources. For those willing to brave the strange world of websites composed in foreign languages, there is one resource for genealogical information from what was once the Prussian region called Posen: a website called the Database of Archival Indexing System, or BaSIA for short.

I've been there before, and hopefully, that website, combined with the other ones I usually use, will help out once again in my two-stop-shopping approach to searching for ancestors from the small Polish village of Żerków.

BaSIA is volunteer operated, with a long list of contributors who serve as transcribers of records from the region. Though the website, based in Poland, includes an option to select the language in which to view the material, even using that feature only covers a few basic entries in the system.

Perhaps I've just moved into a stage in my research requiring reliance upon not just one website, but a tap dance through a combination of many resources. For me, one-stop genealogy is dead. While I've learned to spot the few key Polish words that are of most interest to genealogists, I've also gotten used to cutting and pasting phrases from their "English language" version of the website into Google translate to guide me.

For instance, take their statement on the website's landing page. There are a few headings in English, but the text below each readable header is obviously not in my native tongue. For instance, look at the subtitle, "About the Project." Understandable enough—until you begin reading the text below that headline. No, your eyes are not deceiving you; you don't need to get a stronger prescription for your reading glasses. The rest of the article is in Polish. But if I run that foreign language statement through a translation system online, here is what our Polish friends behind this useful website are telling us:

The BaSIA project, or 'Archival Indexing System Database', was created for a wide range of genealogists and researchers of the history of Greater Poland from the 18th to the 20th centuries (although it also contains older information). Through a user-friendly interface, it provides users with a database containing indexes compiled by volunteers, derived from materials stored in state and church archives, among others. It allows users to find the names of people they are searching for, links to scans, vital records, and other information that helps identify families, places, and basic facts from their history. The database is created using the ASIA application ('Automatic Archival Indexing System'), which primarily allows for user-friendly indexing of archival records and simultaneously acts as an intermediary in the process of indexing and making the results available online.

As they've expanded over the years at BaSIA, they have included links to the state archive in Poznań, so that you can click through on a specific transcribed record and be led to the actual document from which the transcription was drawn. Thus, I can pull up the actual death record for Elżbieta Gramlewicz Laskowska, drawn up following her April 1886 passing.

What is helpful in this specific case is that the record provides the names of several people related to Elzbieta's family, including the name of her father, given in the document as Andreas Gramlewicz. What I can't yet decipher is what follows the "und" after Andreas' name is entered. It's Elżbieta's mother's name, I'd presume—but what is it? Even the transcriber couldn't decipher the entry.

One for the Price of Two

 

When supposed relatives don't quite fit into the family tree the way we thought, we can sometimes find ourselves building out what turns out to be two trees. In the case of "Uncle" Anton Laskowski and his "niece" Annie Gramlewicz, I may have to do twice the amount of work, just to figure out how she was related to Anton's mother, Elżbieta Gramlewicz. It may turn out that, for my answer, I'll get one tree—but for the price of two.

According to the 1900 census, Annie, who was born in New York, was living with her parents in Brooklyn. She remained in the New York City area until her immigrant parents, Mieczyslaw and Jozefa, decided it was best for them to return to their homeland. Annie may have reluctantly acquiesced to her parents' request that she go back to Poland with them, but it wasn't long until she came back to the place where she was born. The most likely reason? Shortly after appearing in the 1915 New York State census in Anton Laskowski's household, she was married.

Tracing Annie's family back in Poland meant finding the parents for Mieczyslaw Gramlewicz. Tentatively, I've found a likely couple: Lorenz Gramlewicz and Marianna Laskowska. But how Lorenz connects with Anton's mother and her Gramlewicz roots, I have yet to discover. Mieczyslaw's mother's Laskowski roots are also tantalizing, but I've yet to figure out how—or if—Marianna is related to Anton's own Laskowski line.

Looking at FamilySearch.org is often helpful—and often the only recourse for English-speaking researchers seeking Polish documents—because of the huge number of international records accessible through their website. However, for records located in what used to be the region known as Posen in Prussia, there is a Polish website which may come to my rescue. We'll take a look at that resource tomorrow.

When "Uncle" Isn't Entirely Accurate

 

I should have caught on to this detail sooner, but my mind was thinking too literally. When I heard the term "uncle," I took it to mean exactly that: a parent's brother, or perhaps even a parent's brother-in-law. Gone from my mind was any remembrance of the parade of visiting adults in my childhood home whom I dutifully called "uncle" and "aunt" upon my parents' prompting. It was simply a term of respect, not relationship.

If not through that childhood memory, I should have realized that detail through my immigrant acquaintances from various ethnicities, especially when I was introduced to their many "aunts" and "uncles." I once asked a friend from India just how many aunts she had—to which she laughed and explained that whether they were family or friends, if older than she was, they were greeted with that deferential term of respect.

And how many of my friends in California would speak of their "tia" or "tio" and never once give up the detail that there was no relationship? Terms like aunt or uncle, while taken literally by genealogists, can so often mean otherwise.

So when I encountered the 1915 New York State census entry for my great-grandfather Anton Laskowski, listing Annie Gramlewicz among his household residents, I assumed she was indeed what he said she was: his niece.

Anton Laskowski, after all, was my source for his own mother's name. His death certificate reported her maiden name to be Elżbieta Gramlewicz. It would stand to reason that Annie Gramlewicz, logically, would be the daughter of Anton's mother's brother.

How wrong I was. When I did, years later, receive a message from a great-grandniece of Annie, she provided the rest of the family's story, which I've recounted here years ago. From that online contact, I was able to build out Annie's tree for a few more generations—and in that process, though not finding the correct Gramlewicz connection, I did discover a marriage between Annie's direct line Gramlewicz ancestor and another Laskowski relative.

The plot thickens.

Do you suppose that Laskowski ancestor would neatly fit into Anton's patriline? Of course not—not, at least, as far as I've been able to determine through limited access to Polish documentation. In the end—meaning the last time I worked on this puzzle—I set up Annie's side of the Gramlewicz family as a floating branch in my tree, still waiting to be connected to the rest of my Polish ancestry.

Just exactly how Annie could call Anton her uncle is my guiding motivation for selecting the Gramlewicz family as the focus of this month's Twelve Most Wanted. I want to discover more about Elżbieta's parents and siblings, yes, but this chase may go for generations beyond that, depending on just what prompted Anton to call Annie his niece.

. . . And Elżbieta Makes Twelve

 

Welcome to December, the last month of the year, filled with holidays and celebrations. In my case, I hope to celebrate some discoveries about my second great-grandmother, Elżbieta Gramlewicz, her siblings and parents.

I named Elżbieta the last of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025. As I outlined in my research plans nearly a year ago, I hope to learn more about not only Elżbieta herself, but her siblings and parents, as well.

Before we begin this month's search, though, here's an overview of what I've already uncovered about this Polish ancestor. Like many family history researchers, I first learned of Elżbieta's name courtesy of the 1935 New York City death certificate of her son, Antoni Laskowski.

Though I had sent for my immigrant great-grandfather's death certificate the old "SASE" way years ago (if you know, you know), it wasn't until recently that I've been able to retrieve further family information through online means, both in New York City and back in Poland, the land Elżbieta never left. Thanks to FamilySearch.org, I can now view her January 22, 1844, marriage record to Mateusz Laskowski in their home parish in Żerków. 

According to that Żerków marriage record, Elżbieta was noted to be twenty four years of age, putting her estimated year of birth at 1820. However, I have yet to locate any baptismal or birth records for her. The only other detail I've been able to find is courtesy of one website in Poland, which then pointed me to online records from a Polish archive, confirming Elżbieta's 1886 death in the same town where she was married.

To find Elżbieta's siblings will mean locating that birth or baptismal confirmation to first uncover the names of her parents. These details will help me to confirm a number of DNA matches, both at Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com especially, due to the latter's high number of customers from European countries. That puts this as job number one for this coming week, but while I'm looking for further details on this Gramlewicz family behind the scenes, we do need to talk about the one connection I had made with this family, back in New York City, the same place where Elżbieta's name first appeared during my earliest search for her identity.

Looking Ahead

 

With the close of one month, it's time to look ahead to the upcoming month's research challenge. For December, that bustling month of holiday preparations, I'll hopefully reserve some time to gain a breakthrough on yet another of my father's Polish ancestors, my second great-grandmother Elżbieta Gramlewicz. 

For this upcoming month, I'll be taking my cue from last month's research success. I'll not only be exploring what I can find on Elżbieta's parents, but examining her collateral lines. Of course, the main reason for such a move is to seek connections through DNA matches, but in finding records for those collateral matches, it is also possible to find corroboration for other family details, such as mistakenly-entered surnames on records. After all, Polish surnames are not exactly the easiest to spell, as I've already discovered with the past two months' research projects on my paternal lines.

To search for Elżbieta, we'll shift our attention from last month's focus on the tiny villages in Pomerania to the west and the province of Posen, another region where Poland was also swallowed up by the governmental designation of Prussia. Thankfully, once again, a local Polish genealogical organization will come to our rescue with their website providing not only transcriptions of Prussian documents but also links to view the actual records. In particular, we'll be seeking the Gramlewicz family in or near the town called Żerków.

As we launch into December's edition of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025, I'll start with a recap of what we've already discovered about Elżbieta Gramlewicz from work in past years. Then, as always, it will be time to explore what record sources are now available to us this year, and look for promising signs of Elżbieta's life story between 1825 and 1886.