Friends in the Family

 

When it comes to reconstructing what life was like for the ancestors we are researching, those who lived in the same country as we do likely present little trouble for us in accessing the answers we seek. We can simply look up historic details about our location and find ample resources in our own language. Researching ancestors who emigrated from a foreign country, however, presents us with challenges, especially if the people in the originating country spoke a language different than ours.

Oftentimes in those cases, I turn to friends within the extended family for help. Older relatives can sometimes infuse a family history with stories of their own lived experience, adding insight—and sometimes even humor—into the genealogical narrative.

When it comes to my Puchała and Zegarski roots from Poland, however, I run into roadblocks. For one thing, my paternal grandfather made sure no one among his descendants would have any idea of his Polish roots—at least, that's the story from my older siblings and cousins who knew him personally.

So who can I turn to among those living relatives to find any inside observations about these Polish forebears? There certainly weren't any relatives from the Puchała side of the family to consult—at least, none that I have discovered so far. But the Zegarski side? Now, that's a different matter.

Thanks to DNA testing, I've discovered a number of third cousins on that side of the family. The first one I had found, years ago, was the one who pointed me to online resources in the country of Poland, which gave me a great head start. But this month, I've been wondering whether I could find anyone who actually knew any of those immigrant Zegarskis, or at least remembered their children or grandchildren. I've been on a hunt to connect with a recipient of the stories from the old country.

I noticed one distant relative (and DNA match) whose research kept popping up online, so I reached out to see if I could glean any insight on this extended family. While in 2025, the time is too distant to find anyone who personally remembered any of the immigrant Zegarskis, this researcher and I have started collaborating, an encouraging step. 

It's often beneficial to make friends from among the members of the extended family. These second and third cousins are not people I've ever met, but we have a common goal to learn about what our ancestors were really like. Yes, the hurdle of messaging someone who is essentially a stranger can seem daunting—after all, what if he or she doesn't answer?—but if we don't reach out and try to connect, we'll never attain our goal.

Granted, some people who take DNA tests only do so for specific, limited reasons—to learn about their ethnic roots, for instance, but if we look more closely at potential contacts from among our DNA matches, we can identify the most likely candidates who'd potentially respond to our message or, even better, collaborate with us.

If, in our brief introductory message to such candidates, we can identify the specific family line we are curious about, it helps to make a connection. But if we also scope out that individual's research history on that same website, we can get a better idea about who has been at this work consistently over time. Researchers who take the time to not only add documentation to their family tree, but to go out of their way to upload specific family mementos—photographs, or a letter written by an ancestor, for instance—show us the care they take to pursue those mystery roots. Unless people like these turn out to be proprietary about their research—the "don't touch my stuff" types who are, unfortunately, also out there—they may become the perfect research partner for delving into the unknown about our family history together.

Back before we had the wealth of documentation available to us online now, we used to rely far more upon connecting with other researchers. Queries on the forums of the past were full of people searching for anyone else who knew something about their brick wall ancestor. Friends in the family, back then, became a valuable research tool. With the abundance of records now at our fingertips with a click of the mouse, we seem to have forgotten the utility of reaching out and connecting with our own relatives who are seeking the same family history answers. I'm hoping that making an about-face on this trend may recharge this lagging search effort.

Overreach

 

"Bit off more than I can chew" would be something my parents might use to rebuke me for overreaching on those grandiose plans. But when I decided, last Friday, to wrap up my work in a tidy basket—complete the work of connecting all my Zegarski DNA matches at Ancestry.com, then harvest all the Zegarski documents I could find on FamilySearch.org—and be done over the weekend, well...yeah, overreach. 

Update: I'm far from finishing the DNA match connection process at Ancestry. The more DNA cousins I find there, the more I realize I need to update the Zegarski branch on my family tree. Considering how prolific that Wisconsin branch of this immigrant line has been, I'd say this will call for far more work than a weekend's diversion.

Regardless, I went exploring at FamilySearch.org as well. My goal has been to trace the line of descent for all the collateral lines of my Puchała roots. After all, I've got several Polish DNA cousins over at MyHeritage for whom I'd love to establish a connection. Finding the documentation between my ancestors in 1840s Pomerania and current generations across the European continent might be a challenge, but—talk about overreach—I'll give it a try.

In the meantime, I started trying another approach. Put this one in the "oldies but goodies" category: I'm reaching out to those distant Zegarski cousins who are researching the same family lines. Maybe one of them knows more about what the people in our ancestry were like than what we can find from dull, dry documents.

Grunt Work and the Genealogy Guinea Pig

 

You know me: the genealogy guinea pig. I'll try anything to burrow around an ancestral brick wall. Many of those attempts lead to dead ends, but for some, I come out in victory. Experiment successful!

With experiences like that, you might not be surprised to hear that I spend a lot of time helping others wander through their own genealogical maze, hunting for the ancestral big cheese. Some of that time is in formal classroom settings and through teaching lessons on specific topics, but other times, I'm just as likely to be meeting one on one with friends at a coffee shop (with a decent wifi connection, of course) or even via online sessions, chasing our ancestral mysteries.

Considering that, I was rather crestfallen to see a Substack article recommended by other bloggers on "Why Most Genealogy Advice Wastes Your Time." Well, I certainly hope my advice doesn't waste others' time; if it does, it wastes my time, also. 

I had to give that one some thought. During that same week, it so happened that I ended up involved with  several such advice-giving sessions, not just in genealogy, but in other realms as well. I met with a fellow researcher one on one to tackle some problems, held an online DNA special interest group meeting, joined with other researchers in a family history writing group, made a presentation to members of a genealogy society, and led my own society's meeting, in addition to wandering around the back corners of Polish records at FamilySearch.org.

But did that help anybody? That's the key question I glean from the Substack article posed by Denyse Allen. I've got to admit, after all the genealogical effort of the past week—in addition to observing a class taught by someone else—I have to concede she has a point. But not, perhaps, in the exact way she means it.

Over this weekend, I watched someone else teach a class on self-improvement which was free to attend. Being held on a sunny Saturday morning, perhaps it was no surprise to see the event was sparsely attended. I watched as people sat, taking notes, and wondered how many would take a look at those notes again, let alone actually put the advice into practice. I think we've all been dulled by the traditional classroom experience, lulled into listening, then thinking the end of class equates with reaching the finish line.

On the contrary, it's just the beginning. It's what we do next that determines whether we've learned or not.

Stepping back and taking a sweeping view of the evolution of educational techniques—at least for adult learning styles—we are far more suited to collaborative attempts at problem solving. The main reason for this, though, is not that we thrive on chaos, but that we can coach each other as we move, step by step, through that dark tunnel towards the light at the end.

We don't, as it turns out, learn as much from massive data dumps—where our brains hardly get the space to burp—as we do from incremental experiments in progress. We try this, test it out. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't—and then we try something else to solve that same problem.

We're guinea pigs at work, testing the limits of our hypotheses, one by one, to follow the trail to the answer we seek. As I've mentioned in the past when explaining my position as unofficial genealogy guinea pig, learning can be awkward, especially when it is observed in real time. After all, to make progress, you have to admit you don't know something. That's the realization where learning begins.

I've often wished I could change the format of some of the teaching sessions I've done for genealogy. If I could have my way—meaning space to experiment, and resources to make it possible—I'd much prefer putting learning into an engaging environment. A place where we had the luxury of testing ideas out and failing—and then taking the time to make adjustments and try again.

Traditional learning has one assumption baked into the formula: you learn in class; where you apply it is on you, at some other time. Just not now.

Whether I can replicate the genealogy guinea pig in such an experimental classroom, I don't know. It does, for instance, call for participants who are willing to take the time to try new things in real time, right there while we're meeting. And then share, reflecting on what went wrong, and what can be done instead—always moving forward.

Maybe that type of experimental lab needs to not be called a classroom. Nor should the session be called a class. Workshop, maybe. Or perhaps something entirely new. Whatever it turns out to be, hopefully it will be the catalyst to get people out of that listening-only mode into a doing mindset.

Genealogy, after all, can truly turn out to be grunt work. And we all need some encouragement to get through those rough spots in the genealogy puzzle. But on the other side, finding that answer! That's the reward which inspires the genealogy happy dance, and we really need someone to share that moment with us. Why not the people who've been working through the process with us all along?

Not on my Bookshelf Yet: Rosie Grant's "To Die For"

 

I'd presumed that every genealogist who appreciates the work of Find A Grave volunteers had heard about Rosie Grant's new book by now, but when I first read about it months ago, I made a mental note to buy a copy when it came out—and then promptly forgot the planned date of publication.

Well, that's now. Actually, To Die For launched on October 7. The author, who has been active on TikTok and Instagram as @GhostlyArchive, assembled forty of her favorite recipes for this book from highly unusual resources: headstones in cemeteries.

This book, however, is not just about cooking good food. Each of those recipes comes with a story baked into it. Harvested from the very memorials serving as the last reminders of someone's loved one, these recipes come presented in this book along with the author's trademark mix of personal and local history, and family interviews—not unlike what we genealogists hope to do with our family history pursuits. It's not just dry facts drawn from researching documents, but recipes with the life breathed into them from remembrances by family members.

Perhaps I'm a little behind on my reading to-do list, but this one just might become part of some advanced holiday shopping, as well.

Collecting Zegarski Connections

 

While my great-grandfather's Puchała ancestors didn't seem to leave many descendants—at least, if I go by what can be found among my DNA matches—Thomas Puchała's in-laws certainly did. Anastasia Zegarska, my misfortune-plagued great-grandmother of the two surviving children, turned out to have many siblings, nieces and nephews who also migrated to the New World. I would never have known it, judging by the very few relatives I remember from my childhood, but there was a reason for this dearth of paternal kin. For whatever reason, while Anastasia chose to settle in New York City, her Zegarski relatives all headed for Wisconsin.

I never knew that information until just recently, after having taken my DNA test at five different genetic genealogy companies. MyHeritage was the first to pinpoint the Zegarski connections through their AutoClusters tool, but since some genealogy enthusiasts test at multiple places—and keep trees at more than one company, too—I eventually discovered one of those DNA matches also kept a family tree at Ancestry.com. 

That was a fortunate connection. Thankfully, this DNA match was quite willing to answer messages from other DNA matches. Not only that, but the information she provided was very helpful. That contact became my first baby steps into a world of genealogy research I had never tried before: researching Polish roots.

As it turns out, over time—well over a century, now—those Polish immigrants have yielded more relatives than I've been able to count. Still, I'm trying to keep track. Thanks to the ThruLines tool at Ancestry, plus the Shared Matches option from Ancestry's ProTools, I've been connecting the dots between those many unknown distant cousins and my Zegarski ancestry.

It's all adding up. And there's more to find. Sometimes, research can seem monotonous, but this repetition is forming a network of descendants I never knew existed. Perhaps I'm in awe over what can be found through DNA—at least when we have effective tools for organizing these many unknown people.

This weekend, I'll be taking time to see how many more unidentified relatives I can connect to this Zegarski line of descent, using the tools at Ancestry.com. Then, I'll turn to FamilySearch records to see whether I can spot any further collateral lines to document for each Puchała generation in Poland and the lines of their in-laws, then trace their descendants. Once equipped with further documentation on the lines of these newly-discovered descendants, on Monday, we'll see what connections can be made with the DNA matches listed at MyHeritage.  

Can't Push Forward, Can't Move Backward

 

When it comes to my Puchała line, I guess I've got to admit I'm stuck. I can't move that line backwards one more generation from my second great-grandfather Jan Puchała, and it sure looks like I can't even push forward in time to discover anything more about his son Thomas, my great-grandfather.

Stuck: I hate to admit it. Worse yet, I can't find any explanation for what became of Thomas Puchała. He simply seems to have disappeared. Thomas' wife Anastasia Zegarska traveled with her two surviving children, eventually ending up in that vast entry point for countless immigrants, New York City—but she certainly didn't appear to arrive under that same married name.

When Anastasia arrived in New York, the first appearance I can find for her is a woman with a different married name. That name was so different that it seemed to stump the local enumerator for the 1910 census, who simply wrote it as "Annie Kusfkr."

Whatever Anastasia's name had become, it was clear that it was a different married name, certainly not any variation on Puchała. It wasn't until I followed a long and winding trail for her daughter—now going by the shortened given name Rose—who had also apparently married by 1910.

From married names "Muller" to Kober to Hassinger I followed Rose. Somewhere in the middle of that chase, when Rose was still married to George Kober and Anastasia was "widowed" and living with them, one devastating morning Rose found that unusual married name blurting out from her trembling lips when she called for help after discovering that her mother had taken her own life. Whatever that name was from the 1910 census, I found it—or at least a closer approximation—in Anastasia's death certificate, even though the accompanying news report from her residence in Queens borough in New York City identified her as Anna Kraus.

One thing was clear, though, from tracing Anastasia from her maiden name to Puchała, to Krauss, and to  Kusharvski: something must have happened to Thomas Puchała long before Anastasia took her two children, Rosalia and Teodor, aboard a boat sailing for America. That record will still be on my research list for a long time, I suspect.

In the meantime, there is much more that can be done on this extended Puchała line. For one thing, I have the aggravation of cleaning up resources and plugging them into the universal tree at FamilySearch.org, complete with proof arguments to explain the convoluted story of what's been found. Rose, in her own several permutations, has appeared in at least two other family tree identities, though in none of them does she show any descendants of her own. Anastasia, as well, could use some explanation, at least for the missing marriage records, wherever those events occurred.

In addition to that, since one goal this month was to examine my paternal grandfather's patriline, that calls for seeking DNA matches who connect to that line. The difficulty is in finding the connections to those descendants who still remain in Poland—or even those who may have emigrated, but now have descendants in other European countries. The DNA may reveal some clues, but the documentation, once again, will be key—if I can find it.

While we're stuck in this tight loop, searching for missing documentation, I'll take some time to examine what can be found through DNA tests, especially at the one resource for the most international test results: MyHeritage.com. 

Another Generation, Another Location?

 

Why is it that we see our ancestors as people who lived in the same location, generation after generation? I don't know about you, but when I think of great-grandparents and the generations beyond that, I'm surprised to learn that they moved on to new locations from the place where they were born.

In my current experiment—finding how far I can go on the lines associated with my paternal grandfather's Polish Puchała roots—I'm seeing my ancestors stay in one town for maybe a generation or two. Then, onward the trail leads me to another location—if, at least, I am still following the same line.

Now that we've pushed back from Thomas Puchała to his father Jan and his wife Susanna Radomska, I thought I'd try my hand at finding Susanna's Radomski roots. It was no surprise to discover that Susanna was born in the same town as the one where she married Jan Puchała. The daughter of Andrzej Radomski and Marianna Nierzwicka, Susanna was born in Lubichowo, as we can surmise from her baptismal record in the Catholic Church there on New Year's Day in 1824.

But the daisy chain of family connections bids us push just one generation further to find her parents. While looking for the Latin version of their names in church documents, a marriage record for Andream Radomski and Maryanna Nierzwicka showed up for November 13, 1814.

Only problem: the church record was not kept in Lubichowo, but in a Prussian town known as Hoch Stüblau. Now what?

Straight to that trusty search engine I went, where the Meyer's Gazetteer pointed out a place by that same name. At the same time, Google redirected me to a place called Zblewo. Sure enough, if you click on the "map" tab under the Meyer's Gazetteer entry for Hoch Stüblau, in smaller print, you can see the word Zblewo.

Back to Google Maps to double check distances and feasibility. 

Sure enough, if taking the most direct route between the two locations, the distance made sense. Though more of a walk than the towns I had checked before, Zblewo is still a reasonable distance at about seven and a half miles from Lubichowo.

On the other hand, looking more closely at the handwritten record itself, the location of the ceremony looked vaguely like it was written as "Libichowo." Perhaps the marriage ceremony was held in Lubichowo, but the record was kept in Zblewo? Something to check for more information on typical clerical procedures in the Catholic Churches in that place and time.