Back to Poland: Taking a Different Route

 

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. 

The Long Slide Down to the Present

 

Sometimes, it seems near impossible to connect collateral lines of our ancestors with stray DNA matches on our list of results. That's the way it's been, working with my second great-grandmother Franciszka Olejniczak's brother's family. Despite knowing that Franciszka's brother Bartłomiej had at least six children, I could only find marriage records for five of them. And when it came to tracing grandchildren, only four of those couples appeared in birth records for their own children.

One son of Bartłomiej in particular, Jan—the one whom his 1869 Catholic Church baptismal record had listed as Joannes—seemed to have disappeared from view entirely. Not even a death record could I find for the child.

As I've worked through each of my Polish ancestors, the understanding that some of those many untraceable children may have "disappeared" because they actually headed to America was first on my mind. After all, once such a relative made a move like that, it might be far easier to research that branch of the family in American documents rather than Prussian or Polish records.

Such a hope would bring with it some research hazards. Prime among those would be the possibility that the immigrant chose to blend in by adjusting a Polish-sounding surname to sound more American. While many family history researchers have laid to rest that tired explanation that their ancestor's surname was "changed at Ellis Island," there is still the possibility that, at some point after arrival, an immigrant might make such a choice. Then how could we trace them?

Even though I already knew my own grandmother's brother had made such a choice with his surname, I entirely doubted a DNA match that popped up in my ThruLines results at Ancestry. After all, that match linked me with a supposed family member by the slimmest of connections: a puny seven centiMorgans shared between us.

The sticking point, though, was the surname that was supposed to be similar to mine. Granted, Olejniczak might be a mouthful of consonant soup to someone not acquainted with handling Polish phonics, so I can understand the desire to make it a surname more easily called to mind—or at least less likely to be misspelled. But I could also see that resultant changed name stand on its own as a separate Polish surname. I had presumed it was a coincidental connection.

The thought has ever since nagged at me, so now that I'm working on this Olejniczak branch of my father's family, I decided to check it out afresh. After all, now that I have the BaSIA website with its resources linked to actual archival records, I had been going through each of Bartłomiej's children and grandchildren carefully, looking up each Prussian document, squinting at the German handwriting and hoping my rudimentary understanding of how to read the script was not leading me astray. 

Still, after all of that, no sign of Jan after his baptismal record. 

Fast forward to my DNA match in, of all places, Ohio. Besides not expecting any of my Polish relatives to have chosen to head to Ohio—New York was more my family's tendency—I knew I had to work on that similar surname choice for the immigrant in question.

This is where looking at every document that can be found for a specific person becomes important. Especially with a surname like Olejniczak, which has spelling made to stump even the most careful of us, it turned out that I could trace the evolution of Jan's name from Olejniczak to the eventual form that it took.

Included in that change was the first, unsurprising, incorrect transcription of the 1920 census. In looking at the actual handwriting on the document, it appears the enumerator might have gotten the spelling correct at Olejniczak, but the effort was somewhat mangled, possibly overwritten. Still, it provided information on Jan—now listed as John—along with his wife, three foreign-born children, and the following three, all born in Ohio.

That census provided valuable help in giving a timeline of the Olejniczak family's travels, based on the birth of those last three children. It also indicated that the family arrived in America in 1905, and that they were naturalized in 1913.

Tracing the family from that point forward illustrated how the surname morphed to its final appearance. What was more valuable, though, was looking back, based on that 1920 census, to locate naturalization records. A Form 1-IP from the U.S. Naturalization Service, found at FamilySearch, summarized John's legal process in becoming a U.S. citizen, with the only discrepancy being a date of birth matching his baptismal record in every respect except the month—July instead of June.

I certainly wouldn't have considered a DNA match based on a connection as small as seven centiMorgans, but combined with multiple records over the length of this immigrant's lifetime convinced me that this John was one and the same as Jan Olejniczak, son of Bartłomiej—and that Jan's own grandson was indeed a DNA cousin.

If only the DNA matches who stayed in Poland would present research trails as easy to follow.

About Bartłomiej

 

If Bartholomew—or Bartłomiej in Polish—turns out to be the younger brother of my second great-grandmother Franciszka Olejniczak, it might pay DNA dividends to explore the details concerning his descendants. 

Bartłomiej was, as we've already discovered, born in 1838 in a small Prussian village which is now called Jeżewo in Poland. One of three villages by that name, this one historically identified as part of the Kreis, or district, called Gostyń. The listing of his parents in his baptismal record confirms his mother Józefa's maiden name as Grzegorczyk, and his father as Nicolaus, the Latin version of the Polish name Mikołaj.

Following the paper trail through Bartłomiej's lifespan at the Polish website BaSIA allowed me to glean details on his 1863 marriage to Katarzyna Orszulak, and locate baptismal records for their six children, Franciszka, Walenty, Jan, Marianna, Katarzyna, and Józefa. Those records take us from Franciszka's birth in 1864 through Józefa's arrival in 1876, just before the family lost their mother Katarzyna in 1877.

Pertinent to my DNA quest, each of Bartłomiej's children not only lived to adulthood, but married and had children of their own. Best I can tell, each of those families remained in Poland, with the exception of one, who apparently emigrated as a young man and ended up in Ohio with a young family of his own.

Piecing together that family story—both from my part, looking ahead in time from the vantage point of the family in Prussia, and from the DNA match's viewpoint, looking backwards to find the link with the family left behind—has at times had me wondering. Name changes as immigrants sought to anglicize their surname (or even their given name) make the attempt challenging. And the DNA match leading back to my second great-grandmother's brother Bartłomiej means that, at best, I am looking for relatives who are fourth cousins, no closer.

Finding one such example, though, has me hoping to find more. There are some branches of this Olejniczak family line who seemed to have simply disappeared. Adding to the problem is the stark reality that some DNA matches haven't connected themselves—or perhaps are unable to—with their third and fourth great-grandparents.

With limitations on access to available digitized records in Poland, I can't always count on building my own version of a match's tree. There are bound to be missing links. No matter how tempting it might be to guess the connection, the only verification would still be up to the records, themselves.

And yet, the more we search, the more records we discover. I need to remember that when stalled at a brick wall moment.

Brother Bartholomew

 

Any time we expand our family history research to include collateral lines, you know that can lead to solving questions about our mystery DNA matches. That's exactly my aim in pushing backwards in time to discover the parents of my second great-grandmother Franciszka Olejniczak.

In fact, though I've been questioning the various entries for Franciszka's mother's maiden name, just testing those versions on document searches at FamilySearch.org and Polish websites led me to identify another child born to the couple, Nicolaus (or Mikołaj in Polish) Olejniczak and Józefa Grzegorczyk (or possibly Grozegorski). That child, born in 1838 and baptized that year on August 19, was Franciszka's younger brother, Bartholomew.

That, of course, would be the brother's name in English. The baptismal record, written in Latin for this Catholic family, listed his name as Bartholomaeus. I suspect that, having been born to a Polish family in what was then considered part of the country of Prussia, his family likely called him Bartłomiej at home.

The beauty of finding this document is that it corroborates one of the two maiden names I've already found listed for Franciszka's mother: Grzegorczyk. Granted, that could be a second priest misspelling the surname in the same erroneous way, but it does help point me towards that variation for future searches.

My quest to discover DNA matches descending from this Olejniczak family may already have paid off, with one DNA cousin who has that same surname in his tree. Whether that tree is correct, I can't yet say. First, we need to check what can be found about this Bartholomew—a.k.a. Bartłomiej—in the Polish resources we've already begun using, something to explore this coming week.

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.

Preserving Stories, Prompting Memories

 

Once a month, our local genealogical organization gathers for an informal meeting, simply to allow members to talk with each other about their research, interesting finds in local history, and, frankly, anything else of interest they'd like to discuss. We started that a few years ago as an antidote to the Covid-era online meetings, since members missed the opportunity to just talk with each other.

This week at our meeting, the subject turned to preserving family stories, regardless of whether our immediate family members cared to know about them. Concern about the loss of family stories—realized too late to go back and ask our grandparents or even aunts or uncles what we'd missed—weighed heavily on some of our members. 

One solution was to write those stories down as they came to mind. That may sound like a reasonable solution. Just do it: sit down and write. But some members realized that they had experiences in life, things that had happened years ago, that they had since forgotten about. If it weren't for someone jogging their memory—a random question from a family member or friend—the situation would never have come to mind, let alone take form with pen on paper.

Those of our members who have been gifted with some of the recent products marketed to help us preserve our family stories had a quick response to that predicament. They discovered that using such products caused them to stumble upon such forgotten memories. The writing prompts jogged their memories, sometimes even prompting them to wander through a series of memories, before they started writing.

One member is nearly done with a year-long writing program given to her by her family last Christmas. She's been quite diligent to regularly work through the program, and has been surprised at the personal or family experiences she's actually forgotten over the years. Now that is down on paper, soon to be included in the book that will be published from her work. Hopefully, the writing prompts represented the very questions her (now grown) children would someday wish they had thought to ask.

We all have questions we wish we had thought to ask our elders when we had the opportunity. Leaving our own breadcrumb trail of stories may help the next generation when it's their turn to wish they had thought to ask.

Location, Location, Location: Finding Resources

 

When it comes to determining whether a branch of the family tree diverged to follow the trail of a misleading name twin, one detail that can serve as a warning is location. In Franciszka Olejniczak's case, two records supposedly for my second great-grandmother provided different locations, one for the each of the events on record. One identified the town of her birth as Jezewo. The other showed her marriage in Jaratschewo.

If Polish tradition follows that of several other countries and a wedding was customarily held near the bride's home, we are in trouble if we assume each of these documents represented my second great-grandmother. While I certainly can't ask any of the wedding guests if the bride was the "real" Franciszka, digging deeper into information on the two towns might provide some guidance.

First step might be to see how closely the two towns were situated. Though this involves Polish ancestors, I know one piece of advice from researching my father-in-law's Irish ancestors was always to map out the distance between the two towns; if their locations were within a reasonable walking distance from each other, that might make sense.

However, these were names in German given to towns which were then part of Prussia. Maps today correspond to current geo-political boundaries. My first step, then, would be to consult an online version of Meyers Gazetteer. But to look for Jezewo, the town where Franciszka was baptized, I already run into problems: there were not one, but three places which went by that name. Which was the right one?

Checking all the details on that baptismal record, thankfully it provided not just the name of the family's home, but also the "Kreis" (district, similar to the American county) and the province. Returning to the Gazetteer, we can see that the third choice offered, Jezewo in Gostyn, matches the baptismal record. Thankfully.

From that point, I turn to Google to search for the modern-day name for the Polish town once called Jezewo in Prussia. The transformation was barely perceptible, with one tiny diacritical mark added for the benefit of pronunciation: Jeżewo. Once I added the second destination on my map, the location of Franciszka's marriage, I determined that the 7.4 kilometer distance between the two was reasonable enough for a possible move for the family, or a marriage celebration in a nearby town.

In going through these steps, I also explored what else could be found on the two locations, both historically and through genealogical sources. It's always handy to stumble upon helpful other resources, and this search led me to some I'll be bookmarking.

One helpful resource I found in this process was an inventory of available church records for the Prussian province of Posen. This useful table includes a large listing of records from the FamilySearch catalog, searchable by locality, Kreis (district), and church organization. Each entry under the heading "Title" is clickable and leads to that line item's record set. For instance, clicking on the entry for Jeżewo brings me to church records in multiple image group numbers for that village alone.

Record sets like those included in this finding aid at FamilySearch.org will keep me busy working my way through the many Olejniczak descendants I've managed to add to my family tree so far, providing another resource to compare with what I've already been able to find through the Polish online resource BaSIA. The process may be tedious, but it is allowing me to work my way from the early 1800s with Franciszka's parents, well into the early decades of the 1900s. Hopefully at some point soon, I'll have enough information to dovetail into the family trees of my Polish DNA matches.

A Mother's Maiden Name

 

Finding a mother's maiden name can become a challenge for family historians. In this month's case of researching my second great-grandmother Franciszka Olejniczak, however, I've already found records where people were all too glad to divulge that information. In fact, I've managed to glean two options for that valued detail.

As we reviewed two different records for Franciszka, it was possible that her mother's name had been recorded in error in one of those two documents. In Franciszka's baptismal record, her mother was identified as Josepha Grozegorski, while Franciszka's marriage record showed her mother as Josephae Grzegorczyk.

I'm not too concerned with the variations in the given name. After all, church records are supposed to be written in Latin. Josephae was probably right, given the context and the syntax required in the document's wording. And Josepha in the baptismal record was probably a similar Latin version, as actually the Polish form would have been Józefa. But the surnames? That's a different matter.

Still, we have to cut these clerics some slack—as well as remember that, until I can get to a FamilySearch center in person, I'm working from transcriptions. Remembering how miserable it sometimes is to read other people's handwriting—to say nothing of sloppy handwriting of prior centuries—I'm quite satisfied to give the benefit of the doubt, at least until I can see those documents for myself.

But which one would the actual maiden name be? As incredible as it might be to an English-speaker's mind, I tend to go with the consonant mash up, Grzegorczyk.

There are some reasons for this. First, having spent considerable time trying to make my peace with Polish phonics, I already know how to pronounce the not-unusual suffix "-czyk." Then, the first part of that surname, "Grzegorz" forms the Polish man's name for which the English equivalent would be Gregory.

I did a simple search online for information on the Polish surname Grzegorczyk. Wikipedia, incredibly, offered a small blurb on the surname. Ancestry.com, of course, provided some perspective, not only explaining the origin and the suffix, but offering two options for that surname. One version of the surname, as it appears in records I've found, is Grzegorczyk. The other, with the entry providing far more information, is for the spelling Grzegorzyk.

All that to say, Grzegorczyk is a patronymic surname. In other words, Josefa's patrilineal ancestor somewhere back in history was likely named "Gregory" and all that followed in that family were known as "son of Gregory."

It is highly unlikely I'll ever be able to trace such a theory through records. I'm having a hard time locating Polish records that reach back to the time of Franciszka's mother in the early 1800s. But having learned a bit of the surname's history, no matter how unpronounceable that consonant soup appears to be on paper, I'm feeling more confident that the priest writing out her baptismal record probably paused to ask, "Now how do you spell that?!"

Same People, Different Place

 

Name twins are always lurking in research shadows, putting family historians on high alert. The trouble with researching ancestors like my second great-grandmother Franciszka Olejniczak is that I've run into that same name in different residences. Do both records pertain to the same person in such cases? I've had to put Google Maps through its paces to ensure that, in such cases, I'm dealing with the same people—it's just that they've moved to a different place.

In the instance of my Polish forebears, there is another step to add to the verification process: records for my second great-grandmother's lifespan were drawn up when the places where she lived belonged to a different country: Prussia instead of Poland. With the change of government often came a change in geographic names.

Take this example of Franciszka's marriage record. On February 13, 1854, Franciszka became the bride of Franciszek Jankowski. The document noted the place where this occurred: Jaratschewo in Jarotschin, part of the Prussian province of Posen. That, of course, is not what the place is called today, so I checked to see whether I could learn the Polish name for that old Prussian village.

In this case, the revision was predictable, basically incorporating Polish phonics instead of German: Jaraczewo. But then, not satisfied to leave it at that one marriage record, I went looking for a birth record. After all, Franciszka's marriage record gave the name of her parents, so I assumed I'd have additional help in finding her birth record. 

Sure enough, there was a baptismal record for Franciszka, giving her date of birth as January 22, 1836. Along with the baby's name, parents' names were included. Granted, this was a church document, so the information was given in Latin, not Polish (or even German). But there was one slight problem: those parents' names in the baptismal record didn't quite match up to the wedding record. Close, but not exact.

For the wedding record, I already had learned that Franciszka's parents were Nicolai Oleyniczak and Josephae Grzegorczyk, but when I came to the earlier church record, the names appeared as Nicolaus Olajniczak and Josepha Grozegorski.

I wasn't too concerned about these differences as much as I was about the fact that each document gave a different location. What if these two Olejniczak children were simply name twins?

To the maps I went, on the theory that if the one town was within walking distance of the other town, I still had a chance that each represented the same person. Once again, for this baptism location, I needed to translate the Prussian town name to its current designation in Poland. Jezewo in Kreis (county) Gostyn in the province of Posen during Prussian rule became, simply, Jeżewo. Because this was such a small village, though, I needed to check for the nearby town of Borek Wielkopolski. (In fact, though I can find a Wikipedia entry on Jeżewo, it is offered only in Polish with translation into French and a couple other languages, but not English. Of course, it is possible to run the text through a translation service, but even if you don't, you can still enjoy the pictures.)

Having checked all that and entered the two locations on Google Maps, asking for directions for those traveling on foot told me that the distance between the two event locations was a little over seven kilometers. In other words, Google estimated that a person could make that hike in an hour and forty minutes.

Having checked all that eased me into thinking that perhaps bride Franciscam and baby Francisca were the same individual, and that spelling her maiden name of Olejniczak had stumped at least two different priests. Father of the bride Nicolai was likely one priest's approximation of the Polish name Mikołaj, and the baby's father Nicolaus was far more likely to be a Latin version of the same.

But mother Josephae? Though this could be the key to providing me with information on the generation preceding Franciszka, the mother's maiden name provided in one document was far too removed from the other version. This surname was one to check into more deeply.

Going Easy on the Search Terms

 

Finding Franciszka Olejniczak in the midst of records in multiple languages may prove to be a challenge. There are some things to keep in mind when researching a Polish ancestor like this second great-grandmother of mine. Here's a little "score card" to help, providing some things to keep in mind as we proceed. We've got to go easy on ourselves when researching in this location during the time period which includes her lifespan, from the early 1800s to the beginning of the next century.

For one thing, Poland wasn't a political designation at that point. Though Franciszka and her parents Mikołaj Olejniczak and Josepha Grzegorczyk may have always thought of themselves as Polish by ethnicity, they were residents of a country then known as Prussia. Even reading a brief overview of the historical consequences of Prussian and German rule over what is now the western portion of modern-day Poland, I can begin to understand the possible underpinnings of why my father's immigrant family brought with them a sense of avoiding all identification with a Polish heritage.

Such historical details may lie hidden behind our genealogical rush to find the bare basics of documentation evidence, but they cannot be ignored. Yet, even in the rudimentary search for paper evidence of their existence, it is easy to see the language predicament they—and, by proxy, we as researchers—faced in their daily life.

For one thing, those of my Polish ancestors who adhered to the faith system of their own forebears were mostly Catholic. Thus, from the very first writing of their name in baptism, these ancestors were recorded in the language of the Church: Latin. However, that is not necessarily a guarantee that the priest recording the records was himself a native speaker of the Polish language. A Catholic priest from, say, Italy or France might hear a Polish surname and write it as he heard it, including the phonics of his own native language, all somehow bundled up with the requirement of a Latin record.

A name like Olejniczak might suffer all sorts of permutations with that treatment. Take the letter "j" for instance, and think of how differently it was pronounced by the various languages on the European continent—not to mention the history of the evolution of the letter itself. For some, "j" and "i" were interchangeable. Thus, to search for old records under a surname like Olejniczak requires an understanding of that history.

That would be the hazards of navigating Latin records. Then, too, there were civil records, which were kept in German, with its old script which is hardly read in our current times, taking an effort to decipher, using another set of skills. 

Underlying all that was the fact that, in a Polish resident's own language, there were different phonics and customs for naming. Regarding phonics, a name which in a Latin baptismal record in 1836 might be rendered as Francisca might in Polish be written as Franciszka—and pronounced with a "sh" sound for the "sz" in the Polish spelling of her name. Likewise, her father, given as Nicolaus in her baptismal record, would actually be written as Mikołaj in Polish, complete with diacritical marks which could be transcribed by English-speaking volunteers in our day as a "t" instead of an "ł."

Wild cards rule the day for searches through digitized record collections.

That, however, is not all, when it comes to going easy on search terms. We also need to take into considering cultural naming traditions. In the case of the Polish culture, their language expects agreement between what might be called "masculine" versus "feminine" word endings. This extends to surnames. So, for instance, any daughter whose father's Polish surname ended in the quintessential "-ski" would have her own surname completed with the revised "-ska." In Franciszka's case, her surname did not end in a vowel, so that would not usually apply to such cases, but it is something to keep in mind when researching many other Polish surnames.

All of this blends together to tell me one thing: when searching for an ancestor whose family originated in the area now known as Poland, don't take that search process literally. Use wildcard characters, depending on the usage rules of the website being consulted, or enter segments of the name, like "Francis" instead of "Franciszek" or "Franciszka." And if the website allows percentages of similarity in a search box, slide that bar down from a high and mighty ninety nine percent to a more forgiving number.

Just as I did in October for the other members of my father's Polish family, next I'll jump into the Polish websites to see what can be found on Franciszka's family. Hopefully, there will be additional names showing up in both church and civil records to tell us more about this extended Olejniczak family.

Meet Franciszka

 

At the beginning of each year, when I plot out my research plans for the next twelve months, how little I know about what I might find when I actually get down to the work itself. In the case of this last quarter of the year, when I usually focus on my father's Polish ancestors, that predicament especially applies. 

It was no surprise, then, to begin October with plans to research my father's paternal grandfather's mother, Susanna Radomska, and end the month discovering that not only was I hobbled in that goal, but faced the same situation with my early attempt at handling November's goal, a different ancestor named Franciszek Jankowski. Thus, we find ourselves jumping forward once again to December's goal from my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, to attempt the impossible with another of my second great-grandparents, Franciszka Olejniczak.

In introducing Franciszka this early, I can at least say I've already discovered a few facts about her life. Mostly owing to her marriage to Franciszek Jankowski in 1854, I can say that she was likely born around 1836, and that her parents were named (at least according to church documents in Latin) Nicolai "Oleyniczak" and Josephae Grzegorczyk.

This discovery of her marriage record enables us to broaden the search for Franciszka's extended family around the Prussian town of Jaratschewo, now known in Poland as Jaraczewo. There are, as it turns out, other records linked to that Olejniczak surname which might be helpful guides in this pursuit.

First, however, it might be necessary to review a few details, tomorrow, about Polish research in general before we proceed with Franciszka's life story.

Maybe his Wife Will Tell

 

It's been a month of mostly fruitless searching. After realizing, two weeks in, that no more records were materializing for my Twelve Most Wanted focus for October—my second great-grandmother Susanna Radomska—I jumped forward to my November candidate. Again, two weeks in, and I realized there was nothing more to locate among documents in Poland for a different second great-grandparent, Franciszek Jankowski.

Here we are, wrapping up the shards of crashed research dreams for both October and November, and I'm wondering, "Now what?" That's when I realized: if I can't find anything more on Franciszek, maybe his wife will tell what became of the missing family pieces.

Fortunately, Franciszek's wife Franciszka was already my selection for the last of my Twelve Most Wanted research plans for 2026. Yes, I know: even though we just turned back our clocks, that doesn't make the month jump forward to December. But since I'm now on a roll with Polish records, it makes sense to broaden the search on this couple and examine the other side of that family.

With that, tomorrow we'll begin with an official introduction to Franciszka Olejniczak. But before we entirely close the books on this year's attempt at learning more about her husband, we need to recap what still remains to be done, so that the next time I tackle Franciszek Jankowski, I'll be primed and poised at the starting line for a new month's research sprint.

My main unanswered question for Franciszek this month was what became of all his children. Other than the two daughters who migrated to the American state of New York and the one daughter who married and remained in Poland, I have yet to discover what became of all the other children in this immediate family. On my next attempt at researching this family, I'll want to find documentation for each of the other six children.

In addition, I'll want to find records regarding his daughter Antonina Jankowska and her husband Josef Karcz and all their children—at least the seven for whom I have found birth or baptismal records. I want to know whether any of those children eventually followed their aunts and uncles to the New World. Or, if remaining in Poland, whether they lived to adulthood and eventually raised families of their own. I also want to know if, among those Jankowski descendants, there are any DNA matches whom I have yet to identify.

Most of that wish list will require one of two items. The one item will be discovery and digitization of baptismal, marriage, and death records for years earlier than the few spotty glimpses I've managed to catch of the older members of this family. An actual birth record for Franciszek himself, for instance, would help by confirming the names of his parents, as I suspect his mother's maiden name may have been entered in error on his marriage record. Finding siblings for Franciszek might be assisted by having that correct mother's maiden name, too.

The second item I'll need will be retrieval of records more recent than the early 1900s. This will particularly help in tracing the younger children of Franciszek and Franciszka, as well as the next generation with daughter Antonina's children.

All this may take time to find its way onto online resources, especially if the only resource will come from volunteer-driven genealogy websites in Poland, itself. Those sites have been an immense help to me so far, and I can see how those volunteers have brought even more records online than I had found in past research sessions. I'm hoping the trend continues, so that the next time I revisit this research question, there will be ample resources to check for answers.

Until then, it's on to December's challenge, a month early. We'll meet Franciszka Olejniczak tomorrow.

A Scary Thought

 

I had a scary thought this month as I was banging my head against an immovable ancestral brick wall—and no, it wasn't scary simply on account of Halloween. It's a thought that has been rising up like a spectre, even back as early as the summer months when I was struggling with my father-in-law's Irish forebears, and even more so, now that I seem to make no headway on my Polish roots.

That thought has to do with the ebb and flow of interest in genealogy, not just for myself, but for all the people whom we, as leaders of genealogical societies, hope to entice as members. While yes, there are many people who become interested in discovering more about their family's history, and some who even express that interest by joining local or state genealogical societies, their continued interest eventually wanes. 

I know that when I brainstorm with other board members of genealogical societies about dwindling membership participation, we often end up fixing the blame on external factors. Some say we're not visible "enough" on social media. Or that we meet at the wrong hours of the day or week. Maybe that we're not "relevant" to younger potential members. Or that potential members can get everything they need or want by researching their family online at the many websites designed for that purpose.

Whatever the explanations that society leaders come up with, I think they are losing sight of one point: that the trajectory of a person's pursuit of family history can have a far shorter range than we expect.

For those of us fanatics devoted to chasing our family's stories, we think everyone, once started on this path, will become addicted and never give up the pursuit. Perhaps for someone like me, the one who claims I was born wanting to know, that desire will never fade. But not everyone is like that. Some people's interest peaks when they get married, or have their first child. Some people never thought they'd be interested at all, until a sibling or cousin talked them into taking a DNA test or shared a surprising discovery from their own research. 

For people like that, interest in genealogy sparks, then increases, then experiences a decline. Maybe even an ebb and flow of interest, such as I had when teaching full time; holiday breaks and summer vacations became my only time to research.

But I'm realizing there is another reason that can choke out that genealogical interest. That reason has to do with the very experiences I've been having the past few months—and in an odd way, is a reaction to the oft-asked question, "How far back have you gone?"

Face it, when you can't go any farther, when there are no more records to access and the trail goes cold—not just for your kazillionth great-grandparent, but for everyone living in that same village or, worse, for the entire country—what else is left to do? That's where the interest lags.

Frankly, I suspect that many of our own society's longstanding members haven't tried their hand at researching their ancestors for years. They remain loyal to our society simply because they wish to support the cause, or help others who are just starting, or like the vibe of talking about someone else's genealogy "happy dance."

To me, the more important question is, why did they stop researching? And the scary thought is, what happens to genealogical organizations when members realize they have no more to find about their family history? Unless our members remain willing to be available to help others still excited about their research path, it's no surprise that so many have talked about dwindling membership numbers at genealogical societies.

And that's a scary thought. 

Another American Line

 

When searching for descendants of my second great-grandfather Franciszek Jankowski, there is one more line I should mention: the line of descent that leads to my own branch of the family. 

Franciszek had another daughter who had headed to America from their Prussian village of Żerków: Marianna. Actually, years before her sister Stanisława married Franciszek Janczak and moved to Buffalo, New York, Marianna had made the journey to New York City—and stayed there.

The trip, taken in 1889, brought Marianna from Hamburg in Germany, along with her three surviving children, Jan, Sofia, and Mieczyslaus. Presumably, Marianna's husband, Anton Laskowski, had taken that same route nearly two years earlier, if I've found the right passenger list for his crossing to New York.

Anton's voyage in 1887 marked the same year as their youngest son's passing. With so many deaths in the extended family leading up to that year, I imagine Marianna's husband decided enough was enough, and went looking for a way to provide a better life for his family. I can also presume that Anton made the voyage along with others from his village—or possibly had received information from family members or close friends who had made that same journey before him. There was likely news of jobs to be had and, hopefully, better living conditions.

Life in America brought varying outcomes for each of the three Laskowski children. Jan, the oldest, took on the Americanized name John, and within twenty years of his arrival in New York City, found himself a bride born in New Jersey of Polish immigrant parents. The two went on to raise seven children, six of whom lived to adulthood—a wry reversal of the fate that might have faced them, should their parents have remained in Poland.

Second-born Mieczyslaus, not quite seven at the time of the family's big trans-Atlantic adventure, was quick to adapt to his new home. Not only did he choose to change his given name—at first, using the family's nickname for him, Michko, then taking on his American identity with the name Michael—but unlike his older brother, he eventually shortened his obvious Polish surname to a more nondescript Lasko, as can be seen on his application for a marriage license on April 13, 1909.

The Laskowski's third-born child became known as Sophie in New York, a place she likely remembered far better than her native Żerków, a dim memory to the mind of the three year old who left home with her family. Like her older brother John, Sophie chose to marry a fellow Polish immigrant, but even that choice led to a tangled research project for family members, for it was he who wished to disguise his surname, for reasons the family still doesn't know, by taking on a totally unrelated, dissimilar surname. Those of his grandchildren who remembered him never could coax him into telling about his family's past. It's only been recently that research has led to telltale records to piece together fragments of his family history.

From the possible brick wall roadblocks that these immigrant changes could have incurred, a wide variety of online resources has allowed us to piece together the generations leading to Marianna Jankowska, the oldest of Franciszek's daughters who left home for America. For Marianna's story, as well as that of her sister Stanisława, I suspect much of the details we've found have been owing to the fact that they left Poland for America. It is far easier for my family to research our Polish ancestors here, where records are kept in the language we understand—English—than it has been to determine the right record has been found in Poland, if it can be found at all. Progress has been made, thanks to the volunteer efforts of researchers transcribing Polish records at websites like BaSIA and PTG, but there are still many gaps.

Now that we are at the end of the month, the question becomes, "Now what?" For my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, we've used this one month of October to attempt researching not just one but two different ancestors. With Franciszek Jankowski being the selection for November, I haven't yet begun the new month when I've already run out of options. It's time to re-examine the research plan and see whether we need to set a new course for the upcoming month.

Your Family Tree Tells a Story. Does it Make Sense?

Outlining the main events of your ancestors' lives on a pedigree chart may help to gain the big picture of where you've come from and how you got here. And creating that pedigree chart, essentially, is what we do, even if we use resources such as the major genealogy programs online. Pedigree charts and family group records, whether analog or digital, are handy for guiding us as we enter names and dates. Everything from birth through death has a designated line on the form. The routine of filling in these details, generation after generation, has a certain calming sense about it: we know what we should be looking for next.

That orderliness has a downside, too. It lulls us into losing sight of the big picture as it gently eases us along to the next step. The big picture, though, is that your family tree actually tells a story. It's a story about where each ancestor came from and where life brought them, in the end. It reveals gaps in the pedigree narrative which, jibed with history timelines, can make us realize the troubles our ancestors lived through—and survived to tell of it. 

The stories are, of course, the foundational aspect of family history that first drew me to begin writing this blog. I'm convinced that every family has a story to tell. I want to preserve those stories which have been passed down to me, first in the outline form of pedigree charts and family group records, but also through narratives, newspaper reports, documents, letters, and photographs.

As I'm struggling my way through a dearth of such tokens in my father's Polish heritage, I'm taking time to check out several details I wouldn't otherwise have given so much thought. I'm taking a closer look at DNA matches and even people whose trees, Ancestry.com tells me, contain the same ancestor as I'm attempting to research right now. I look, not because I want to copy any details from the tree itself, but to confirm whether we are indeed a match, and if so, whether the creator of that family map happens to be a DNA cousin of mine.

In the process, I've come to realize one thing. And no, it isn't that other people have messy trees. Just as much as that may be obvious in some cases from one single glance, it may also become apparent that another researcher has exquisitely taken pains to accurately reflect far more of that family's story than I'd ever hope to find.

The main detail I notice, as I take a look around publicly accessible trees at places like Ancestry or MyHeritage, is the disconnects apparent in a family tree's story. Yes, that family tree, just like mine, tells a story, but for some trees, the story simply does not make sense.

We can all agree that such glaring errors as the mother being born after the daughter's arrival in the family are obvious clerical errors. Not entering a married woman by her maiden name in a pedigree chart may just mean a newbie trying her best who still needs to learn a bit more—or perhaps missing the fact that a click on a document overlaid the married name on the field where we had previously inserted the correct entry.

But there are some other details in a family tree which simply don't make sense. The detail of a woman married in Germany who, less than a year later, gives birth in midwestern North America, and yet is back in Germany for the arrival of her second-born child needs some additional explanation. Sure, there might be a story there. We just want to know more about such details.

I'm struggling with that right now as I explore a Polish couple who became American immigrants before the arrival of their third child. Due to what I suspect is a case of name twins, the second born son, subsequently using an Americanized version of his Polish given name, showed up in records in two different states. The birth date given in each record is not exactly the same, but close enough to make one wonder about clerical errors in record keeping.

I spotted that detail, and it has given me grief ever since. Several breathlessly-arriving hints reveal trees which have the man in one state, other trees showing our name twin in the state where I have him, and a third set of trees trying to merge the two into one individual, a contortion which doesn't seem to work. Surely, there is a story for each of these name twins. But I'm not sure the "story" being told by some of the proposed matching family trees belongs to my relative. In some cases, the story just doesn't make sense.

The experience certainly sensitizes me to the inevitable result that each of our family trees, no matter how full or empty, can tell a story. And stories are great—at least, that's my opinion. Our pedigree chart guides us through an ancestor's life story, and, if we post a tree for others' eyes, that chart tells others that story, too. But there is one crucial detail to a story: no matter how wild or incredible the story arc about an ancestor's life may seem, in the end, it still needs to make sense to the reader.

Another Daughter Leaves Home

 

Sticking to one's research protocol may be a wise approach, but it doesn't always keep us busy for as long as we presumed. The end of the road came up so quickly when I stuck to my plan of following the one Jankowski daughter remaining in Poland. The task brought me to the early 1900s, following the documentation I could obtain through guidance from the Polish website BaSIA. In fact, Franciszek Jankowski's daughter Antonina gave birth to her youngest son, Victor Karcz, in 1913. And that was the last document I could find in the archival collection for that Jankowski daughter.

Finding Polish descendants still living in their native land is only one part of my goal for this coming month, though. Franciszek Jankowski actually had two other daughters who did emigrate. One, of course, was my own great-grandmother, Marianna, who left her home for New York City in 1889. The other daughter married and also sailed to New York, though that daughter headed for upstate New York and the western region around Buffalo.

That other immigrant daughter was Stanisława. Eight years younger than her sister Marianna, Stanisława married Franz Janczak in 1894, according to records kept at the government office at Żerków. Two of their children were born there, as well: Leon in 1899, and Władysław in 1901.

And then, they left home for America.

Tracing the Janczak branch of the Jankowski family has been far easier than seeking those descendants who remained in Poland. There was no telling what the Janczak family would face upon their decision to leave home—but then, there was no way of knowing what would befall those who stayed behind. When I fail to find any records for the Jankowskis remaining in Poland, my mind plays through all the possible results. Early death, succumbing to the many diseases which seemed to fall on so many of the young ones? Possible death through ravages of war, either before 1918 or in the 1940s? Deportation to work camps somewhere else in the region or even farther removed? (Hey, I just found a DNA match who lives in Uzbekistan!)

I'll still be pondering that question, searching for possibilities in newspapers and in DNA matches. But for now, I'll be considering the Janczak branch of the family, up in Buffalo, New York. Perhaps they weren't the only family members to migrate there.

Sticking to the Protocol

It's when we are deep within the tedium of a genealogical search that it seems as if we are cast into a vast vacuum. Like in outer space, there is no grab bar to reach for to steady our floundering steps. We are floating free, unanchored to any orienting document. And it's those documents we are so desperate to find.

As I walk my way through the process of searching for signs of documentation for the extended family of Franciszek Jankowski, I realize I do have one anchoring token. It is a process I adopted years ago, when I realized that adding descendants of collateral lines would help me place DNA matches in their correct family constellations. Starting with the chosen ancestor, I would first work on documentation for that ancestor's firstborn child. When marriages occurred and children were eventually born to that now grown firstborn, I added each one in order. 

Rather than skipping from firstborn immediately to second born of the target ancestor, I then slid down the ladder of that firstborn child's own children, then grandchildren, all the way to the present date, before moving back to the ancestor's second born child. I'd repeat the process for that firstborn child's own children, handling that child's firstborn all the way down the generations before coming back for the next-born child.

Now that I'm working my way through Franciszek Jankowski's nine known children, looking for confirming documentation through the BaSIA website in Poland, I'll be sticking to that same protocol. Granted, with so many of the Jankowski children dying in infancy, the process won't be as tedious as it sounds. (So far, I only have three Jankowski daughters identified as marrying and having children.)

The process, however, still will take time. Every person needs to be accounted for, whether through the baptismal and marriage records I found through FamilySearch.org, or by using the index at BaSIA to locate archived civil records in Poland.

There is nothing so helpful as seeing the digitized copies of records from the 1800s in Poland, something I could never hope to accomplish in person by myself. I'm grateful for the opportunity, but nearly holding my breath as I work my way through the process, hoping not to miss a single step through this extended family tree.

Let the Process Begin

 

Equipped with the index of Polish vital records at BaSIA, coupled with Google Translate to help me bounce back and forth from German language records to marginal notes in Polish, I've begun my quest to find civil records documenting the descendants of my second great-grandfather Franciszek Jankowski. The end goal is to trace all the lines of descent that I can find for this ancestor and his collateral branches. The reason for such an expanded search is that I want to be able to connect with possible DNA cousins linked to this family.

While that process has barely begun, I can already see it will be a tedious one. Thankfully, the steps at BaSIA to move from the index to the actual scans are straightforward. But taking the time to find each individual in each generation of the family, then confirming the details on that person by reading the document—who knew I could stumble my way through old German text?—and entering the information in my family tree is indeed time consuming.

Being painstakingly thorough is the goal. I'm surprised at the notes which sometimes pop up in the margins, with stern, hundred-plus year old German script in the body of the document embellished with the more rounded handwritten addenda entered alongside in Polish, capturing later details about the person's life.

As I had hoped, the records at BaSIA reach much further into current times than what I had been able to find at FamilySearch.org. This is helpful on two counts. First, these digitized documents are civil records, not church records, also offering the actual scanned document rather than simply a transcription. This allows further inspection into details, such as the specific village where the child was born, rather than the diocesan headquarters where the baptismal records were kept. Second, the more recent records help me push forward in time to closer family connections, guiding me in guessing the nexus with DNA cousins. When I finally uncovered a family record dated in the mid 1920s, it really hit me how helpful this approach may become.

I've seen so many of these Prussian forms in the old German script that I almost want to draw up a translation of the pre-printed material as a guide. I certainly don't speak German, myself, but would like to know the specifics of the routine portions. Reading the handwritten portions is also challenging, but spotting names and dates is not much of a problem—unless the person in question is known by an alias.

Bit by bit, I'm working my way through the available records. So far, I've found a couple birth records for which I've not been able to find any baptismal record back at FamilySearch.org, perhaps lost in the transcription process at FamilySearch but thankfully flagged by native-speaking volunteers at BaSIA. Even finding a few confirmations like that are helpful, making me more determined to continue the step-by-step minutiae of the process. Not much to report on while in the midst of doing it, but rewarding to realize it is a more thorough approach.

Tedious But Necessary

 

There are some aspects of family history research that are, let's say, less than glamorous. No, let's put it more clearly: they are downright tedious. That's the rut I've been stuck in lately.

Now that it's time for my biweekly count, the numbers will be quite telling—but that isn't to say I haven't been researching. On the contrary, I've been scrolling through documentation at multiple websites, seeking  proof of those vital specifics of birth, marriage, and—sometimes far too early—deaths. The documents which confirm that story for my ancestors and their collateral lines are necessary, but finding the documents can be tedious, especially when the repositories which store them can be hard to access.

So, for the past week, and on into the future month, I'll be walking through a process of locating transcriptions of such documents for my Polish ancestors' descendants, then following the links or reference notes to confirm those details with my own eyes—preferably with a copy of the actual digitized document saved to my own computer.

The numbers on my biweekly count tell the story of this process rather starkly. In the past two weeks, while giving up closing out the search for my second great-grandmother Susanna Radomska's line and beginning that same task for second great-grandfather Franciszek Jankowski, I've managed to increase my tree to 42,030 documented individuals. Sound impressive? Not really: that means I only found four new names to add to my family tree in the past two weeks. This process is indeed moving along s-l-o-w-l-y.

With a pace of that speed, it will seemingly take an eternity to catch up with my in-laws' benchmark of 44,402 individuals, which has been holding steady since I wrapped up this year's search for my father-in-law's Irish forebears back in September.

Still, the process is necessary. There is no single place where I can go to both download actual digitized records and display my family tree. Not for Polish ancestry.

I want the online tree. But I also need to support every assertion that appears on that online tree. And those Polish records are not always readily available to descendants like me, whose ancestors left Poland generations ago. But I can't let that deter me. It may be tedious, but it is still necessary to document each assertion in that tree. If it means importing digitized copies of supporting documentation to my family trees, then that's what I'll need to do. 

Tracking DNA When the Trail Isn't Clear

 

Using DNA to point us in the right direction beyond the ancestral line we already know seems to be a logical step...until we hit a brick wall. When I work on my father's Polish ancestors, I already know I'll have that challenge. I've seen it this month as I worked on my second great-grandmother Susanna Radomska, and I'll be running into the same challenge, now that we're making an early transition to the November challenge for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, Franciszek Jankowski.

Franciszek, my second great-grandfather on my paternal grandmother's mother's line, is yet another of those ancestors for whom I have very little documentation. In other words, the trail to that man's ancestry is not clear to me. Tools like Ancestry.com's ThruLines won't help much, despite the chart showing I am connected to the DNA tests of ten other subscribers who also claim this ancestor. 

There was a slight stroke of good fortune in even finding that detail. On the transcription for the 1854 marriage record of Franciszek and his wife, Franciszka Olejniczak—whom we'll be studying for the last month of this year—both the bride and groom had their parents' names listed. So technically, when I say I have ten results on my ThruLines for the Jankowski family, I'm really looking at ten people who also claim Franciszek's father, Jan, as their ancestor. 

But clicking through to see who those ten DNA cousins are, I don't see anything particularly helpful. Why? Those ten people are relatives who are much closer than the anticipated third or fourth cousins linked to Franciszek or his father. I already know who those people are. They are relatives who are more immediately connected to me as descendants of cousins or even half-siblings.

How to find DNA matches who descend from, say, third great-grandfather Jan Jankowski, is the real question. No one else has shown up on Ancestry's ThruLines. At first, this made me wonder whether those diseases and wars that cut short the lives of so many descendants in the Jankowski family—in fact, most of the rest of my father's Polish ancestors—had made a thorough job of the demolition of these people groups.  But I'm finding signs that there were, somehow, additional survivors.

In a zigzagging route from one DNA match to shared matches, and then beyond to their shared matches, I'm finding distant cousins whose immigrant ancestors settled in places like Chicago or Michigan or Wisconsin, much like I had found when researching other parts of my paternal line. Seemingly disconnected from the rest of their family—or perhaps without any concept of how large the distance between one American city and another for these immigrants—these immigrants began life after their journey and stayed in that one place for generations.

The trees of their descendants show such a story, but rarely seem to explain how they connect back to Poland. I'm wondering whether DNA will ever be able to explain the story. In combination with the use of multiple Polish websites, partnered with what can be found at FamilySearch.org, double-checking the assertions and assumptions displayed on each match's tree may be one way to find the answer. But with such small matches, the risk of telescoping results—is it this fourth generation which produces the match, or one even farther beyond that?—makes me heed the warning to proceed with caution.

Hopefully, a first step this coming week of cross checking family records at FamilySearch with archival records linked to the BaSIA transcription project will shed some light on missing generations in the Jankowski lines of descent.