Don't Discount the Journey

 

When we are deep in the midst of tracking our elusive ancestors and holding fast to each twist and turn in the race to find all the family details, perhaps it is easy to forget to sit back and enjoy the journey. Don't discount that journey. While we may be tempted to label that journey as a slippery slope—or (gasp) even a rabbit trail—we may as well enjoy the trip. After all, we may be back on this trail once again, so learn to recognize the sign posts of the scenery.

It was on the trail of each of the descendants of my third great-grandparents Nikolaus Olejniczak and Josefa Grzegorczyk (try saying that one three times, fast) when I got stuck on one particular relative. Their great-granddaughter Marianna Banaszak had married a man with another tongue-twister name, Kazimierz Szczepański, and I had found not only their 1923 marriage record, but the 1928 death record for their three week old daughter Cecylia.

But then something else popped up. As I scrolled through the listings for Marianna's married surname, looking for entries with more recent dates, listings for Kazimierz started being linked to the name of another woman: Jadwiga Banaszak, not Marianna Banaszak. I wondered if this were the point at which the index had made a shift from church records based in Latin to civil records in the contemporary language. After all, I had seen Marianna's uncle Walenty listed in church records as Valentinus and, of course, Jan showing as Joannes in Latin and Johann in German. Was there a Polish equivalent to Marianna that I didn't know about?

That's when the journey began: taking the detour to learn more about Polish names. The FamilySearch wiki provided more information than I ever thought possible on every aspect of the very different world of Polish names, both given names and surnames—as well as the grammatical effect of the Polish language conventions on Polish names. And if that weren't enough, Wikipedia provided another entry on the topic of Polish names.

Since I had already discovered some of the surprising differences between Latin and Polish versions of given names—like the Latin Adalbertus becoming Wojciech in Polish—I was ready for any such further surprises. But as far as Marianna went, according to the index to the Słownik imion—or Dictionary of Names—Marianna in almost every European language was...Marianna.

So what about Jadwiga? This was the crux of the journey, and a great introduction to Polish history. Apparently a name holding cultural significance—and recent resurgence—in Poland, it calls to mind the first woman to be crowned as monarch of the Kingdom of Poland. In case you don't recall it, that event occurred in 1384, but her name has lived on over the centuries in Poland—a little something I hadn't known until stumbling upon this puzzling entry for a different wife's name for Kazimierz Szczepański.

What I don't yet know is whether there were two men by the same name living in the area surrounding Jarocin, Poland, with one married to Marianna and the other to Jadwiga—or whether that signified the death of Kazimierz's first wife before those entries in 1934 and 1935 containing Jadwiga's name. While I certainly have further to go to catch up with that answer, I can continue to enjoy what I'm discovering while I'm still on the journey.

 

Cracking the Door Open Just a Tiny Bit More

 

Finding documentation for the ten children of Józefa Olejniczak and her husband Michael Banaszak was far more than I had expected for the limited access I have to Polish records of the early 1900s. Each time I return to this project of researching my paternal grandmother's roots, the closed door seems to crack open just a tiny bit more, for which I am thankful.

I'm thankful, particularly, for the additional records being linked to the transcriptions listed at the Polish website BaSIA. Without their help at those websites, there would have been very little available to me in the U.S. to find.

Now that I've found Józefa's family, my next step is to research the newly-found surnames of her married children. Again, another tour of the BaSIA entries, leading to another set of documents and entries in multiple trees, complete with links listed back to the specific archival scans serving as source documentation.

With each of those discoveries made, as well as the ones yet to find, I feel the need to post those names and dates to each place where I am keeping a family tree—not just on my primary tree at Ancestry, but also at FamilySearch, MyHeritage (good connection to international researchers), and WikiTree. It's so important, having discovered a resource, to point the way for others, so I make sure to paste the link to the actual documents on each entry I make in those trees. Since they are all public trees, hopefully someone else will spot these details and follow the trail to the sources I've discovered.

The process isn't quick, and it certainly isn't easy. It's downright tedious, admittedly, but the process is worth the persevering. I think of the possible cousins who might find this helpful—and, if helped, will take the time to at least drop a line and connect.

In genealogy, we are all in this together. While your part of "together" may come from an entirely different part of the world—hey, I grew up being told I was Irish!—you may someday discover you need to know more about this hidden corner of the world, as well. And the places where you are researching your roots may well become the source of help or encouragement for a distant cousin you haven't even met—yet.

Józefa: Moving Beyond the Expected

 

By the time my research arrived at the fourth daughter of Bartholomaeus Olejniczak, I was already primed to not expect much from the few Polish records already available online. For Józefa's older sisters Franziska, Marianna, and Catharina, I had found—for the most part—very little. The baby of the family, however, was different.

Born February 3, 1876, by the time Józefa turned one year of age, her mother had died. By the time she became twenty three, Józefa was married. Her intended, Michael Banaszak, moved his bride from her family's home in Żerków to nearby Jarocin, where the records of births and marriages over the following years moved far beyond the limited dates I had come to expect. Unlike what I observed of the records in Żerków, as I kept stretching the search parameters to later and later dates for this family in Jarocin, the information kept appearing in the readout at BaSIA, the Polish website I've been using to search this branch of my family.

All told, I was able to find records for Józefa and Michael Banaszak in Jarocin dating from the birth of their oldest child, Waclaw, in 1900, all the way to marriage records for their daughters Marianna (to Kazimierz Szczepański in 1923) and Johanna (to Ignacy Frankowiak in 1931). 

Like clockwork at almost one child for every two years, Michael and Józefa welcomed ten Banaszak children into the world. Of course, there were the not-unusual sad spots when they lost their children Czeslaus in 1906 as a three year old, and Wojciech in 1915 as a one year old infant. But looking at the birth year of their youngest daughter Wladislawa, born in 1916, I wondered how much more heartbreak the family was about to face as they endured at least one World War, and possibly two—if they lived long enough to see it.

With these freshly-found discoveries about Józefa Olejniczak, I need to enter the information in my trees at FamilySearch, MyHeritage, and Ancestry, as well as include links back to the actual documents identified by my search through the BaSIA transcriptions. Perhaps those entries will flag even more digitized documents housed at any of the other websites. One can hope. But for now, I'm satisfied to know I've been able to reach beyond the turn of the century and into the 1900s with at least this one branch of the Olejniczak family. Perhaps that will be a close enough hook for a Polish DNA cousin to find me now.