You Can't Have Just One

 

I learned a long time ago that when it comes to documenting family relationships, you can't rely on just one document to confirm ancestral connections. In looking at the Prussian death record for Catharina Cichocki, I was reminded of how many times I've seen mistaken reports of the deceased person's parents' names—especially that of the mother's maiden name. When it comes to confirming relationships through documentation, it helps to look twice.

Finding Catharina's 1887 death record, now held at the Polish archival collection at Żerków (see scan number nine), I saw that her maiden name was Gramlewicz, and that her father's name was Andreas Gramlewicz. After providing that information, the record stated that her mother was also named Catharina, with the surname Zakrzewicz.

Wait, I thought: didn't I have records with differing assertions for that mother's maiden name? Perhaps my second great-grandmother Elżbieta and Katarzyna were not full siblings, after all. I went back to the other record I had for the supposed sisters' parents: the 1810 marriage record for Andreas and Catharina. Sure enough, there in that record, the bride's maiden name was given as Nowicka. Not Zakrzewicz. 

Of course, I thought, perhaps Andreas had been married twice. Since daughter Catharina was born about ten years before Elżbieta, perhaps Catharina's mother had subsequently died and Andreas married a second Catharina, surnamed Zakrzewicz. It was a possible scenario.

And yet, when I looked for documents on another Gramlewicz sibling—Apolonia, baptized in 1820—her record, too, indicated the mother's name as Catharina "de Nowickie." (Ironically, Apolonia's godfather was listed as a Zakrzewicz, and years later, she ended up marrying someone else with that surname, Paweł Zakrzewicz.)

Checking for younger brother Piotr Paweł, his baptismal record, despite using the Polish form of the participants' names, also noted his mother to be Katarzyna Nowicka.

Looking at Elżbieta's own death record didn't help matters. While I claim no expertise in reading old German handwriting, I can clearly see that her father was listed as Andreas Gramlewicz. Included in that record was mention of Elżbieta's husband, listed as "Matheus" Laskowski, and her son, Anton. No mention that I can find in the verbiage indicates the identity of her mother.

From all this, we can see that Elżbieta's older and younger siblings were mentioned in records identifying their mother as Catharina or Katarzyna Nowicka—the same woman identified in Andreas' own marriage record. Perhaps I'll never learn why Elżbieta's own death record doesn't appear to include mention of her mother's maiden name—at least, as best I can tell with limited knowledge of old German script.

Perhaps, considering the DNA matches I've found who descended from Elżbieta's presumed sister Katarzyna, it would help to examine the expected range of centiMorgans for a full-parent relationship versus a half-sibling situation. It's probably time to go looking for other Gramlewicz descendants in my DNA matches again. 

Connecting the Dots to Connect the Family

 

It sometimes seems like a roundabout journey, connecting many dots before we can put together the family tree. In the case of my research focus this month, Elżbieta Gramlewicz, I had wanted to discover more about her siblings—and, ultimately, her parents. Problem: there wasn't exactly a straight line leading me from my second great-grandmother to her parents.

We've just returned from wandering through the records to connect Antonina, the wife of Stanislaus Samolewski, with one of her siblings, Thomas Hilscher. Why, you might ask, does that Hilscher discovery mean so much to me? I realize there may be some missing steps in the tale of why I'm ecstatic to have found those documents in the past few days.

Knowing that siblings Antonina and Thomas were children of Peter and Agnes—likely Piotr and Agnieszka in their native tongue—helped in a big way. Not only did that knowledge reveal how several DNA matches related to me, but since I already had the Hilscher line in my tree from previous research, I could see the next generational step.

That next generation came through Piotr's wife, Agnieszka, who was born a Cichocki. Her 1839 baptismal record shows her own parents as Vincent Cichocki and Katarzyna Gramlewicz.

Back at the beginning of this month's research project, I had mentioned the lack of any document to show my second great-grandmother's relationship to this Gramlewicz family. There were indications that Elżbieta and Katarzyna were sisters, but I couldn't locate a baptismal record for Elżbieta. 

Katarzyna, however was another matter. I could find several documents mentioning her name—up to the 1887 record of her death in Żerków, Poland, which detailed the names of her parents. In a record on May 2, 1887, "Catharina" was noted to be the daughter of "Andreas" Gramlewicz and "Catharina" Zakrzewicz. Along with that detail, the record included mention of Katarzyna's husband, "Vincent" Cichocki, and her daughter "Agnes"—with Agnieszka's married surname, spelled following Polish phonics, as Hilszer for Hilscher.

With that connection between Katarzyna, mother of Agnieszka Cichocka Hilscher, and grandmother of Thomas and Antonina, the fact that among Katarzyna's descendants are several of my DNA matches points to the strong possibility that Katarzyna and Elżbieta were sisters. Of course, lacking the actual documentation indicating such a relationship suggests that they could also have been another close relationship, perhaps cousins. In my book, while it appears that I'm closer to the truth, it still means I simply need to keep looking further.

Document above: May 1887 death record for Catharina Cichocka courtesy of the State Archives in Kalisz, Poland, from the Civil Registry Office at Żerków, scan number 109.  

The Long Slide Down to the Present

 

Disappearing relatives from the meager collection of digitized or transcribed records from 1800s Prussia all become the brick walls I wonder about. Did those children find an untimely death due to rampant infection or the ravages of wars? Or did they successfully make it to adulthood, marry, and raise families of their own, still living in Poland—but beyond the time frame of Polish records I can access online? Finding the rest of their stories in immigrant records in the United States refreshes my energy, and with discoveries like that,  only then can we move on to trace their line through subsequent generations.

Now that I've connected Antonina Hilscher, a descendant of a collateral line related to my second great-grandmother Elżbieta Gramlewicz, to her married identity in New York City, it's time to begin that long slide down the family tree to the present generation, adding and documenting each descendant in the family line. Why? I'm on the hunt to discover possible DNA cousins who can confirm my genetic connection to this collateral Gramlewicz line.

There's a reason I'm keen on finding such DNA matches. You see, Elżbieta's birth and parentage have caused me grief when it comes to documentation. I've had some hints that she was sister to Katarzyna Gramlewicz, but I haven't been satisfied with any solid record sources. Knowing that Katarzyna married Wincenty Cichocki and became the mother of several children, including daughter Agnieszka (Agnes in Latin church records), brightens the path leading me to this newfound connection with DNA matches descended from Stanislaus Samolewski.

You see, Agnieszka married Piotr Hilscher, and the path between those Samolewski DNA matches and I now becomes much clearer. Their daughter Antonina stands out as a bright Exhibit A, but that is not the only Hilscher child who migrated to America. There was one other child, named Thomas, who also opted to move to New York City. And following Thomas' own name through several documents led me to some handwritten notes scrawled on the back of passenger records which, had I not looked at the actual documents—and then flipped the page to look at the reverse side—I would have missed. 

Tomorrow, we'll take a look at that genealogical gold that gilded this story of the Gramlewicz DNA connections.