Back Home With the Jankowskis

 

I probably wouldn't have known much about my second great-grandfather Franciszek Jankowski if it weren't for his daughter marrying and then leaving home with his three remaining grandchildren. That his daughter Marianna didn't suffer the fate of so many young people growing up in the old Prussian town of Żerków was unusual enough. I'd already noticed the finality of multiple extended family members having laid their young children to rest. Though it might have seemed young, Marianna's marriage at age sixteen may have been her ticket away from the doomed future which befell so many of her family members.

When Marianna left home to follow her much older husband to New York City, she left behind the small town of her parents' generation. By the time of her 1889 departure, her father would have been closing in on sixty years of age. Her mother, Franciszka, would have been in her early fifties. The Jankowskis' youngest child, Marianna's sister Antonina, would barely have turned eleven.

Thankfully, when Marianna's parents were married, marriage records of that time period included information on the parents of both Franciszek and his wife Franciszka. Though I have yet to access the actual document at a FamilySearch Library, the main details from that February 13, 1854, marriage record tell me several details about Franciszek.

For one thing, his age given in the marriage record provided the estimate of a year of birth in 1830. More helpful than that was the provision of his parents' names, likely Jan Jankowski and Anna Stajeska in their native Polish tongue. Franciszek's wife, Franciszka, was the daughter of Nicolai (likely Mikołaj in Polish) Olejniczak and his wife Josepha. Franciszek's mother-in-law came with a bona fide Polish tongue twister for a maiden name: Grzegorczyk (though that run of consonants only serves to puzzle those who haven't taken the time to learn how to pronounce Polish phonics).

All told, I've been able to account for nine children for this couple, though as far as I can tell, many of them died in infancy or early childhood. Tracing documents for these family members requires not only relying on the digitized records available at FamilySearch.org, but also by venturing out online to websites in Poland, where volunteers dedicate themselves to posting transcriptions of digitized records from Polish archival sources.

Documenting who those many children are will require bouncing between three or four websites, juggling with verbiage in two different languages (neither of which are Polish), and posting those sources in all the places where I keep family trees.

As I mentioned earlier this year when I set up my research plans through my Twelve Most Wanted program, my main goal in zeroing in on Franciszek Jankowski is to trace the lines of all survivors in the hopes of pinpointing the shared ancestral couple linking me with several DNA matches I have at the major genetic genealogy websites. Expanding the Jankowski branch of my family tree may be challenging, especially for those descendants remaining in what eventually became war-torn Europe in the 1900s. As research resources become more available online, helpful tools may make this more of a possibility than in years past.

A Brother for Franziska

 

A genealogical chain of events is finally unfolding, now that I've tapped into church records for the Olejniczak family of my father's great-grandmother Franziska. It seems challenging enough, trying to find records of one's Polish ancestors from thousands of miles away—not to mention, inability to speak the language. But Catholic Church records, whether drawn up by a priest in America or in Poland, are all written in the same language: Latin. And I can find my way around Latin far easier than I can decipher Polish handwriting.

Having discovered Franziska's maiden name—which I presume is the rather unusual name Olejniczak—I realized I have several distant DNA matches who have that same unusual surname in their family tree. Only problem: their Olejniczaks and mine do not share any given names. This leaves me with one guess as to how to proceed: figure out whether these DNA matches descend from any possible brothers of Franziska.

Fortunately, though I wish I had found more, I did find a record for one brother for Franziska. His name, according to church records, was Bartholomaeus. That, presuming it was the Latin form of his name, might yield Bartłomiej in his native Poland.

Bartholomaeus Olejniczak was apparently born on August 16, 1838, in the area which soon became the Province of Posen in Prussia. Born to Nicholas Olejniczak and Josepha Grzegorczyk, he was a full sibling to Franziska. 

I followed Bartłomiej's paper trail to make sure he wasn't one of the many Polish family members I've traced whose end followed his beginning by a matter of mere days—a fate that seemed to be a common occurrence among the children of my father's ancestors. And once again, I found his latinized given name, Bartholomaeus, entered in a ledger in 1863, on the occasion of his October 26 marriage to Catharina Orszulak.

Within the year, at least according to transcriptions of records posted on volunteer-driven Polish websites, Bartłomiej and his wife—most likely called Katarzyna by her Polish kin—became the proud parents of their first daughter. First of at least four daughters, this child also eventually became the big sister to two brothers. And those brothers potentially became eligible to be the one who passed down the Olejniczak surname to some of the DNA matches I have today.

The catch is that, while I was able to find documentation for the birth of one of those Olejniczak sons, I can't be entirely sure the descendants who claim him as their ancestor are indeed connected to the same man as the one I found in Polish baptismal records. We'll take a look at the details—and how they don't quite jibe—in tomorrow's post.

Stepping Back Before Moving Forward

 

For a family history researcher working from the United States, it is sometimes difficult to access records from other countries. My problem this month lies in my choice to focus on my father's great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak, who was born in Poland, and likely spent her entire life there. I also know that I have several DNA matches whose trees include the surname Olejniczak. By a brilliant process of deduction, I thus observed that I will somehow need to first find more information on Franziska's father—and likely also a listing of any brothers she might have had.

Thus, before we move forward to look at descendants of this family, we need to first take a step backwards in time. Fortunately, I was able to locate a transcription of Franziska's own marriage record from February 13, 1854, when as an eighteen year old daughter of Nicolai—likely Mikołaj in Polish—and Josepha Grzegorczyk Olejniczak, she married Franz Jankowski. Again, at the end of her life, her July 12, 1908, burial record confirmed those same parents' names, although the spelling of her mother's maiden name of Grzegorczyk was understandably mangled by what I'd assume was a non-native speaking priest.

Finding Franziska's parents opened the door for me to search for any possible siblings, especially brothers. Remembering that I have DNA matches carrying the surname Olejniczak, my next step will be to locate any brothers of Franziska and trace their line of descent. If that doesn't work, that means pushing back yet another generation. Hopefully the first step will yield us some answers when we resume this search next week.