Susanna's Siblings

 

For anyone wishing to find distant cousins useful in pointing to a specific shared ancestor, DNA is the best bet. However, where those cousins live and where they tested may signify the best possibility for testing companies. In my second great-grandmother Susanna's case, unless I find any more emigrants among her Polish siblings, the best likelihood for discovering distant cousins would be the most international of the major genetic genealogy companies. Hence, I'll be spending a lot of time at MyHeritage, scouring the match lists for descendants of Susanna's siblings—if, that is, those siblings lived to adulthood and had children of their own.

One dismaying detail about researching the collateral lines for my newly-discovered Polish ancestors was seeing how many of those family members died young. After reviewing the multiple tragedies of loss experienced by Susanna, herself, I braced myself in preparation for looking to the children of the previous generation. The 1850s, at least, were a rough decade for Susanna's family. What more could go wrong in the generations preceding that?

From what I'm seeing at this point, I may yet discover some distant cousins descending from that generation of the Radomski family. Though I am not yet done documenting Susanna's siblings, so far I've found transcriptions of baptismal records for Katarzyna ("Catharinam") in 1821, Susanna's younger brother Simon (likely Szymon) in 1826, Francisca (Franciszka in Polish) in January of 1828, and her apparent twin, Anna, also baptized at that same date. 

Bracing myself for the inevitable—after all, Susanna's own children didn't fare too well in that rural northern region of Poland known as Pomerania—I expected to find each sibling's baptism followed soon afterwards with a record of the baby's burial. So far, no. In fact, I'm finding some marriage records for those siblings, as well. Not only that, but I believe I've found a marriage record for Susanna's own parents in 1814.

Now to move on to mapping out the possible descendancy of those collateral lines. There may be a DNA match from among my Polish cousins, after all.

Straight to the Next Generation

 

Pursuing the details on some ancestors may leave us chasing empty promises, buried among the myriad pages of recorded history. Other records, thankfully, are rather straightforward in providing the details we seek. While I can't say there are even any promises in view for my second great-grandfather Jan Puchała, fortunately I've found information gleaned from a document on his wife.

The information listed in that one record I found was rather straightforward. Baby's name: Susanna Marciana. Mother's name: Marianna Nierswicka. Father's name: "Andr Radom."

Well, almost straightforward.

I can presume that the "Andr" stood for the Latin name, Andreas. After all, this was a baptismal record from the Catholic church in Lubichowo, Pomerania. Or perhaps the cleric meant to enter the Polish version, Andrzej. But Radom for a surname? I wasn't sure this was quite what I had seen in Susanna's own marriage record, where her maiden name was listed as Radomska, the traditional feminine form of her father's surname, which would have been Radomski.

Keeping in mind that this record set, only available in transcription form online at FamilySearch.org, would need to be confirmed by viewing the digitized handwritten entry. Since for this, I would need to go to a local FamilySearch Center, I thought I'd first look for corroboration from another transcription-only website. So I jumped over to the PTG site for the Pomeranian Genealogical Association, and looked up records for anyone named "Radom" who might have been baptized in Lubichowo in 1824.

Sure enough, there was one entry for a Susanna Marciana, whose father was named Andreas Radomski. And just to make sure, I noted that the entry also included a mother listed as Marianna Nierzwicka.

Just like that, I pushed back another generation, exactly as I had hoped when I listed Susanna as one of my Twelve Most Wanted for this year. Armed with this information, it was all too easy to pursue the couple named as her parents to see what siblings Susanna might have had.

There is a reason for this secondary pursuit. Since Susanna was my second great-grandmother, finding DNA matches with whom I'm mutually linked to Susanna would, in theory, be possible. The genetic distance for a third cousin is certainly within reach. Once I know the line of descent for the children of Susanna's siblings, I could even possibly find fourth cousins among my matches.

There is, however, a catch with all of that hopeful pursuit of siblings. To see what my possibilities actually are, let's first take a look at who else was descended from Susanna's parents, Andrzej Radomski and Marianna Nierzwicka.

When Sue Met John

 

Well, actually it was when Susanna met Johann, according to the Latin in their 1842 marriage record. She was nineteen and he was...ahem...thirty three, an age disparity which, in my in-laws' era, would prompt the local officials to alert the newspaper editor, "don't publish ages" in the legal notices.

But it wasn't even Susanna and Johann, I suspect, back in their home town of Lubichowo, where their native Polish tongue would likely have labeled them Zuzanna and Jan. 

The two of them tied the knot on January 24, 1842, bringing together two families from the same village, the Radomskis on the bride's side and the Puchałas—whoever they were—from the groom's side of the aisle. The sixteen years of their marriage—no surprise here to learn that, with the age disparity, Jan died in 1858—yielded the births of at least five children, though the tragedy of the time was that most of those descendants died in infancy.

After the birth of the first and second of the Puchała children (at least that I can find), an age gap was followed by the birth and subsequent loss of three infants: Andrzej in 1851, Franciszek in 1855, and Katarzyna in 1857, after which their father, himself, followed suit. There may, of course, be other children, but none that I've been able to find so far.

Of the other two, daughter Marianna and son Thomas, Zuzanna would eventually live to see several grandchildren, with almost all of them—at least if they survived childhood—remaining in Lubichowo. While I have yet to find a death record for Zuzanna, an entry at the PTG website indicated an eighty six year old woman by that name died in 1909. If that was our Zuzanna—or Susanna—she lived a long but tragedy-ridden life in the rural north of what is now Poland. Whether we can learn anything more about what life was like in the region around Lubichowo, I can't yet say, but I'll be digging until I find something to paint a clearer picture of this couple and their family.

Introducing Susanna

 

When you can't make any further progress on a brick wall ancestor—especially on the patrilineal side—what do you do next? In the case of my father's Polish ancestors, my first step is to look more closely at the woman who married that last patrilineal puzzle. 

That's why, this month, I'm introducing my father's great-grandmother, Susanna Radomska. When I selected her back in January as one of my Twelve Most Wanted to research this year, I realized I had never paid her much mind at all. For all the years I had used the Twelve Most Wanted system to organize my family history research, I had never once considered looking into the origin of one specific great-grandparent: Susanna Radomska. My focus had always been on her husband Jan Puchała, who has never since budged in his stubborn insistence to remain one of my brick wall ancestors. 

With that glaring exception to my research progress, we'll spend this month looking deeper into the roots of this great-grandmother, Susanna Radomska. I already know she was likely born in the small village of Lubichowo in the northern province of Pomerania in the country which was once called Prussia. Only back then, according to the Meyer's Gazetteer, the place was called Lubichow. Handily, as was noted in the gazetteer, the town claimed only one Catholic church. And thankfully, those church records are still in existence.

From those tiny details, I've cobbled together a research approach which first has me checking the transcriptions at PTG, the Pomeranian genealogical website I mentioned yesterday. Then, I'll be moving to FamilySearch.org to explore all the resources available at that website. Due to negotiations between that website and the foreign archives which hold the original documents, in many cases I will find myself having to travel to an actual FamilySearch library in order to view the documents rather than rely on someone else's transcription of the record. This, in some cases, may be absolutely essential, given varying writing styles, legibility after decades of fading ink and crumbling paper, and the inevitable mistakes that can occur when tackling hundreds of such records in the transcription process.

As it turns out, finding Susanna's parents was an easy task, thanks to her own baptismal record. Along with her record, the same church gets credit for numerous other documents containing the same parental names. Bit by bit, we'll discover more on this family from Lubichowo, in hopes of explaining distant cousins among DNA matches and other family mysteries, but the number one hope I have this month is to learn more about just how Susanna met and married Jan Puchała, that brick wall ancestor who became her husband in 1842. 

The Necessity of Multiple Resources

 

We may have become spoiled in the genealogy world, considering all the digitized records that can be accessed on websites like Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org. Finding so many records in one place gives the aura of one-stop shopping for family trees. When we step beyond our own country to explore our roots in those immigrant ancestors' place of origin, though, we shift to face new challenges.

No matter how much a website may promise an international purview, on a case-by-case basis, that promise may only be upheld to varying degrees. In the case of my paternal Polish ancestors, I've already learned I'll need to cobble together multiple resources to progress with my research plan.

Since this month's goal is to find more details—and documentation—for my second great-grandmother Susanna Radomska, I already know I will need to look for resources which specialize not only in the nation of Poland, but which look to the north and the region historically known as Pomerania.

Fortunately for me, there is a Polish website which focuses on vital records from this exact region in Poland. This volunteer-driven site, with a URL echoing the initials of its name in Polish—Pomorskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne—is known in English as the Pomeranian Genealogical Association.

The PTG database provides transcriptions of vital records for the region from the early 1800s through the earliest decades of the subsequent century. Each entry also indicates the resource from which the transcriptions were drawn, mostly local archival holdings, which are indicated by book and photo number for those wishing to obtain copies of the actual documents.

Granted, many of the ancestral collateral lines I've already researched were also available through records at the more familiar FamilySearch.org—but not all. I've had to bounce between PTG and FamilySearch to see which records were lacking at FamilySearch, then prepare a list to pursue through those archival avenues. And even if I can locate those birth, marriage, or death records online, I'll need to deal with reading the old German script in many cases, simply because Pomerania was, at the time of my ancestors, part of the Prussian domain.

That, alone, is a great illustration for why doing international family research demands access to multiple online resources. I've found myself bouncing back and forth between Google's Translate app and cheat sheets that provide listings of words genealogists are most likely to encounter, such as this old handy (though ad-ridden) treasure from the old RootsWeb days.

Now that I'm bouncing back and forth between several online resources, building out the Radomski family line, it's high time we give this month's featured ancestor from my Twelve Most Wanted an introduction. With that, tomorrow we'll officially meet Susanna Radomska and see how she ties into the family line.

Wandering as I Wonder

 

At the start of each month, I sit down to form a research plan. I often follow the same basic procedure, and over the years, the process does become somewhat routine. In the case of my Polish paternal ancestors, the approach can be limited, leaving me to wonder, "now what?!" As I went through my usual routine, though, I began wandering through the results of what I found, more as if I were lost in the maze rather than zeroing in on my goal.

Looking to genetic records of DNA cousins is especially limited for Polish connections, based on the small number of matches I've found despite testing at five major genetic genealogy companies. Even though that is one of my first steps taken, in the case of my focus for this month (my father's great-grandmother Susanna Radomska). I have only four ThruLines suggestions given by that Ancestry tool. Each of those four ThruLines candidates happens to be a niece, nephew, or grand-nephew—each of them relatives I already know.

I tried a different approach. Rather than look at ThruLines to discover any alternate connections to Susanna Radomska, I picked up on a lesson I realized last month: stick to simply searching for the surnames. Though no DNA matches popped up with Radomska or Radomski in their family tree, at least I tried.

A second approach was to revisit the tree I've built at FamilySearch.org. First task was to make sure everyone was updated there, based on what I've already attained at my tree on Ancestry.com. FamilySearch is rich with foreign documents while Ancestry is lacking in such records, so that also provides a way to verify connections for both trees. As I wondered about each child listed in that Radomski tree—and made sure to connect documents back to my Ancestry tree as well—I began making new discoveries.

Those new discoveries, in turn, caused me to wander. And wandering is not exactly part of the profile of the "S.M.A.R.T." objectives researcher. Each time I entered a new name in my Ancestry tree, accompanied with the inevitable hints, I looked at the suggested trees to see whether the tree owner happened to be a DNA match. I then looked at that person's Shared Matches on my DNA readout, wandering from one possible match to another until I spotted the surnames I was seeking.

In the end, while ThruLines might not have provided me any direct links to the right people, this sidestepping approach, wandering from DNA cousin to DNA cousin, did eventually narrow down my focus. Some aspects of our quest can be so nebulous that there really aren't any exact links to lead us to our goal. But in the face of that blank slate, as we wonder what to do next, a little judicious wandering may just lead us to some answers—or at least productive realizations.

Stuck at Another Great-Grandparent

 

With the arrival of fall, it's time to switch our focus from my father-in-law's Irish ancestry to researching my own father's roots. There is only one problem with this change: I'm just as stuck at the point of my own father's great-grandparents, as I was with those of my father-in-law. It seems researching American-born ancestors proceeds far more smoothly than tackling the legacy of those immigrants' forebears. 

My father's father, the one who secretly changed the family name, was born with a surname which, itself, kept morphing over the years. Eventually recorded in the United States as Puchalski—possibly because in America "-ski" was assumed to always be affixed to Polish surnames—he was baptized in Prussia with the surname Puchała. 

This man's father, my father's paternal grandfather, was also difficult to locate through documentation. Perhaps because of the transcription hazards of copying (or bothering to even use at all) Polish diacritical marks, my best chance at finding his name in records in his homeland was through his wife. His 1868 marriage to Anastasia Zegarska did indeed confirm that Thomas Puchała was a man—unlike his baptismal record in 1844, identifying the Puchała infant as a "weiblich."

That document, faulty as it was, did help identify the soon-disappearing Thomas' parents. His father, according to church records, was noted as Johann. His mother, with a given name Susanna, had a partial rendition of her maiden name provided in that birth record. Fortunately, moving back a couple years, another record confirmed the maiden name of Johann Puchała's wife: Radomska.

From the point of that 1842 marriage record in the village now known as Lubichowo in northern Poland, we can begin piecing together the story of my father's great-grandparents. Our focus this month will be on Susanna, but my corollary hope is that some details of her life might uncover an explanation of whatever became of her husband and family, as well.

Marrying Into the Patriline

 

As long as I can remember, my paternal grandfather's origin was a closely-held secret. Even my older siblings and cousins who knew him personally could not coax the story out of him. Years after his passing, when all of us still tried collectively to find clues, there was not much to uncover. Despite my grandfather's decidedly Irish surname—which we didn't learn until just recently was an official legal request—we knew there had to be a different history for his family.

When the first of direct-to-consumer DNA tests came out, I learned about the Y-DNA test. Tracing the specific line from a son to his father, then his father, and so on back through the family's history, this genetic test could be a powerful tool to reveal a family's origin. There was one catch, however: this test was only applicable to a male descendant's patriline—and it was most meaningful when the subject's test matches someone else's test.

Fortunately, to solve our paternal mystery, my only brother was willing to serve as the test subject. I say "fortunately," not because I doubted my ability to talk my father into doing his own test, but because the opportunity to do so was, by then, long gone; he had passed away years before genetic genealogy of any type was publicly available. Because my brother's only son had also died, the only possible subject would have been my brother. I'm glad he was willing to participate.

Testing was the first part of the process. The second part was waiting to see if we had any matches close enough to provide guidance on where my father's family originated. We're still waiting for that discovery. In the meantime—and mostly thanks to records digitized at FamilySearch.org—I have managed to trace my way from my father's father to his father and, eventually, back to Poland where some documents identified his father as Jan Puchała.

From there, progress stopped. I had figured out who my father's great-grandfather was, but I could move no farther back in time.

No matter which ancestor I'm tracing, I've long since learned that, when stopped cold at a research roadblock, learn to step sideways. If a direct line refuses to divulge any details about the past, look to a collateral line. Siblings are one example, especially when minute changes in record keeping laws or customs over a span of even a few years may yield the detail that was missing for that direct line ancestor. 

There is, however, another way to tackle those brick wall ancestors. If I can't find the information I need on that earliest node in my father's patriline, I can sidestep that man entirely and look to his wife. For this month's selection of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, as we transition to research on my father's side of the family, that is exactly what we'll do for October: see what we can find on Susanna Radomska, wife of Jan Puchała of Lubichowo in Poland's north region of Pomerania.

Taking Inventory

 

Looking into the new year, I decided it was time to take inventory on my research progress before making plans for upcoming projects. Much as I had done when I began making selections for the three ancestors from my father-in-law's Irish lines for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, as we move into plans for my own paternal ancestors for the last quarter of the year, I thought I'd follow suit with a tally of results for my Polish ancestors.

There is a reason for keeping track of such selections. I tend to lean toward those ancestors who keep me chomping at the bit to continue working on the same line. These are the ancestors for whom ample records keep luring me onward—meanwhile, sucking up all the available research time in my calendar while other branches lie dormant. I want to ensure that no branch is left neglected—especially those brick wall ancestors.

So once again, I drew up a list of the eight great-grandparents, this time from my father's side of the family tree. Fortunately, in some cases, I had broken beyond that generation to find parents' names, but in those cases, I just tallied the parents in the category for that specific paternal great-grandparent.

As had happened when I examined my father-in-law's eight greats, I saw that some lines were weighted with more attention than others. And, just as with my father-in-law's results, there was one of my father's great-grandparents whom I hadn't researched at all.

That glaring exception will become the tenth of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026. That featured relative will be Susanna Radomska, wife of the brick wall ancestor on my dad's patriline, Jan Puchała. Though I am stumped with her husband's line, learning more about Susanna herself may provide some clues about how she met her future husband. We'll examine what we can find about her parents' identity as well as the names of her siblings, so that we can trace collateral lines for DNA purposes, too.

With this research plan for next October, we will move from researching my father-in-law's ancestors in Ireland to puzzling over Polish records for the last three months of the year.

Just as planning for this new year's Twelve Most Wanted works better by taking inventory of research objectives to find the neglected branches of the family tree, today also marks another type of inventory: my biweekly count. Granted, the past two weeks have been filled with holiday activities—not to mention some needed rest and relaxation with family—but I was able to complete some work wrapping up last December's goal, and slip into the new month's project.

Between those two activities, I managed to add eighty more documented names to my family tree, so we will start 2026 with a tree filled with 40,824 individuals. And thanks to those newsy inserts arriving with Christmas cards last month, I was able to add six more names to my in-laws' family tree, where the count is now at 41,737 relatives.

I anticipate the biweekly count will jump back to more usual parameters as we move past the holidays and I launch into January's research focus. But before we do so, there are two more ancestors I need to line up for this year's Twelve Most Wanted.

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. 

The Problem With Diacritics

 

The search for my father's Polish Puchała ancestors runs into a problem: the surname requires use of a diacritical mark. Depending on who was writing the record concerning any of his key life events, my great-grandfather Thomas Puchała's name could show up in the document containing a "t" instead of an "ł"—or double that, in either case. Or the official could just as easily disregarded use of any diacritics and simply written the name with a plain, unembellished "l." Wildcards, by necessity, become my best search engine friend in such cases. Whether documented by a Prussian official in German, or a church cleric in Latin, that "ł" could end up being my research downfall.

Still, I'm hoping I pinpointed the right parents when I located a baptismal record for a "weiblich" named Thomas Puchała, born November 20 in 1844 (despite the translation from German being rendered as "female"). The transcription indicated Thomas' surname as "Puchata"—a slight pen stroke which, once I see the actual handwritten document, will surely be more accurately transcribed as "Puchała."

Those parents, by the way, were listed in the transcription as Johann "Puchata" and Susanna "Damska." But I can't just accept the transcriber's word for that. Until I can make it to a FamilySearch Center to view the actual document—access to that record set is currently limited—I can at least double check with similar records.

Sure enough, the transcription of an 1842 marriage record for the same Johann "Puchata" indicated his bride's name to actually be Susanna Radomska. And not that many years later, Johann's own death record in 1858 indicated the same maiden name for his widow. In between those two dates, there were baptismal records for their children, supporting that same name for the mother, and, sadly, confirming that same maiden name in death records for some of those unfortunate children, as well.

So far, all records for the Puchała line showed them remaining in Lubichowo, but I'm wondering whether that detail will remain constant for yet another generation. To double check, let's push back another generation and see whether we can find any indication where that leads.

And For my Next Trip

 

Research is sometimes a process involving many iterations of the same type of step. In the case of my discovery of record transcriptions online for Aunt Rose's ancestors, I did indeed find many records for her Zegarski grandfather and his family. All I needed do after that point was to repeat the same process at the same website for her other three grandparents.

For some, I fared better with progress. While I couldn't push back any further in the generations for Rose's paternal grandfather, his wife—Susanna Radomska—appeared in transcriptions of birth records, revealing her own parents' names, and thus her siblings, as well. Likewise, for Rose's maternal grandfather Jan Zegarski, I could repeat the same process with welcome results, though not for his wife, unfortunately.

While the indexed transcriptions at the PTG website were a big help, they clearly pointed out the need to find a record set containing the original documents. Fortunately, I did indeed find just that, but brace yourself: this record set won't have a name which rolls right off your tongue (well, if you're not Polish, that is). Known as "Księgi metrykalne," or "Record Books," the collection dates from 1770 to 1896 and covers the parish of Pączewo—that source of earlier records I mentioned yesterday—as well as the place known back then as Schwarzwald, currently Czarnylas. Included are four microfilms of Catholic parish registers in Latin, German, and Polish, plus an index.

In my explorations, I also realized that the paternal side of the family was more likely to show up in records in a different nearby town named Lubichowo. This town, situated to the west of Czarnylas while   Pączewo was to the east, was roughly twice the distance as that between the two towns I mentioned yesterday—certainly a short distance quite easily traveled. While I was also able to access helpful transcriptions at the PTG website for Lubichowo, I also found a microfilm version of the actual documents available, again called "Księgi metrykalne." Though the dates for this three microfilm set were not as early as the one for the other parishes—from 1803—the record set continues through 1925.

There is one drawback to finding these microfilmed record sets. While I'm grateful they are out there, preserved on microfilm, their accessibility at FamilySearch.org is currently limited to viewing at a local FamilySearch center, or at the FamilySearch library in Salt Lake City. (Although, oddly, I discovered that one record set was indeed viewable despite the key icon displayed.)

Hence, as the month has drawn to a close and we'll be moving toward a new research project for November, I'll be putting these two microfilmed record collections on my to-do list for my next trip to Salt Lake City. Though I've been grateful for finding the website which provided the transcriptions for these record sets, I'm glad to know I can access a copy of the actual records for myself. Hopefully, there will be more information included in the actual records—baptismal sponsors, wedding witnesses—to help me piece together Aunt Rose's Polish ancestry more completely on that next trip to the library.

But What About the Patriline?

 

It certainly can be encouraging, when tentatively dipping into new research territory, to find hits for searches on those foreign-sounding surnames. I had no problem getting results to my queries for the Polish surname Radomski, the maiden name—in the feminine form of Radomska—for my second great-grandmother. Even when I limited the search to her hometown of Lubichowo in the region of Pomerania, there were websites cheering me on to the right track.

Not so for Susanna Radomska's husband. His surname, supposedly Puchała, gave me very few signs that I was on the right track. Looking for anyone else besides their son Thomas—or whatever his given name really was in Polish—I could only come up with one other candidate in the same village.

That possibility was a woman by the name of Marianna Puchała, who in 1858 married a man listed as Johann Flizik. Predictably, within the year, they welcomed their firstborn, a daughter they named Anna Elisabeth. And then promptly dropped out of sight.

Oh great: a surname to search which is even more obscure than Puchała. This caused me grave doubts that I was on the right track. I headed back to my go-to websites for surname origins at Forebears.io, where they assured me that, yes, there is such a surname as Puchała—although a rather rare one. Predictably, the greatest occurrence of that name occurs in Poland, where over six thousand incidences of that surname adds up to a relative rank of 742.

Okay, so now I understand where my struggle lies: there aren't too many of us around. Perhaps all my distant cousins tried the same tactic as had my paternal grandfather: move to New York and change your name.

Just to make sure there are others of us around—that still wasn't convincing enough for a doubter like me—I visited good ol' FamilySearch.org, where I entered the plain search term of Puchała. When enough hits helped build my courage that I am not imaging this surname, I tried a few limiting additions: search for Puchała in Pomorskie, Poland (the term for the province of Pomerania), and even search in Lubichowo.

I found plenty of people claiming that surname, both in Poland and in the United States, which was encouraging. Of course, they aren't my people, but at least there are people with that name in existence—a detail I was beginning to doubt. After all, having had my brother test his Y-DNA has not, in all those seven years since he agreed to test, produced one single exact match on that patriline. Where are all these Puchałas?

There is, however, one other question which plagues me as I pursue this Puchała line. That may have been the surname I was led back to as I traced this family from my grandfather in New York, to his multiply-married mother's birthplace in Poland, thanks to yet another boost from DNA testing. But Puchała wasn't the surname which I found my grandfather using when I first spotted him in New York before his top-secret name change. The name he was using then, depending on who was trying to spell it for American documents, was Puchalski, not Puchała. Where did he get the "-ski" from? 

Building Trees in the Clouds

 

It has been an idyllic week in Hawaii. Perhaps watching the puffy clouds fly over this paradise has had an effect on my tree-building skills, though. Right now, I'm contemplating how to tackle the disembodied branches of the family tree I'm building—the possible collateral lines of my great-grandfather Thomas Puchała's maternal line.

Thomas Puchała's mother was Susanna Radomska—at least, as far as I can tell. Susanna likely married Thomas' father—a man with perhaps a Polish version of the name entered in his baptismal record as Johann—in Lubichowo, the same two thousand person village in Pomerania where Thomas was born in 1844.

Since my only long-distance resources for records of that time period and location are websites which provide transcriptions, not digitized copies of actual documents, I am somewhat limited in how to approach building a family constellation for either of Thomas' parents. The plan is to search the online resources for all listings of those two surnames, limited to the village of Lubichowo, to see what can be found. From that point, the next step would be to see whether any names could be clustered into logical family groupings.

To achieve that task, I started out with a search at the PTG—short for Pomorskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne—to locate any records containing the surname Radomski in Lubichowo. This involved both spellings customary for use of surnames in Poland—Radomski for the men, Radomska for the women—as well as checking three different search options for birth, marriage, and death.

Furthermore, since it helps to familiarize oneself with the website being used, I noticed that there were two categories for records transcribed from Lubichowo. One had, simply, the village's name. The other was labeled "Lubichowo USC."

What's a USC?

Google Search to the rescue: I entered "Lubichowo USC" in the search bar at Google and was rewarded with a few websites in response. Only problem: the websites were entirely in Polish.

I don't speak Polish.

Simple solution: take it to Google Translate. Thus, I discovered that, cutting and pasting "Urząd Stanu Cywilnego (USC) Lubichowo"—the first line on the first hit of my query to Google—into Google Translate, it provided me with the instant answer. "Urząd Stanu Cywilnego"—the words represented by the Polish abbreviation USC—stands for the English term, "Registry Office."

Bottom line: until I can figure out when the people in Pomerania were required to use the Registry Office rather than just record their infants' information in a baptismal record, I will search using both options.

Meanwhile, I not only took my search to the PTG, but also consulted another website which provides transcripts of records: a Polish site known as Geneteka. The best point about this website was that I could drill down to the specific province and parish to search for my Radomski roots—or explore by neighborhoods within a fifteen kilometer radius. Between searches on the birth, marriage, and death tabs, I found several families claiming that surname, then built out each couple's family tree. From that point, consulting death records, I could determine which children died young, and which survived to adulthood so I could continue by setting up a family for their own generation.

Now my challenge is to find a way to connect each of these Radomski relatives from Lubichowo. I can't yet say, for instance, that Susanna Radomska is sisters with Francisca Radomska—or cousins. Likewise with Martin Radomski and Johann Radomski—her brothers? Or her cousins?

At any rate, thanks to these online transcriptions, I've been able to build trees for each of their families. I just don't know yet how—or if—I can connect them to my Susanna Radomska's branch in my tree. I can enter them as "floating" branches, of course, making sure to note the addition somewhere so that I won't forget that outer-space part of my database. With some of the family lines boasting large families with children born like clockwork every two years, I don't want to lose the work that went into assembling the family constellations. Even if they aren't helpful for my purposes in the long run, perhaps they would be of use to someone else researching that Radomski line.

Meanwhile, those pages of handwritten notes I've composed will serve to give me something to muse over as I ponder what my next step might be in tackling my research goal for December. This has turned out to be a far more challenging goal than I had envisioned, back in January when I made the call to head in this direction.

Fingerprints of History Show up in D N A Ethnicity Estimates

 

When puzzled by the strange results on your DNA ethnicity estimate, it might help to review the history of the land from which your ancestors emerged. In the case of Thomas Puchała, whose baptismal record pointed me to the current Polish village of Lubichowo, there was much to learn from the history of the region once known as Pomerania.

Lubichowo is a village of about two thousand people, located in the Pomeranian Voivodeship (think province) of northern Poland. That is its current geopolitical designation. However, the region known as Pomerania has an extensive history.

That depth of history, extending back much farther than any genealogical paper trail I'll hope to find, includes a "rich and complicated political and demographic history at the intersection of several cultures." Considering that very description could be used for the American city where I now choose to live—Stockton in California—it makes me wonder whether my choice of residence can be chalked up to a multi-ethnic message emanating from deep within my genetic roots.

Starting with the "Old Prussians" of the tenth century, Polish and German rulers attempted to subjugate this Baltic people group of the region, which eventually meant that it was assimilated by the time of the fifteenth century. Thus, though I have yet to figure out which ancestor might have emigrated from what is now one of the Baltic republics to northern Poland, these facts from the history of the broader region may explain how that trace of Baltic ethnicity landed in my own DNA readout.

Likewise, learning that that same time period was followed by international struggles which eventually saw portions of Pomerania overtaken by the Swedish Empire, I now am no longer surprised to see that small percentage of Swedish ethnicity in my DNA results. It didn't mean that any of my ancestors came from Sweden, but it certainly could have hinted at Swedish military attaches before 1648 temporarily residing in the part of Pomerania now claimed by Poland.

Meanwhile, back to the reality of whatever genealogical documentation can be found in Lubichowo—or any other town nearby—I need to examine what can be found for the names Puchała or Radomski, the surnames linked to my great-grandfather Thomas. Next, I'll gather a cluster of all entries—baptismal, marriage, or death—transcribed for either of those surnames, which we then can sort into possible family groupings.

Hopefully, a pattern will emerge to suggest which family members belonged to Thomas Puchała's own immediate family. After all, if I can't discover anything new about Thomas himself, perhaps his collateral lines will give up his secrets to me.

The Truth About John T.

 

Ever since the advent of DNA testing for genealogical purposes, there have been adherents who didn't expect to discover what they subsequently learned about their parentage. When I explore the true story about my paternal grandfather, I feel a kindred spirit with everyone from adoptees to those who unexpectedly uncovered the identity of their actual parent. The only difference is, I already knew my grandfather was not going to turn out to have the same identity he wanted everyone to think he had.

John T. McCann, the man I knew as my paternal grandfather, was a soul in need of a disguised identity. While I am still firmly convinced he was, indeed, my father's father, he spent his adult life ensuring that no one learned his true identity. There were only two problems with that lifelong strategy: his mother, and his sister. Factoring in his wife—and the fact that as a young married couple, John and Sophie lived in New York City with her parents—his documented life leaves us a trail which begins to tell the story he never wanted anyone to learn.

I've worked on the story of John T. and his family for a long time. While I still don't have a completed dossier on John's sister Rose, I've traced enough of her life story to connect her to a "F.A.N. Club" of possible future suspects on this paper chase—not to mention, a few helpful hints that pointed me in the right direction. As for John's mother, Anna, the twists and turns in her own life story sometimes leave me stumped, but give me at least enough detail of her identity to confirm important connections.

John T. himself turns out to originally have been bestowed the Polish equivalent of the name Theodore—presumably represented by the "T" that he subsequently carried around as his ever-present middle initial. The facts of his existence in New York gradually were augmented with details which showed our family a clearer picture of the story our grandfather never wanted anyone to know: that he wasn't born in Brooklyn, New York, as his death certificate declared, but somewhere in the former domain of a now-banished country known as Prussia.

It was over two years ago when DNA matches at various testing companies pointed me to further connections for John T. I learned that Theodore—the "T" in John T.—was likely born in 1876, son of a woman named Anastasia Zegarska, for which Anna was a shortened, Americanized nickname, and a man by the name of Thomas Puchała, the very man whose roots I am pursuing this month.

Even last year, plugging away at this perennially plaguing research problem, I attempted further progress on Anna, herself. Again, DNA helped identify familial connections back in a specific region within the current country of Poland: a place historically called Pomerania.

The beauty about researching genealogical documentation for roots in Pomerania is that I now have an online resource to consult: the Pomorskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne (Pomeranian Genealogical Association), or PTG for short. While the website only provides volunteer-entered transcriptions of their local records, not the digitized documents themselves, that is more than I had before discovering their website.

Exploring the PTG entries for baptisms, marriages, and deaths, I've discovered that John T.'s—Theodore's—paternal grandparents were probably Johann Puchała and Susanna Radomska.

Now, the question is, what else can I uncover about that couple? As far back in time as I can reach on this database of transcribed records, it's time to explore the possibilities and cluster the family names in my John T.'s ancestry, all apparently found in one specific location in Pomerania: the village of Lubichowo.

Above: Readout of search results at the PTG website for baptisms in the Pomeranian village of Lubichowo for children born to Johann Puchała and Susanna Radomska.

Making the Leap Once Again

 

Family history buffs seem so excited to arrive at that momentous step when they will leap "across the pond" to explore their roots in the ancestral homeland. Landing in that strange new world, however, can be quite disorienting.

The premise, of course, is that one of the genealogical guides we've become accustomed to relying on in the English-speaking world will be there to take us by the hand and introduce us to the challenges of research in a new setting—and often in a new language. In some instances, that will indeed be the case. For my foray into Poland and my paternal roots, unfortunately, the records I need are not there at my favorite go-to sites—yet.

From the kindness of others further down the research path than I am, I've learned about some alternate genealogical resources in Poland. We've already explored what is available when I tackled my research challenges concerning my paternal grandmother. Sophie Laskowska was born in what is now Poland and arrived in New York as a young child—too young, probably, to even have remembered what home was like, or where to find it. But from some serendipitous errors on the part of census enumerators in New York, I was able to learn exactly where in Poland the family originated: a region called Posen by the Prussians, but Poznań by the Polish.

As it turned out, the lack of digitized documents for the region in our usual go-to places was made up by a website put together by enterprising genealogists in Poland. You can be sure I made good use of that website, once I found it. But I also discovered something about that website: it worked great for finding way pointers for my ancestors related to Sophie's family in that region, but not for her future husband's family. Why? Because that line—my father's patriline—came from a different region of the country which is now Poland.

Thomas Puchała, my great-grandfather, came from an area of Poland known as Pomerania.While the website covering records from Poznań would be of no help to me in this new project, there was—thankfully!—another resourceful group of local genealogists who banded together to create a database of use to researchers like myself.

The website was created by a group known in Poland as Pomorskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne—or, translated, the Pomeranian Genealogical Association. Let's just say I'd like to follow suit and call them PTG for short, as they suggest. 

The PTG has been in existence since the key organizers met in 2005, but they formalized the organization in 2011. Adopting the slogan, "If you want something to be done for you, you should do something for others first," the PTG set about transcribing local records which are searchable for free on their website. Transcribed information covers baptisms, marriages, and deaths, as well as information regarding cemeteries. Each resource is cross-referenced to the location of the original record.

From that discovery, brought to my attention by a fellow researcher following the same line as I am, I became the recipient of one of those acts of "giving back," that genea-kindness which has helped so many of us progress in our research. Now, my quest—although at this point, it may merely be an attempt—is to see if I can push back to yet another generation on this line, to the parents of my great-grandfather Thomas Puchała.

Pursuing the Impossible

 

As we move along the first branch of the twig which becomes our family tree, it is far easier to determine the right names, dates, and locations, than when that tree grows into the many gnarled branches of a well-researched, multi-generational project. Choosing my Twelve Most Wanted for the ancestors I planned on researching in the upcoming year made for easy pickings, years ago. Not so, now.

For this last month's goal of 2021, I was hoping to face the double challenge of researching a possible husband and wife team representing my second great-grandparents. While that may not sound like much of a challenge, this couple belongs on the paternal side of my pedigree—specifically, the paternal grandparents of my mystery grandfather, the one who refused to divulge his roots to even his own family.

The discoveries I've made so far on this family branch have come not from the usual resources—not at Ancestry.com, not at FamilySearch.org—but from websites across the pond, a leap made by me most tenuously. These I learned from those helpful others who believe firmly in "giving back" to help others new to that particular research task—and new I was to exploring the records of Poland, the secret homeland of my immigrant paternal grandfather.

From the resources of one particular Polish website, it seems my patriline makes its last stop on its trip back in history—so far—with the parents of Thomas Puchała. From research progress made last year, I discovered that Thomas was born about 1844. That was two years after his father, listed in church records under the very un-Polish name Johann, had married a woman by the name of Susanna Radomska.

The same couple—Johann and Susanna—were listed as parents of two more sons and one daughter, all who died within the year of their birth. The only other family member was a daughter named Marianna, for whom I can find no other mention in records—whether following suit of a premature death with the others, or somehow living to adulthood, but not much longer, like her brother Thomas.

All these events apparently took place in the village of Lubichowo, located to the north of Poland in what once was considered the region of Pomerania. To explore documentation, it takes a visit to yet another Polish website than the ones we've visited earlier this year, so to start the process on this last goal for my 2021 Twelve Most Wanted, tomorrow we'll review our research resources. 

So Much for Plans

 

While the new year is a time when so many people like to devise plans—or at least make heartfelt resolutions—it is often a time more full of hope than reality. Take 2020: how many of us could have foretold, at this point one year ago, that we would be spending at least three quarters of the year essentially under house arrest?

But plans are a tangible sign of good intentions, bred from hope. And with that, I make the preposterous gesture of assuming that, eleven months from now, I will be working on a research plan to delve even further into my mystery grandfather's patriline. For Ancestor #12 of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2021, I want to learn more about my recently-discovered second great-grandfather, Johann Puchała, and his possible wife, Susanna Radomska—if, that is, that was actually who they were.

To even make a statement like that is more than I could even have hoped, one year ago. It took a chain reaction of discoveries, precipitated by some unexpected DNA matches, to start me looking in the right direction for the answer to my childhood question about where my father's family came from.

Sometimes, we keep looking so long and so hard for the answers to our family history questions that we get caught by surprise when the answer finally shows up. It's as if we never really believed there would be an answer.

Yet, do I dare to presume that my research luck will hold out for one more year? Now that I have the possible names of my paternal grandfather's paternal grandparents, can I learn anything further on this family from a country—Prussia—which is no longer in existence? And how can I guarantee that I will actually make these discoveries in December of 2021?

Of course I can't. None of us can guarantee anything. But we can plan to work on the process. And that is the key.

For this (hopefully) bright new year, I've laid out the plans for where I am going to direct my family history research focus for 2021. I've selected one ancestor for each of the twelve months of the new year: my Twelve Most Wanted. All that's left at this point is to work the plan. It doesn't really matter whether I fail or succeed—although succeeding would be a vast, and more fun, improvement over failing. 

The point is to steadily focus on specific research goals, and to make progress toward discovering more about each of these twelve ancestors. Who knows what curves will get thrown at us in the course of yet another year in our future. But does it matter? The main point is stating what we hope to accomplish, and working that plan to the best of our ability. No matter what.