Two Nieces

 

Two nieces—one close to home, the other far from it—can possibly cement the connections between a controversial priest and his family back home in Żerków, Poland. We've already explored the connection between Father Ignacy Benevenuto Gramlewicz and the two nephews mentioned in his 1910 memorial, but including the exploration of the family roots of the two nieces also mentioned in that Wilkes-Barre Record article may help clarify some family speculations.

Father Gramlewicz's passing was said to have been mourned by two surviving nieces: "niece Maryanna Kujawska in Europe and niece Jadwiza Gramlewicz of Mount Carmel, this State."

"This state," of course, was the location of priest's parish in Nanticoke: Pennsylvania. But don't think it an easy matter to simply pull up the census record for Mount Carmel and look for "Jadwiza" Gramlewicz. That report, remember, was obtained from a newspaper, and newspapers are known for editorial errors—even when the paper is trying to be nice and say glowing comments about someone after his death.

A little background knowledge on given names in an ethnic community can come to our aid in seeking this "Jadwiza." But first, let's double check something. If you recall, after noticing the error the Wilkes-Barre Record had served up for Father Gramlewicz's mother's maiden name, we double checked on his death certificate to confirm that his mother should actually have been listed as Mary Pawełkiewicz. In that same death certificate, the informant had been listed as one Jadwiga Gramlewicz.

Unfortunately, the state of Pennsylvania did not ask for relationship of the informant to the deceased, but at least we have a clearer idea of what that woman's name might have been.

When we take that newly-confirmed information to the census record for that very year, though, we are once again delayed by a technicality: there is no such person as Jadwiga Gramlewicz listed in either Mount Carmel or Nanticoke.

There was, however, someone named Hedwig Gramlewicz. This is where that knowledge of name equivalents I mentioned can come in handy. Searching for a listing of name equivalents, we find that the Polish given name Jadwiga was originally the old German name Hedwig. 

Of course, in Polish, the "w" would be pronounced like a "v"—which explains why Father Gramlewicz's niece would show up in a fairly-mangled census enumeration as Hedvigis.

There, in the household of a priest, his assistant, a servant and a boarder, she was listed as "cousin." From that same census record, we learn that Hedwig—or Jadwiga—was twenty eight years of age, giving us an approximate year of birth in 1882, back in Poland. We also learn that her year of immigration was given as 1897.

That, however, was not her only time to travel across the Atlantic to America, for a passenger list a year preceding Father Gramlewicz's death shows a Hedwig Gramlewicz with the same year of birth arriving in New York City on the S. S. Rijndam from Rotterdam. There, her travel plans indicated she was headed to Mount Carmel from visiting her "Cousin Gramlewicz" in Deutschdorf, Posen.

With that clue, we are getting warmer. Our main purpose in exploring all this is to see just how Hedwig connects to this Father Gramlewicz in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania. Returning to the Polish website BaSIA to search through transcribed records from that specific region—Posen—we can find a birth record for one Hedwig Gramlewicz, daughter of Peter Gramlewicz and Antonie (actually Antonina) Nawrocka.

 

Though the year of birth is one year off from the Hedwig we've found in Pennsylvania, this is likely the same individual, for we've already discovered, yesterday, that her father, Peter, was a son of Blasius Gramlewicz, same as Father Benevenuto Gramlewicz. Thus we find the simple connection between the woman listed as Father Gramlewicz's niece in his death notice and the inference that the priest's brother was Peter Gramlewicz.

Just as we had discovered in yesterday's search for the second nephew, our search today for the second niece involved an additional research step. That second niece, "Maryanna Kujawska," may well have been a daughter of Peter's sister Julianna.

Julianna, as you may remember from yesterday's post, was also a child of Blasius and Marianna. As we saw from her death record, she had married a man by the name of Onufry Weinert. While yesterday, we were searching for any record of their son Stanislaus' birth—and could find none—with their daughter Marianna, we are a bit more fortunate. Though her birth year apparently landed just before the close of that records gap I've mentioned, there was a transcription of a wedding record which proved most helpful.

 

While the bride's father's name was listed as August, not Onufry, the mother's name was indeed Julianna Gramlewicz. The town was the same as Father Gramlewicz's hometown, and once we recall one detail about surname suffixes for women, we realize this marriage to Martin Kujawa was likely the right record.

Normally, a typical Polish surname, like those ending in -ski, would be altered to indicate the wife or daughter's surname: -ska. In a more archaic form, other Polish surnames would see a similar transition, as well—for instance, the surname Gramlewicz might, for the wife, see the addition of the suffix -owa, as I found in some records from the early 1800s.

In the case of the surname Kujawa, the ending already contains an "a." So how would a Polish person alter that surname's ending for the wife or daughter? I did a search through the BaSIA website to see if I could spot any changes. With only one exception, all people with the family name of Kujawa, whether male or female, saw that surname remain constant. The only exception was in another town in 1830, in which a daughter born to a Kujawa father had her surname entered as Kujawska.

Chalk it up to typo or force of habit, but the "Maryanna Kujawska" in Father Gramlewicz's memorial was likely an editorial error. Father Gramlewicz's niece would have been Marianna, daughter of Julianna Gramlewicz and Martin Kujawa.

With that, of Father Gramlewicz's four family members surviving him in 1910, two—Edward and Hedwig—were descended from his brother Peter. The other two—Stanislaus Weinert and Marianna Kujawa—were children of his sister Julianna. Because I had no other way to determine the relationships of Stanislaus and Father Gramlewicz, himself, I was grateful to find that lengthy article published in the Wilkes-Barre Record upon his passing in 1910.

That long article, incidentally, also detailed more of Father Gramlewicz's history, including his early years in the priesthood in Poland and how, exactly, he ended up coming to America. You can be sure that if the man had no hesitation about speaking out about issues in his adopted homeland, he likely had the same propensity back home in Poland—which was exactly the problem.

When I began this week discussing my tight-lipped Polish ancestors, I had a reason for mentioning that. Learning the history of these two Gramlewicz men who became Roman Catholic priests—Ignacy Benevenuto and Edward—I realize just what type of situations some of our ancestors may have had to endure, back in that homeland they ever after refused to talk about.

 

Images: Top, excerpt of 1910 U.S. Census from Ancestry.com; middle two images of transcriptions from BaSIA; bottom image of Hedwig Gramlewicz's passage to America, the then-U.S.S. Rijndam in New York harbor in 1919 following service during World War I and decommission to commercial service as part of the Dutch-American Steam Navigation Company; image courtesy of NavSource Online via Wikipedia; in the public domain. 

Two Nephews

 

Sometimes, genealogy research starts taking on the aura of math. Take the transitive property of equality. You know that: if A = B and B = C, then A = C. If I tamper with that equation just a little bit—to say, for instance, if A is related to B and B is related to C, then would it be possible to say A is related to C?

In some cases, yes. Let's try that with our controversial Polish-American priest, Father Ignacy Benevenuto Gramlewicz, and his two known surviving nephews, Edward and Stanislaus. Wouldn't the relationship similarity between Father Gramlewicz and his two nephews lead us closer to information on how they connected to the Gramlewicz family back home in Zerkow, Poland?

Here's what we were provided in that same memorial article published in The Wilkes-Barre Record shortly after Father Gramlewicz's passing in 1910.

The one nephew mentioned, Edward Gramlewicz, was himself a priest back in Poland. But the second nephew, Stanislaus, may provide us with additional research assistance, simply because his was a different surname. That, of course, means rather than running the risk that we find the wrong Gramlewicz man with a coincidentally similar given name, we must jump through two steps before assuring ourselves we have found the right nephew. Stanislaus Weinert, if a true nephew, would need, among other confirmations, to have a mother with a maiden name of Gramlewicz.

There is one more technicality in our genealogical equation which needs to be satisfied. We've already learned that Father Benevenuto Gramlewicz was son of a man by the name of Blasius. Thus, the father of nephew Edward would, by necessity, need to be a son of Blasius, as well. And the mother of Stanislaus would need to be a daughter of Blasius, as well.

Now, to see what documentation can be found online—since this is not the season for jumping a red-eye to Poland, ourselves—we'll turn to the Polish website BaSIA. However, we've already noted that the transcriptions uploaded to that website have a record gap between 1829 and 1873—prime years for Blasius and his wife to be baptising their children.

However, remember inferences. After trawling through all the search results at BaSIA for the surname Gramlewicz, limited to the ten-kilometer region surrounding Żerków, we come up with a starting point: the death record for Blasius, himself.

This transcription of the 1877 event provides us with some useful information. First, the record confirms the maiden name of Blasius' wife, Marianna: Pawełkiewicz. Knowing the down side both of relying on transcriptions and trusting newspaper editorial staff, it is good to see that that surname agrees with Father Gramlewicz's death certificate in Pennsylvania.

Then, the transcribed 1877 death certificate for the elder Gramlewicz provides us with his age—indicating a birth year around 1812, again out of reach of the date range for the BaSIA transcriptions from Żerków—and a listing of his own parents. So far, I've been able to catalog the relationships within two sets of Gramlewicz extended family—one set belonging to my great-grandmother's line descending from Andrzej Gramlewicz, and the other, from this same Michał, father of Blasius.

That, however, only provides us with a connection to Father Gramlewicz's parents. What about those nephews? 

Going back to the BaSIA website and searching for any records specific to Blasius Gramlewicz in Żerków, my best hope would be to find a death record—or perhaps even a marriage record—for any child of Blasius, as the search function locates names included in any portion of the record.

Fortunately, there were some hits to that search. For one, there was a son named Peter, who died in 1904 at the age of fifty two. Bonus fact: his wife's name was given as Antonina Nawrocka. But we also get an extra boost on the record search, as the BaSIA website defaults to "similarity" at sixty percent, thus yielding us a marriage record in 1878 for one Peter "Grannlewicz" and the very same Antonina as his bride.

Now, let's go back through the website once again and search for any birth records for children of Peter and Antonina. Since the record gap stretched only through 1873, this put us safely beyond that research hazard. 

Sure enough, there was a record for a son named "Eduard" born to this couple in 1878, who could very likely be the same one listed years later in Father Benevenuto Gramlewicz's memorial as a nephew—although, to be sure, we'll need to complete a few more research steps.

For now, though, let's check for that other possible nephew of Father Gramlewicz, the one named Stanislaus Weinert. Returning to the search terms we had used to find Edward, we again look for death records of any child of Blasius and Marianna. There, we find a daughter named Julianna, who died in 1896.

Her entry first listed her married name, Julianna Weinert, followed by the letters, "z d." which means, "z domo"—or what we'd perhaps list as "née." In other words, Julianna Weinert was born a Gramlewicz, daughter of Blasius and Marianna, the very couple we're seeking. In addition, we discover her husband's given name was Onufry.

Now, we're off again to seek any birth records for our newly-discovered couple, Julianna and Onufry, to see whether they had a son named Stanislaus. This turns out to be a less cooperative search term, as the surname Weinert encountered a few spelling permutations—even Winert and Wejnert. Though other children of Julianna and Onufry could be located—and several instances where a Stanislaus Weinert acted as witness to others' certificates in Żerków—there was no sign of a birth, marriage or death record for this Stanislaus.

This is a research task to follow up on further. Still, we see signs of how to connect this Stanislaus to the extended Gramlewicz family constellation, thanks to the mention in the newspaper article for his uncle, the priest in Pennsylvania.

There are two others who can help us pinpoint this Gramlewicz family from Żerków, though. The Wilkes-Barre Record also mentioned two nieces. We'll see if we can discover just how they are connected to the Gramlewicz family, tomorrow.

Top image above, from the memorial article, "Death of a Priest" published on page thirteen of the June 6, 1910, Wilkes-Barre Record, courtesy of Ancestry.com; all other images from search results at BaSIA, the Database of Archival Indexing System.

Another Father Provides Some Clues

Perhaps it is no surprise that when they came to this country, my Polish immigrant great-grandparents settled near a spot in Brooklyn, New York, later known as Little Poland. It was there, too, that my great-grandfather, Anton Laskowski, played host—not to mention uncle—to an eighteen-year-old returning to her native New York City after her parents left America to bring the family back to Poland.

Trying to determine the exact connection between that niece, Annie Gramlewicz, and her uncle, whose mother's maiden name was also Gramlewicz, might seem to be a slam-dunk exercise.

Think again. I've had to reconstruct the entire Gramlewicz population of the small town of Żerków, in the former Prussian province of Posen, in my attempt to arrive at an answer—and I'm still stumped. But I've learned ever so much more about those Gramlewicz kin in the effort.

It's been an effort of several years. Along the way, I ran into bits of information which seemed, at the time, to be inconsequential—but which, after discoveries years later, took on a new light.

Way back then, when I searched for newspaper reports with the name "Gramlewicz," I kept coming up with stories about a man who was not only a fellow Polish immigrant, but a Catholic priest. Not being aware of any relationships which included a priest, I was sure that, despite the rare surname, there was no family connection. And moved on.

Now, I'm finding out differently. Thanks to expanded online newspaper archive resources, that name keeps popping up as I continue my quest to outline those Gramlewicz connections. Included in those many references were the same details I had observed the last time I explored this possible connection: that Father Ignacy Benevenuto Gramlewicz had pastored a church in Pennsylvania—though inexplicably would stop by in Brooklyn on his travels back to his Nanticoke parish—and that he was somehow embroiled in Polish-American disputes which sometimes labeled him as controversial.

Perhaps in researching our roots, it is not only critical to find the information we seek, but to find it in the right sequence and at the right time. This month, finally, provided that right time.

I found the one newspaper article which divulged Father Gramlewicz's own roots. And, thanks now to all the research I've done this month, I have those people organized in my family history records.

At the time of Father Gramlewicz's passing, several local Pennsylvania newspapers published tributes to the man. One of the lengthiest, published June 6, 1910, in The Wilkes-Barre Record, revealed (albeit with the usual editorial deficiencies) enough about his origin for me to place him within the Gramlewicz family back in Poland.

 

It was no surprise that the priest had been born in Żerków; I had already suspected that from the other newspaper articles I had stumbled upon over the years. As for "Blazious," let's adjust that to Blasius. And that mother's maiden name? Forget all about Krukowski. Thankfully, the priest's death certificate set that record straight: it was Pawełkiewicz.

As for how I knew that, though, we need to rely on deductions based on other details provided in the Wilkes-Barre Record because of one small problem: going back to the records in Żerków only helps if you are looking for documents pre-dating 1829. From that year, there is a gap through 1873—right through the point where Blasius Gramlewicz and his wife would have been welcoming infants into their growing family.

That series of connections, of course, will take some time to explain—beginning tomorrow. 

Image above: Excerpt from June 6, 1910, memorial in The Wilkes-Barre Record upon the passing of Father Ignacy Benevenuto Gramlewicz; image courtesy Newspapers.com.

About Those Tight-Lipped Ancestors

 

The virtue of finding cousins through DNA testing is that we often get to connect and discuss those brick wall relatives who've kept us stymied. Having now found about a dozen unsuspecting cousins linked to the ancestry of my mystery paternal grandparents, I haven't missed any opportunities to talk with such potential resources. I ask them such things as, "Well, did they tell you anything about their past?"

In my case, the few relatives I did know on my paternal side recall their parents refusing to talk at all about their roots—going so far as to deny their ethnicity. 

Being the ever-curious sort that I am, I still am not willing to take no for an answer, even to my childhood questions, so when I found those DNA cousins, I saw that as my way around those tight-lipped relatives. I asked if they had heard anything about their Polish immigrant ancestors' remembrances of the "old country." My newfound cousins put it this way: nice people, but tight-lipped.

There was clearly something to this sort of story. Why did none of these immigrants ever want to talk about their past?

Perhaps it takes being faced with a genealogical brick wall to inspire us to take any research detour which could potentially lead us to answers. Since I haven't been able to glean a direct lead, I've tried everything, including taking the broader approach of learning Polish phonics (in case I could discover a new way to incorrectly spell those challenging Polish surnames), and informing myself of the timeline of Polish history.

It was in the process of examining the history of the area once known as west Prussia that I've begun to gain an appreciation for why people might never, ever, ever want to remind themselves of such a past: it may have been too traumatic a memory to relive.

As far as my Gramlewicz connections went—the surname from my family tree I had set as my research goal for December—there was one person claiming that name who kept surfacing in my research for years. I could never quite figure out why he kept showing up when I researched those distant Gramlewicz relatives in Brooklyn—that niece Anna and her family who returned to Poland—but this time, finally, I may have found a connection. If not to my line, at least it is a connection which ties together one branch of that family in a way I can document and verify.

It doesn't hurt to realize this was a person well-known enough to have been mentioned occasionally in newspaper reports spanning a few decades. Apparently, he was considered controversial in his circles. No matter the cause for such controversy, eventually everyone dies, and this man was no exception. Thankfully, noted as he was in his life's calling, his passing was also noted in regional newspapers, including a mention about his origin in Poland and the names of family members.

You can be sure I was on that one, once I discovered it—and despite the tenuous resource of a newspaper article, we'll see this week what connections we can make back to that tiny village both he and my Polish kin once called home: Żerków.

Counting on It

 

There is one thing I can say for setting research goals and steadily plugging away at those goals: eventually, we make progress.

Although I may be tangled up with this month's research goal—the last of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2020, my Gramlewicz connections from Zerkow, Poland—I am nonetheless making progress. That alone is gratifying, although it would be nice to find the answer to my specific question about family connections. After all, how did that collateral Gramlewicz-Laskowski marriage connect to my family? I still don't know, but I have only two more weeks to arrive at the answer.

Thankfully, there is a bit more left to this month (minus the holidays), so here's where I stand after the last two weeks plus the ongoing tree-merge results from last month's research conquest. News flash: combining two trees can make it look like one researcher has been incredibly busy. In the last two weeks, my mother's tree—now my unified tree with roots of both parents blended in, thanks to discoveries about my paternal grandfather—grew by 653 names. The tree now has 24,594 names.

That may seem like a lot accomplished, but it actually wasn't work completed solely in two weeks. Remember, this is a project I've been plugging away at for more than a year, once I started seeing DNA matches who could link to none other than my mystery grandfather. It's just that I finally got brave and connected the nearly 800 names in a private, unsearchable tree I had been constructing with the public tree I had used for my mother's family. The past two weeks has shown the result of finishing that great migration of data.

I made the change in tree configuration to accommodate the change Ancestry made months ago—the one in which subscribers can actually tag and link a DNA match to the specific position in the family tree. Since only one tree could be used for this feature, I had to ditch the idea of keeping a separate tree for each side of the family.

I'm making the same change on my husband's tree by rolling over my father-in-law's smaller tree into my mother-in-law's robust database. Thus, numbers will also seem to grow by leaps and bounds, once I begin migrating her husband's information to her tree, as well. For now, since my Twelve Most Wanted goal focuses on my father's family, there was not one bit of work done on my mother-in-law's tree. It still sits at 19,334, as it has since the beginning of November. With the new year, numbers will begin to pick up there, as well.

With the close of this year and the upcoming holidays, the addition of new DNA matches has dried up to nearly a dribble, making me look forward to the (hopeful) surge of new tests arriving at all five DNA testing companies after the gift-giving season. Those who were curious enough to spring for a DNA test last year have not only gifted themselves with the grounding of knowing more about their own roots, but they have contributed toward others' discoveries, as well. I know I wouldn't have been able to discover where my own grandfather came from, if it hadn't been for nearly a dozen people who decided to try a DNA test for themselves. Sometimes, when we do something for ourselves, we end up benefiting others, too.

While this year begins to wind down, I look forward to planning research adventures for the upcoming year. While discovering new DNA cousins may be fun, there are so many other ways to find answers to our ancestry questions—but to find them requires some focus. By the time I do my year-end wrap up two weeks from now, I'll be launching the planning process for next year's Twelve Most Wanted.

Being Responsibly Social

 

While this online space at A Family Tapestry is devoted to sharing stories of our family connections, this holiday season, of all times, brings us some reasons to consider making those connections more tangible. As we enter what some people have dubbed the "most wonderful time of the year," I'm recalling reminders that perhaps we need to stop and do a welfare check with each other to make sure this season doesn't turn into something far different.

Just over a week ago, an eleven year old boy in a community not far from my home turned off the mic and camera during a break in his online school session and did the irrevocable: he killed himself. In the aftermath, wonderful accolades poured in about how cheerful, kind and considerate that young student always seemed to be as shocked neighbors, school associates and extended family members tried to grapple with the unthinkable.

No matter what the underlying causes might have been, there is no denying that incident was a tragedy which will leave several scarred for the rest of their life. Coupled with a doubling-down of quarantine orders in the face of a relentless pandemic, some are pointing to the negative effects of isolation upon students, and renewing calls for vigilance to combat the devastating side-effects of social distancing upon the emotionally vulnerable.

This, of course, is not something only experienced by eleven-year-olds. On a recent trip to a small rural cemetery, a family friend remarked on his conversation with the manager there. He had asked whether the coronavirus had precipitated a noticeable increase in burials there. On the contrary, the manager replied, there were far more deaths in that community of the despondently healthy than of those who had contracted the virus.

No matter how introverted a person may be, we all have a need to connect with other human beings. Some of us, admittedly, more than others. Think of this need on a sliding scale—I claim introverted status, myself, but even so, cannot abide this continual isolation and need relief from my "house arrest" every once in a while. This pandemic has upset our normal course of affairs, no matter how gregarious we may—or may not—be.

What this latest course of affairs has reminded me is that no matter what age we are, or how introverted we may claim to be, we all are at a vulnerable point at which we need to be more mindful about reaching out and connecting with each other. "How are you?" may be a cliched question we dutifully mumble in perfunctory social interactions, but there isn't a time in which we've needed to reach out more than now and mouth those very words. The ones we know need to know that someone else is thinking of them.   

Checking That List Twice

 

In our ever-ongoing quest to learn more about our family history, sometimes we choose research goals which, in retrospect, remind us of that old saying about "biting off more than you can chew."

For the grand finale to this year's "Twelve Most Wanted" of my ancestors, I had hoped to get a clearer picture of just how all those Gramlewicz relatives actually related to my Laskowskis from Żerków, Poland. The deeper I get into this month, the more I realize how far short I will fall from the hope of completing this goal. I need a longer month.

Goal setting can be like that: if we "bite off" more than we can "chew," but set a time limit on how long we work on that goal, we'll need to face up to the need to revisit that goal in a future research iteration. I never dreamed a tiny town of barely two thousand people could have so many Laskowskis! I am not certain yet just how they all intertwined in their family relationships, but they are not leading me as conveniently as I had hoped to those Gramlewicz kin.

As for the Gramlewicz families in Żerków, I am still at a loss as to how two branches of that surname connect—if at all. While I've had to make some adjustments to that surname in my family tree database, there are still several questions. Perhaps that is the benefit of reviewing one's tree periodically: there are some honest mistakes which would otherwise remain uncorrected. Or details which would otherwise have been neglected.

And so I proceed, slowly, line by line through the family tree, adjusting, updating, and completing what I know about that Gramlewicz line—and tying in the Laskowski family where appropriate. Since I am also migrating my father's separate family tree over to one master tree for DNA-linking purposes, that "list" from my dad's tree is also getting added, one by one, to the master list, as well.

In the meantime, as the tedium of this list-checking continues in the background, there are other tasks which will need to be attended to in this last-month-of-the-year review time. We are about to spring into a new year, a year complete with a whole new set of research goals and plans. It certainly won't be like the year we were planning for, twelve months ago when traveling to, say, Salt Lake City for hands-on research was still a possibility; research plans for next year will certainly be curtailed on account of the same restraint. But plan we must, so that we will have a list to double-check at the end of next December.

A list of goals would not be worth much if we didn't also review what we did accomplish, and reflect on how that process went. It's informative for future goal-setting to know how the last year went, how much was actually accomplished, and what happened to those goals which fell short of the month's mark. I'll be saving some time later this month to reflect on that, as well.

In the meantime, it's back to checking off that Laskowski list in Żerków, and seeing how many of those relatives lead me to connections with my Gramlewicz lines.