Moving from a Tentative Yes to a Definitive Maybe

 

Slowly, slowly, the lethargy of indecision gives way to the realm of "maybe." How hard it is to trust the results of a paperless DNA test.

Now, after well over a year, that first DNA discovery on my paternal line—thanks to the AutoClusters tool at MyHeritage—has blossomed into nearly a dozen matches tying my paternal grandfather to an extended family of Polish immigrants bound for Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A good percentage of those DNA matches, it's true, descend from those same two Zegarska sisters whom I suspect were also the sibling of my paternal grandfather's mother—the woman I only know (on paper) as immigrant to New York City, Anna Krauss.

Unfortunately, on my side of the equation, there are very few others to ask to test, if I wanted to see any further DNA evidence. My cousins from my paternal aunt's side of the family would also be descendants of Anna through that same son, offering me no new information I couldn't already glean from a paper trail. Anna's daughter, the one the family called Aunt Rose, had no children that I can find. Anna had no other children, leaving no other way to double check from our family lines, other than her son—the man who frustratingly changed his name, with no documented explanation, to John T. McCann.

But those other Zegarska daughters I found in the marriage records, back in their Polish hometown of Czarnylas: I'm still working diligently to trace their descendants. Just yesterday, I added thirty four names to that private tree I'm building on all those DNA matches for this Zegarska connection. Since the beginning of November, that means the tree has grown by 114 names.

In the meantime, I've worked on the line of yet another Zegarska sister who married and moved from Czarnylas to Milwaukee, allowing me to confirm yet another DNA match. And that makes me realize why it is so important to make my decision and plug these families into my main tree at Ancestry: it will give me the utility of not only noting these people as DNA matches right in my tree, but also tagging them so the connection is verified.

Yet, I still feel the need to be indecisive. Perhaps wrapping up a few more of these DNA "shared matches" will help bolster that confidence. Before I tag anyone in my public tree, I want to confirm how they connect via the paper trail, as much as possible. It would be helpful to reassess the head count as confirmation. If nothing else, it will provide a solid platform from which I can finally take that DNA-based leap of faith.

Reinventing that Name

 

Did your immigrant ancestor ever do this?

I have a relative who was born outside the country in which we all now live. This relative happened to be born into a family for which English was not their native language. The name this family bestowed upon him at his birth happens to be one which presents pronunciation difficulties for those who originate in other countries for which those phonetic sounds are not included in their vocabulary.

Fast forward to the present. In this relative's adopted homeland, introducing himself to new business associates can sometimes present problems. For instance, when this relative invites prospective clients to go golfing with him at his club, should those guests have as their native tongue, say, Japanese, it is well nigh impossible for them to wrap their tongue around my relative's name. Big problem when it's important to make comfortable first impressions.

Solution? My relative just tells them his name is "Jack."

Now, let's move that same scenario to a different time and a different city. Two sisters, with the unwieldy surname—at least to English speakers—of Czechowska marry two Polish men by the name of Michalski and all decide to move from the small town of Czarnylas in the region of Pomerania to a big city in the midwestern United States. In their new home in Milwaukee, they are sometimes fortunate to encounter American officials with whom they share their native Polish tongue—but sometimes they don't. For their many children born in Wisconsin, the variety of spellings for the same surnames—not to mention, for the Polish given names their parents naturally preferred—is a record-keeping wonder of inventiveness.

Some of those creative spelling approximations stuck, but sometimes, the challenge became wearying, and the end result was that quite a few of those Czechowska and Michalski descendants decided that the path of least resistance was to resort to a version of claiming "Jack" as their name. Sometimes, that attempt simply meant chopping off the last few syllables, or the last string of consonants from a surname. Other times, the surname didn't look much at all like the Polish version originally appeared. It was far easier to "fit in" than to wear someone's patience thin with un-American spelling conventions.

Working my way forward in time, researching these family lines, makes tackling that reinvention convention much easier, because I can clearly follow dates of birth, home addresses, and other telltale signs that confirm Name X is indeed the same as Person Y. But when I trace a DNA match backward in time, it isn't always as clear-cut a research path. Seeing someone with a clearly Anglo-sounding surname doesn't necessarily reveal the fingerprints of what once was a Polish surname in that match's heritage.

For those whom I can trace back through the several generations between our current times and the 1880s arrivals of these founding immigrant families, there is one particular detail to keep in mind. Those two Czechowska sisters led to one valuable clue in tying their descendants to my own DNA results: their mother had almost the same maiden name as my own mystery grandfather's mother, the woman I had found in New York City listed as Anna Krauss. While I can't be sure from the few items of documentation I could locate, her maiden name had been reported on just one record—her son's death certificate—as Zegar. 

The two Czechowska sisters happened to claim a mother surnamed Zegarska. While that is not an exact match to my Anna's possible maiden name of Zegar, could it have been yet another instance of someone just succumbing to that immigrant desire to fit in by shortening that name to a less-foreign length?

Perhaps all it takes now, given the confirmation of those DNA matches, is to just make the move and plug them in to my family tree. I'm building out the Michalski and Zegarska tree, and I don't see any other possible way those descendants of the two Milwaukee immigrants connect to my New York kin. And yet...I hesitate while I try to find just one more token that maybe, maybe this is as right as it seems to be. When we're trained to base our genealogical conclusions upon documentation, it seems so tenuous to decide something when we aren't holding the security blanket of a piece of paper. 

 

Not so Quick and Dirty

 

I've heard "Search Angels" call it a "quick and dirty" tree when they are helping adoptees piece together possible family trees of their closest DNA matches. There is so much information to sift through, so many possibilities to discard, that the process does involve a lot of trial and error. May as well get to the punch line as quickly as possible.

Somehow, though I understand their reasoning, I can't find it in me to do the same: to turn out a quick and dirty tree. Not that I'm an adoptee, of course, but my paternal grandfather has a heritage so hidden as to make him virtually the same. 

Since taking up the challenge of the last couple in my "Twelve Most Wanted" ancestors for 2020, I've been tying up the loose ends on the mystery of Theodor Puchalski—or whatever his name really was—to see if his mother was the one who was sister to the several other immigrants from her hometown in Poland who emigrated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It sure looks possible, but I'd like it better if I could piece together a reasonable pedigree chart linking all these DNA match descendants to that family. Hence, the "quick and dirty." Only...not.

So a couple years ago now, when I first dealt with the possibility, I had set up a private, unsearchable tree on Ancestry, just for this research puzzle. I didn't want to lead anyone down the wrong path while I was experimenting with connections. That tree has been languishing ever since—until now, when I took up the challenge once again.

When I left off the pursuit last time, I had 391 individuals in that tree—remember, I need to trace all the descendants of each of those Zegarska sisters from Czarnylas, Poland, who traveled to America. With just this week's work, I've added eighty more names. Not bad for less than a week's work.

And that's where I get bogged down. Somehow, I can't just enter a name in a tree without making sure to attach supporting documentation. It's important to know why we mark down certain dates or locations. After all, I could forget, right? So, unlike those quick and nimble Search Angels who can knock out a family tree in just one night, I plod along, adding each decennial census record, double-checking each marriage and death record, verifying the burial information, gleaning what I can from each obituary. And on and on...slowly.

In the end—if I do get to the point where I feel confident enough to plug these DNA matches into my father's tree at precisely the spot where his presumed paternal grandmother belongs—it will be worth it to have all the accompanying documentation. In the meantime, I just wish I could go a little more hurrier.

Research and Goal Setting

 

Don't look now, but in no time at all, it will be the start of a new year. That, of course, will touch off a volley of New Year's resolutions—a habit I've refused to engage in. There is, however, one year-end tradition I would like to repeat—if a program participated in only once can qualify as a "tradition." That new-to-me tradition will be the research goal-setting effort from this past year I've dubbed my "Twelve Most Wanted."

I'm not entirely sure I've succeeded in completely discovering everything I had hoped for in this initial year. Giving myself one entire month to research just one ancestor seemed amply generous when I launched this program, but from the perspective of a year in review—which I'm soon to face—I'm not sure I'll deem it a success. For having at least tried, though, I can say I'm that much closer to success than I would have been, had I done nothing. These things are important reminders to clutch in desperation at such times of doubt.

The benefits to at least naming, if not claiming, my goals are multiple. Back in January, faced with the prospect of at least two (well, surprise, before March's dire quarantine sanctions) trips to the world's most complete genealogical reference library, having a list of my Twelve Most Wanted helped focus my efforts in Salt Lake City. Those goals also helped delineate research direction when, swamped with all the next-step possibilities coming at me, I would otherwise have been stymied with indecision over which next move to take along the timeline. Having the names laid out also ensured that my research focus wasn't lopsided or partial to only one branch of the family; I made sure to include an equal amount of names from each of four family trees.

Looking back over the year, I can say I haven't conquered as much as I had hoped—but in what year has any of us managed to make such a claim? Genealogical research is like that: we never know if we are going to conquer that unknown. If we draw that bottom line clearly, though, we provide ourselves a measuring stick to better make that determination.

As for the remainder of this year, I'm still pedaling as fast as I can toward that research finish line. I have three final ancestors to review, and I'm certainly motivated to make progress on those mystery ancestors on my paternal side. I will take some time in December to draw up a final reflection on what was gained for 2020. But I won't be lingering long on that. While I'll undoubtedly keep working, in times to come, on the unfinished research business from this year, I'll be setting my sights on what's to come for 2021: a new set of those Twelve Most Wanted, one for each month of a new year.

Awfully Presumptive of Me

 

In researching our immigrant ancestors—especially when speculating over the land of their origin—the duly diligent are those who heed warnings to take their investigations step by step. No wild leaps of faith, flinging ourselves across the Atlantic, at least not without a paper trail.

I threw all such sage advice to the four winds. Impatience got the better of me, and I struck out to see whether I could find Anna Krauss, or Kusharvska, or Puhalski, or whoever she was. If my DNA test results have any say in the matter, at one time, Anna was a young Polish woman with a maiden name of Zegarska.

Despite the rigors of science—which brought us genetic genealogy in the first place—I still have a hard time swallowing such an assertion. I have been too indoctrinated in the mandate that we adhere to a paper trail. And so, I look. And I look again. And I still can't be sure, even though the matches add up to several individuals who all know their roots and all claim that same surname, Zegarski.

So, back again I go, checking out the online resources, since at a time like this, I sure won't be traveling to Poland. FamilySearch provides me with a handy listing of online sources for records concerning Pomerania, the northwestern shoreline section of Poland where those Zegarski roots were supposed to originate. And reminds me that Ancestry.com has a collection of Pomeranian Parish Register Transcripts and also Pomeranian Passenger Lists.

I search. And I find nothing.

Then I look at the fine print for these collections. As it turns out, the parish register collection reminds me that "This collection does not represent all parish records for this area and time period." And the passenger collection pipes up, "In comparison to the millions of emigrants who traveled via Bremerhaven and Hamburg, the 20,000 passengers who passed through Szczecin and Swinoujscie represent only a small portion of the total."

But of course.

Still, I can go back to my old Polish staple for all things Pomeranian: The Pomorskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne (PTG)—or, the Pomeranian Genealogical Association, for those of us who can only speak English. And, once again—as if I can't believe my eyes—I did.

I searched for all unmarried women in the parish of Czarnylas who went by the name Zegarska between the years 1865 and 1876, dates generously extending both before and after the likely time in which my paternal grandfather's parents might have married. While there wasn't any mention of an Anna, at least there was an Anastasia:

 

There was a Marianna who, in 1864, married Franz Krocz, and a Susanna who married Mathias Machlus in 1875. Right in the middle was Anastasia and her intended, Thomas Puchała, with the very reasonable marriage date in 1868.

Why reasonable? While, best I can tell, my grandfather was born in 1876, if we turn to that same website to examine baptismal records, we find that, in another parish nearby, the same couple was named as parents of a son, Joseph, in 1869, and a daughter named Rosalia in 1872. In addition, there was a son named Theodor who was born in 1876, though no name was provided for his father, and his mother was listed by both her married surname plus the notation that she was "born Zegarska."

What happened to those other Zegarska women in Czarnylas? If they were this Anastasia's sisters, can we follow their records to discover what became of them? Perhaps we can trace them along their immigrant trail to North America—if that is indeed how I ended up with Zegarska DNA matches in Wisconsin. 

Taking that Theory for a Test Drive

 

So, I'm stuck on the name given for my supposed great-grandmother, Anna, following her unexpected death. In all the census records in which I could find her—which, admittedly, were very few—she had been represented as Anna Krauss. Despite the fairly common surname, I was pretty sure I had located the right woman; the telltale sign was the constant accompaniment of her daughter in the same New York City household.

It was that daughter, in fact, who at the shocking discovery of Anna's unexpected death, provided her mother's name for the death record. Not that she would have me, the family historian, uppermost in her mind at the moment, but she sure didn't help out by providing a name I haven't been able to find anywhere else. I didn't expect to see the resultant surname on Anna's death certificate to read Kusharvska. Where did that come from? Could Rose have, at that moment, forgotten her own mother's name?

Needless to say, I've been stuck on that detail since that discovery, five years ago. Who ever heard of a surname like Kusharvska? I tucked that one aside for future consideration—until yesterday. It occurred to me to handle that name like a Polish researcher might. Remember, it was Americans who wrote up that death certificate, but when Anna was born—and married—she was living in Poland. How would the Polish have spelled her name?

My guess was "Kuszarwska." The "sz" for the American "sh." The "w" for the American "v." If I tried that variation in spelling, could I find anything online? Did anyone else have a surname like that?

Here's what I found online—complicated, of course, by the shifting search results, I guess, by when the search was performed, for I got different results on different attempts at the same site.

The first time I tried, on FamilySearch.org, to find something like Kuszarwski (using the masculine form, as it would be more likely to be used in America), I received hits for these similar spelling variations:

• Karczewski
• Kurczewski
• Kuszewski

Thus, it seemed credible to think perhaps when Anna's daughter Rose stammered out the answers to the government official charged with collecting such information, she may have pronounced the name wrong—a "sh" sound instead of a "ch." Who knows—maybe by that time, Polish-born Rose may have developed a New York accent, herself, rendering that middle syllable more like Ku-shawv-ska than an actual "r" sound. At least, now we know there are surnames similar to the one Rose provided at the time of her mother's death.

Among the records I found at FamilySearch, I also found the reasonable variation Kucharski in a census record—enumerators not known for their spelling precision nor their handwriting clarity—as well as Kuchorski. The name is apparently out there.

I then took my search question to Ancestry.com to see whether I could find any names similar to "Kuszarvska" there. Using that same Polish take on the spelling, I even located a Kuszmarski in the 1940 census in Chicago—not quite my target, but at least containing that telltale "sz" combination.

Searching on Ancestry brought a broad range of possibilities. It was encouraging to find an option spelled Kusharfsky—phonetically similar, if not properly Polish in spelling. I was excited to spot an obituary which reported descendants named Kucharvski, according to the indexed report but which—confounded optical character "recognition"—upon actual inspection of the faded newsprint, yielded a surname spelled Kucharyski. Oh, so close, yet so far away.

I found a Michigan death record reporting a surname spelled Kuzarvski, and a poor transcription of a surname Kuzawski, which, in the original passenger record from "Germany" rendered the name Kuzawski. Frustrating.

Still, this little field research experiment told me one thing: there may well have been a surname that sounded similar to Kusharvski—or, in the feminine case, Kusharvska. For my efforts, I now have a healthy list of spelling variations which I can also check, in case that Kusharvska leads me nowhere.

The real question, however, is: can this name, no matter how it is spelled, lead me back to that tiny village in Poland where the Zegarskis once claimed to live? That, after all, is where all my Zegarski DNA matches on my paternal grandfather's side of the family say they have their roots.

Above: Kushervski? Or Kushewski? This 1886 Detroit marriage record was indexed both ways—perhaps the same fate of the surname reported at the death of Anna Kusharvska. Image courtesy Ancestry.com.

 

Oh, Duh: Phonics!

 

Tracing the family connections on our hardest-to-research ancestors is no different than dealing with any other line in our genealogy. We start with what we know, and work our way backwards in time, building one fact upon another. No overstepping our document-demanding bounds or jumping to conclusions without evidence. We move tentatively, then test, one step at a time.

The maddening thing about researching Anna Krauss was that she had to choose such a common surname for a place like New York City. To make matters worse, it was a surname with a variety of spelling options. Sometimes, she was listed as Anna Kraus, dropping the final "s"—or Krause, adding a final "e." She also had her name spelled Krouss, a reasonable guess, but a totally different search term for the desperate researcher.

But then, add in the various other names that she might have assumed in her lifetime. Was she really, at one point, the wife of Thomas Puhała? Or was that also spelled Puchała? And how did it become Puchalski? Or, if that really was her son's surname, was it an American indifference to spelling that wrought Puhalski?

Forget all those puzzles—how did the same woman show up on her own death certificate with yet another surname? The 1921 death certificate insisted this woman—on the right date and at the right address—was actually named Anna Kusharvska. Her daughter said so.

Of course, try as I might, I couldn't find any records other than that death report which included a surname like that. Even tampering with that Polish convention of the feminine ending to the name—"ska" instead of the masculine (and more widely recognized) "ski"—yielded no usable search results. 

That, among other reasons, was what inspired me to, well, do nothing more with that research puzzle. Until now.

It occurred to me, especially after spending all that time familiarizing myself with the general rules of Polish phonics, that perhaps, if I lent an ear to the sound of that name, rather than trying to focus on the appearance of its spelling, I might make more progress. So, considering those phonics tips I found online, I set about to reverse-engineer the mystery Anna Kusharvska's surname.

How might the Polish spell that surname? First, the "sh" in the initial syllable might more likely be represented in Polish by the letter combination "sz." Then, the "v" in the middle syllable would most certainly have been spelled with a "w" in Polish. In addition, though I don't know enough about the Polish language to say for sure, the insertion of that "r" in the middle syllable might indicate another aspect of Polish pronunciation that I'm just not equipped to fathom at this point.

Still, that said, could Kusharvska actually have looked like Kuszarwska? What are my chances? I had to go test out my theory with some online searches.