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From Shepherds and Shoemakers
Polish Genealogy Tip of the Day
Author: Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz
I'm a family historian with 20 years of experience in researching my family's origins in Poland, Germany, the U.S. and Canada. You can find me on Facebook, where I'm an administrator for the groups "Polish Genealogy,""Polish Culture, Food and Traditions," and "Genealogy Translations." I'm a member of the Polish Genealogical Society of America, the Polish Genealogical Society of New York State, the Polish Genealogical Society of Massachusetts, and the Polish Genealogical Society of Connecticut and the Southeast. I also enjoy sharing research strategies and resources via genealogy lectures and webinars, which I've given for the PGSMA, PGSNYS, Central Massachusetts Genealogical Society, New England Historic Genealogical Society, and Massachusetts Society of Genealogists.
No Scan in Geneteka? No problem!
Published on May 31, 2019 May 31, 2019 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz5 Comments
I've said it before, but it's worth repeating: the lack of a scan linked to a record found in Geneteka does not imply that no scan is available online.
I was reminded of this recently while researching my Wilczek family. A search of marriage records from Mazowieckie province for children of Andrzej Wilczek and Anna Kornacka produced the results shown in Figure 1:
Figure 1: Geneteka search results for marriage records from any indexed parish in Mazowieckie province which mention Andrzej Wilczek and Anna Kornacka together.
While the first two marriage records are linked to scans, the last one, from Iłów parish, is not. Hovering over the "Z" reveals that the original record is in possession of the Archiwum Państwowe w Warszawie Oddział w Grodzisku Mazowieckim (Grodzisk Mazowieckie branch of the state archive of Warsaw). Although this seems to suggest that the only way to obtain a scan is to write to that archive to request a copy of the marriage record, the reality is that this record can be accessed online from either of two repositories, GenBaza or Metryki.
GenBaza
GenBaza, whose home page is shown in Figure 2, is a digital archive of Polish vital records privately hosted through the generosity of Tomasz Nitsch. Although the main site is found here, it's necessary to register first at GenPol (Figure 3). Creating an account is free.
Figure 2: GenBaza's home page.
Figure 3: GenPol's home page.
GenPol's site can be switched to English by clicking the British flag icon shown under the login area, boxed in red in the image. To create a new account, click "Zarejestruj się" and follow the instructions. Note that if you want to view the GenBaza site itself in English, clicking "English version" in the upper right corner won't get you very far. What's shown in Figure 2 is the "English version." (It states "Wersja Polska" in the upper right corner in the image because that's what you click to change it to Polish.) Using the English version helps a tiny bit when it comes to viewing the scans themselves, but if you want to read the material on the home page in actual English, you're better off translating the page via Google Translate by copying the URL for the page into the input text window, as shown in Figure 4, and then clicking on the resulting link in the output box.
Figure 5: Using Google Translate to translate web pages from Polish to English.
Alternatively, those who use Chrome as their browser can right-click anywhere on a web page and select, "Translate to English" as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Using Google Chrome to translate web pages from Polish to English.
Getting back to GenBaza, the nice thing about it is that fluency in Polish is not necessary in order to navigate the site and locate vital records. C. Michael Eliasz-Solomon wrote an excellent tutorial for using GenBaza at his blog, Stanczyk — Internet Muse, which I highly recommend. However, I'll quickly walk through the steps I used to obtain a scan of that 1909 marriage record from Iłów that was indexed in Geneteka.
Records on GenBaza are arranged according to the archive which houses them, so some familiarity with the archival structure in Poland is helpful if one wishes to locate scans for a particular parish. To quickly determine which archive holds the records for a parish or registry office, check the PRADZIAD database. Although this database is no longer being updated, the version that existed in July 2018 is still available, and I personally prefer PRADZIAD's display format to that of Szukajwarchiwach when it comes to determining the range of available records, but either site will do. In this case, however, when the object is simply to find a scan that's already been indexed in Geneteka, we can determine the archive simply by hovering over the "z" in the indexed entry.
Once I'm logged into the GenBaza site, I select the parent archive from the list on the left (Figure 7). In the case of Iłow, the records are at the Archiwum Państwowe w Warszawie Oddział w Grodzisku Mazowieckim, so the parent archive is AP_Warszawa.
Figure 7: Root directory for archives with scans in GenBaza.
When we click on AP_Warszawa, we get a list of all the branch archives that operate under the umbrella of the state archive of Warsaw (Figure 8). From this list we choose AP_Grodzisk.
Figure 8: Directory of branch archives within the State Archive of Warsaw system.
This brings us to the list of available vital records collections from this archive (Figure 9). Remember that civil records from this part of "Poland" were maintained by each religious denomination separately starting in 1826, so denominations are indicated by abbreviations, such as "ew" for "ewangelickie" (Lutheran), "moj" for "mojżeszowe" (Jewish), etc. Another important abbreviation which you will see in GenBaza is "gm," which refers to "gmina." As it's used in GenBaza, this term designates collections of civil vital records created in the Duchy of Warsaw and the Russian partition between 1808-1825. During this period the local Catholic priest usually served as the civil registrar for everyone in the gmina (an administrative division comprised of multiple villages but smaller than a county), regardless of religion. Of course, the majority of collections in GenBaza are not designated with any of these abbreviations. and in these cases, the default seems to vary based on the collections themselves. For example, most of the undesignated collections from AP_Gdańsk—an archive which mainly holds records from places that were in the Prussian partition—are civil vital registrations, which were introduced in the Prussian Empire in 1874. On the other hand, most of the undesignated collections from AP_Warszawa—an archive which mainly holds records from places that were in the Russian partition—are civil records for Roman Catholics, created at Roman Catholic parishes. These are generalizations, and your mileage may vary, so your best bet is to click around within a collection. The style of the records themselves will usually tell you about their origin.
Figure 9: List of vital records collections from AP Grodzisk Mazowieckie for which scans are available from GenBaza.
From this list of parishes in AP Grodzisk, I can scroll down to find Iłów and then click on it, which brings us to the page shown in Figure 10.
Figure 10: List of scans available from Iłów parish.
The list on the left indicates eight collections of civil birth (U, urodzenia), marriage (M, małżeństwa) and death (Z, zgony) records created by the Roman Catholic parish in Iłów and dating from 1889–1927. There is also a collection of civil records created by the Lutheran parish in Iłów ("Iłów_ew"), and clicking on this link will open up to a similar list of vital records collections dating from 1834–1934.
The marriage record indexed in Geneteka for Franciszek Wilczek and Katarzyna Widyńska was number 22 in 1909, so it will be in the collection entitled "1890–1910 M_05." Clicking on this link opens up the range of individual years shown in Figure 11.
Figure 11: List of individual years within the collection of civil marriage records from the Roman Catholic parish in Iłów, 1890-1910.
Clicking on "1909" brings up the page shown in Figure 12, where we can select an individual image file to view. These are named according to the numbered marriage records contained on each, so marriage record number 22 will be on the image "_22-23.jpg."
Figure 12: Individual image files for 1909 marriages.
Clicking on that image file brings us at long last to the image of the marriage record of Franciszek Wilczek and Katarzyna Widyńska which was indexed in Geneteka with no link to a scan (Figure 13).
Figure 13: Marriage record for Franciszek Wilczek and Katarzyna Widyńska, 7 November 1909.
Since Iłów was located within the Russian Empire in 1909, the record is in Russian rather than Polish. However, it was common practice to write the names of the key participants first in Russian and then again in Polish. So even without an ability to read Russian, it's possible to ascertain that this is the correct record by scanning through the text to find the names of the target individuals. In the example above, Franciszek Wilczek's name, written in Russian and Polish (in the instrumental grammatical case, so Franciszek becomes Franciszkiem and Wilczek becomes Wilczkiem) is underlined in red. To download a copy of this record in full resolution, click the "Pobierz zdjęcie" button boxed in green.
The second digital archive in which a scan of this marriage record can be found is Metryki.genealodzy.pl (Figure 14). A common theme is evident in the names of these digital archives, since both contain the word "metryki." "Metryki" is just the plural form of "metryka," which can mean certificate, registers or metrics. In other words, these are birth, marriage and death registers. Many researchers refer to Metryki.genealodzy.pl as "Metryki" and Metryki.GenBaza.pl as "GenBaza" for simplicity's sake.
Figure 14: Metryki.genealodzy.pl home page.
Metryki is the work of the Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, or Polish Genealogical Society, and is supported financially by donations to the society. I've written previously about using this site, so again, a detailed tutorial is not necessary. However, typing "Ilow" into the search box and selecting the records from Iłów, 1889-1910, results in that same book of marriages, 1890-1910, that is found at GenBaza. Further drilling down to marriages from 1909, and then to the image file which contains marriage number 22, results in exactly the same image of the marriage record for Franciszek Wilczek and Katarzyna Widyńska (Figure 15).
Since both Metryki and GenBaza offer the same image in this case, it makes sense to obtain the record from Metryki and avoid the hassle of having to log in to the GenBaza site (and then continue to log in periodically, since the site seems to require frequent re-logins). However, it's important to recognize that, while there is some redundancy between these sites, the overlap is not complete, and each of the major sites from which one can obtain scans of Polish vital records (e.g. Szukajwarchiwach, FamilySearch, AGAD, AP Przemyślu, etc.) offers some unique collections that are not duplicated elsewhere.
Although Franciszek Wilczek's marriage record was found in GenBaza and Metryki, the specific sites that might contain a particular scan will vary depending on the parish or registry office in question. Knowing which sites to check when no scan is linked to an indexed entry is sometimes a matter of experience. However, help is always available via Facebook groups, an assortment of which can be found in Katherine R. Willson's indexed list. Of course, not every indexed entry without a linked scan has a secret scan lurking online somewhere. In some cases, indexes were created from parish or diocesan archival collections for which no online scans are available. In those cases, the best recourse may indeed be to write to the archive identified by the "z" infodot in the indexed entry. The good news is that an indexed entry in Geneteka means that the record exists somewhere, and with a little perseverance, it can be tracked down.
© Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz 2019
Categories Gündelwangen, Baden, GenBaza, Geneteka, Metryki.genealodzy.pl, Tutorials, Wilczek
Solving the Puzzle: Establishing a Paper Trail to Match DNA Evidence
Published on May 24, 2019 June 2, 2019 by Julie Roberts SzczepankiewiczLeave a comment
In my last post, I wrote about a new DNA match that I've been puzzling over, between my mother and our genetic cousin, Ron Wilczek, who gave me permission to use his name on my blog. However, in looking at this research again more closely, I've been able to solve the puzzle and figure out how Ron and I are related, thanks to a document gifted to me by a friend, which provided the crucial bit of evidence that was the key to solving the problem.
To quickly recap, Ron's great-grandfather, Izydor Wilczek, was a Polish immigrant who arrived in the U.S. circa 1903 and settled in North Tonawanda, New York. In 1895, Izydor married Zofia Krawczyk in the parish of Żyrardów, presently located in Żyrardów County, Mazowieckie province, Poland.1 According to that marriage record, Izydor was born in Budy Stare, a village which happens to be less than 6 kilometers distant from the village of Młodzieszynek where my Wilczek ancestors lived. Both villages were served by the Catholic parish in Młodzieszyn, which was the same parish to which my great-grandfather, Joseph Zieliński, belonged prior to his immigration to North Tonawanda, New York in 1912. It was Joseph's great-grandmother who was named Marianna Wilczek. So if Ron and I both have Wilczek ancestors from villages in the vicinity of Młodziesyzn, then obviously this must be how we're related, right? It should just be a matter of documenting the common Wilczek ancestor from whom Ron and my mother inherited that bit of shared DNA?
Not so fast. That same marriage record for Izydor Wilczek and Zofia Krawczyk also revealed that Zofia was born in Kuznocin, a village which belongs to the parish in Sochaczew and which was home to my Krzemiński, Bielski, and Świecicki ancestors. So was it Izydor or Zofia who was the most recent common ancestor who contributed that single segment of DNA shared between Ron and my mom? We really need some documentary evidence in order to figure this out, and the first step is further research into Izydor Wilczek's roots in Młodzieszyn and Zofia's roots in Sochaczew.
In Search of Zofia Krawczyk's Maternal Ancestry
Zofia Krawczyk was age 20 at the time of her marriage in 1895, suggesting a birth circa 1875. A matching birth record was quickly identified in the indexed records in Geneteka (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Geneteka search results for birth records mentioning Zofia Krawczyk in Sochaczew.
The first result, showing Zofia Krawczyk born to Marianna Krawczyk and an unknown father, is clearly a match for the Zofia mentioned in the marriage record to Izydor Wilczek. Hovering the cursor over the "i" in the "Remarks" column reveals that she was born on 14 May 1874, and hovering over the "z" column informs us that a copy of the record can be requested from the Archiwum Diecezjalnego w Łowiczu, the diocesan archive in Łowicz. Although the unknown father presents a roadblock at this point, perhaps we can more easily identify Marianna Krawczyk's parents?
If we assume that Marianna Krawczyk was between the ages of 13 and 45 when she gave birth to Zofia in 1874, then she herself would have been born between 1829 and 1861. A search for a birth record for Marianna Krawczyk in all indexed parishes within a 15 kilometer radius of Sochaczew, between 1829 and 1861, produces the results shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Geneteka search results for birth records dated between 1829-1861 mentioning Marianna Krawczyk from all indexed parishes within a 15 kilometer radius of Sochaczew, omitting results in the parents' columns.
There are three possible matches, all from Sochaczew parish, but none specifically from the village of Kuznocin where Zofia was born. However, Zofia's marriage record provided one important clue buried at the end of the record, where it stated, "Permission for the marriage of the underage bride was given orally by the stepfather, Jan Skrzyński, present at the marriage act." Repeating the search with the date restrictions removed, and clicking over to the "marriages" tab, produces the results shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Geneteka search results for marriages after 1829 for given name Marianna and surname Krawczyk from all indexed parishes within a 15 kilometer radius of Sochaczew, omitting results in the parents' columns.
Bingo! The first item underlined in red is the 1876 marriage of Jan Skrzyński and Marianna Krawczyk, which took place in Sochaczew. According to this indexed entry, the bride was the daughter of Andrzej Krawczyk and Tekla Pietraszeska, and information revealed by the "i" infodot (not shown in this image) states that the bride was 25 years old and born in Gawłów. Although a scan is not available, this record, too, can be requested from the Archiwum Diecezjalnego w Łowiczu.
If Marianna was 25 in 1876, it suggests that she was born in 1851. However, this information does not align perfectly with the information from the available birth records for women named Marianna Krawczyk from Sochaczew shown in Figure 2. The Marianna Krawcyzk born in 1851 was born in Żuków, not Gawłów, and her mother's maiden name was Piotrowska, not Pietraszeska. On the other hand, the Krawczyk girl born in Gawłów was named Marcjanna, not Marianna, and she was born in 1859, not 1851. Moreover, her mother's name was still Piotrowska, not Pietraszeska. So how do we reconcile this? We remember that no single document can be trusted to be 100% accurate and completely reliable. Each piece of evidence must be evaluated in light of the total. In this case, it seems more likely that the Marianna Krawczyk born in 1851 is the same as the Marianna Krawczyk who married in 1876, despite the discrepancies in the place of birth recorded in the marriage record and in the spelling of the mother's maiden name. This assertion is bolstered by the fact that the Marcjanna Krawczyk born in 1859 appears to have died in 1861, which we discover when we click over to the "deaths" tab in Geneteka.
The second marriage record underlined in red in Figure 3 should also inspire confidence in the conclusion that Marianna's mother's name was most likely Piotrowska rather than Pietraszeska (although both names are patronymic surnames related to the given name Piotr). That record shows the marriage of Mateusz Krawczyk, son of Andrzej Krawczyk and Tekla Piotrowska, to Marianna Winnicka in the parish of Młodzieszyn in 1893. Mateusz is clearly a full brother to Marianna Krawczyk, and as additional documents emerge which mention Piotrowski, it becomes clear that the Pietraszeska variant was an anomaly. Having established that Zofia Krawczyk's mother, Marianna Krawczyk, was the daughter of Andrzej Krawczyk and Tekla Piotrowska, we come to a dead end. Although further searching in Geneteka can fill out the family tree, producing additional birth, marriage, and death records for children of Andrzej Krawczyk and Tekla Piotrowska, there is no marriage record for Andrzej Krawczyk and Tekla Piotrowska which identifies their parents' names. Similarly, no death records were found for either Andrzej or Tekla which might provide this information. All that can be done quickly and easily to trace Zofia Krawczyk's ancestry in the hope of finding a connection between her and my family has been done, and no connection has been discovered.
In Search of Izydor Wilczek's Paternal Ancestry
Moving on, then, to research into Izydor Wilczek's ancestry, we recall that Izydor's 1895 marriage record described him as age 30, born in Budy Stare to Andrzej Wilczek and Anna Kornacka. This suggests a birth year circa 1865, and again we hit a snag because birth records for Młodzieszyn are only readily available after 1885. The situation with marriage records from Młodzieszyn is similarly frustrating, since these are only available from 1889–1898 and then again from 1911–1928. Although it is not possible to easily obtain Izydor's birth record or his parents' marriage record, a search for a death record for his father, Andrzej Wilczek, pays off (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Geneteka search results for death records for given name Andrzej and surname Wilczek in Młodzieszyn parish.
According to this indexed entry, Andrzej Wilczek died in 1900 in the village of Budy Stare in Młodzieszyn parish. The record is shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Death record from Młodzieszyn parish for Andrzej Wilczek, 16 August 1900.2
The record is written in Russian, which was the official language required for all church and civil vital records in this area at the time, and the full translation appears in the footnotes. It states that Andrzej Wilczek was a farmer, born and residing in Budy Stare, age 72, which suggests a birth year circa 1828. The most important part for solving our DNA puzzle is the section underlined in red, which translates, "…son of Jan and Joanna née Winnicka. He leaves after himself his widowed wife, Anna née Kornacka…" The statement of his wife's name confirms that this death record does indeed pertain to Andrzej Wilczek, father of Izydor Wilczek, rather than to some other Andrzej Wilczek who might have been living in Budy Stare at the same time. Having determined that this is definitely the right guy, the information about Andrzej's parents becomes the link which allows me to connect Ron Wilczek's family to my own, because I have preliminary evidence that Jan Wilczek was the full brother of my great-great-great-great-grandmother, Marianna Wilczek.
Why Genealogy Friends Are the Best Kind of Friends
How do I know that Jan and Marianna Wilczek were siblings? As mentioned previously, records from the parish of Młodzieszyn are not readily available, as the only existing copies of books prior to 1885 are onsite at the parish itself. The current pastor, Fr. Dariusz Kuźmiński, is understandably busy with tending to the spiritual needs of his congregation, and has little time for research in old records. However, last November, my friend Justyna Cwynar visited the parish on my behalf to request some Masses for the deceased members of my family, and while she was there, Fr. Kuźmiński kindly permitted her to spend about ten minutes with the parish books. It was unfortunately all the time that Fr. Kuźmiński could give her since he had other commitments, so Justyna worked quickly. She first located the marriage record for Antoni Kalota and Marianna Wilczek which was discussed in the last post, and she also discovered this marriage record for Jan Wilczek and Joanna Winnicka (Figure 6).
Figure 6: Marriage record from Młodzieszyn parish for Jan Wilczek and Joanna Winnicka, 20 January 1828.3
The record is written in Polish, and states in translation,
"This happened in the village of Młodzieszyn on the twentieth day of January in the year one thousand eight hundred twenty-eight at twelve o'clock noon. We declare that—in the presence of witnesses, Grzegorz Orliński, land-owning farmer residing in Budy Młodzieszyńskie, age thirty, and Izydor Wilczek, land-owning farmer residing in Budy Młodzieszynek, having sixty-two years of age—on this day was concluded a religious marriage between Jan Wilczek, a bachelor born in Budy Młodzieszynek to Izydor and Katarzyna nee Chlupińska, the spouses Wilczek, residing in that same place as land-owning farmers; living with his parents, having nineteen years of age; and Miss Joanna Winnicka, daughter of Maciej, already deceased, and Jadwiga, the spouses Winnicka, residents of Budy Młodzieszyńskie; age sixteen, born in Budy Młodzieszyńskie and living with her mother. The marriage was preceded by three announcements on the sixth, thirteenth, and twentieth days of January of the current year in the parish of Młodzieszyn, and likewise by the oral permission of those present at the marriage act—the mother of the bride and likewise both parents of the groom. There were no impediments to the marriage. The newlyweds stated that they had made no prenuptial agreement. This document was read to the declarants and witnesses, who are illiterate. [signed] Fr. Wawrzyniec Kruszewski, pastor of Młodzieszyn."
And there you have it.
Unlike the marriage record for my ancestors, Marianna Wilczek and Antoni Kalota, which only stated that she was the daughter of Izydor and Katarzyna without specifying Katarzyna's maiden name, the present record states that Katarzyna's maiden name was Chlupińska. Although Wilczek is a fairly common Polish surname, especially in this part of Poland, the name Izydor is sufficiently uncommon to permit a reasonable certainty that there were not two distinct couples named Izydor and Katarzyna Wilczek who were living concurrently in the same parish. However, the possibility still remains that Izydor Wilczek could have been married sequentially to two different women named Katarzyna. Lacking evidence from additional marriage and death records in the parish, the hypothesis that Marianna Wilczek and Jan Wilczek were full siblings and both children of Izydor Wilczek and Katarzyna Chlupińska remains tentative. Jan Wilczek's age in this record suggests that he was born circa 1808, and an added bonus in this record is the fact that the first witness, 62-year-old Izydor Wilczek, was almost certainly Jan's father. We can therefore infer that Izydor was born circa 1766.
That's a Wrap (For Now)
Despite the limitations on available records for Młodzieszyn, further research can be done in the indexed records in Geneteka to identify additional children of Andrzej Wilczek and Anna Kornacka. (Note that one such child, Paulina (née Wilczek) Orlińska, turned up during the search for Andrzej's death record shown in Figure 4.) However, for the purpose of understanding the DNA match between Mom and Ron, we have already established a paper trail, as shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7: Relationship chart showing documented relationship between Ron Wilczek and my mother, showing their proposed common descent from most recent ancestral couple, Izydor Wilczek and Katarzyna Chlupińska.
The chart indicates that my mom and Ron are fifth cousins, a relationship which is consistent with the amount of DNA they share (26.3 centimorgans, cM). Of course, the established paper trail does not prove conclusively that the shared DNA must come from the ancestral couple of Izydor Wilczek and Katarzyna Chlupińska. In order to do that, it would be necessary to identify additional living descendants of this same couple, who match Ron and Mom on this same DNA segment. Ideally, those tested would descend from Izydor and Katarzyna through other children besides Marianna and Jan Wilczek, such as the Paulina (née Wilczek) Orlińska mentioned in the death record in Figure 4. But present documentary evidence is sufficient to establish this relationship as a preliminary hypothesis for further testing, if one wished to determine beyond the shadow of a doubt that this particular DNA segment was inherited from either Izydor Wilczek or Katarzyna Chlupińska.
Personally, I'm satisfied with this progress. This DNA match spurred me to new discoveries about the interrelatedness of the Polish immigrant community in North Tonawanda; it pointed to a new migration pathway to ponder, which brought migrants from Sochaczew County to Żyrardów County; and it opened paths to further research into the descendants of my 5x-great-grandparents, Izydor Wilczek and Katarzyna Chlupińska. This should keep me busy for quite a while. I'm deeply grateful for the kindness and generosity of two individuals: my friend Justyna Cwynar, who made time during her trip to Poland to stop by Młodzieszyn for me, and Fr. Dariusz Kuźmiński. who permitted access to these priceless vital records. Without them, these discoveries would not have been possible.
And now, back to those Walshes!
1 Roman Catholic Church, Żyrardów parish (Żyrardów, Żyrardów, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księgi metrykalne parafii rz-kat. w Żyrardowie, Księga UMZ 1895 r., marriages, no. 63, Izydor Wilczek and Zofia Krawczyk, 24 February 1895, accessed as digital images, Metryki.genealodzy.pl (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 24 May 2019).
2 "Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Mlodzieszynie," Ksiega zgonów 1889-1901, 1900, no. 55, death record for Andrzej Wilczek, died 16 August 1900, accessed as digital images, Metryki.genealodzy.pl (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 24 May 2019). Translation: "No. 55, Budy Stare. This happened in the village of Młodzieszyn on the fourth/seventeenth day of August in the year one thousand nine hundred at eleven o'clock in the morning. They appeared, Franciszek Orliński, farmer, [having] fifty-five years, and Mateusz Orliński, farmer, [having] sixty-three years from birth, residents of the village of Budy Stare, and stated that, on the third/sixteenth day of August of the current year, at eleven o'clock in the morning, in the village of Budy Stare, Andrzej Wilczek died; a farmer, having seventy-two years of age, born in the village of Budy Stare, son of Jan and Joanna née Winnicka. He leaves after himself his widowed wife, Anna née Kornacka, residing in the village of Budy Stare. After eye witness confirmation of the death of Andrzej Wilczek, this document was read to the illiterate witnesses and was signed by Us only. [signed] Fr. J. Ojrzanowski."
3 Roman Catholic Church, Młodzieszyn parish (Młodzieszyn, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), "Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Młodzieszynie," unknown dates, 1828, marriages, no. 1, Jan Wilczek and Joanna Winnicka, 20 January 1828, Parafia Narodzenia Najświętszej Maryi Panny w Młodzieszynie, Chodakowska 1, 96-512 Młodzieszyn, Poland.
Categories Budy Stare, Chlupiński, DNA, Geneteka, Kalota, Młodzieszyn, North Tonawanda, New York, Sochaczew, Wilczek
Puzzling Through a DNA Match
Although I'm mostly working on my Walsh research these days, there's some Polish research that's in the back of my mind that I thought I'd write about today. This research relates to an exciting DNA match I found recently on my Mom's side. Although I still don't know exactly how we're related, I'm sure we're on the right track.
Like many of you, I regularly check my list of new "close" matches (4th cousins or better) at the sites where I have done DNA testing with various family members. Since I'm fortunate enough to have test data for both my parents, I prefer to check their match lists rather than my own since their matches yield better information about earlier generations of the family. During one of the checks on Mom's matches, I noticed a 4th-cousin-level match to Ron Wilczek, who gave me permission to use his name in my blog. Ron had a tree linked to his DNA data, and I was immediately intrigued by the fact that his grandfather was reported to be a Polish immigrant to North Tonawanda, New York, named Stanisław Wilczek. Both the surname and the location were significant to me, because my mom's grandfather was another Polish immigrant to North Tonawanda named Joseph Zielinski, and Joseph's great-grandmother was Marianna Wilczek.
The Wilczek family of Młodzieszyn Parish
Marianna was born circa 1810, and she married Antoni Kalota in the parish of Młodzieszyn in 1830. The record of their marriage was kindly obtained for me through onsite research at the parish by my friend Justyna Cwynar, and is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Marriage record from Młodzieszyn parish for Antoni Kalota and Marianna Wilczek, 31 January 1830.1
The record is written in Polish, and in translation it states,
"No. 2. This happened in the village of Młodzieszyn on the thirty-first day of January in the year one thousand eight hundred thirty at twelve o'clock noon. We declare that—in the presence of witnesses, Antoni Chaba, land-owning farmer of Młodzieszyn, having forty-eight years of age, and Antoni Wilczek, land-owning farmer of Budy Młodzieszynek, having twenty-seven years of age, brother of the aforementioned Marianna Wilczkówna—on this day was concluded a religious marriage between Antoni Kalota, bachelor, land-owning farmer of Budy Młodzieszynek, age twenty years, son of Grzegorz and Helena, the spouses Kalota, former residents of Młodzieszyn; born in Młodzieszyn; and Miss Marianna Wilczkówna, age nineteen, daughter of Izydor and Katarzyna, the spouses Wilczek, residing as land-owning farmers in Budy Młodzieszynek; born in that same place and living there with her parents. The marriage was preceded by three announcements on the tenth, seventeenth, and twenty-fourth days of January of the current year in the parish of Młodzieszyn and likewise by the oral permission of the parents of the bride, present at the marriage act; on the part of the groom, permission was officially declared by the family council before the village mayor of gmina Trojanów on the ninth day of January of the current year. There were no impediments to the marriage. The newlyweds stated that they had made no prenuptial agreements. This document was read to the declarants and witnesses who are unable to write. [signed] Pastor Fr. Fabian Hirschberger."
Marianna's name was recorded as Wilczkówna, but this is merely an old-fashioned form indicating an unmarried woman of the Wilczek family. She was noted to be the daughter of Izydor and Katarzyna, whose maiden name was not provided in this document.
The second witness on the marriage record for Antoni Kalota and Marianna Wilczek was Antoni Wilczek, who was also identified as her brother, and whose age suggests a birth circa 1803. The record states that Marianna was born and residing with her parents in "Budy Młodzieszynek," a place which does not appear in the Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich (Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and Other Slavic Lands). It's unclear from this record whether the village of Młodzieszynek was intended, or instead the village of Budy Młodzieszyńskie, both of which belonged to the parish in Młodzieszyn. According to the Słownik, Budy Młodzieszyńskie had 44 homes, while Młodzieszynek had 15 homes circa 1827, contemporaneous with the time frame for the marriage of Marianna and Antoni Kalota. 2
The DNA Match
Mom and Ron share a single segment of DNA on Chromosome 17. The matching segment consists of 26.3 cM and 11,008 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), according to the chromosome browser at MyHeritage, where Ron uploaded his raw DNA data from Ancestry. The Shared cM Tool at DNA Painter, which offers statistical probabilities for each relationship that is possible based on a given amount of shared DNA, reports a 55.88% chance that the relationship between Mom and Ron is pretty distant, along the lines of 4th-8th cousins, but encompassing a number of possible relationships within that range (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Most probable relationships predicted by 26.3 cM shared DNA, according to DNA Painter.
26.3 cM is likely to be identical by descent, indicative of shared ancestry, rather than by identical by chance, i.e. a false positive. However, the Wilczek surname is sufficiently common throughout Poland that we cannot assume that this is necessarily how Ron and Mom are related without documentary evidence to prove the relationship (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Approximate geographic distribution of the Wilczek surname throughout Poland, circa 2009, courtesy of Nazwiska Polskie. Numbers in colored circles indicate approximate number of bearers of the surname in that region.
So what do we know—or what can we discover—about the origins of Ron's Wilczek ancestors that might help confirm the hypothesis that the connection lies with the Wilczek family of Młodzieszyn parish?
The Wilczek Family of North Tonawanda, New York
According to Ron's tree, his grandfather, Stanisław, was the son of Izydor and Sophia Wilczek, both of whom also immigrated from Russian Poland to North Tonawanda. Izydor is not an especially common Polish given name, and its appearance in both Ron's family and my own offers further evidence that our connection lies somewhere within the Wilczek family of Młodzieszyn. The 1910 census shows the Wilczek family living at 36 Eighth Avenue in North Tonawanda (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Extract from the 1910 census showing Izydor Wilczek and his family in North Tonawanda, New York.3
According to the information in the census, Izydor was born circa 1874 in Russian Poland and had been married for 15 years, suggesting a marriage date circa 1895. He was reported to have immigrated in 1903 but was not a naturalized citizen. His wife, Sophie, arrived three years later in 1906. Although there were only four children living with the family in 1910, the census revealed that Sophie was the mother of 8, so we know there were four additional children that we need to identify in order to get a complete picture of the family.
In addition to the 1910 census, Ron's tree contained one another piece of information that was especially interesting. His tree stated that his grandfather, Stanisław Wilczek, was born in Żyrardów, Poland, a town which is located some 40 km south of Młodzieszyn (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Locations of Żyrardów and Młodzieszyn within the Mazowieckie province of Poland, courtesy of Google Maps.
If Ron's Wilczek ancestors were originally from Żyrardów or nearby villages, that would fly in the face of my hypothesis that we descend from common Wilczek ancestors in Młodzieszyn. Could his information be incorrect? Or did his branch of the Wilczek family move south, and if so, how long ago?
Geneteka to the Rescue, Again!
Fortunately, this was an easy thing to check. Records for Żyrardów are indexed in the popular Polish vital records indexing database, Geneteka, for the time period when Stanisław Wilczek and his siblings were born. A quick search for records pertaining to Izydor and Zofia (the Polish version of the name Sophie) Wilczek demonstrated that Ron's oral family history was accurate: Stanisław Wilczek was born in Żyrardów (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Geneteka search results for birth records pertaining to Izydor and Zofia Wilczek, searching all locations in Mazowieckie province.
In addition to Stanisław's birth record, this search also produced birth records for the two Polish-born siblings mentioned in the 1910 census, Feliksa and Antonina. Furthermore, it identified two of the children born to Zofia Wilczek who were reported to be deceased prior to 1910, Zofia Stanisława and Józef. Their death records can be found by clicking over to the "Deaths" tab in the search results. Best of all, the marriage record for Izydor and Zofia was also indexed and linked to a scan, which is shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Marriage record from Żyrardów parish for Izydor Wilczek and Zofia Krawczyk, 24 February 1895.4
The marriage record is written in Russian, and is translated as follows:
"No. 63. Teklinów and Budy Stare. This happened in the town of Żyrardów on the 12th/24th day of February 1895 at 7:00 in the evening. We declare that—in the presence of witnesses, Antoni Peńsko and Jan Wysocki, both adult laborers residing in Ruda Guzowska—on this day a religious marriage was contracted between Izydor Wilczek, bachelor, reserve solder, farmer, born in Budy Stare in Młodzieszyn parish, and residing in that place with his parents; son of Andrzej and Anna née Kornacka, the spouses Wilczek, age 30; and Zofia Krawczyk, single, seamstress, born in Kuznocin, Sochaczew parish, and residing in Teklinów, daughter of the unmarried Marianna Krawczyk; age 20. The marriage was preceded by three readings of the banns in the local parish church and in the parish of Młodzieszyn on the 10th, 17th, and 24th days of February of this year. No impediments to the marriage were found. The newlyweds stated that they had made no premarital agreements between them. Permission for the marriage of the underage bride was given orally by the stepfather, Jan Skrzyński, present at the marriage act. The religious ceremony of marriage was performed by Fr. Kazimierz Nowosielski, vicar of the local parish. This document was read aloud to the newlyweds, witnesses, and stepfather, who are illiterate, and was signed by Us. [signed] Acting Civil Registrar, Fr. Jan Ka??? [illegible]"
So Izydor was indeed born in a village belonging to Młodzieszyn parish, and he was still living there at the time he married Zofia. This confirms my hunch about Izydor's origins and suggests that I'm on the right track. It may be that the common ancestor shared between me and Ron was a Wilczek from Młodzieszyn. The record goes on to identify Izydor's parents as Andrzej Wilczek and Anna Kornacka, who were unknown to me, so further research in the records of Młodzieszyn is needed to elucidate the relationship between Izydor Wilczek and my great-great-great-grandmother Marianna (née Wilczek) Kalota. However, the record also presents a plot twist: the bride, Zofia Krawczyk, was a native of the village of Kuznocin in Sochaczew parish! This is potentially relevant because I've traced my Krzemiński, Bielski, and Świecicki ancestors back to villages belonging to Sochaczew parish, so it muddies the waters quite a bit when it comes to determining the common ancestor from whom Mom and Ron inherited that segment of DNA on Chromosome 17. Moreover, it's problematic that Zofia's father is unknown, as our connection might lie with him.
Although an answer to this problem is not immediately apparent, it may be that additional research can present the solution. In the meantime, it's obvious that we're on the right track. This is a story that will be continued…. stay tuned!
1 Roman Catholic Church, Młodzieszyn parish (Młodzieszyn, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), "Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Młodzieszynie," unknown dates, 1830, marriages, no. 2, Antoni Kalota and Marianna Wilczek, 31 January 1830, Parafia Narodzenia Najświętszej Maryi Panny w Młodzieszynie, Chodakowska 1, 96-512 Młodzieszyn, Poland.
2 Filip Sulimierski, et al., Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich [Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and Other Slavic Lands] (Warszawa: Nakładem Władysława Walewskiego, 1880-1902), Tom VI, 536, "Młodzieszyn," DIR—Zasoby Polskie (http://dir.icm.edu.pl/pl/ : 17 May 2019).
3 "United States Census, 1910," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M5HJ-T4L : 17 May 2019), Izidor Wilczek household, North Tonawanda Ward 3, Niagara, New York, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 126, sheet 20A, family 309, NARA microfilm publication T624 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1982), roll 1049; FHL microfilm 1,375,062.
Categories Geneteka, Kalota, Młodzieszyn, North Tonawanda, New York, Sochaczew, Wilczek, Zieliński
Published on May 5, 2019 May 6, 2019 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz3 Comments
As genealogy researchers, we often stumble upon interesting historical tidbits while researching other things. Since time for research and writing is limited, I do my best not to let my curiosity take me too far down the rabbit hole into further exploration of those individuals or events. Yet sometimes, those individuals stay with me, returning to my thoughts every now and then, so I decided to write about two of them today.
Lament for a Nameless Child
The first item I'd like to share is a death certificate I discovered recently while reviewing the entry for Thomas Coyle on the same page. Number 2827, bordered in red on the image below, is the death certificate for an unnamed child from Nepean township, Carleton County, Ontario.1 Records on this page were erroneously described in the FamilySearch catalog as being from the city of Toronto, some 400 km away.
The death record is for an unnamed baby girl who died on 7 June 1896 having lived for just a few minutes. As was typical for civil death records from Canada in this era, no parents' names were required on the form, so her identity may be lost to the descendants of any siblings she may have had. Her cause of death was noted to be "difficult parturition," meaning she died as a result of some trauma from her birth. The informant was her father, who was a resident of City View, which is a neighborhood formerly located in Nepean, which is now located in Ottawa.
As family historians, we often think in terms of preserving the stories of those who have gone before us. Stories like this one, of lives ended before they'd even begun, always make me sad. Perhaps there's a genealogist out there somewhere who's researching a family from Nepean, wondering about that gap in the births of the children, noting that there should have been another baby born circa 1896. Or maybe that genealogist has already discovered a Catholic burial record which identifies the parents for this little one, so this civil death record is just one more piece of evidence to document a life cut short. In an era when infant mortality was so much higher than it is today, it's quite possible that her parents had already lost children prior to the death of this baby girl, yet losses like this aren't something one ever forgets. I hope that her parents and any siblings found some measure of peace in this life after her death, and as a person of faith, I also hope that the souls of all the family are reunited in the joy of the next life.
The second historical tidbit is this 1891 baptismal record for Cinderella Maria Howe, found in the records of St. Stephen's parish in Middleport, Niagara County, New York.2 I stumbled across it one day last year when researching my husband's Lewandowski/Levanduski ancestors (there's a baptismal record for Joseph Levanduski on the preceding page).
The record is in Latin, and it states that Cinderella Maria Howe was baptized on 15 August 1891, and that she was the daughter of Morgan L. Jones and Elizabeth White. Godparents were Maria Butler and Daniel Hurlihan. All of this is pretty standard, apart from the uncommon given name, but what really intrigued me was the fact that Cinderella was 62 years old at the time of her baptism, having been born on 13 February 1829.
Although people can get baptized into the Roman Catholic faith at any age, infant baptism is common practice. So if one is researching ancestors that one knows or suspects were Catholic, one might expect to find a baptismal record within a year or so after birth, not 62 years later. A researcher investigating the family of Cinderella (née Jones) Howe would have absolutely no reason to go looking for her baptism in these records, in this time period, unless there were an oral family tradition which stated that Cinderella was baptized as a Catholic late in life. Moreover, since these church records from St. Stephen's are not presently indexed online, this record can only be found by browsing through the digital images, page by page, or by visiting the parish. (More information on finding such unindexed scans at FamilySearch can be found here.)
Quick searches on Ancestry and FamilySearch reveal quite a lot of "low-hanging fruit" in the form of easily-found documents that can further inform us about the life of Cinderella Howe, but this baptismal record was not cited in any of the family trees I reviewed that mention Cinderella. This is perhaps unsurprising in light of the factors already discussed. One wonders what the factors were that inspired her to convert to Catholicism at the age of 62. As a widow who had buried her husband a few years previously, was she merely pondering her own mortality, and felt drawn to the Catholic faith? Were there other family members who converted as well? Perhaps these questions will one day be answered by one of her descendants. In the meantime, I need to climb back out of the rabbit hole and get back to my own genealogy projects. Those dead ancestors aren't going to research themselves.
1 "Ontario Deaths, 1869–1937, and Overseas Deaths, 1939–1947," database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org: 4 May 2019), no. 002827, register entry for Not named, died 7 June 1896 in Nepean, Carleton, Ontario, Canada, accessed as browsable images, path: Deaths > 1896 > no 1001-6523 > image 579 of 1466.
2 Roman Catholic Church, St. Stephen's parish (Middleport, Niagara, New York, USA), "Church records, 1878-1917," database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org: 4 May 2019), Baptisms, 1891, p. 35, unnumbered entries, Cinderella Maria Howe, baptized 15 August 1891, accessed as browsable images, image 23 of 154.
Categories Canada, FamilySearch, Rabbit-Hole Research
The Walshes of St. Catharines: Digging Deeper with Cluster Research
Published on April 23, 2019 April 24, 2019 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz1 Comment
Every spring year my thoughts turn to my Walsh ancestors, from whom I inherit my very tiny bit of Irish ancestry. Finding the place of origin of the family in Ireland so that I can attempt to research them in records there has been an elusive goal for me and I often think how much easier it is to research my Polish ancestors, despite the language barrier, rather than this brick-wall Irish-Canadian lot. However, I've been able to gain some insights through cluster research, focusing especially on two individuals, Thomas Walsh and B. Maria Walsh, who were reported to be living with the family of my great-great-great-grandparents in the 1861 census. Through insights gained from research into Thomas and B. Maria, I may be inching closer to answering my research questions, "Where in Ireland was (my) Robert Walsh born, and who were his parents?"
Robert and Elizabeth (née Hodgkinson) Walsh, who have also been recorded with the variant surnames Welch and Welsh, were my 3x-great-grandparents. I've written about them a few times, including, most recently, here. To quickly recap, Robert was born in Ireland circa 1808-1816 and was an immigrant to St. Catharines, Ontario. He married Elizabeth Hodgkinson circa 1840, but due to the loss of early church records for the parish in which they probably married, as well as census records for St. Catharines for both the 1842 and 1851 censuses of Canada West, the first glimpse we get of the Walsh family comes from the 1861 census. The 1861 census of Canada is one of those censuses which does not specify the relationships of each individual in the household to the head of the household. The entry for the family of Robert Walsh in St. Catharines, Ontario is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Robert and Elizabeth Walsh family of St. Catharines, Ontario, in the 1861 Census of Canada.1
These data tell us that Robert Walsh was a married Roman Catholic tailor, born in Ireland circa 1816. His wife, recorded here only as Mrs. Robert Walsh, was also noted to have been born in Ireland and Roman Catholic. However, the bulk of the evidence pertaining to her indicates that Elizabeth (née Hodgkinson) Walsh was actually an Anglican native of Upper Canada. Her age here, 40, suggests a birth circa 1821. So far, so good.
Thomas Walsh or Welsh, merchant tailor of St. Catharines
The following entries are where it starts to get interesting. The next two individuals who were mentioned in this family group are "Thos." (Thomas) Walsh and "B. Maria" Walsh. Thomas was reported to be 30 years of age and B. Maria was reported to be 20 years of age, suggesting birth years circa 1831 and 1841, respectively. Both were single. It's pretty clear that this Thomas cannot be the son of Robert and Elizabeth, since they would have been just 15 and 10 years of age when he was born. Moreover, their youngest son was also named Thomas, and it's unusual (though perhaps not unheard of) to have two children in the family with the same name while both are living. The elder Thomas was noted to be a member of the family, rather than an unrelated resident in the household, but his exact relationship to Robert Walsh is unclear. Was he a younger brother? Nephew? Or perhaps cousin?
The fact that he was some close relative of the family is indisputable. Not only was Thomas living with the family in 1861, he was also living in the same house with them at 34 Lake Street in St. Catharines as of 1878 (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Partial listings for Welch in Gazetteer and business directory of Lincoln and Welland counties for 1879.2
By 1878, Robert Walsh Sr. was probably retired from his previous occupation as a tailor, since no occupation was given. However, Thomas was noted to be a merchant tailor, so perhaps he inherited the family business from Robert. Robert's son, James George Walsh, had apparently branched off into the sewing machine business, while Robert Jr. was noted to be a partner in Rogers and Welch, a local livery service.
Thomas's close relationship to Robert Walsh's family is underscored by the proximity of their graves in St. Catharines' Victoria Lawn Cemetery. Figure 3 shows the location of the graves of Thomas Welsh (sic) and his wife and son, relative to the graves of Robert Walsh Jr. (buried under the spelling "Welch"), his wife Caroline, and their daughter, Frances Maria.
Figure 3: Location of Walsh family graves in Victoria Lawn Cemetery, section H. A = grave marker for Robert and Caroline Welch (sic). B = ground-level grave marker for Francis (sic) Marie Welch, daughter of Robert and Caroline. C = grave marker for Thomas Welsh (sic), his wife Mary Ann Cronin, and their son, Robert Francis Welsh. Photo taken circa August 2006 by Carol Roberts Fischer, used with permission.
A closer view of Thomas Welsh's grave marker is shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Grave marker for Thomas and Mary Ann Welsh, Victoria Lawn Cemetery, Section H, Division 19, Lot 2. The marker reads, "In/Memory Of/Thomas Welsh/died/July 17, 1900/Aged 68 Yrs/May his soul rest in peace/Mary A. Cronin/Beloved wife of/Thomas Welsh/October 28, 1907/Aged 65 Yrs/May she rest in peace." Photo taken circa August 2006 by Carol Roberts Fischer, used with permission.
The marriage of Thomas Walsh (or Welsh) and Mary Ann Cronin was found in the records of St. Catherine of Alexandria parish. (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Marriage record for Thomas Walsh and Maryann Cronin from the cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Catharines, Ontario, 9 May 1861.3
The ages reported in the record for Thomas and Mary Ann suggest birth years circa 1834 and 1841, respectively. These are reasonably consistent with the years of birth suggested by the grave marker for Thomas (1832) and for Mary Ann (1842). Moreover, there is no evidence from census records to suggest that there was another Thomas Walsh/Welsh/Welch married to a woman named Mary Ann/Marianne/Mary and living in St. Catharines contemporaneously. The fact that "our" Thomas Walsh was reported to be single in the 1861 census doesn't contradict the information found here because the census was taken 14 January 1861 and the marriage took place later, on 9 May 1861. Therefore we can be certain that this is the correct marriage record for the couple whose grave is shown in Figures 3 and 4, and that this is the same Thomas who was living with the Robert Walsh family in the 1861 census, despite the minor discrepancies in age and surname spelling.
The marriage record revealed that Thomas was born in Ireland to "Jas." (James) Walsh and Catherine Cavanah (sic), while Mary Ann was the daughter of Patrick Cronin and Catherine Shea. Witnesses to the marriage were Michael O'Laughlan and Maria Walsh, both of St. Catharines. Might "Maria Walsh" be the same as our "B. Maria" from the 1861 census? What evidence can we find for B. Maria Walsh, and what is her relationship to the family of Robert and Elizabeth (née Hodgkinson) Walsh?
B. Maria Walsh of St. Catharines, Upper Canada
If the relationship between Thomas Walsh and Robert Walsh is unclear, then the relationship between B. Maria Walsh and Robert Walsh is even more murky. Her age in the 1861 census (Figure 1) makes it reasonable to believe that she was the oldest child of Robert and Elizabeth, since they would have been about 25 and 20 years of age, respectively, when she was born circa 1841. Moreover, she's only about 3 years older than the next person listed, who was Robert and Elizabeth's son, James, which is a reasonable spacing between siblings. For many years, I and others researching this family have believed she probably was the daughter of Robert and Elizabeth Walsh. The problem is the lack of evidence that she was their child. All the other members of the household—James George, Henry, Mary Ann, Robert, Elizabeth, Ellen, Thomas John, and Peter Joseph—are documented children of Robert and Elizabeth Walsh. For each of these children there is abundant direct and indirect evidence which establishes their relationship to Robert and Elizabeth, but this is not the case for B. Maria.
Additional evidence for B. Maria Walsh which might elucidate her relationship to Robert Walsh was initially scarce. No civil marriage record was found for her, but this is perhaps unsurprising since civil vital registration began in Ontario in 1869, and a woman born in 1841 may well have been married by that point. Although newspaper research can often provide evidence for a woman's married name, there were no promising matches for "B. Maria," "Maria," or "B." Walsh/Welsh/Welch in the local names index compiled by the St. Catharines Public Library, based on local newspaper notices of births, marriages, deaths, adoptions, anniversaries, etc. Similarly, she was not found in a search of Ontario death records. However, analysis of baptismal records for the children of Robert and Elizabeth Walsh offered a glimmer of insight. I've written previously about my obsession with tracking godparents as a particular subset within our ancestors' FAN clubs (Friends, Associates and Neighbors) since they were often family members, so I took a look at the godparents that Robert and Elizabeth Walsh selected for their children. Surviving baptismal records from St. Catherine of Alexandria parish begin in 1852, so the only records that exist for this family pertain to the youngest four children, and the data are summarized in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Known godparents for children of Robert and Elizabeth (née Hodgkinson) Walsh.
While all of these individuals are worthy of further exploration, a few names from the group stand out immediately. Michael O'Laughlin, godfather to Peter Joseph Walsh, is likely to be the same Michael O'Laughlan who was a witness to the marriage of Thomas Walsh and Mary Ann Cronin. Thomas Walsh, godfather to Thomas John Walsh, is almost certainly the same Thomas Walsh whose history we've been exploring thus far. Since he did not marry Mary Ann Cronin until May of 1861, the Maryann Walsh who was godmother to Peter Joseph Walsh cannot be Thomas's wife. However, it's possible that this godmother was actually Peter Joseph's older sister, Maryann Walsh, who would have been about 12 years old at the time of his birth. Most significantly, Thomas John's godmother was noted to be Bridget Walsh. Could Bridget Walsh be the B. Maria Walsh of the 1861 census?
Before we can answer this question, we must determine whether there was another Bridget Walsh who was living in or near St. Catharines at the time of Thomas John's baptism in 1859, and who would have been old enough to be his godmother. The 1861 census may be informative here, since it was taken just two years after the baptism. Therefore, searches of the Lincoln district (which includes St. Catharines) of Upper Canada in the 1861 census for B* Wal* and B* Wel* were performed. These search parameters should produce results for anyone with a given name starting with B, with surnames starting with Wal- or Wel-, so that all the usual variants of Walsh (Welch, Welsh) as well as any less-common versions (Walch, etc.) would be returned in the results. The only relevant result was the B. Maria Walsh living with Robert Walsh's family, which supports our hypothesis—albeit weakly—that B. Maria Walsh was Bridget Maria Walsh. However, we can't rule out the possibility that the godmother was a different Bridget Walsh who was married, died, or moved away in the time between the baptism on 13 March 1859 and the census on 14 January 1861. At this point we lack sufficient evidence to claim that Bridget Walsh, godmother, was necessarily the same as B. Maria Walsh, member of the Robert Walsh household.
Although civil marriage records do not exist which might inform us about B. Maria's parentage, church records from the cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria may be helpful. Accordingly, marriage records from 1852-1910 were examined for any bride named Bridget, Maria, or Mary Walsh/Welch/Welsh. A total of five marriage records were discovered and results are summarized in Figure 7. A larger version of the table can be viewed here.
Figure 7: Brides married in St. Catherine of Alexandria parish, St. Catharines, Ontario, between 1852-1910 with given name Bridget, Maria or Mary and surname Walsh/Welsh/Welch.
Although her age was not provided in her marriage record, the Mary Walsh who married in 1856 is not likely to be our B. Maria, because B. Maria (born circa 1841) was only 15 years old in 1856. Similarly, all three of the Bridgets were too young to fit the description of our B. Maria. However, the Maria Walsh, born 1839, is a good fit in terms of age—and guess who her parents were? None other than James Walsh and Catherine Cavanagh, which means she was a full sister to Thomas Walsh!
Maria's marriage record, shown in Figure 8, confirms that she was born in Ireland. Her husband, Patrick McNamara, was a resident of Thorold, born in Ireland circa 1838 to Timothy McNamara and Catherine Sullivan. The only witness to the marriage was C. Hanigan (?), but there is a notation, "Dispensat from 2 calls" which suggests that the marriage may have taken place under somewhat hurried circumstances, since three calls (announcements of the banns) were customary prior to the marriage.
Figure 8: Marriage record for Patrick McNamara and Maria Walsh from the cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Catharines, Ontario, 8 August 1867.13
Now a clearer picture begins to emerge, and it appears that the given name used by Bridget Maria Walsh was dependent on the timeline. In 1859, siblings Bridget Walsh and Thomas Walsh served as godparents to Thomas John Walsh, son of Robert and Elizabeth Walsh. In January 1861, Thomas and B. Maria were living with Robert and Elizabeth, and in May of that year, Maria Walsh witnessed the marriage of her brother, Thomas. In 1867, it was still Maria Walsh who married Patrick McNamara. The timeline suggests that while she may have used her first name, Bridget, early on—soon after her arrival in Canada, perhaps?—she eventually abandoned it in favor of her middle name, Maria. This propensity for reversing first and middle names seems to have been a Walsh family trait, since a similar phenomenon was noted with Robert and Elizabeth's son, James George Walsh, who was noted as "James G." in sources such as the 1869 baptismal record for his sons, Henry Thomas and Robert James, but was known as George James by the time of his death in 1924.15
So now we understand the relationship between Thomas Walsh and Bridget Maria (née Walsh) McNamara, but their precise relationship to Robert Walsh, husband of Elizabeth Hodgkinson, remains unclear. My original thought was that Robert, Thomas, and Maria might be full siblings. However, the disparity in ages between Robert and Maria is problematic. Existing data for Robert suggest that he was born circa 1808-1816, while data for Maria suggest that she was born circa 1834-1841. Assuming Robert was the oldest child in the family and that he was born in 1808, and assuming that Maria was the youngest child, born in 1841, then their mother must have borne children over a period of 33 years, which is beyond the biological limits for childbearing. However, if Robert and Maria were born in 1816 and 1834, respectively, then it becomes more conceivable that the three of them might be full siblings. Moreover, onomastic evidence supports the hypothesis that Robert is Thomas and Maria's brother. Irish naming traditions dictate that the eldest son in a family should be named after his paternal grandfather, and since Robert and Elizabeth Walsh's oldest son was named James George, we would expect that Robert's father was named James, assuming the family followed this tradition. It's also entirely possible that Robert was a half-brother to Thomas and Maria, if Robert's mother died and his father James then remarried Catherine Cavanagh.
Even if we assume that there is a more distant relationship between Robert Walsh and siblings Thomas and Maria Walsh—for example, they were Robert's nephew and niece, or his first cousins—knowing their parents' names could potentially give us enough information to seek records in Ireland, if only we knew where in Ireland to find them. That's another topic for another day, but for now, we've made some good progress. By examining the crucial evidence in church records from St. Catherine of Alexandria parish, we've been able to determine that B. Maria Walsh, who was living with the family of Robert and Elizabeth Walsh in 1861, was not their daughter, as is generally assumed. Rather, she is most likely Bridget Maria Walsh, the same individual as the Maria Walsh who married Patrick McNamara in 1867, and the Bridget Walsh who was godmother to Robert and Elizabeth's son, Thomas John Walsh. Moreover, she was evidently a full sister to the elder Thomas Walsh, a merchant tailor who was also living with Robert Walsh's family in 1861. Finally, we've been able to develop a new hypothesis for further testing, that Robert Walsh was the son of James Walsh, husband of Catherine Cavanagh, possibly by a first wife, if not by Catherine herself. All in all, that feels like a good day's work.
1 "Census of 1861," St. Catharines, Lincoln, Canada West (Ontario), household of Robert Walsh, born 1816, accessed as digital image, Library and Archives Canada (https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca : 22 April 2019), image no. 4391560_00231.
2 William W. Evans, Gazetteer and business directory of Lincoln and Welland counties for 1879 (Brantford, Ontario, Canada: William W. Evans, 1878), entries for Welch, Henry; Welch, J.G.; Welch, Robert; Welch, Robert Jr.; and Welch, Thos. J, pages 150-151, accessed as browsable images, "Canadian Directories Collection," Library and Archives Canada (https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca : 22 April 2019), path: Southwestern Ontario Counties > Gazetteer and business directory of Lincoln and Welland counties for 1879 > e010780629_p3.pdf, page 23 of 28.
3 Roman Catholic Church, Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), Parish Registers, 1852-1910, Marriages 1858-1910, 1861, unnumbered pages, unnumbered entries in chronological order, record for Thomas Walsh and Maryann Cronin, 9 May 1861, accessed as browsable images, "Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923," FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org : 22 April 2019), path: Lincoln > St. Catharines > Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria > Marriages 1858-1910 > image 9 of 48.
4 Roman Catholic Church, Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), "Parish Registers, 1852-1910," 1854, #88, baptismal record for Elizabeth Walsh, accessed as "Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923," browsable images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org: 22 April 2019), path: Lincoln County > St Catharines > Cathedral of St Catherine of Alexandria > Baptisms, Marriages 1852-1860, image 28 of 104.
5 Roman Catholic Church, Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), "Parish Registers, 1852-1910," 1857, unnumbered pages, unnumbered entries in chronological order, "Baptism Ellenor Walsh," 2 August 1857, accessed as "Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923," browsable images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org: 22 April 2019), path: Lincoln County > St Catharines, > Cathedral of St Catherine of Alexandria, > Baptisms, marriages 1852-1860 > image 72 of 104.
6 Roman Catholic Church, Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), "Parish Registers, 1852-1910," 1859, unnumbered pages, unnumbered entries in chronological order, baptismal record for John Walsh, 13 March 1859, , accessed as "Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923," browsable images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org: 22 April 2019), path: Lincoln County > St Catharines > Cathedral of St Catherine of Alexandria > Baptisms, Marriages 1852-1860, image 88 of 104.
7 Roman Catholic Church, Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), "Parish Registers, 1852-1910," Baptisms 1860-1906, 1861, p. 2, baptismal record for Peter Joseph Walsh, accessed as "Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923," browsable images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org: 22 April 2019), path: Lincoln County > St Catharines > Cathedral of St Catherine of Alexandria > Baptisms 1860-1906, image 4 of 177.
8 Roman Catholic Church, Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), Parish Registers, 1852-1910, Baptisms, marriages 1852-1860, unnumbered pages, unnumbered entries in chronological order, 1856, record for Francis DeYoung and Mary Walsh, accessed as "Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923," browsable images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : 22 April 2019), path: Lincoln > St. Catharines > Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria > Baptisms, marriages 1852-1860 > image 63 of 104.
9 Roman Catholic Church, Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), Parish Registers, 1852-1910, Marriages 1858-1910, unnumbered pages, unnumbered entries in chronological order, 1867, record for Patrick McNamara and Maria Walsh, 6 August 1867, accessed as browsable images, "Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923," FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org : 22 April 2019), path: Lincoln > St. Catharines > Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria > Marriages 1858-1910 > image 18 of 48.
10 Roman Catholic Church, Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), Parish Registers, 1852-1910, Marriages 1858-1910, unnumbered pages, unnumbered entries in chronological order, 1876, record for Thomas Wilkins and Bridget Walsh, 7 February 1876, accessed as browsable images, "Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923," FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org : 22 April 2019), path: Lincoln > St. Catharines > Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria > Marriages 1858-1910 > image 23 of 48.
11 Roman Catholic Church, Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), Parish Registers, 1852-1910, Marriages 1858-1910, unnumbered pages, unnumbered entries in chronological order, 1876, record for Felix Roony and Bridget Walsh, 9 October 1876, accessed as browsable images, "Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923," FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org : 22 April 2019), path: Lincoln > St. Catharines > Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria > Marriages 1858-1910 > image 23 of 48.
12 Roman Catholic Church, Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), Parish Registers, 1852-1910, Marriages 1858-1910, unnumbered pages, unnumbered entries in chronological order, 1877, record for William Smith and Bridget Walsh, 19 September 1877, accessed as browsable images, "Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923," FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org : 22 April 2019), path: Lincoln > St. Catharines > Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria > Marriages 1858-1910 > image 25 of 48.
13 Ibid, marriage record for Patrick McNamara and Maria Walsh.
14 Fiona Fitzsimons, "Traditional Irish naming patterns," Find My Past blog, post on 29 November 2018 (https://blog.findmypast.com : 23 April 2019).
15 Roman Catholic Church, Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), "Parish Registers, 1852-1910," 1869, unnumbered entries in chronological order, sequential baptismal records for Henry Thos. Walsh and Robert James Walsh, baptized 30 December 1869, accessed as "Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923," browsable images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org: 22 April 2019), path: Lincoln County > St Catharines > Cathedral of St Catherine of Alexandria > Baptisms 1860-1906, image 59 of 177. Baptismal records note that Henry Thomas and Robert James were the sons of James G. Walsh and Jane Lawder. Also,
Victoria Lawn Cemetery (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), marker for George James Welch and Jane Lauder Welch. "George James/WELCH/Born/ Nov. 9 1844/Died/June 18, 1924/His Wife/Jane Lauder/Born/May 15, 1844/Died/April 16, 1927".
Categories Brick Wall Ancestors, FAN research, Hodgkinson, St. Catharines, Ontario, Walsh
Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance
Published on April 15, 2019 April 15, 2019 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz10 Comments
As a former Air National Guard fighter pilot, my Dad has always viewed life from a distinctly military perspective, which extended to our family life long after he separated from the military. As a family, we formulated our "POA" (Plan of Attack), and when it was Dad's turn to cook supper we'd often have "S.O.S" ("s**t on a shingle," otherwise known as creamed chipped beef on toast). We learned not to have our "heads up and locked"—that is, to be disengaged or inattentive, a reference to a potentially catastrophic situation in which an aircraft's landing gear fails to descend when needed. Most importantly, we were taught to remember the 5 P's: Prior planning prevents poor performance. Life may be full of surprises, but fortune favors those who anticipate and plan for disaster.
I was reminded of this recently while interviewing Dad as part of my ongoing project to record some of his stories for the family history. I asked him to recount the scariest incident that he experienced while flying. Surprisingly, it was not the time when he had to eject from his burning aircraft over the South China Sea. No, it happened during the summer of 1969 after his return home from Vietnam, while on a routine training mission at Niagara Falls Air National Guard base. By that point in his career, Dad was an experienced pilot, having logged close to 1,000 flight hours in the F-100C Super Sabre jet fighter aircraft. However, continued training was essential for maintaining proficiency. On the day of this incident, Dad was supposed to fly as wingman to Norm Culbertson. The flight protocol involved a 15-second spacing between the take-offs of their aircraft. Norm's takeoff proceeded normally, but the same was not true for Dad. Almost immediately after take-off and just as soon as the wheels were up, Dad's aircraft suffered a complete electrical failure. At first, Dad thought it was just the radio, but he quickly realized that the problem extended to all of his electrical systems. By that point, he was about 500 feet off the ground, and trying to power up to 400 knots to rejoin Norm and get in position on his wing. Dad knew he needed to land immediately, and he needed help from Norm to do that.
As Dad pulled up on Norm's wing, he had to communicate the problem with his aircraft to Norm, without a radio. The Air Force employed "HEFOE" hand signals for just such emergencies as this, to indicate that a pilot was having trouble with his hydraulics, engine, fuel, oxygen, or electrical systems in addition to his radio. Dad caught Norm's attention visually and gave the signal for electrical failure, and both pilots proceeded to implement the protocol to achieve a safe landing under these circumstances. Since the problem occurred immediately after take-off, with full fuel tanks, Dad's plane was too heavy to land. The added weight of the fuel increases the stall speed of the aircraft, which in turn increases the minimum landing speed and stopping distance for the aircraft, necessitating a longer runway than what was available. The practical solution to this was to lighten the aircraft by jettisoning both 335-gallon fuel tanks, so Norm led Dad out into a wide, 5-mile circle over Lake Ontario before heading back to the base. Lacking an electrical system, Dad had to jettison the tanks using a manual release, but he was able to accomplish this successfully.
Dad remarked that prior to this incident, he never appreciated just how much a pilot depends on his electrical systems when flying. With the electrical gone, Dad lacked a number of key flight instruments, leaving him with only the throttle for altering power to the engine, the control stick for changing the direction of the plane, and the pitot-static indicators (airspeed indicator, vertical velocity indicator, altimeter, and machmeter). Just prior to the electrical failure, Dad had the airplane trimmed for a speed of 400 knots – that is, optimized in such a way that the center control stick was very sensitive to a light touch, and fine adjustments in attitude could be made with just the fingertips. With the electrical systems gone, Dad needed to use all his strength to steer the aircraft, holding the stick with both hands. Moreover, the summer day was hazy, with visibility restricted to about a mile. Flying in the haze means that a pilot lacks any visual reference to his position in the sky, so it's impossible for him to know if he is inverted or not.
Inversion—flying upside down—can be a serious problem for pilots. Dad recalled an incident with the pilot who was ranked first in his class at Combat Crew Training School at Cannon Air Force Base in Clovis, New Mexico, and who was later stationed in Tuy Hoa with Dad. One day, this pilot tried to make a TACAN GCA (Tactical Air Navigation Ground-Controlled Approach) in bad weather. He had his gear down and was getting ready to land, but instead he crashed into the ocean and perished. Crash investigators later surmised that he must have gotten vertigo in the clouds and was inverted as he attempted to land.
The memory of this incident was on Dad's mind as he flew in the haze with no instruments. Dad reasoned that if he just stayed on Norm's wing in fingertip formation, matching Norm's plane's attitude and rate of turn visually and copying everything he did, he'd be all right. They completed their circle over the lake, and Norm led him back to the airfield. Once they were within a couple miles of the runway, Norm broke off, leaving Dad to land on his own. However, Dad knew that a successful landing under these circumstances would be very difficult.
The lack of an attitude indicator was a problem for landing in addition to flying, since pilots depend on these even for normal landings in good weather. Moreover, fighter jets typically require faster landing speeds than other aircraft. A typical landing speed in the F-100C (which lacked the trailing-edge wing flaps featured on later models to help reduce the required landing speed) is 185 knots, with additional speed required as the weight of the plane increased. If a pilot had to land immediately after takeoff, the lowest possible approach speed was 205 knots. To accommodate these high-speed landings, the F-100C had some special systems built in, which included a speed brake, anti-skid system, and tailhook. Unfortunately, all of these features were dependent on the plane's electrical system. Not only was Dad going to land "hot," but if he tried to brake prematurely, he'd blow out the tires. He still had his drag chute which could be deployed manually to slow the plane, but it could not be deployed until the plane's speed was less than 185 knots since it was designed to tear away at higher speeds.
As Dad came in for the landing, he needed to use an alternate release mechanism for the landing gear, since normally that, too, was controlled electrically. The gear doors were designed so that the aerodynamic loads on them pull the gear down in the absence of hydraulics. However, Dad had to hope that this system was operating normally, because the confirmation lights indicating the gear was down were electrical, so he had no way of knowing if the landing gear were actually in place. To his relief, Dad's aircraft touched down on the tarmac, but stopping it was still another matter. More than half the runway had disappeared behind him by the time he was able to deploy the drag chute at 185 knots. He ran out of runway and had gone onto the overrun before his aircraft finally came to a halt. Dad was drenched with sweat by that point, but he was alive.
Exiting the aircraft offered a welcome bit of comic relief after such a stressful landing. Normally after landing, the pilot taxis the airplane back to the parking space near the hanger and then the flight crew hangs a ladder on the aircraft's canopy rail so that the pilot can exit the plane. Since Dad's plane was in the overrun, there was no ladder available for him to get out of the plane. Some members of the flight crew had arrived to assist him, however, and they offered Dad the option of exiting the aircraft by climbing onto the shoulders of a particularly tall crew member nicknamed "Stretch" Johnson, rather than waiting for the ladder to arrive. Unfortunately, as Dad climbed out of the cockpit onto Stretch's shoulders, the D-ring on the parachute on Dad's back snagged the rail of the canopy and deployed the parachute, covering both men in a mass of silk as Dad stumbled to the ground.
When I was growing up, my Dad always seemed invincible. Unflappable under pressure, he could be counted on to be stay calm and keep his sense of humor in any crisis. I often think that experiences like this one are what shaped that quality in him. At so many points in the story, things might have ended differently had he made one false move, but his training, preparation and carefully memorized protocols carried him through. That, and maybe his guardian angel. After all, Dad also used to tell us, "There are no atheists in foxholes."
Categories Roberts
Comparison of Ancestry's Ethnicity Estimates for Three Generations of My Family
Published on March 10, 2019 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz2 Comments
This past Christmas, my four young adult children gave me a really great gift in the form of DNA test kits and spit samples. Although it violates the "oldest first" rule about the order in which we should test family members, I was nonetheless pretty excited to have the kids test. Since a group of three siblings is necessary in order to attempt visual phasing, their data will give me an opportunity to practice that, and since I've already tested all four of their grandparents, I'll also have the "answer key" available.
Additionally, since I have this unique data set at my disposal—all four grandparents, both parents, and four children—I thought it might be fun to create a table comparing all our ethnicity estimates from AncestryDNA to see what insights such analysis might offer about DNA inheritance and also about the limitations inherent to these estimates. This chart is shown in Figure 1, and a larger version can be viewed here.
Figure 1: Comparison of AncestryDNA ethnicity estimates among four siblings, their parents, and grandparents.
Before we dive into the data, let's discuss the ethnicities in my family based on pedigree. The ancestors of my father-in-law ("Paternal Grandpa" in the chart) were ethnic Poles from the Russian and Prussian partitions as far back as I've been able to discover. (A brief discussion of the partitions of Poland and related border changes is found here.) My mother-in-law's ("Paternal Grandma's") ancestors were also ethnic Poles, from the Prussian partition. My mother's ("Maternal Grandma's") family were ethnic Poles from the Russian and Austrian partitions. My father's ("Maternal Grandpa's") ancestry is more mixed. His mother's family was entirely German, and his father's family was half German/Alsatian, half English/Irish/Scottish. Since three of the four tested grandparents have all-Polish pedigrees, let's look at their data first, before moving onto my Dad's data.
It may be helpful to start by noting that there's no such thing as "Polish DNA." Poles are part of the broader ethno-linguistic group known as Slavs, although Ancestry chooses to use the term "Eastern Europe and Russia" which they define as being "primarily located in Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria, Russia, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia." 1 However, examination of the territories that were originally inhabited by the Slavs, shown in Figure 2, suggests that this area corresponds pretty well to the geographic region referenced in Ancestry's definition of "Eastern Europe and Russia."
Figure 2: Spread of Slavic tribes from the 7th to 9th centuries AD in Europe by Jirkha.h23, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.2
The ethnicity estimates from my mother ("Maternal Grandma"), my father-in-law, and my mother-in-law are pretty typical for individuals with all-Polish pedigrees. All three of them were reported to be as much as 95-100% Slavic, with significant contributions from ancestors whose ancient origins were in the Baltic tribes. Although part of the region inhabited by the Balts is located in Poland today, they were a separate group from the Slavs, as indicated by the map in Figure 2. Each of these testers also shows traces of other ethnic groups (Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Germanic, and European Jewish) that make sense in light of Poland's history and geography.
Notice that when AncestryDNA presents these ethnicity estimates, they indicate their best guess for the percentage of each ethnic group identified, and also the predicted range for this estimate. For example, about 3% of my husband's ("Dad's") DNA was reported to originate in Germanic Europe, but the range was reported to be anywhere from 0-18%, which means he could have no Germanic DNA, or he could have up to almost 1/5 of his genetic ancestry from this region, but their best guess is about 3%. You'll notice that some of these ranges are tighter than others, so that same 3%, when it refers to the Norwegian component of my oldest son's ("Child 1's") ancestry, falls in a narrower range from 0-7%. The ranges help us to understand how confident we can be in the contribution of a particular ethnic group to our genetic makeup. Moreover, we should remember that there may be more than one explanation for the amount of ethnicity we inherit from one particular ethnic group. My husband's 3% Germanic component may indicate that he had a single German great-great-great-grandparent, since on average, we inherit about 3.125% of our DNA from each of our 32, 3x-great-grandparents. Alternatively, that 3% could be the combined contribution from multiple, more distant ancestors, and I believe that the broader range suggests that this possibility is more likely.
In some cases, AncestryDNA predicts one or more additional, specific regions from which a tester's family was likely to have originated. These regions are based on Ancestry's identification of Genetic Communities,™ a process which incorporates data from the family trees posted by testers and their DNA matches, in addition to the data gained from analyzing the DNA itself. The science behind the Genetic Communities™ is explained in detail here. In the case of my family, all of us with documented Polish roots (i.e. everyone but my Dad) were accurately assigned to the Genetic Community for those with roots in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Lithuania. Moreover, all of us with these Polish roots were assigned to the "Pomerania" region, while my father-in-law and oldest son were additionally assigned to the "Mazovia and Łódź" region.
I found it interesting that my father-in-law and oldest son were the only ones identified as having ancestry in Mazovia and Łódź, for two reasons. First, my mother (and therefore all my children and I) also have documented ancestry from this region, so our pedigrees would predict that all of these tested family members would be noted to have "Mazovia and Łódź" ancestry except for my mother-in-law, whose ancestors were from Prussian Poland, and my non-Polish Dad. The fact that so many of us were not assigned to this category suggests that Ancestry's algorithm may depend more on on the presence of a particular marker or markers in one's DNA, rather than on family tree data. However, if that's the case, then it's a bit of a red flag that only my father-in-law and oldest son would be assigned to the "Mazovia and Łódź" category, and not my husband. This is the second reason why I found this result interesting: DNA cannot "skip generations." If my son carries a particular set of markers for Mazovian ancestry, shared by his paternal grandfather, then my husband must carry those markers as well, despite the fact that the test did not identify them.
One should also pay close attention to Ancestry's definitions of these geographic areas, as they might differ from the usual historical definitions. For example, Ancestry identifies everyone in my family group except for my dad as having roots in Pomerania. Historically, "Pomerania" refers to a region presently divided between Germany and Poland, along the shore of the Baltic Sea, shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Approximate border of historic Pomerania region, shown in yellow, by Kelisi, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.3
Although the borders of historical regions like this can sometimes be somewhat subjective, the map suggests that at its southernmost point, the Pomerania region extends to about the 53rd parallel, approximately the same latitude as the city of Bydgoszcz. After the final partition of Poland in 1795 and throughout the 19th century, this area was under Prussian control, and my mother has no known Polish ancestry from the Prussian partition. So although it made sense to me that Ancestry identified my mother-in-law, father-in-law, husband, and children as having Pomeranian roots, I was at first puzzled about how my mother and I managed to achieve this designation. While this may reflect an ancient migration of our ancestors from Pomerania to Mazovia that predates the oldest vital records I've been able to find, it's perhaps more likely that the issue lies in Ancestry's definition of "Pomerania," shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Pomerania geographic region as defined by AncestryDNA.
At first glance, the highlighted region seems to extend much further south and east than the historic Pomerania region shown in Figure 3. We can confirm this suspicion if we zoom in closer on Ancestry's map (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Detail of Ancestry's Pomerania geographic region, showing location of Bydgoszcz underlined in red and Konin underlined in blue.
Ancestry's version of "Pomerania" encompasses Słupca County, which lies between Poznań and Konin. Słupca County was the ancestral homeland of my mother's Grzesiak and Krawczyński ancestors. So by that definition, it makes sense that my mother and I would have "Pomeranian" roots despite the fact that we have no known ancestors from the historical Pomerania region going back to the early 1700s.
So what other insights can we gain by looking at the data for the four grandparents? In addition to the Slavic ("Eastern European") and Baltic components that are typical features of DNA from ethnic Poles and which were discussed previously, my mother-in-law's ("Paternal Grandma's") DNA includes possible small contributions from Germanic Europe, Norway, and Sweden. Given the fact that her ancestors were all Poles from the Prussian partition, these ethnicities make sense. We might expect to see some intermingling of German DNA in a region that was under Prussian control. Moreover, the Scandinavian contributions are perhaps more evident in Poles from the Prussian partition than they would be in Poles from the Russian or Austrian partitions because a tiny bit of Pomerania ("Swedish Pomerania") was under more or less stable control of Sweden from 1630 until 1815.3 In contrast, the Swedish genetic influence in other parts of Poland, which might have resulted from the Swedish Deluge in the mid-1600s, may have been more transient and diluted over time.
Moving on now to my dad's data, Dad was reported to be 55% Germanic, within a surprisingly tight range of 55-56%, which was a tad less than I might have expected, based on his pedigree. However, Dad's other major ancestry component, 38-40%, was from "England, Wales and Northwestern Europe," a region which includes almost all of modern-day Germany by Ancestry's broadest definition, the outermost circle shown in Figure 6. The balance of Dad's ethnicity was from Ireland & Scotland (0-5%), and since the whole "United Kingdom" component of his ethnicity based on pedigree should be about 25%, I'd think Ancestry's estimate is pretty accurate overall.
Figure 6: England, Wales and Northwestern Europe region as defined by AncestryDNA.
Given that Dad's DNA reflects such a high percentage of ancestry from the "England, Wales and Northwestern Europe" region, I found it somewhat surprising that I did not inherit any of it, and therefore I could not pass it down to my kids. Those genes are entirely lost in my branch of the family. I seem to have inherited virtually all of his Irish & Scottish genes, however, and I managed to pass down about half of these to three of my children. (My oldest son lost out there.) Similarly, I inherited whatever traces of Jewish ancestry may exist in Mom's DNA, but I did not pass them down to any of my children.
Finally, it's interesting—if a bit suspicious—that Ancestry did not detect any trace of Norwegian or Swedish DNA in my husband, passed down from his mother, yet two of our children exhibited traces of Swedish DNA (up to 4%) and three exhibited traces of Norwegian DNA (up to 9%). As mentioned earlier, DNA can't "skip a generation;" it's not possible for our children to exhibit traits or carry genetic markers which they did not inherit from one parent or the other. To me, this speaks to the imprecision of the test—these are ethnicity estimates, after all. So perhaps my husband does, in fact, carry whatever markers they're using to assess "Swedish" and "Norwegian" DNA, but for some reason they were missed when Ancestry's algorithm calculated his ethnicity estimate. Since all four children were independently found to have some trace of Scandinavian DNA, this seems more likely than the alternative hypothesis, which is that the entire Scandinavian contribution is a false positive, although that is certainly possible.
Ancestry DNA continues to refine their ethnicity estimates as the number of testers in their reference panels grows, and as more geographic regions are included, so perhaps in the future these estimates will become more precise and some of these issues with consistency between individuals in the same family will disappear. However, even despite those issues, these ethnicity estimates match reasonably well with expectations based on documented pedigrees for the tested members of my family, especially when one interprets the estimates in light of both the specified ranges for each ethnic contribution, as well as Ancestry's unique definition of each of the geographic areas.
1 "Eastern Europe and Russia," DNA Origins for Julie Szczepankiewicz, AncestryDNA (https://www.ancestry.com/dna/ : 10 March 2019).
2 "Spread of Slavic tribes from the 7th to 9th centuries AD in Europe" by Jirkha.h23, is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, accessed 10 March 2019.
3 "Pomerania map" by Kelisi, is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, accessed 10 March 2019.
Categories DNA
Ancestry's New ThruLines Utility Needs More Work
Published on March 3, 2019 March 15, 2019 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz11 Comments
Last week, AncestryDNA® unveiled a new utility called ThruLines.™ You can read more about getting and using ThruLines™ from Ancestry's article, here. Like many of you, I was anxious to play with it and see what, if anything, it did for me. I must say, I'm underwhelmed. Granted, the tool is still in Beta testing, so hopefully improvements will be made to the accuracy of the matching algorithm as time goes by. But as it is now, my concern is that ThruLines™ will only add to the existing confusion and misunderstanding of fledgling genealogists. Let's walk through this utility to see what it offers and where the problems lie.
This shows my new Ancestry DNA home screen. I can access ThruLines™ on the right, and there's a link at the bottom to click if I choose to continue using DNA Circles.
The second screen gives me a portal to each of my ancestors to explore.
When I first scrolled down on this screen, before I began to write this article, Ancestry highlighted a Potential Ancestor named Marianna Kozłowska, and informed me that she was my great-great-grandmother. Intrigued, I clicked on this person to examine the evidence for this assertion. On the next screen, Ancestry informed me that Marianna Kozłowska was the mother of my great-grandfather, Joseph Zielinski, and that she was mentioned in the family tree of a particular Ancestry member. If we take the information in the family tree at face value, Marianna Kozłowska was the daughter of Antoni Kozłowski and Tekla Stępkowska, born 1863 in Nowy Garwarz, Mazowieckie, Poland, near Glinojeck. (Antoni and Tekla were also reported to be my potential ancestors.) Marianna was married to Stanisław Zieliński, who was born 1863 in Wkra (also near Glinojeck). That fact is apparently the basis on which Ancestry's algorithm determined that Marianna Kozłowska was my ancestor. I, too, have a great-great-grandfather named Stanisław Zieliński, who was born in 1863 and was married to a woman named Marianna.
The problem is, I have good documentary and DNA evidence that proves that my great-great-grandfather Stanisław Zieliński was born in Mistrzewice, Mazowieckie, Poland, not Wkra, and was married to Marianna Kalota, not Marianna Kozłowska.1 Moreover, my Marianna Kalota was the daughter of Roch Kalota and Agata Kurowska of Budy Stare, Mazowieckie, she was not the daughter of Antoni Kozłowski and Tekla Stępkowska. Marianna Kalota's parents' names and grandparents' names are stated in my online tree, so it's not as if there's anything to suggest to Ancestry's algorithms that I'm uncertain about the identifies of those ancestors. Closer examination of the tree which mentioned "my" ancestor, Marianna Kozłowska Zielińska revealed that the tree owner really has no good evidence for her claims about Marianna Kozłowska's place of birth. For example, the passenger manifest that was supposed to document Marianna Kozłowska's emigration to the U.S. was for a woman whose husband's and children's names did not match the data in the tree. Furthermore, the Marianna in the manifest was from Eckardtsfelde, Prussia, which is some 230 km west of Glinojeck.
There's no shame in being confused about the origins of one's ancestor, and everyone makes mistakes when they're starting out in genealogy, so I'm not using this example merely to criticize the research of the woman who posted this tree. But I thought that surely there must have been some other basis for Ancestry's conclusion that Marianna Kozłowska was my ancestor. Since this tree owner was clearly confused about where her Marianna Kozłowska was born, was it possible that she's nonetheless a distant cousin of mine who simply made a few wrong turns while tracing her tree?
I checked out the profile of the woman who posted the family tree in question. If you've never done this before, you can access the profile of any Ancestry member with an online tree by clicking on the username found at the top left corner of the screen showing their tree. That will bring you to the screen shown below.
If that person is a match to you, or if any of the kits that (s)he manages are a match to you, it will be noted here. Additionally, if you manage other DNA results besides your own, you can use the drop-down menu, "Select DNA Test," circled here in red, to compare this particular Ancestry user with any of the kits you manage.
To my surprise, she was not a DNA match at all. Not only did she not match me, she did not match my mother, the great-granddaughter of Stanisław and Marianna Zieliński. At this point it was pretty clear that the only basis for the assignment of Marianna Kozłowska Zielińska as my ancestor was her marriage to a man with the same name and year of birth as my great-great-grandfather. Never mind that Zieliński is the 8th-most popular surname in Poland, so there were undoubtedly quite a few Polish men named Stanisław Zieliński who were born in 1863. Sigh.
There is a bright side to this story, however. Ancestry requested feedback on my experience with ThruLines,™ via a little popup window, so I gratefully obliged them and expressed my concerns about their algorithm. Ancestry responded with lightning speed, such that when I returned to the site a few hours later to grab some screen shots for this blog post, there was no longer any mention of Marianna Kozłowska or her parents among my Potential Ancestors. Whew! Kudos to Ancestry for taking such prompt action in response to critical feedback. If nothing else, it underscores their desire to do the right thing by their customers.
Let's examine another Potential Ancestor and see how that one shapes up. To quickly find these, I sorted my results according to this "Potential Ancestors" option using the drop-down "Filter by" menu at the top left. Once filtered, the results are shown below.
Mary Cebulska intrigued me because there is a Maria Cebulska in my family tree, although she's on my husband's side. I also have Cybulskis in my tree since they married into the Zieliński family in Poland. However, examination of the family tree from whence this data came reveals that this is a reference to a fictitious Mary Cebulska who was purportedly married to my great-great-grandfather, Józef Grzesiak. This case was a bit trickier, since there was actual documentary evidence from a U.S. marriage record which stated that Józef's wife's name was Mary Cebulski. It turns out to be incorrect, and I wrote about this evidence previously. However, it was at least an honest mistake that any researcher might make if they were to base their case only on U.S. records instead of examining the evidence from Polish records. I won't fault Ancestry for that one.
Next up, we have Walburga Meinzinger. I was a little surprised to find her in the list of "potential" ancestors because she's an actual ancestor identified in my family tree on Ancestry. When I click on her name in this list, I arrive at a screen that tells me a little more about the connection.
Ancestry's proposal of Walburga Meinzinger as my 4x-great-grandmother is based on her appearance in a tree posted by my paternal aunt, with whom I collaborate. Clicking on the "10 DNA Matches" brings me to a screen which may be the best part of the ThruLines™ utility, thanks to the clear graphic depiction of the relationships between me and my DNA matches who are also descendants of my great-great-grandparents, Wenzeslaus Meier and Anna Goetz.
Is this new information for me? No, I had already discovered my connection to these folks by clicking on "shared matches" and either examining their online trees (where available) or writing to them. And the information about number of shared DNA segments and centimorgans of shared DNA is no more useful now than it was previously, in the absence of a chromosome browser which would allow me to paint these shared segments onto my chromosome map. Moreover, it's misleading for Ancestry to highlight Walburga Meinzinger as the common link between me and all of these matches, since the most recent common ancestral couple isn't Walburga and her husband, Christoph Meier, but rather Walburga's grandson, Wenzeslaus Meier and his wife, Anna Goetz. At this point we have no evidence that Walburga is necessarily the ancestor "thru" whom I'm related to these 10 DNA matches, since it's entirely possible that none of the DNA that we share came from her, but instead came from (for example) the Goetz side.
Finally, let's take a look at Ancestry's suggestion of Elisabeth "Lizette" Christina Gross as another one of my potential ancestors. This time, Ancestry informs me that Elisabeth was the mother of my 3x-great-grandfather, Carl Goetz. According to the tree which was supposed to be the source of the information, Elisabeth was born 2 February 1833 in Heilbronn, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. She married Carl Wilhelm Friedrich Goetz, and they were the parents of one Carl Wilhelm Christian Goetz who was born 5 October 1853 in Bavaria (Bayern), Germany and died 19 March 1933 in Buffalo, New York.
My Carl (or Charles, in English) "coincidentally" also died on 19 March 1933 in Buffalo, New York,2 and equally "coincidentally," was born on 5 October 1853 in Leuchtenberg, Neustadt an der Waldnaab, Bayern, Germany.3 However, he was the son of Ulrich Goetz and Josephine Zenger, as evidenced by his death certificate (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Death certificate of Charles Goetz (Carl Götz), 19 March 1933, with parents' names underlined in red.2
Moreover, there's no evidence that my Carl ever used the middle names Wilhelm and Christian. While the birth dates quoted by this tree owner for her Carl Wilhelm Christian Goetz are a match for the documented birth and death dates of my Carl Goetz, the parents' names and place of birth are clearly not a match. So this tree owner is erroneously conflating my Carl Goetz with her Carl, who may or may not have been the son of parents named Elisabeth "Lizette" Christina Gross and Carl Wilhelm Friedrich Goetz. It's not clear to me precisely how she came to the conclusion that my Carl belonged in her family tree, beyond indiscriminate borrowing from online trees, but it's very clear that he does not. Once again, I thought perhaps there was DNA evidence linking me to this tree owner through some other line, that might have been the basis for Ancestry's identification of Elisabeth "Lizette" Christina Gross as my Potential Ancestor. Once again, I was disappointed. This tree owner isn't a match to me, or to my father (Carl Goetz's great-great-grandson).
The point here isn't that there are inaccurate family trees online; we all know that already. But I think Ancestry's ThruLines™ tool exacerbates the problem. Since ThruLines™ are accessed through the "DNA" tab and not the "Search" tab, it suggests that the highlighted "Potential Ancestors" are proposed on the basis of DNA matching rather than being based solely on the existence of trees containing individuals with the same names as one's own ancestors. Unfortunately, in all the cases I examined, the DNA matches were too far "downstream" for them to be useful in drawing any conclusions about my potential relationship to more distant ancestors. The fact that I share DNA segments with my mother, my sister, and my four children cannot be used as evidence of our common descent from someone purported to be my great-great-grandmother. So if these "Potential Ancestors" are being identified solely on the basis of online family trees, then it would be more honest to have them suggested under the "Search" tab rather than the "DNA" tab.
If beginning genealogists are going to use these ThruLines,™ they need to understand that the the "Potential Ancestor" designations are no more reliable than the record hints or "shaky leaf" hints which Ancestry provides. While I love Ancestry for the convenience it offers in allowing me to locate and download documents pertaining to my family online, in the comfort of my home, at 2 am, I do wish they would leave well enough alone. I think it would be much better to put the records online, put the family trees online, and put the DNA data online, and then leave it to genealogists to connect the dots between those data sets themselves.
Perhaps the best thing to do is to hope that, in time, the usefulness of tools like ThruLines™ will increase. There seem to be plenty of people who are raving about this tool in the various Facebook genealogy forums, but so far, my personal experience with it has not been positive. As Blaine Bettinger wrote in the "Genetic Genealogy Tips and Techniques" Facebook group, "As a community, we need to decide whether we want automated tools that will unavoidably perpetuate mistakes, or whether we want NO automation. Those are the only two options." Call me a Luddite, but I don't think automation like this is doing us any favors. I look forward to the day when Ancestry proves me wrong.
1 Roman Catholic Church, Młodzieszyn parish (Młodzieszyn, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), "Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Młodzieszynie," unknown dates, 1885, marriages, #21, record for Stanisław Zieliński and Marianna Kalota, 15 November 1885.
2 New York, Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, County of Erie, City of Buffalo, Death Certificates, 1933, no. 1688, certificate for Charles Goetz, died 19 March 1933.
3 Roman Catholic Church, St. Margaret's parish (Leuchtenberg, Neustadt an der Waldnaab, Bayern, Germany), Band 6, Taufen 1848 – 1869, p. 26, no. 38, birth record for Karl Götz, Bischöfliches Zentralarchiv Regensburg, St.Petersweg 11-13, D-93047 Regensburg, Germany.
4 Blaine Bettinger, "Genetic Genealogy Tips and Techniques" Facebook group, post on 27 February 2019, (https://www.facebook.com/groups/geneticgenealogytipsandtechniques/permalink/594183891045315/ : 3 March 2019).
Categories Budy Stare, Buffalo, New York, DNA, Götz, Grzesiak, Kalota, Leuchtenberg, Neustadt an der Waldnaab, Bayern, Meier, Meinzinger, Mistrzewice, Zieliński, Zinger
Still Searching For Antonina Naciążek: Some New Insights into Old Data
Published on March 1, 2019 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz4 Comments
Sometimes I find that it pays to take a break from my research on a particular family line. When I come back to it, I notice clues in the data that I missed the first time around. This happened recently when I returned to the question of the parentage of one of my Brick Wall Ancestors, my great-great-grandmother Antonina (née Naciążek) Zarzycka, who was born circa 1828, married Ignacy Zarzycki circa 1849, and died after 1904. I've written about her in several posts previously, and she continues to haunt me. The crux of the problem is that all her children were baptized in Rybno parish, Sochaczew County, but she herself must have been from another parish, since there is no birth, marriage or death record for her in the records of Rybno.
The Search for Antonina, Revisited
My strategy thus far has been to search vital records in the popular database Geneteka in order to identify the families that were living in the vicinity of Rybno with the surname Naciążek, or with one of the known variant forms of this surname, Maciążek and Raciążek, to discover potential parents for Antonina. However, the effectiveness of this strategy is limited by major gaps in the indexed records in Giżyce and Sochaczew, which are the two local parishes where this surname is most prevalent. Records for Giżyce are especially limited, since there are no records for this parish in the diocesan archive in Łowicz. Moreover, the only vital records from Giżyce from the relevant time period that are in possession of the state archive in Grodzisk Mazowieckie are from 1810, and 1823-1825, all of which are indexed in Geneteka. This suggests that most of the records for Giżyce are at the parish itself, where they can only be accessed onsite, at the discretion of the parish pastor. The situation for Sochaczew is somewhat better, since marriage records are available from the diocesan archive in Łowicz with no gaps from 1802-1842, although there is a large gap after that, from 1843-1861, which is when Antonina Naciążek would have been married (circa 1849).
Search results in Geneteka point to two couples who emerge as most likely candidates for Antonina's parents. The first couple, Francizek Naciążek and Marianna Kowalska, married in Sochaczew in 1826. The entry noted that the groom was from the nearby parish of Giżyce, so it's quite possible that they moved back there after their marriage. Since Geneteka contains no birth records from Giżyce after 1825, it's impossible to identify any children that Franciszek and Marianna might have had without onsite research. My great-great-grandmother Antonina may have been one of those children.
The second couple was Mateusz Naciążek and Petronella Trawińska, who were already married by 1824 when their daughter, Marianna, was born in Giżyce. The data suggest that they subsequently moved to Sochaczew parish, where they had sons Michał in 1826, Stanisław Andrzej in 1832, and Ignacy in 1834, and a daughter, Florentyna Marianna, in 1836. Notice the 6-year gap in the births to this couple after Michał's birth in 1826? Such a large spacing is unusual in a family, and as luck would have it, Antonina's birth circa 1828 would fall right into that gap. This gap in births can't be explained by any gaps in the available records for Sochaczew, since birth records from this parish are indexed during this entire time period. However, these data are consistent with the hypothesis that Mateusz and Petronella moved back to Giżyce after 1826. Since birth records from Giżyce are not available after 1825, it's entirely possible that Mateusz and Petronella were the parents of Antonina, circa 1828, and possibly even an additional child born circa 1830 whose births would not show up in Geneteka.
So the focus is presently on Giżyce, whose records might hold a birth record for Antonina, as well as her marriage record. Her death record remains elusive, however. Antonina was still noted be living in 1904 when her son Leonard married, but her husband, Ignacy Zarzycki, died in 1901.1 As a 76-year-old widow, one might expect Antonina to continue living in her own home with assistance from her children, or to move in with one of her adult children. Unfortunately, the former hypothesis does not bear up, because there is no death record for Antonina Zarzycka in the parish records of Rybno or the civil records of the gmina (a gmina is an administrative district smaller than a county, similar to a township). Nor have I been able to find a death record for her in the civil records of gmina Iłów, to which the parish of Giżyce belongs, or in the civil records of Sochaczew. However, the search is frustrated by local registry offices claiming that some books were transferred to the regional archive in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, while that archive asserts that they don't have the books, so therefore they must be in the local registry offices. Moreover, if Antonina fled her home during the confusion and chaos of World War I, it's entirely possible that her death may not have been recorded.
Research on the families of each of Antonina's children is still a work in progress which needs to be completed in order to identify every location where Antonina's death may have been recorded if she was living with one of her children when she died. Of Antonina's 11 children, six survived to adulthood and married, four died in childhood or as young unmarried adults, and one is thus far unaccounted for. The six who married included daughters Marianna Gruberska, who was living near Łowicz as of 1887, Paulina Klejn, who was living near Sochaczew as of 1880, and Aniela Gruberska, who was living near Młodzieszyn as of 1914, as well as sons John Zazycki, who was living in North Tonawanda, New York, until his death in 1924, Karol Zarzycki, who was living in Warsaw as of 1908, and Leonard Zarzycki, who was also living in Warsaw as of 1905. No promising match for Antonina's death record is found in the indexed death records in Geneteka, and there's no evidence to suggest that she emigrated. Since Łowicz and Warsaw both contain multiple Catholic parishes, finding Antonina's death record without knowing her exact date of death will be challenging.
The Search for Marianna Kowalska, Revisited
That brings us back to the search for Antonina's birth and marriage records, which might be easier to locate than her death record. Previously, while gathering clues about Antonina's early life, I noted an interesting set of records pertaining to the family of Marianna (née Naciążek) Kowalska, whom I hypothesized might be Antonina's sister. I discovered Marianna by reasoning that one might expect to find other Naciążek relatives of Antonina's in the records of Rybno, since family members often settled near one another. In fact, this surname was generally not found in Rybno, with one exception: the 1903 marriage record of one Roch Kowalski mentioned that he was the son of Marianna Naciążek and Aleksander Kowalski.2 The record indicated that Roch was born in Giżyce, and further research revealed four additional children of Aleksander Kowalski and Marianna Naciążek, all of whom married in Giżyce, Sochaczew, or Iłów, underscoring the importance of these parishes— especially Giżyce and Sochaczew—to my quest for the origins of my great-great-grandmother. In addition to these records pertaining to her children, a second marriage record was discovered for Marianna Naciążek herself following the death of Aleksander Kowalski. Marianna married Stanisław Marcinkowski in Giżyce in 1881, and the record indicated that she was born circa 1837 in Czerwonka, a village belonging to the parish in Sochaczew.3
As noted in that previous post, birth records from Sochaczew are available for the period from 1819-1841, but there is no baptismal record for a Marianna Naciążek during this time. The closest possibility is the birth of a Florentyna Marianna Naciążek in 1836, to parents Mateusz Naciążek and Petronela Trawińska, and I believe that this Florentyna Marianna Naciążęk is the same person as Marianna Naciążek Kowalska Marcinkowska. It's a bit unusual that she seems to have been called "Marianna" and not "Florentyna" in her adult life, but I believe this may have occurred because she had an older sister named Marianna who died young. There is a birth record in Giżyce in 1824 for Marianna Naciążek, daughter of Mateusz and Petronela, and if this theory is correct, we should expect to find her death record between 1824 and 1836. Although no death record is presently available, this doesn't mean much, since indexed death records are only available from 1823-1825. Once again, it seems that the records of Giżyce may hold the key to unlocking these genealogical mysteries.
As I looked at this research with fresh eyes, it dawned on me that there was another small piece of evidence I had overlooked previously, which was the fact that Antonina (née Naciążek) Zarzycka gave her daughter the name Florentyna, and that this child's godmother was Marianna Kowalska (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Birth record from Rybno for Florentyna Zarzycka, born 5 June 1861. Text underlined in red translates, "….was given the name Florentyna, and her godparents were the aforementioned Wincenty Zarzecki and Marianna Kowalska." 4
Yes, I'd analyzed the godparents of all the Zarzycki children previously, and I realized that despite the popularity of the Kowalski surname, this Marianna Kowalska was most likely Marianna Naciążek Kowalska of Giżyce. But somehow I'd failed to make the connection with Marianna Kowalska being named as godmother to this particular child, Florentyna, rather than any of the other children of Antonina and Ignacy Zarzycki.
Although it was not de rigueur in Polish culture to name a child after the godparent of the same sex, this practice was not unheard of. Indeed, Ignacy and Antonina Zarzycki named their second daughter Paulina, presumably in honor of her godmother, Paulina Jagielska.5 So it's quite possible that little Florentyna Zarzycka was also named in honor of her godmother. This suggests that I'm definitely on the right track with my reasoning that Marianna Kowalska is, indeed, Florentyna Marianna Naciążęk Kowalska, who was pretty clearly some relative of her mother's. However, at this point we still have too little evidence to conclude that Florentyna Marianna was necessarily Antonina Naciążek Zarzycka's sister, rather than a cousin.
In reviewing the chart I made previously showing each of the Zarzycki children and their godparents (Figure 2) and rereading my notes, I noticed a careless supposition. That is, that the surname of Józef Zarzycki's godmother, Jadwiga Bugajka, was necessarily rare. While this exact surname is rare, I realize now that I was thinking too narrowly, since the surname is merely a variant of the common surname, Bugaj. Given the lack of standardization of surname forms in the 19th century, it's quite possible that this same Jadwiga Bugajka might be recorded as Jadwiga Bugaj in some records.
Figure 2: Summary of Godparents of Children of Ignacy Zarzycki and Antonina (née Naciążek) Zarzycka. Source citation numbers correspond to sources cited in original blog post.
So what does that do for us? Why do we care if she's Jadwiga Bugaj or Jadwiga Bugajka? Well, more recent digging suggested an interesting possibility regarding her relationship to the Zarzycki family. Figure 3 shows Geneteka search results for Jadwiga Bugaj in Sochaczew.
Figure 3: Geneteka search results for birth records which mention Jadwiga Bugaj in Sochaczew.
In 1851 and 1854, there were two births to children of Maciej Bugaj and Jadwiga Krzemińska. Then there is a gap, and in 1861, there is the birth of Józefa Bednarska to Józef Bednarski and Jadwiga Bugaj. Now, the timing there is rather curious, and might almost suggest a scenario in which Jadwiga Krzemińska married Maciej Bugaj and had two children with him before his death between 1854 and 1861, after which she remarried Józef Bednarski and had 7 more children. (Note that double entries for children with the same name in the same year represent different records for the same event.) However, it was customary in these records for the priest to record the mother's maiden name, not her first husband's surname, in the case of a woman who remarried. I think it's unlikely that the priest would have misrecorded the mother's maiden name on 10 different birth records, and wrote her surname from her first husband instead. So in absence of evidence to the contrary, I believe that Jadwiga (née Krzemińska) Bugaj is not the same person as Jadwiga (née Bugaj) Bednarska. But at this point, I'm not fussed about whether she remarried or not, I'm just excited to find evidence of the Krzemiński surname, because it just so happens that Ignacy Zarzycki's mother was Joanna Krzemińska, who was born circa 1806 in Lubiejew, as evidenced by her death record (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Death record from Rybno parish for Joanna (née Krzemińska) Zarzycka, 30 April 1857. Text underlined in red translates as, "Joanna Zarzycka, wife, tenant colonist, daughter of Jan and Zofia, the spouses Krzemiński, already deceased; born in the village of Lubiejow [sic], having 52 years of age." 6
To answer the question of how Jadwiga (née Krzemińska) Bugaj is related to the Zarzycki family, we need to find the record of her marriage to Maciej Bugaj and hope that it states her parents' names. If her parents were Jan and Zofia, we know that she was Ignacy Zarzycki's aunt. If they are something else, then further research is needed to determine the connection. Maddeningly, there is a gap in existing marriage records for Sochaczew from 1842-1861, according to information from the diocesan archive in Łowicz about their holdings for Sochaczew. Since Jadwiga's oldest child was apparently born in 1851 based on information found in Geneteka, Jadwiga most likely married circa 1850, right in that gap in the records.
The Krzemiński Family of Bielice, Lubiejew, and Szwarocin
What do we know about the family of Jan and Zofia Krzemiński, and how likely is it that Jadwiga (née Krzemińska) Bugaj and Joanna (née Krzemińska) Zarzycka were sisters? My 4x-great-grandfather, Jan Krzemiński, was born circa 1782 in either Czerwonka or Czyste.7 He married 17-year-old Zofia Bielska on Valentine's Day in 1802 in Sochaczew.8 (The birthplaces of Jan and Zofia are uncertain because their marriage was recorded on a page pertaining to vital events from residents of the villages of Czerwonka and Czyste, but no indication was made regarding which individuals on the page were from which village.) On 19 July 1802, their oldest son, Jakub, was born in the nearby village of Bielice.9 A gap in birth records from Sochaczew exists from 1803-1809, so it's not possible to find the birth record for my great-great-great-grandmother, Joanna Krzemińska circa 1806. However, Joanna's death record (Figure 4) states that she was born in the village of Lubiejow [sic], about 7 miles northwest of Bielice. Since couples had children every 2-3 years, typically, we might expect additional births to Jan and Zofia circa 1804 and 1808, but there are no indexed marriage or death records in Geneteka that identify any children born to this couple in those years.
By 1810, the Krzemiński family had moved to the village of Szwarocin, some 3 miles west of Lubiejew, where their son Błażej was born on 2 February and baptized in Rybno parish (Figure 5).10 Jan Krzemiński was described as a gajowy, which was a forester or gamekeeper. On 21 July 1812, a daughter, Magdalena, was born.11 Two years later, another daughter, Zofia, was baptized on 9 May 1814, and was probably born a day or so before that.12 On 25 February 1816, little Magdalena Krzemińska died of smallpox (ospa, in Polish) at the age of 3 1/2.13 Just nine days after her daughter's death, Zofia Krzemińska gave birth to another son, Józef.14 Although no death record has been found for this child, it is likely that he died some time before 1821, because Jan and Zofia conferred the name Józef on their next son, born 17 March 1821.15
Figure 5: Map showing locations of places mentioned in records pertaining to the Krzemiński family. The towns of Sochaczew and Rybno, where the parishes are located, are underlined in red and the villages of Czerwonka and Czyste where Jan and Zofia were stated to have been born are similarly noted.
After this, the family disappears from the records of Rybno. Justyna Krogulska, who performed the onsite research at St. Bartholomew church in Rybno for me in 2016, noted, "In the years 1826-1860 [there was] no record [of the] deaths of Jan Krzemiński and Zofia Krzemińska. Probably the family moved to another parish. In the years 1826-1846 [there was] no record [of any] marriage on the name Krzemiński / Krzemińska." 16
Consistent with the observation that the Krezemiński family moved out of Rybno, a death record for a 75-year-old widow named Zofia Krzemińska was found in the records of Sochaczew in 1843. At the time of her death, Zofia was living in Lubiejów [sic], and her age suggests a birth year circa 1768. Although "our" Zofia was only born circa 1785, based on her age at the time of her marriage, it's nonetheless possible—likely, even—that the Zofia mentioned in the death record is the same woman, since priests frequently approximated people's ages when this information was not known precisely. As a smallpox survivor who had already buried a husband and at least two children, Zofia may have looked much older than she actually was when she died.
Zofia Krzemińska was only 36 when her son Józef was born in Szwarocin in 1821, so it's entirely possible that she might have had a few children after his birth, including, perhaps, Jadwiga (née Krzemińska) Bugaj. Geneteka contains a birth record for a Maciej Bugaj who might be the same as Jadwiga Krzemińska's husband, and who was born in Sochaczew in 1823. If Jadwiga Bugaj was approximately the same age as her husband, she would have been born exactly two years after Józef Krzemiński was born in Rybno in 1821. However, birth records for Sochaczew are indexed with no gaps from 1819-1841, and there is no record of Jadwiga's birth. However this lack of evidence for her birth in Sochaczew does little to disprove my theory about Jadwiga Bugaj's parentage, given the extent of parish records in this area that are unindexed and can only be found in the parish archives. So at this point, we still don't know precisely who Jadwiga Bugaj(ka) was, and what relationship she may have had to Antonina and Ignacy Zarzycki that would have inspired them to ask her to be godmother to their son, Józef. Present evidence suggests that she may have been Ignacy's aunt or possibly a cousin through his mother's Krzemiński family, but the frustrating difficulty with access to records makes it impossible to state anything definitively.
Despite the difficulties inherent in research in this area—or perhaps because of them—it's fun to examine every minute detail of the precious data that have been found for my family. Knowing that Marianna Kowalska was actually Florentyna Marianna Naciążęk Kowalska Marcinkowska may not bring me closer to knowing whether she was sister or cousin to my great-great-grandmother, Antonina Zarzycka, but somehow, it's satisfying to find yet another small consistency in the data. At this point, without knowing what's contained in those records from Giżyce, I'm betting on Team Mateusz and Petronella as the parents of Antonina and Marianna, but there's really no compelling reason for it. It may be that Antonina was the daughter of Franciszek and Marianna instead, and that Mateusz and Franciszek Naciążek were brothers. That would make Antonina Zarzycka first cousin to Florentyna Marianna, and it's certainly plausible that a first cousin might be asked to serve as godmother. As evidenced by the new discovery that Jadwiga Bugajka was most likely Jadwiga Krzemińska Bugaj, a maternal relative of Ignacy Zarzycki, but definitely not his sister, anything is possible.
Perhaps, in time, I'll be able to gain access to those records from Giżyce, and the answers to all these mysteries will be revealed. Maybe I'll even get to know who the heck Weronika Jaroszewska was, and why she was named as godmother to three Zarzycki children. Hey, I can dream, right?
1 "Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Rybnie," (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księga ślubów 1888-1908, 1904, no. 15, marriage record for Leonard Zarzycki and Maryanna Majewska, accessed as digital image, Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki.Genealodzy.pl (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 February 2019); and
"Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Rybnie," (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księga zgonów 1886-1903, 1901, no. 44, death record for Ignacy Zarzycki, accessed as digital image, Metryki.Genealodzy.pl (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 February 2019).
2 "Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Rybnie," (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Ksiega slubów 1888-1908, 1903, no. 1, marriage record for Roch Kowalski and Anastazja Blaszczak, 2 February 1903, accessed as digital image, Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki.Genealodzy.pl (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 February 2019).
3 "Akta stanu cywilnego parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Giżycach" (Giżyce, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księga ślubów 1856-1891, no. 9, marriage record for Stanisław Marcinkowski and Marianna Kowalska, 21 February 1881, accessed as digital image, Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, Metryki, (http://metryki.genealodzy.pl : 28 February 2019).
4 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew's Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księga urodzeń 1855-1862, 1861, #36, baptismal record for Florentyna Zarzecka.
5 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew's parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księga urodzeń 1845-1854, 1853, no. 60, baptismal record for Paulina Zarzycka.
6 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), "Księga zgonów, 1853-1868," 1857, #21, death record for Joanna Zarzecka.
7 Roman Catholic Church, St. Lawrence parish (Sochaczew, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księgi małżeństw, 1802-1825, 1802, no. 2, marriage record for Joannes Krzemiński and Sophia Bielska, 14 February 1802, Archiwum Diecezji Łowickiej, 99-400 Łowicz, Stary Rynek 19 A. "[Towns] Czerwonka et Czyste, [Number] 2, [Month] February, [Day] 14, [Marriage Statement] I, Sebastian Richter, (expositus?) of Sochaczew, after three banns. and without discovering (? "adinvento") any Canonical impediments, blessed the marriage between the honorable Joannes Krzemiński, young man, and Sophia Bielska, virgin, "inetum" (?) with additional witnesses Jacob Skokoski and Florian Stolarek, Under column heading "Young Man with Virgin," indicating that it is a first marriage for both the bride and the groom, the age of the groom is given as 20 and the age of the bride is given as 17.
8 Ibid.
9 Roman Catholic Church, St. Lawrence parish (Sochaczew, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), Księgi urodzonych, 1781-1802, 1802, no. 69, birth record for Jacobus Krzemiński. 19 July 1802, Archiwum Diecezji Łowickiej, 99-400 Łowicz, Stary Rynek 19 A.
10 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew's Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), 1810, births, no. 5, record for Błażej Krzemiński, 2 February 1810.
11 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), 1812, births, no. 46, record for Magdalena Krzemińska, 21 July 1812.
12 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), 1814, births, no. 26, record for Sophia Krzemińska, baptized 9 May 1814.
13 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew's parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), 1816, deaths, no. 9, record for Magdalena Krzemińska, 25 February 1816.
14 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), 1816, births, no. 13, record for Josephus Krzemiński, 5 March 1816.
15 Roman Catholic Church, St. Bartholomew Parish (Rybno, Sochaczew, Mazowieckie, Poland), 1821, births, no. 17, record for Josephus Krzemiński, 17 March 1821.
16 Justyna Krogulska, "Krzemiński Family," report to Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA, 18 May 2016, original held by Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA.
© Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz 2019.
Categories Bielski, FAN research, Geneteka, Giżyce, Krzemiński, Naciążek, North Tonawanda, New York, Rybno, Sochaczew, Zarzycki
Using your DNA Match List at Ancestry
Published on February 22, 2019 July 8, 2020 by Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz4 Comments
In my last post, I tried to introduce some basic concepts in genetic genealogy in a shameless attempt to stimulate increased interest in DNA matches among scientifically-challenged genealogists. When I say "scientifically-challenged," I'm not judging, here. Many family historians took high school biology classes a long time ago, and for those who attended high school back in the 1950s or '60s, the topic of DNA may not have been covered at all. So it's not surprising that there are many testers who aren't really sure how to make best use of their results. Today, I'd like to talk a little more about using your DNA match list at Ancestry, and the specific tools that are available there.
I think most of us realize that the list of DNA matches we receive when we first get our test results is not static. Nope, DNA test results are the gift that keeps on giving, and as more people test, our list of matches will grow. For this reason it's a good idea to check back periodically to view your DNA results reported by each company with which you've tested. Ancestry will report your closest matches first, and after that, more distant matches are ranked in terms of both shared DNA (expressed in centimorgans, cM) and general degree of confidence (expressed as "extremely high," "very high," "high," or "moderate"). New test results from the holiday DNA test sales have already started to hit the match lists, so you may have noticed a more dramatic uptick in your number of matches recently. A few weeks ago, I had 209 pages of matches at Ancestry (at 50 matches per page); today, I have 234 pages of matches. Of course, not all of these are quality matches. As discussed previously, many of the distant matches, especially those with whom I share 7 cM of DNA or less, are false positives and should be evaluated very critically, or completely ignored.
If you're new to DNA testing, your list may include some close matches from your family tree, because you have family members (already known to you) who decided independently to test their DNA. That's a good thing; those results confirm the established paper trail as discussed in the last post, and with any luck, you can persuade those cousins to upload their DNA to one of the other sites that offers a chromosome browser, such as Family Tree DNA, MyHeritage, or GEDmatch. Be sure to encourage them to read the terms of service for these sites before they upload.
If your match list includes very few close matches (Immediate Family, Close Family, 1st Cousins, 2nd Cousins or Third Cousins), you may want to begin proactively target-testing your family members, as finances permit. I typically wait until there's a good sale, and then stock up on several kits at once. The general rule of thumb is to test your oldest relatives first. This is because the amount of autosomal DNA that you could potentially inherit from any particular ancestor gets cut in half with each successive generation. So, my Grandma's DNA contains information about ancestors about two generations further back than mine does. If you are among the oldest members of your family, don't despair. You can still gain valuable information by testing your siblings and first cousins. Full siblings (except for identical twins) inherit different bits of DNA from their parents, which they then pass down to successive generations. Therefore testing your siblings gives you added information about your parents' DNA, and testing your first cousins will give you additional insights into your grandparents' DNA, that are not provided by looking only at your own DNA. However, DNA samples from the children or grandchildren of your siblings and first cousins will not be as informative, since your parents or grandparents' DNA is further diluted in these individuals. If you think of your ancestors—the people you're trying to learn about—as the targets of your DNA testing, then relatives from older generations are "upstream" from your position in the family tree, and therefore closer to the target, and relatives from younger generations are "downstream."
Just how different can siblings' DNA test results really be? Well, if you consider DNA matches at the level of 4th cousins or closer—a level at which matches are unlikely to be Identical by Population or Identical by Chance—my sister has 248 matches currently, and I have 169. Her matches provide 79 additional opportunities to understand our shared ancestry, based on the different bits of DNA we inherited from our parents. Since I now have DNA test data from both our parents, my sister's test results are nice to have, but not critically important. However, before my parents tested, my sister's DNA gave me opportunities to confirm my documentary research thanks those additional matches to distant cousins whom she matched, but I did not. These individuals are still documented cousins to both of us, but they are only genetic cousins to her, and not me.
As you review your closest matches, you may notice that Ancestry "mislabels" some of the relationships. For example, my "Second Cousin" category includes two documented first cousins once removed (1C1R), and a documented grandaunt (or great-aunt, if you prefer). Conversely, I have some documented second cousins who are reported to be third cousins. What's going on here? Does this mean the DNA test is inaccurate?
In a word, no. DNA inheritance is somewhat random thanks to a process known as genetic recombination. There are a variety of great articles out there to help you understand this process, but the take-home message is that the amount of DNA you inherit from any given ancestor—say, a grandparent—is random. On average, a person will inherit 25% of his or her DNA from each grandparent, but in practice, one may inherit 27% from the paternal grandmother, 23% from the paternal grandfather, 26% from the maternal grandmother, and 24% from the maternal grandfather, while a sibling's inherited percentages will be different.
Because of this, it's impossible to say that second cousins will always share exactly X number of centimorgans of DNA. Instead, it's more appropriate to think in terms of averages and ranges, i.e. according to Ancestry, second cousins will share between 200 and 620 cM. Using another real-life example from my DNA match list, I have a documented second cousin, Ellie, with whom I share only 175 cM. Since this amount is less than the 200 cM defined by Ancestry as the low end of the acceptable range for the second-cousin category, Ancestry's algorithms guess that she's actually my third cousin. However, Ancestry's definitions oversimplify the situation to some extent, as we'll see in a moment.
Figure 1 shows a few of my second cousin matches at Ancestry with their names blacked out to protect their privacy, to illustrate a few points about how Ancestry presents the data.
Figure 1: Second cousin matches at Ancestry.
Although these are grouped under the heading, "2nd Cousin," you can see that Ancestry qualifies that assignment with the notation, "Possible range: 1st-2nd cousins." If you click on the question mark, circled in red, you will find the chart shown in Figure 2, which indicates the amount of shared DNA (in centimorgans) which Ancestry uses to define relationships. According to this chart, DNA matches must share between 200-620 cM of DNA, as stated previously, in order for Ancestry's algorithm to classify them as second cousins. However, Ancestry offers a disclaimer at the bottom of the page which cautions that "The exact amount of shared DNA can vary beyond the ranges shown in the table."
Figure 2: Ancestry's Predicted Relationship Info page.
Fair enough; so where can we obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the possible relationships suggested by a given amount of shared DNA? There are two good resources for this. The first is Blaine Bettinger's Shared Centimorgan Project, an ongoing, collaborative effort to gather empirical evidence for the amount of DNA shared between DNA matches whose relationships are known or have been established through documentary evidence. The most recent update from the project includes data from more than 25,000 DNA matches, and can be found at the author's website, and also at the website of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy.1 A copy of this chart is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: The Shared cM Project, Version 3.0, courtesy of Blaine Bettinger, licensed under CC By 4.0.
In the example of a DNA match with whom I share 175 cM, examination of the chart reveals that this amount of shared DNA falls into the established range for the following relationships: Half GG-Aunt/Uncle, Half Great Aunt/Uncle, Half 3C, Half 2C, Half 2C1R, Half 2C2R, Half 1C, Half 1C1R, Half 1C2R, Half 1C3R, Half Great-Niece/Nephew, Half GG Niece/Nephew, 1C1R, 1C2R, 1C3R, 2C, 2C1R, 2C2R, or 3C. As you can see from these notations, some of these relationships are more complicated than simple first cousins, second cousins, etc., so if you're not sure what "third cousin twice removed" (3C2R) really means, this chart by Nathan Yau may be useful.2
These results represent quite a lot of possibilities, and statistically, some of those relationships will be more probable than others. With this in mind, Jonny Perl, creator of the DNA Painter site, developed an interactive tool which combines data from the Shared cM Project with probability statistics provided by Leah Larkin. Figure 4 shows the result of plugging my 175 cM shared DNA into this calculator.
Figure 4: Calculator for assessing the most probable relationships suggested by a given amount of shared DNA, courtesy of Jonny Perl at DNA Painter, licensed under CC By 4.0.
According to this tool, it's statistically most likely that two people who share a total of 175 cM DNA will be half second cousins, second cousins once removed, half first cousins twice removed, or first cousins three times removed, although other relationships are possible.
Leveraging Shared Matches
To examine an individual match from your list at Ancestry more closely, click on either the person's name or on "View Match." That will bring you to a screen that looks like the one in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Ancestry's main match analysis screen.
There are a few points of interest to note in this display. The first thing to notice is that there are four options for looking at the match in more detail. The default is the screen we're on, "Pedigree and Surnames" underlined in purple in Figure 5. Since this DNA match does not have a family tree, we don't get much information here. Similarly, if we were to click over to "Map and Locations," we wouldn't learn much, either, since those are dependent on information included in the family tree. So in cases like this one, where the tester has not linked a family tree, what can we learn?
Well, for starters, the ethnicity estimate, circled in yellow, might give us some clues about which side of the family the match is on, assuming one's mother and father come from different ethnic backgrounds. In my case, my Mom's ancestors were entirely Polish as far back as I've been able to research thus far, while my Dad is a mix of German, Alsatian, English, Irish, and Scottish. Since the ethnic blend reported for this DNA match is Eastern Europe and Russia, Baltic States, and European Jewish, she's most likely a cousin on my mom's side. This is an important bit of information, since a primary goal of DNA testing for most of us is to understand how we're related to our DNA matches in the hope of extending and confirming our documentary research.
Are we ready to contact this match to request more information on her family tree? Not yet. The text underlined in red in Figure 5 informs us that the last time this member logged into her Ancestry account was October 2018—about four months ago, as I write this. That suggests that she's not actively researching her family tree, and may have been one of the many people who bought a DNA test in order to see the ethnicity estimate, with no real interest in the list of DNA matches. That doesn't necessarily mean that we shouldn't reach out to DNA matches who haven't logged into their accounts in a while, but it means that we should temper our expectations of a reply.
So what else should we do before we write to her? Check out the shared matches! These are one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal at Ancestry, and they can be accessed by clicking the "Shared Matches" to the right of "Pedigree and Surnames." When I do that, I can see all the matches I share in common with this person, which can provide some evidence of how we might be related. Note that caution must still be exercised when interpreting these results. If I see my 4C1R, Mark, among the shared matches for a particular DNA match (Dan), and I know that I'm related to Mark through my Ptaszkiewicz/Łącki line, it suggests that I am also related to Dan through that line. However, other interpretations are possible. For example, Dan might match Mark through Mark's father's side, while Mark matches me through his mother's side. What we're looking for is not just a shared match, but a shared segment of DNA, which suggests common ancestry. The only way to know if a segment of DNA triangulates between three people is to use a chromosome browser, which Ancestry lacks.
We'll look at the Shared Matches screen more closely in a minute, but on this screen, I'd also like to point out Ancestry's option for making notes on each of your DNA matches, circled in blue in Figure 5. Once I have a good idea about how I'm related to a certain match, I like to make a note about the relationship (e.g. "paternal 4C3R") and the path back to our most recent common ancestral couple. A very helpful tool when working with Ancestry matches is a Google Chrome extension called MedBetter DNA, which will enable all your notes on DNA matches to show on the main listing page simultaneously, , so you don't have to click on each note individually in order to view it. It also allows you to filter your matches according to certain surnames (or other keywords), provided they are prefaced with a hashtag (#) in the notes. A more detailed explanation of how to use MedBetter DNA can be found in Kitty Cooper's blog, here.3
As mentioned, Ancestry offers four options for looking at a match in more detail. The first three are the "Pedigree and Surnames," "Shared Matches" and "Map and Locations" tools, and the fourth is the "Compare" utility, to the left of "Ethnicity" and "Send Message" in Figure 5. The Compare utility gathers all the information about predicted relationship, shared centimorgans, ethnicity estimates, shared migrations, and shared matches and displays it on one page. Note that their data on "shared migrations" incorporates data from Ancestry's Genetic Communities.™ To identify these "Genetic Communities," Ancestry uses data from the family tree of each DNA tester who has uploaded a tree. So when Ancestry tells me that I belong to the Pomerania "Genetic Community," that assignment is not based on evidence from my DNA, but on the fact that I, and many of my DNA matches, have family trees which include ancestors born in the region that Ancestry defines as "Pomerania." Note that Ancestry's definitions of historical regions such as Pomerania might not correspond to the traditional borders of such regions, so you might want to take those designations with a grain of salt.
As an initial goal, you may want to try to identify your connection to each of your unknown "close" matches, but it's up to you to decide how to define "close," based on your total number of matches. You can start off by going down the list, one at a time, or you can search your match list according to surname, to see which of your matches report that surname in their family tree. Be careful with common surnames—just because you and a match both have a common surname, like Smith, Jones, Nowak, or Wagner in your tree, you cannot assume that this is how you are related without documentary research to back that up. The best way to begin the process of identifying your relationship to your matches is by seeking those that share surnames and geographic locations in common with you. As long as you have one of those things in common to begin with, a surname or a place of origin, you can start documentary research to investigate the relationship.
As you identify your relationship to each person in your list, you may want to contact that person to introduce yourself. To increase the likelihood of a reply, I try to give my matches some specific information about our connection, without being overwhelming. I also try to explain the benefits of using a chromosome browser to better understand the location of our matching segment(s) of DNA, and encourage them to consider downloading their raw DNA from Ancestry and uploading to one of the sites that offers a chromosome browser, such as MyHeritage, GEDmatch, or Family Tree DNA, being sure to read the sites' privacy policies first.
Even if a DNA match has a family tree online, it's important to be skeptical regarding the information contained there, since not all family historians are equally experienced or rigorous. And even when a match's tree indicates an intersection of surname and place with your own tree, additional research may still be necessary to trace back to the common ancestral couple. Clearly, DNA testing is not (usually!) a magic wand that will miraculously give you four more generations back in your tree, unless you happen to discover that you're related to a very good genealogist. Nonetheless, it's very satisfying when you are able to find solid documentary evidence identifying your relationship to a DNA match, and when that documented relationship is consistent with the amount of shared DNA. At that point, it's usually safe to call the match "solved" and move on to the next one.
Solving such puzzles can often reveal quite a bit of new information about one's family tree. DNA testing has enabled me to discover and connect with living cousins in Europe, which is fun. It's also answered questions about the disappearance of my ancestors' s cousins from Polish records, many of whom also immigrated to the U.S., but settled in places other than where my family settled. With time, effort, and a bit of luck, it's also possible to use DNA testing to solve unknown parentage cases.
DNA testing offers a unique opportunity for genealogists to confirm and extend their documentary research. Although there's a bit of a learning curve involved with understanding the key concepts, the abundance of online educational resources makes it possible to gain confidence with interpreting DNA results. That long list of DNA matches might seem intimidating at first, but bit by bit, it's possible to work through them. A willingness to collaborate with our DNA matches will make the genealogy community a better place for all of us. So what are you waiting for? Check out your matches and maybe we can connect.
Sources and Further Reading:
1 Blaine Bettinger, "August 2017 Update to the Shared cM Project," The Genetic Genealogist: Adding DNA to the Genealogist's Toolbox, posted 26 August 2017, (https://thegeneticgenealogist.com : 19 February 2019); and
"Autosomal DNA Statistics," International Society of Genetic Genealogy, International Society of Genetic Genealogy Wiki, (https://isogg.org/wiki : 19 February 2019), licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.
2 Nathan Yau, "Chart of Cousins," FlowingData, posted 5 November 2014 (https://flowingdata.com : 19 February 2019).
3 Kitty Cooper, "An Awesome Ancestry Add-On," Kitty Cooper's Blog: Musings on Genealogy, Genetics and Gardening, posted 10 January 2018 (https://blog.kittycooper.com : 20 February 2019).
Some relevant blog articles:
Using GEDmatch: https://blog.kittycooper.com/2018/06/getting-started-with-gedmatch/
Using Ancestry's "Shared Matches" tool: https://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2015/08/28/ancestrydna-announces-new-in-common-with-tool/
Understanding Ancestry's Genetic Communities™: https://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2017/03/28/ancestrydnas-genetic-communities-are-finally-here/
© Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz, 2019
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"Understanding and Using Geneteka" January 16, 2021 at 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm Members-Only webinar sponsored by the Polish Genealogical Society of Connecticut and the Northeast. Current members will receive a link for the webinar in their email. For more information about membership, please see https://pgsctne.org/membership/.
Lecture TBA March 6, 2021 at 9:30 am – 11:00 am Webinar hosted by the Worcester Chapter of the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists. For details and registration, please visit: https://www.msoginc.org/msogwp/category/chapters/worcester/
"Crowdsourcing for Genealogy" March 14, 2021 at 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm Webinar hosted by the Lincoln - Lancaster County Genealogical Society. For details and registration, please visit https://llcgs.info/eventListings.php?nm=96
"Finding Vital Records from Poland Online" May 23, 2021 at 2:00 pm – 4:30 pm Framingham Public Library, 49 Lexington St, Framingham, MA 01702, USA Co-sponsored by the Polish Genealogical Society of Massachusetts and the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston. For more information, please visit https://www.jgsgb.org/event/jszczepankiewicz-2021/