Another genealogist just informed me of something called the Poznan Project, and I lost myself in it for several hours yesterday. It’s a growing index of 19th century marriages from the Poznan (Posen) region of Poland, the region that my maternal grandmother’s family emigrated from. My research on my Polish line has been limited at this point, and based solely on records in the US, and this is my first foray into archives like this.
The great thing about the Poznan Project is that even though they only have a transcription of the main info, there’s information on where the actual records can be found, whether that’s National or church archives, or LDS films. So for several records I was able to then go to familysearch.org and find (with much scrolling) the original information.
For instance, I found the 1860 marriage record for my GGG-grandparents, Michael Wisniewski (pronounced vish-NEF-skee) and Victoria Ogonek (pronounced oh-GOH-nek).
I knew very little of my Wisniewski line before the first arrived here at the very end of the 1800s, and wasn’t certain about Michael and Victoria. One document I already had, their son’s death certificate, listed her maiden name as Ognacz, and getting this correct surname allowed me to find her parents and her grandparents, taking me back to my 5G-grandparents! For the first time I’ve broken the 1700s on my Polish line!.
My head has ben swimming. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, and this is a major breakthrough for my Polish roots! Now, of course, I wish I knew more – of siblings and cousins, etc., but that will come in time.
While I don’t know much (yet) I know a bit of the story that leads from Michael and Vitoria down to me. Michael was born in 1837, presumably in Poznan, to Piotr Wisniewski and Constance Wojciechowski (also new names for me). Two years after they were married, they had what was very likely their first child, whom they named Piotr who would become bridge to America for the Wisniewski family. By the age of 34, Piotr was married to Franciszka Puchalski and had four children, including 10-year-old Zofia (Sophie) who would become my g-grandmother. It was at this point, that Piotr went to the US. I can only presume that he worked to save money to send for the family, because they were apart for 7 years.
Fun fact: Grandma Frances showed up at Ellis Island in 1903 with a son name Jan, who was only about 2 yrs old. Records show that she said her husband had been in the US for 7 yrs. Ooops! They were detained. I’ve never heard or seen info on Jan again, and I suspect he was someone else’s child that she successfully snuck into the country.
Frances and Peter settled in Westmoreland and Fayette Counties, south of Pittsburgh, where they had three more children. (So, it seems the “illegitimate” may not have been a problem.)
I had been looking for information about Peter (Piotr) for many years when one day I found myself visiting my elderly great-uncle, Peter’s eldest grandson. At the time, Uncle John was 98, living at home with his daughter – sharp as a tack and blind as a bat. I was telling him about how I had been tracing family, and decided to ask him about his grandfather Peter. I could only determine from children’s birth years and census records that he had died sometime between 1911 and 1920. Uncle John said he died in a terrible accident in a coal mine, where he was pinned by equipment, and said he himself was very young and didn’t really know him. It took a few more years, but I it. In 1913, Peter was working in a coal mine , and per his death certificate: “Death due to injuries received from being caught between car and wall on the outside of the Standard Mine of the H.C. Frick Coal & Coke Co. while employed as track cleaner. Died in Mt. Pleasant Hospital.”
After he died, the Frances and the family moved from SW Pennsylvania to Chicago. Peter’s oldest daughter, Sophia, was married and a mother by the time Peter had died, and Sophia and her husband, Charlie (Stanislas) Maciejczak, led the move to the midwest. Their oldest daughter, Marianna (known as Marie) was my grandmother. I knew Sophie as an old woman, when I was a young boy. I remember her as a smiling, quiet, loving old lady. (I mean, I was small, ok, so of course I did.)
But, I remember how she was different from thee rest of Mom’s extended family because despite her being in the country for about 70 years, arriving when she was 15, she still had a thick accent, and spoke broken English.
If only knew and wondered then what I do now. How I wish I could go back in time (and become some strangely intuitive and curious-beyond-my-years child) and ask my great-grandmother about her childhood in Poland, or Germany, or Prussia – whatever it was at whatever time – there in Poznan.