Family Facts and Fiction
When I was in third grade my class learned about legends. We learned that legends are stories that are made up to explain why something is the way it is. I remember that with this assignment, I wrote a story about why calico cats are three colors. I no longer can remember my legend’s explanation for the tri-colored felines, but the lesson of legends stuck with me. This lesson has recently come back to me as I’ve dissected a few family legends.
It’s no wonder that family legends exist. For most people, exact recall of stories is not a strong point. This is why the often-true family stories morph into garbled stories that stretch, distort or confuse the truth. And the fact is, you may have contributed to these stories, not intentially of course. It’s just that sometimes it’s easy to get confused about which ancestor participated in which event in which place.
I just got off the phone with my mom, and she told me that the Irvings lost their chuck wagon while crossing the Red River. “Or was the Hughes family? Or maybe the Stevens family? Okay, I definitely remember it was the Irvings.” Now, I don’t mean to nit-pick my mom because any one of us can be this person who is only remembering bits of the true story.
In analyzing family stories it’s important to remember that sometimes not a speck of the story is true. The legend may be that your great-great grandfather died of a monkey bite in Texas while working for the circus. (Yes, this is a real family story of my own). I, unfortunately, have not figured this story out entirely. However, I have found that this great-great-grandfather in question actually died in California and never worked for the circus. His father also is not the man in this story. It’s possible that the story is really about the son of my great-great grandfather, but I haven’t ruled out the possibility that the story is just not true at all. I’d love to know where this story came from, and I do have at least one clue. There was a family member on that branch of the family who did work for the Carl Hagenbeck Circus around the turn of the century.
Usually, there are at least some true bits of a story, and it’s just a matter of figuring out which bits are true. Generally I find that it is best to be skeptical. If I approach the research expecting the entire story to be true, I may overlook important sources that could disprove the family story.
I actually find that the greatest danger in researching family legends is that some family members don’t like to learn that their favorite family stories are not actually true. This is particularly true of stories about ancestors who were prominent, wealthy, royalty, or the first to do something. A lot of people get a kick out of telling about their family stories, and when you take those family stories away from them, they may not have any good stories to tell.
What are your favorite family stories that you just don’t want to let go of?
Fires, Strikes and Research
I have been working on a Puerto Rican research problem and came to a point where we needed records from the National Archives in San Juan. We did everything we could to work with the archives in getting them to search the records, but they were not accomodating and would not carry out research requests. We then worked to find a reliable agent who was capable of conducting the search and this was not easy. Finally, we were able to find a local gentleman who is familiar with genealogical and historical research and who agreed to help us by researching at the archives. At last, we seemed to be getting somewhere!
However, after not hearing from the local contact for over a month we began to be even more frustrated at the time it was taking to complete this client’s research. At length, we recieved an apology email from the researcher and he explained that he had been unable to get to the archives because of a terrible fire that had engulfed a major highway in San Juan, and which prevented access to the archives, not to mention the fact that the archives had been closed during the whole ordeal!
Pretty wild, and our first thoughts were “Yeah right! Nice try, buddy!” However, after doing a little due dilligence on CNN.com, the story was confirmed!
Here at ProGenealogists, we take on research cases that expand to nearly every part of the world. Many times international research requires the use of records that are only accessible at local archives and repositories. This requires us to either communicate directly with these facilities or enlist the services of an agent. This is one of the reasons why ProGenealogists has been so successful in overseas research–we’re not afraid to do everything possible to access the records we need!
Unfortunately, there are, at times, circumstances beyond our control that greatly extend the calendar time of a client’s research project. This is always a frustrating thing for us becuase we know how anxious our clients are to find answers to their ancestral questions.
In our vast experience in working with foreign agents, government entities, archives, etc., we have encountered a myriad of extraordinary circumstances that have prolonged research completion time. The fire in Puerto Rico is just one example. Another recent instance is the postal strike in the U.K. This prevented us from recieving much needed documents that had been requested from various archives and repositories. Another example is the earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy last year, which destroyed the state archives and many records that were housed there. Other times we find that cultural differences in certain countries cause agents and archivists to not have the same level of urgency that we are so accustomed to in the U.S. They just “get around to it when they get around to it.”
The moral of the story is that research is unpredictable. Our team is committed to serving our clients in the best way possible. Part of that committment includes providing them with scholarly and accurate research. If there are records tucked away at a parish priest’s home in Germany or a difficult-to-access archive in Ukraine that are most likely to solve the research problem, we’re going to do everything we can to access those records–even if it takes months and months to do it! We only ask that our clients bear with us during the work because we are always doing everything we can to complete their research in as timely a manner as possible.
Kyle Betit Researching in Europe
As one of ProGenealogists’s senior genealogists, I specialize in European research. In November 2009, I will be traveling in France, Germany, and Poland. I am available to undertake research for ProGenealogists clients during this time. That includes archival research in repositories of these countries, onsite research in cemeteries and churches, home site research, and interviewing and photographing. I will also be posting information and tips here in our blog about research in those countries. If you have a research question in one of those countries, we would be glad to hear from you and to give you a free estimate for helping you with your research: http://www.progenealogists.com/estimate.htm . I travel often in Europe, and we work with many colleagues throughout Europe, so if we can’t help you on this particular trip, we will work hard to help you on the next trip or in another way! For more information about German and Polish research, please see our German Research Pages http://www.progenealogists.com/germany/ and our Polish Research Pages http://www.progenealogists.com/poland/ .
Polish Marriage Records Online
Polish Marriage Records Online
Kyle J. Betit
Finding an ancestor’s home village or town in Poland can be a difficult job – especially because there are few large databases of Polish records to check online. Recently, however, some marriage databases have become available that are impressive and a good start on indexing Polish marriages online. Beware that the search engines on these sites vary in how they treat spelling variations. Some of them look for close spelling variations of a surname. At least one only searches for the exact spelling you enter. You can find the links I have discussed below online on ProGenealogists’s International Sleuth page http://www.progenealogists.com/genealogysleuthi.htm , where you may also find other links of interest on an ongoing basis. Many Polish marriages still need to be accessed the old-fashioned way (by searching the records of individual congregations or churches), and ProGenealogists offers a variety of services to help you with that also: http://www.progenealogists.com/services.htm . The collection of Polish marriage records on microfilm at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City is particularly vast, and our researchers are at the FHL every day.
One of the best indexes to Polish marriages online is the Poznan (Posen) Marriage Indexing Project at http://bindweed.man.poznan.pl/posen/project.php . Posen was a section of Prussia (Germany), and is now called Poznan in Polish. Poznan is now a region of western Poland. Many immigrants came from here to the United States. The Poznan marriage index online is flexible and helpful to use, and I have found some families I was looking for there. I recommend it! If your ancestors came from Posen/Poznan (or if they just said they came from Prussia), check it out since it is free and online. It covers the period from 1820 to 1899. About 426,000 marriages are included at this writing! If you find a reference you are looking for on this site, ProGenealogists can help you obtain a copy of the original record: http://www.progenealogists.com/record_search.htm .
A similar index online for Pomerania is the Pomeranian Marriage Indexes at http://www.ptg.gda.pl/index.php/certificate/action/searchM/ . This web site is maintained by the Pomeranian Genealogical Association (Pomorskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne). About 165,000 marriages are included at this writing, with over one million records indexed total (including baptisms and deaths).
An index that includes a wider geographical area is “Index of Polish marriages until 1899,” operated by Dr Minakowski Publikacje Elektroniczne, online at http://www.przodkowie.com/metryki/en.php . This database doesn’t include very many marriages at this point (about 70,000 at this writing), but it will undoubtedly expand. You can check the list of locations/parishes that are included, and if your ancestral parish is there, it could be quite helpful. Kraków is well represented, for example. With a less common surname, searching a database like this could give a clue as to the region or even parishes where a name may have appeared.
If you are looking for Jewish ancestors, many of the Jewish marriage records from Polish archives and elsewhere have been indexed in the Jewish Records Indexing Project (JRI-Poland) at http://www.jri-poland.org . The project also includes births and deaths, so it is a must for researching Jewish ancestors who lived in Poland (or in what is today Poland). At this writing, more than 3.5 million records from 500 Polish towns have been indexed. Don’t forget that sometimes people converted from one religion to another, so you might have Jewish ancestors you didn’t know about back some generations.
Now perhaps the best for last. A large database covering all of Poland is the Geneteka web site at http://www.geneteka.genealodzy.pl/ . This site (operated by the Polish Genealogical Society – Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne – in Warsaw) is only in Polish, but you can translate it using Google or another translation tool. There are some 2 million entries of births, deaths, and marriages included in the database. You can search for a surname to see what regions of Poland a particular surname appeared in. Then you can search either the entire region or a single locality for records of people with particular names. I noticed that you can get different results if you use the feminine form of a surname, such as Grzybowska, rather than the masculine form, in this case Grzybowski. You might want to check both depending on your research strategy and goals. Also, this suggests the search engine is looking only for exact spellings. You may want to put in several variant spellings of your surname to see what the different results are. There are also a few localities from modern-day Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, and Russia included on this site. Again, if you find a reference you are looking for on this site, ProGenealogists can help you obtain a copy of the original record: http://www.progenealogists.com/record_search.htm .