Pacanow

Pacanow – St. Martin 1918

Pacanow – St. Martin 2018

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Stanczyk ‘s paternal / ELIASZ grandfather (and great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather) were born in Pacanow.

There are online records in metryki.genbaza.pl for Pacanow:

1875-1917 (inclusive). The 1909-1917 are very recent additions! [editor’s note: this is why this blog article was delayed.]

Also recently, a third genealogist contacted this blog about our shared ZASUCHA (from Pacanow) research. This genealogist confirmed to this jester that Pacanow-Niagara Falls-Cleveland-Michigan were Pacanow/Zasucha enclaves for her family.

Besides the normal genbaza church records (Pacanow), the Ancestry/Family Search/Ellis Island (USA records), https://fultonsearch.org proved very useful for the NY Zasucha.

This jester is now in a massive Social Network Analysis research in an effort to sort the Zasucha trees in order to merge the complete Zasucha into the Eliasz/Leszczynski et. al. Family Tree.

Let me leave you readers with a 1930 Poland Business Directory page for Pacanow.

 

 

From Genealodzy.pl we can find parish holdings at https://parafie.genealodzy.pl/index.php?op=pr&pid=6067

Miejscowosc		Parafia pod wezwaniem
Pacanów		św.Marcina
Wyznanie	Wcześniejsza parafia	Diecezja		Dekanat
rzymskokatolickie
Erygowana	Województwo (stare)	Województwo (nowe)		Powiat
XIII w.	kieleckie	świętokrzyskie		buski
Kod pocztowy	Poczta	Adres		Telefon 1	Telefon 2
28-133	Pacanów	ul.Kościelna 24		041-3765442
Indeksy w zasobach internetowych
Portal	Narodzin		Slubów		Zgonów
Geneteka	1875-1903,1905-08		1875-1903,1905-08		1875-1903,1905-08
Ksiegi w parafii
Narodzin		Slubów		Zgonów
1910		1945		1945

Genetic Genealogy & Polish Family Tree

Stanczyk, like most family historians is proud of his heritage and research. Today’s pics are just a small part.

Martha – via Siwiec, Wojtys, Lewinski, Eliasz

Jon/Jan – via Marzic, Zasucha, Eliasz

The two pics represents two wings of this jester’s family tree.

This jester does not employ genetic testing for a variety of business/legal reasons.

However, now twice genetic genealogists have used my tree to solve their genetic mysteries.

Now this jester has maintained that the people (osob) of Biechow, Pacanow, Zborowek, Szczebrzusz, Olesnica, Stopnica, Beszowa, Swiniary, Solec(-Zdroj), and Dobrowoda parishes (parafia) including their surrounding villages are inter-related.

So I have been only too happy to work with other genealogists. Genealogy is easily the best suited field of study for crowd-source solutions and collaborating on family tree & histories. My feeling is that I am helping others who are connected to me and through our mutual research we will discover those connections. Indeed that is the raison d’etre of this blog. Its meant to be a cousin magnet. I have benefited as much as the other genealogists. Sometimes I get pictures of distant cousins, sometimes pictures of myself or my father or grandmother that I did not know existed (and obviously did not have). Often I get get new avenues of research in branches that were long lost.

Back to the pictures. John Marzic (right pic) is a person from an affiliated family of an affiliated family (Zasucha). I worked with a genetic genealogist, Kathy G. and we found her cousin’s cousin who was adopted as child and we found his birth family. John Marzic turned out to be the missing father and through extensive testing of many people not shown, the genetics provided the info to connected John Marzic to myself. I did not even know John’s son’s name, just that he grew up Michigan and was connected to Pacanow (my grandfather’s birth village) and might be related to a Zasucha. Remember a blog “Searchin’ For Zasucha”? It and a few other Zasucha blogs drew Kathy’s attention. We worked together, me using geneteka and genbaza and aiding on the USA side in odd bits here and there. Kathy did the suspected families (from Pacanow to Niagara Falls(NY) to Albion(MI) to Nevada). She did the genetic testing of the probable branches and we succeeded. I did NOT know her “cousin’s cousin, the adoptee”!

The left picture shows a FB genealogist who worked with me to connect our trees! Martha had so many wide branches I had no idea of. Through her I even found Eliasz that I did not know of connected to her ancestors (through marriage). We did connect our trees. I like to add the branches leading to the genealogists connected to me. So I was surprised when Martha messaged me recently about a SF person who was highly connected to her genetically (long cm strands and many strands). Martha started describing to me and I knew at once she was connected to my Marzic/Zasucha branch (so yet another path to Martha and me). They are at far branches and yet they are connected via genetics. But it was my branches (and I suppose my untested genetics too) that connected them. Through her MRCA numbers from her to him & vice versa (slightly different 3.4 generations & 3.6 generations), I was able to count up my tree from her and from him and tell her the most likely branches she needed to pursue. In her case it was her Lewinski branches & Wojtys branches (oddly enough not the Eliasz nor the Zasucha).  Counting back from John Marzic (or really his son) I ended up at Lewinski & Wojtys the same as for her. The Eliasz & Zasucha are merely stepping stones between these two families. Kathy G, if you are still reading my blog, then look at Martha (left pic with arrow). Her DNA is up on some genealogy website(s). Your cousin’s cousin has another set of family branches to add to his tree.

By the way, Martha & Kathy, I have a friend, Louis Kessler who is a genealogist, blogger, & a programmer who does genetic genealogy. He has some excellent dna triangulation software  on his website.

A Little Bit of Blog Bigos … — #Genealogy

This blog post became necessary because blog topics overran my ability to write blog posts … so here is a bit of Bigos (a mishmash) / hunter’s hodge-podge of blog topics in minature, some of which foreshadow a larger blog post (or two).

Ancestry released version 8.2. Security & some bugs were addressed … but the big news is image/record viewer! For a long time I despaired over the inability of the smartphone app to display the images at full resolution necessary for detailed analysis. So Stanczyk tried the image at top that this jester received from third-cousin that became a seminal document for both of us genealogists! Wow! The image viewer was great! 

In fact, I noticed a detail in the record as I was trying to detail the church record’s Polish for our shared ancestors. The image notes are below … (see Church Marriage Register)
One of the witnesses was a JAN ZASUCHA. It just so happened that I had an unfinished blog piece from mid December 2016 that was languishing in draft mode. It was upon Zasucha and how this affiliated family was related to me because my second-great-grandmother was Anna Zasucha.  So here was another example that 100 years ago the Pacanów families in America were very close and related at some level to my Eliasz/Elijasz/Elyasz/etc. family. I will finish that blog. I am hoping there is a 3rd/4th cousin in Poland with images or info about Anna Zasucha. [Editor’s Note – published Zasucha article on 20-April-2017; URL:  https://mikeeliasz.wordpress.com/2016/12/12/searchin-for-zasucha-genealogy-polish/  ]

I also have a new blog post in progress about a new Ancestry database that was brought to my attention by Chicago genealogist, Jennifer Holik. She is an expert on Military (especially WWII) genealogy records. So she had a brief piece on US Army funerial Transport ships and I noticed the database had WWI Transports and I wondered if some Haller’s Army troops were transported via that. (Spoiler alert … yes!).

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Church Marriage Register – Roza Wleciałowski & Adam Gawlikowski

Adam Gawlikowski – kawaler, 27, syn Marcina i Maryanny Lisów z Opatowiec, Kieleckie

Rozalia Wleciałowska – panna, 20, corka Maciej i Kat.  Eliasz z Pacanowa – Kiel.

sw. Marcoli Dusza, Jan Zasucha

<margin>

4)

sl. 19/8

o 9ty

Klęczu z.

— — — transcription above / translation below

Adam Gawlikowski – bachelor, age 27, son of  Marcin (Gawlikowski) & Maryanna z. Lisów of Opatowiec in Kieleckie (Gubernia of Russian-Poland)

Rozalia Wleciałowska – maiden, age 20, daughter of Maciej (Wleciałowski) & Katarzyna Eliasz of Pacanow in Kieleckie (Gubernia of Russian-Poland)

witnesses Marcoli (spelling uncertain) Dusza, Jan Zasucha

(marginalia)

Marriage #4 (of 1912) at Sweetest Heart of Mary, Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan

Marriage August 19th

9pm (time)

kneeling

Searchin’ For Zasucha — #Genealogy #Polish

Stanczyk has the instincts of an hard-boiled detective.  Now this is not the story of forensic genealogy. Nor am I infringing on Tim Firkowski (Genealogy Assistant / Family History Detective). I guess my hard-boiled detective work stems from my reading Michael Chabon right now. 

No I am investigating / researching an affiliated family of my ELIASZ /ELIJASZ ancestors: the ZASUCHA. You see, Anna Zasucha, is my 2nd-great-grandmother and wife of Marcin/Martin Eliasz. She is a part of my direct DNA. Like in DNA, the ZASUCHA are a genetic marker for my Eliasz family of village Pacanów. Hence, my curiosity.

Now for a while this jester has noticed the Zasucha were engaged in some  chain-migration genealogy involving many families from Pacanów to the USA, including among others, my Eliasz family.

So I find Zasucha in many of the same locales as my Eliasz: 

Buffalo, Syracuse, Niagara Falls, Cleveland, Toledo and Detroit.

But there was NO family memory of ZASUCHA among my direct Eliasz family. Indeed, nobody knew Anna Zasucha was our 2nd-great-grandmother.

But I notice things and patterns and I have employed SNA (Social Network Analysis), aka as cluster genealogy before and made breakthroughs in finding out more about my direct lineage by studying these genetic markers (affiliated families) as they immigrated to the USA in a chain-migration fashion. Whole branches have been discovered. I would welcome geneslogists with:

Kędzierski/Kendzierski, Pieszczachowicz, Fras/Frass, Hajek, Zwolski, and Zasucha (all affiliated to Eliasz/Pacanów or Leszczyński/Biechów).
You will be happy I have connected back your families to those two ancestral parishes(Biechów and Pacanów) whence my paternal grandparents originated from. Indeed, I have found many 2nd/3rd and further distant cousin-genealogists via this blog’s research. However, I am still waiting on a Zasucha genealogist.

So this blog is about a lovely couple: Feliks Zasucha & Antonina Łuszcz Zasucha (both from Pacanów).
I want to end this blog with the Zasucha in my tree and pick up in the next blog article with my struggles to find data on Feliks & Antonina.

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2nd and 3rd great-grandparents

Zasucha in Niagara Falls, Pacanow, Albion and Elsewhere — #Genealogy, #Polish

Two days ago, Stanczyk wrote about SNA/Cluster Genealogy and FultonHistory.com. So today I wanted to wrap-up some loose (odds and) ends. Its all about the Zasucha and that is my focus. But I must digress for one minute …

Historic Newspapers

I mentioned Tom Tryniski, the owner of FultonHistory.com whose Herculean efforts provides us with 21.8 Million pages to search through. Today, I wanted to extend to Tom, the offer to correspond (click on the Post Missive picture on this blog page). I have been an Historical Newspaper fan ever since I found my grandparents and the birth of my uncle mentioned in Dziennik Polski (Detroit). So I am hoping for a discussion on what Roots Tech he uses to maintain his website. Stanczyk after all is a STEM worker and loves IT (that is Information Technology, not ‘it’). That is my offer –  an interchange of ideas and perhaps a blog article. Tom, if you are looking for ideas on Newspapers to scan (in the NY region), how about the Buffalo area newspaper:  Dziennik dla Wszystkich (= Everybody’s Daily). Come on help this Polish jester out! Just a reminder, the Library of Congress ‘s Chronicling America projects lists about 220 Polish language, Historical Newspapers  [Polskie Gazety językowe]   (that it has holdings of?).

Zasucha

The last blog post listed four ZASUCHA families:

Martin (father of Andrew in the above death notice) – Andrew(the deceased), Roman, and Jan

Adam – Michal, John, Karol, Marya, and Feliks

Josef – Benedykt (son of Josef), Feliks (a 2nd much-younger Feliks, son of Benedykt)

Jan – Roman (a 2nd Roman), Teofil, Josef, and Pawel

Those were Niagara Falls Zasuchas. When I queried Ancestry Public Family Trees, I found another Zasucha family in the USA for the same timeframe:

Wojciech (aka Albert in USA, husband of Urszula) – Tomasz (aka Toma) and Tekla

These were Albion (Calhoun County, Michigan) Zasucha. If the owner of Brubaker and Zasucha Family Tree (silverandsienna) would like to compare notes on these Zasucha and/or Pacanow, then please by all means email me or comment on this blog post.

All of the above Zasucha are of interest to me because:

• They all came from Pacanow (where my grandfather was born)
• My great-great-grandmother was Anna Zasucha, wife of Martin Eliasz (of Pacanow)
• Karol & Feliks sons of Adam lived at 235 11th Street in Niagara Falls
• My grand-aunt Mary and grand-uncle John lived at 235 11th street in Niagara Falls

Now besides the Zasucha, I also found the following affiliated families living at 235 11th Street:

Adam Ziglicki,  Josef Ziglicki,  and (Filip Kulczyki brother-in-law of Adam Ziglicki).

The Ziglickich are intermarried to Eliaszow/Elijaszow in Pacanow (hence an affiliated family).

Finally, there was a Rozalia Zasucha last residence Samsonow, coming from her mother,  J. Zasucha living in Komorow to her brother-in-law Wawrz. Berusad(sp?) at 239 11th street in Niagara Falls on 7/1/1913 (SS Gothland). Now Komorow is a village in Pacanow parish. Samsonow is also related to my family tree as a residence for some Kedzierski related to my grand-uncle John’s wife, Pelagia. There is also a Feliks Zasucha at 239 11th street (who was son of Adam, going to brother Michal) at 239 11th street. So I am thinking I am going to add Rozalia to the Adam children [Michal, John, Karol, Marya, and Feliks] which are very connected to my ELIASZ family.

I am now guessing that Wawrz. (short for Wawrzeniec = Lawrence = Lawrenty) perhaps married Marya Zasucha (a theory I will need to test and verify).

So … any Zasucha out there? Particularly, the children of Adam [Michal, John, Karol, Marya, Feliks and now Rozalia] Zasucha. Let’s trade missives. The Social Network Analysis is trending towards a deeply connected family tree.

 

One very final aside …

Two other ELIASZ surfaced in this SNA research. Tomasz Eliasz (b. 6 September 1881 in Pacanow) son of Ludwik Elijasz. There was also a Stanley Eliasz (I believe a theater owner in Buffalo) who I believe was a cousin to my grandfather, but not the cousin that came to Detroit (aka Stanley Elyasz) who was the son a Martin Elijasz and Julianna Odomski. Tomasz was a 1st cousin twice removed and is in the family tree. I am aware of Stanley Eliasz (Buffalo theater owner) and his family, but as yet I have not been able to connect him to my tree. I think Stanley is also fairly closely related to our Detroit/Pacanow Eliasz family. It was interesting to see him turn up in the SNA (via City Directories).

SNA seems to find some very interesting and unknown familial relationships. At the very least it provides the fodder for future research to break through those genealogical “brick walls”. Please drop me a missive and let me know if you are using this technique and what successes you have had.

Niagara Falls Gazette – 1937 — #Genealogy, #Newspaper

Today’s blog is an intersection of some prior Social Network Analysis (aka Cluster Genealogy) and  EOGN‘s mention of FultonHistory.com (the website of Historic Newspapers). Stanczyk, waaay back discovered FultonHistory.com – An Historical Newspaper  (mostly NY) website. I was not aware that the owner (Tom Tryniski) was still adding content and that the content had grown to about 21.8 million pages, rivaling the Library of Congress’s efforts of digitized newspapers.  Each scan is a single page PDF document that is zoomable.

So  the idea presented itself, why not see if any ZASUCHA in Niagara Falls can be located in those 21.8 million scanned pages. I am happy to report a very good success. Take a look at the image. It is from Tuesday, January 19th, 1937 edition of the Niagara Falls Gazette. [You will need to click to read death notices – Jacobs, Geraud, Kochan, Laydon, Mahoney, Morrison and ZASUCHA].

Now I said this was a part of a long standing (i.e. “incomplete”) SNA project of mine. I am trying to do ELIASZ/ELIJASZ research by analyzing the affiliated families in the ELIASZ Social Network in Biechow/Pacanow (Poland) and Detroit/Toledo/Cleveland/Buffalo/Niagara Falls/Syracuse (USA).  My thesis is that all of these people are closely inter-related from Poland and they continued/extended their villages in the USA.

So by following these “genetic markers” (literally) of my family tree, the affiliated families, that I would be led to new facts about my direct lineage and possibly artifacts (pictures, etc.) of my ancestors. I was also hoping to lure my distant 2nd/3rd/4th cousins to me via this blog and my research in hopes of a second bump beyond my circumstantial info of the SNA. You see they would see their family names and realize the connection and we would be able to do that genealogy swapping of intelligence and/or pictures and documents.

First, an aside [skip ahead to next paragraph if you are not a ZASUCHA], the death notice transcription:

ZASUCHA – Died in Mount St Mary’s hospital, January 19, 1937, Andrew Zasucha, beloved husband of Catherine, father of Helen and Joseph, son of Martin in Poland; brother of Roman of this city. Funeral services at 9:30 Thursday, January 21, from his home, 423 Eighteenth street and 10 o’clock in Holy Trinity church. Burial at Holy Trinity cemetery.

That is some excellent genealogy info there for Andrew Zasucha of Niagara Falls who was born in Pacanow, [old wojewodztwo Kielce], Poland !

Now I am spending many hours in Ancestry/Ellis Island ship manifests, Ancestry city directories, censuses, WWI draft registrations,  etc. and now historic NY newspaper scans. I am matching people up (my nodes in the picture) and drawing lines connecting the people(nodes) to other people. I have to take some care to get the nodes right in order to draw inferences, so I tend to a conservative approach of keeping nodes separate until I have a high degree of certainty they are the same node. I use spreadsheets to collect a timeline of data and then match up people before drawing the picture. This is my SNA methodology.

I did this current project because I noticed that my grand-aunt Mary arrived to my grand-uncle John Eliasz and were in Niagara Falls (not Buffalo/Depew like most and not Detroit). I was always puzzled about why Niagara Falls. Who or What drew them there (Niagara Falls) before their sojourn to Detroit? Now grand-aunt Mary came from Ksiaznice in Pacanow parish from her brother-in-law Jan Leszczynski to her brother Jan Eliasz in Niagara Falls in 1910. All of these facts matched my family tree (except for the Niagara Falls which nobody alive had any memory of anyone living there). None the less, I slavishly recorded the address: 235 11th Street, Niagara Falls, NY.

Now let me digress. This is why I want the PLAC tag in GEDCOM to be elevated to a Level 1 tag. I want to do these analyses in my family tree. I want to find people who shared the same/similar places for family events and see if there is any connection that I am not aware of — i.e. SNA (aka Cluster Genealogy). I need it in the genealogy file and I need reports to allow me to search on place and to conform these places into a hiearchy for analysis.

Fortunately, Stanczyk still has a good memory. I was gathering data about: Zasucha, Zdziebko, Zwolski, Hajek, Leszczynski, Eliasz/Elijasz, etc. These are all families found in Pacanow parish who came to the USA and settled in: Buffalo/Depew, Niagara Falls, Syracuse, some moving onward to Cleveland, Toledo and my grandparents moving onward further from Toledo to Detroit. When I was recording addresses from the city directories, I noticed a few Zasucha being at the 235 11th street address. That address rang a bell in my memory and I went back through my family’s ship manifests to see who had been at that same address. That is when I saw that my grand-aunt and my grand-uncle had been there. So now I had a thesis that any ZASUCHA at 235 11th street the surrounding environs, would close family to my grand-aunt/grand-uncle and be direct ancestors of ANNA ZASUCHA, my great-great-grandmother, wife of MARTIN ELIASZ of Pacanow. In fact, I am pretty certain now that I have gotten this far in my SNA, that ANNA ZASUCHA had a brother(s) who had sons:   Martin,   Adam,    Josef,    Jan.  These four men had children as follows who came to Niagara Falls:

Martin (father of Andrew in the above death notice) – Andrew(the deceased), Roman, and Jan

Adam – Michal, John, Karol, Marya, and Feliks

Josef – Benedykt (son of Josef), Feliks (a 2nd much-younger Feliks, son of Benedykt)

Jan – Roman (a 2nd Roman), Teofil, Josef, and Pawel

Now the ones of greatest interest to me are the children of Adam. This is because Karol and his brother Feliks lived at 235 11th street, the same address that my ELIASZ ancestors had lived at, in the same year! That shows a pretty strong family connection in my family tree (I cannot say for your tree or not) whenever I find it happening. Of course, the other ZASUCHA of Niagara Falls are also of some interest to me as they ALL came from Pacanow. I can be pretty sure that everyone from Pacanow (or Biechow) parish is likely to share a distant (non-linear) family relationship as determined by connecting family trees.

So I owe some thanks to FultonHistory.com – An Historical Newspaper  (mostly NY) website and its creator  Tom Tryniski. Tom’s efforts have provided my the above death notice. I also found an Emil C. Mrozek (a physician) from Erie County, NY and his exploits of winning a bronze star in WWII. I also found an article of a Richard (aka Ryszard) Kryszewski who died tragically at the age of 18 in a car-train crash in Depew, NY. Now I had Richard’s cause of death from the newspaper article. So some articles are uplifting and some are tragic, but I collect them all for my ancestors.

Some people mock my genealogical research as chasing down dead people. My wife, Teréza, takes the learned Jewish position that I am doing a good deed (mitzvah) in keeping these ancestral memories alive. Tereza likes to call me the “Soul Keeper”. This blog of my musings is filled with my genealogical / family stories. Besides being a “cousin magnet”, this blog is my effort to record these stories.

 

PLACes: Biechow, Pacanow [in Poland],  Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo/Depew, Niagara Falls, Syracuse

NAMEs: ELIASZ/Elijasz, Kedzierski/Kendzierski, Leszczynski, Sobieszczanski, Fras(s), Mylek, Hajek, Mrozek, Kryszewski

Social Network Analysis – A Genealogical Tool — #Genealogy, #RootsTech

Social Network Analysis has worked again!

This is a broad, umbrella-like, semantically overloaded term. In fact, this term is even known by aliases. GeneaBlogger, Thomas MacEntee, calls it “Cluster Genealogy“. Stanczyk calls it by a more modern term that immediately identifies and places this tool in a perfect context — Social Network Analysis (SNA for short). Both terms are defined by wikipedia pages — follow both links and decide for yourself what to call it, but whatever you call it, start using it in your genealogical research now!

Stanczyk has successfully used this technique three times now.

• Used to determine siblings for my great-grandfather Jozef Elijasz of Pacanow
• Inadvertent use in locating another line from  great-grandfather Tomasz Leszczynski
• Whimsical Use on an Affiliated Family Name that exploded in multiple dimensions

This article and the next article where I elaborate the steps for the last one in the list is my third success.

The first two list items are from two earlier blog posts:

1. Jozef Elijasz – Inferring unknown siblings from known siblings. A series of 3 articles.
2. Jozef Fras – Son of Agnes Leszczynski. Proving this Leszczynski family was mine.

Happenstance Scenario

The third research opportunity was a happenstance fluke. To test my connection to Ancestry, I did an Immigration search on ‘ZWOLSKI’. This is one of the affiliated names from Poland for our Elijasz family branch. I also knew that some Zwolski came to America and were related to my great-grandfather’s sister, Pelagia. So I did an Immigration search and clicked on the Passenger List Ship Manifest for Jan Zwolski. A mere random selection of Zwolskich. He arrived in 1910 on the Lapland. Jan was not from Pacanow or as far as I could tell any nearby village of my ancestors. Finally, he was going to Jamaica, NY, also not a locale known for members of my family tree. So I figured that my Ancestry was working since I could see the ship manifest, but this random person was not a candidate  for entry into the family tree.

Now the real genealogy began. I looked down the ship manifest to see if anyone else with Jan was from a nearby ancestral village. Looking down the page I found plenty, so I decided to focus on those affiliated family names that I had researched before in my Pacanow Social Network Analysis (#1 on the list). I started with the first Pacanow resident, Francisek [sic] Luszcz. He was going to  a Teofil Zasucha at 1319 Falls street in Niagara Falls, NY. Now I got interested Zasucha is a big SNA family name and it is the maiden name of my 2nd great-grandmother, Anna Zasucha Elijasz. The location also tugged at a memory from my research. I had a great-aunt (Mary Elijasz) who arrived in the USA in 1910 to her brother Jan Elijasz from a brother-in-law, named Jan Leszczynski in Zborowek and she went to her brother who lived in Niagara Falls. Looking further down the page, I even found a Jan Eliasz from Zborowek (not my great-uncle, but surely deserves a place somewhere in my tree, though his branch is yet missing) and Jan was going to Syracuse (where some distant Elijasz resided and also another Elijasz affiliated family, the Kedzierski, one of whom did marry my great-uncle Jan Elijasz). Alas this Jan came from a wife Maryanna, not a Pelagia.

So I thought to check Ancestry’s City Directories for Teofil Zasucha in Niagara Falls and up popped a 1915 address. Teofil was now at 163 13th street in Niagara Falls (as are all addresses today). I thought to look-up my great aunt’s address from her ship manifest, she was going to her brother at 235  11th street. No match … except the city directory showed two other Zasucha living at 235  11th street in 1915. OK, I was now officially beginning a new SNA and recording my data (a necessary step in SNA).

One final note, further down the page in the city directory of ‘Z’ names was an Albert Zdziebko. Now Zdziebko are quite rare, but they too are from the Pacanow area (and they are related to the great genealogist, Ceil Wendt-Jensen, the current PARI director). So this was becoming a full fledged SNA project. My Pacanow SNA project had just moved across the Atlantic to  Niagara Falls, NY.

Summary

This article and the next one on SNA are about my third use of SNA in my genealogical research. SNA (or Cluster Genealogy) are techniques described in Wikipedia pages (see links above) or another article in my Post Scriptum below. The first two projects were wildly successful with limited data. I had other follow-on successes as a result because I had done those two SNA studies — for example at RootsTech 2012, I found an 1876 marriage record of  Walenty Paluch to Magdalena Major. Neither of these two people were in my family tree when I read their record in Russian (so you know I was committing time/effort on a whim). The Paluch and Major were affiliated names from my 1st SNA project so I decided on that basis alone to read the 1876 marriage record. What did I find? I found that the two people getting married were each a sibling of  two of my paternal great-grandparents in my tree! So I added this married couple to my family tree. SNA is a technique to increase your confidence level in your research to take a guess/hunch/assumption from that level of statistical probability (which is what 10-25% ??) to a level well above 50% maybe as high as 99%. While this may or may not pass muster for a Genealogical proof,  it is actually good enough for civil court (where you just have to prove just 51%, not the 100% required in criminal court). It may open up new lines of research you were unaware of,  that come back to help with your existing “brick-walls”.

Next

The next article will be the details of my SNA research and the results.

P.S. – Another post scriptum. Though I prefer the term Social Network Analysis, thus demonstrating my computer education/bias — I found a very early reference to the term Cluster Genealogy from March 1st, 1994 by a CG, named Connie Lenzen who published this article in National Geological Society Quarterly. Her goal was to develop a higher level of confidence in proving a female ancestor’s lineage when there is no certain paper trail to follow, but only indirect leads. You may want to read her article too. SNA has wide applicability in uncertain circumstances.

#Polish, #Genealogy – The Pillars of the Eliasz Social Network of Pacanow

tanczyk,

was very sleepy/tired when the last posting was written! As I looked at this Social Network Analysis  (SNA) that I performed and the resulting diagram from the data I realized two more things.

There were five old men, the pillars of this Social Network who were the progenitors of this data, if not literally, then at least figuratively. These august gentlemen, were Marcin Elijasz (about 1819),  Pawel  (abt. 1825) & Antoni (abt. 1830) [undoubtedly brothers] Odomski, Antoni Wojtys (abt. 1823) and Franciszek Zwolski (abt. 1823). In fact, Franciszek Zwolski & Antoni Wojtys were the witnesses at my 2great-grandfather Marcin Elijasz ‘s death in 1879. If you have one of those five men in your family tree, then welcome, for  we are surely relatives. Indeed it is true for just about everyone in the diagram.

Second, this SNA diagram – that messy scribble from my last posting, with the nodes and the connecting lines is properly viewed in two ways. First off, the SNA diagram is a road-map for reading these church records (in Pacanow and to some degree the adjoining parishes) and providing a much richer/complete context for understanding the families: Elijasz (Heliasz), Zasucha, Wojtys, Zwolski, Odomski, Siwiec, Paluch, Lewinski, Piotrowski and Major and Wlecialowski. However the SNA diagram is a bit unwieldy in being able to quickly read/find any single individual. So the Second view is that it is a database. Now Stanczyk is database architect and data analyst by trade. So I will reorganize this data from its visual representation into a more “tabular” data friendly representation that is searchable/sortable. I will also redraw the diagram and organize its visual presentation because that visual road-map is invaluable. It is easy to count the hops between nodes (people) and get a sense of connectedness or remoteness between two individuals in quick fashion.

I urge people to incur the pain of producing such a diagram and then re-viewing your church records and/or family group sheets again.  It also shows the clear import of transcribing witness names and AGEs, as well as the mother and father’s ages and the God Parents names. It is too bad that the GEDCOM, file format of our family trees,  mostly buries this info in NOTES/COMMENTS because it is hard to query/report/analyze these pieces of data that link/glue nuclear families together.

My family tree never indicated to me that it was important to take note of the ODOMSKICH. Nor really the Zwolski or Wojtys and certainly not the Zasucha. The Lewinski and Piotrowski were not even on the radar before. The SNA diagram really shows the rich/complex tapestry of the social network in Pacanow for my ancestors.

#Polish #Genealogy – Major, Zasucha, Zborowek, Ksiaznice Miscellanea

Dateline Zborowek, 2-June-1878 –  This marriage announcement was slightly delayed.  Maryanna Zasucha, age 38 of Komorow, daughter of Sebastyan & Apolonia (nee Cygan) Zasucha married  Walenty Golen, age 23 of Wojcza [Editor: An early cougar], son of Jozef & Maryanna (nee Midorowicz) Golen. This was witnessed by: Toma Zasucha (age 37) & Jozef Plieta.

I am posting this as I am searching for Zasucha in and around Pacanow who may be related to great-great-grandmother Anna Zasucha, who married Marcin/Martin Elijasz of Pacanow. So I am thinking perhaps these Komorow Zasucha of the Zborowek parish may possibly be related.

Here is some miscellanea of the parish of Zborowek – made up of the following villages: Zborowek, Biskupice, Komorow, Orzelec, and Zalesie.  Parish  Ksiaznice (who records were noted in the 1878 Zborowek as a separate parish-within-a-parish) is made up of the following village(s): Ksiaznice [Editor: ???].

The Ksiaznice Question

Which leads to another question of Stanczyk’s. Why are there three parishes in the same vicinity: Pacanow-Ksiaznice-Zborowek. These fine parishes are closely surrounded by Biechow and Beszowa parishes. Can someone from Poland explain to me how this parish arrangement arose? At the very least, Ksiaznice seems excessive even for Poland.

Major Miscellanea

Stanczyk emailed a Kornelia Major of SwietoGen Genealogical Society. I am hoping for a return email. Hence the above marriage record posted. I am also give my great-grandmother’s (Aniela Major) info below in hopes there is a family connection between us and you can fill me in on a portion of the family tree (drzewo genealogiczne) or help me with Pacanow church records.

Aniela Major was born (urodziny): 31-July(Lipca)-1866 in Piestrzec, Poland  and married Tomasz Leszczynski on 22-October(Padz.)-1885 in Pacanow. Aniela was the daughter of Martin Major of Piestrzec and  Katarzyna Ozarowicz. That is sum total of my knowledge of the Major family.

So, proszę,  Kornelia Major or any other Major in SwietoGen or elsewhere in the region, email Stanczyk .