The Challenge

Amy Johnson Crow's second prompt is #Challenge. 

Did you know another name for Genealogy is Challenge? Seriously. If anyone is doing Genealogy and hasn't hit a brick wall then you aren't doing it right, or your family handed you your genealogy on a silver platter with a pretty bow on top.

I've faced many challenges. I've been relentless, spent numerous hours researching and finally found the answers. For instance, I know two of the four of my Polish roots. I also know a huge part of my mother's genealogy and I was able to finally trace my ancestry back to an American Revolutionary War Patriot and was sworn in as an official DAR member. 

I currently have three challenges I've been working on for some time.

1. Julia Carr. - She's important to me because if I can find her death certificate I can prove another revolutionary war patriot link. Through my research, I've become drawn to her. This is what I know about Julia Carr

• Julia Carr was born in April 1950 in Pennsylvania to William Riley Carr and Mary Withey. 
• Julia married Mathew Marmaduke Bunting in ?? 
• Mathew remarried her half-sister - Etha Julia Foor 3/20/1883 and his name was written Matthew in the record. Etha was 19 and Mathew was 33 (really 35)
• I originally through Etha and Julia were the same person since Etha's middle name is Julia, but the birth dates are very different. Julia had her first child in 1866. Etha was born in 1864 so it was impossible for Etha and Julia to be the same person.
• The last place she was seen was on the 1880 census in Metamora, Fulton, Ohio and Mathew was remarried in 1883. When Mathew was remarried in Ogden, Lenawee, Michigan, USA to Etha it said his residence was in Metamora, Ohio. 
• Therefore I believe Julia most likely died between 1880 and 1883. 

2. Peter Kopec - This was my grandmother's father. He was deported back to Poland around 1930 for having an affair and not supporting his wife and three daughters. I have a very close DNA match to his side of the family, and I match another woman who has extensive research on the Kopec side, but I can't find any records for Peter or his parents Eva and Anthony. My next step is to find his marriage records in Detroit Catholic Church or find his naturalization application. 

3. The Dziekan family. My grandfather Raymond Dziekan Sr's grandfather is as far back as I can go on the Dziekan side from Poland. His name is Ignacy Dziekan married to Mary Legawicz. They had a son John. John Dziekan is my grandfather's father, who died young from TB. The story was that they put all the patients with TB in a locked down hospital and he'd jump out of the window and walk many miles home, only to be caught and taken back to the hospital. He eventually got too weak to do this anymore and later passed away from TB. 

I found a local resource in the Michigan Polish Genealogical society that said he was researching the Dziekan side. I reached out to him and found we are a DNA match but it is about 4-5 generations back. He told me how he found his Dziekan records and I tried this and came up with nothing. I have an idea where they lived, but I'd like to find some concrete records for this side of the family.

These are my challenges and I'm open to any suggestions on getting me past my #challenges or brick walls.  

The First

I'm following Amy Johnson Crow's 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks. The prompt for this week is 'The First'. Here is how I wanted to interpret it.

My dad's side of the family is Polish. I remember both of my grandparents speaking their special 'Polish' language. They never taught any of their seven kids because it was their way to talk without the kids knowing what they were talking of. Both of their parents came from Poland so they were the first generation to be born in the USA. 

When I embarked on this journey called genealogy I knew it wouldn't be easy since all of my family on my dad's side were from Poland and no one knew where anyone was from. How was I going to be able to find any of these records?

I decided that DNA testing was intriguing and so I did a test and then proceeded to test all my immediate family. DNA testing is really the key that helped piece a lot of the missing puzzle pieces together. 

I reached out to some close DNA matches to ask if they knew how we were related. One woman, Judy, provided me with my entire family's genealogy in Poland back to the 1700s. I almost cried when I opened the envelope. She included stories of how she traveled to Poland, how she met her extended family, how they welcomed her with open arms and how she walked through the family cemetery and gathered hundreds of years of data from the small town church. If that wasn't enough, she provided me with every single person from the beginning of the records and every branch until it met my great-great-grandmother. I was thrilled, elated and in awe. Had I not had a DNA test done, I never would have known I was related to this wonderful woman, Judy. 

These records that Judy gathered aren't online. They are only available in a small church's records in a small area of Poland. She was able to gather all those records and I finally had names and places in Poland to where one of my four branches were from (My Grandfather's mother, Victoria Baran's family). 

So 'The First' I am writing about is not only my grandparents who were the first of their family to be born in the United States, but also 'The First' of answers as to where our Polish family is from and where in Poland they lived. I was 'The First' in our family to research and find answers. Here are to many more 'Firsts' on this wonderful journey! 

Victoria (Wictoria) Baran's passenger list. This was the passenger list in Germany. She immigrated to the USA when she was 18. Her entry is the third one from the top on the right page. 

Victoria (Baran) Dziekan holding my father during his baptism.