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.