ZenonPolishOrigins Team Leader
Joined: 28 Apr 2007
Replies: 1519
Location: PolandBack to top |
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joda
Joined: 02 Dec 2008
Replies: 9
Location: PoznanBack to top |
Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2013 1:10 am
Post subject:
I think all of us who search for our ancestors have been asked the question of why many times. For me, it started out as a hobby and turned into a passion so much so that I moved to Poland with my wife over 6 years ago. Before I left the U.S. I found out a lot, did some correspondence with cousins I never knew, made trips to Poland to meet them and then, finally, decided I had to know more. So we moved and in the last 6 years have found much more information and visited many cousins. Most were from my mother's side of the family but in the last year I've been working on my fathers side and spent this Christmas day with new cousins in Jankowice, close to Krakow. Most people have pictures of nature or scenery hanging on their walls but now in our flat every wall is covered with pictures of relatives, old and new. Every night we have dinner with my extended family because they are all on the walls in our dining room. Even now, after 12 years, the search continues and I am still finding new relatives. I started out with only about 20 people in my tree and now it is over 1,000. I've written a family history book of both sides of my family and sent it to all cousins who wanted it in a PDF file. Unlike my generation who knew almost nothing of our family history, now there is a record of where we came from and if any future generations are interested, there is a documented history available for them and they won't have to spend years looking for the knowledge.
David Piekaczyk
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bronklimach1
Joined: 01 Dec 2008
Replies: 10
Location: London, EnglandBack to top |
Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2014 10:20 pm
Post subject:
My least favourite questions?
How far BACK have you got (which seems to rather miss much of the reason for researching family history), and are you nearly FINISHED?
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UtePO Top Contributor
Joined: 13 Dec 2009
Replies: 597
Location: GermanyBack to top |
Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2014 11:53 pm
Post subject:
| bronklimach1 wrote: | My least favourite questions?
How far BACK have you got (which seems to rather miss much of the reason for researching family history), and are you nearly FINISHED? |
I've been asked these two questions many times plus 'Do you have a famous person in your family tree?
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Magroski49PO Top Contributor & Patron
Joined: 10 Nov 2008
Replies: 1762
Location: Joao Pessoa - BrazilBack to top |
Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 6:50 pm
Post subject:
| joda wrote: | I think all of us who search for our ancestors have been asked the question of why many times. For me, it started out as a hobby and turned into a passion..... Even now, after 12 years, the search continues... I started out with only about 20 people in my tree and now it is over 1,000. I've written a family history book of both sides of my family and sent it to all cousins who wanted it in a PDF file. Unlike my generation who knew almost nothing of our family history, now there is a record of where we came from and if any future generations are interested, there is a documented history available for them and they won't have to spend years looking for the knowledge.
David Piekaczyk |
David,
Your history is very similar to mine in many aspects. I was never asked "why", but it also started as a hobby and turned into a passion. I did not write a book: I preferred to write a blog, so I could update every new piece of information. The bad thing is that the blog was written in polish, english, german and portuguese, and I had to count on friends' native speakers help (the reason I had to stop updating it). It will surely remain as the history of the family for the generatons to come.
Pozdrawiam,
Gilberto
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bronklimach1
Joined: 01 Dec 2008
Replies: 10
Location: London, EnglandBack to top |
Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 5:24 am
Post subject:
I've been asked these two questions many times plus 'Do you have a famous person in your family tree?[/quote]
Ute - I'm not sure whether I should be disappointed not to regularly be asked that! I'm working on a reply just in case it happens 
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rsowaPO Top Contributor
Joined: 09 Nov 2013
Replies: 177
Location: Dundee, Michigan, USABack to top |
Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 7:52 am
Post subject:
We all get the "famous people" question occasionally. But what is even more fun, is telling folks about some of my nefarious ancestors. The one I like to tell most is about my great-great grandfather and his son that were poisoned with strychnine and then his wife ran off with the dead guy's brother. That's a true story. Or the Polish peasant that evaded the draft in Galicia, and managed to immigrate to America a week before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
So while the routine of our ancestor's day to day life is fascinating, there are plenty of other things to discover while tracing our genealogy!
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UtePO Top Contributor
Joined: 13 Dec 2009
Replies: 597
Location: GermanyBack to top |
Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 2:18 am
Post subject:
With the exception of one ancestor on the maternal side of my family who became a well known painter, none of my ancestors was famous or rich. They were simple, hard working people who had to struggle for everything they needed and wanted to achieve. Many of them were farmers or laborers with many children and a plain simple way of living.
I’m proud of those who stayed in their home country and endured hard times, two world wars in Europe that killed and disabled a large number of men and left many women with the burden of men's work in addition to the work considered their own.
I’m proud of these women who kept things going while their husbands were away -- working someplace else, fighting in wars, or even dead -- who learned to fend for themselves and to develop skills, strategies, and endurance in their struggle to survive and to improve their lives and those of their children. They held the family together and many raised their children without a father.
And I’m proud of those of my ancestors who had the courage to leave everything behind and venture into an entirely unknown world in order to create a better life for themselves and their descendants.
Whichever way our ancestors chose, it had (and still has) an impact on us, on our own life, and on who we are today. Today, my major motivation to investigate my family history is to keep my ancestors’ memory alive through the research I’m doing and sharing. When I'm looking at old records more than 100 years later, listening to stories passed on in the family, and reading about the economic, social, and political conditions that influenced our ancestors' lives, I realize what they accomplished and with which perseverance they endured hardships and overcame struggles to achieve their goals. To see how they lived and what they went through makes me sad and grateful at the same time. I think we owe all of them respect and gratitude.
Last edited by Ute on Wed Feb 12, 2014 11:35 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Agnieszka PawlusPolishOrigins Team
Joined: 10 Mar 2013
Replies: 748
Location: PolandBack to top |
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UtePO Top Contributor
Joined: 13 Dec 2009
Replies: 597
Location: GermanyBack to top |
Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2014 5:31 am
Post subject:
Thank YOU, Aga! I like your idea of setting up blogs now!
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Agnieszka PawlusPolishOrigins Team
Joined: 10 Mar 2013
Replies: 748
Location: PolandBack to top |
Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2014 10:11 am
Post subject:
I came across this popular science article today and I think that this is a great voice in above discussion:
“According to the new insights of behavioral epigenetics, traumatic experiences in our past, or in our recent ancestors’ past, leave molecular scars adhering to our DNA. Jews whose great-grandparents were chased from their Russian shtetls; Chinese whose grandparents lived through the ravages of the Cultural Revolution; young immigrants from Africa whose parents survived massacres; adults of every ethnicity who grew up with alcoholic or abusive parents — all carry with them more than just memories (...)
You might have inherited not just your grandmother’s knobby knees, but also her predisposition toward depression caused by the neglect she suffered as a newborn.
Or not. If your grandmother was adopted by nurturing parents, you might be enjoying the boost she received thanks to their love and support. The mechanisms of behavioral epigenetics underlie not only deficits and weaknesses but strengths and resiliencies, too.”
Read the whole article: Grandma's Experiences Leave a Mark on Your Genes
http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/13-grandmas-experiences-leave-epigenetic-mark-on-your-genes
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UtePO Top Contributor
Joined: 13 Dec 2009
Replies: 597
Location: GermanyBack to top |
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2014 6:11 am
Post subject:
Aga, thanks for sharing the link to the article -- an interesting subject indeed. ...
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Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2016 2:18 am
Post subject:
For me it's like this. I was born shortly after my parents came to Australia with my brother who is 15 years older than me. He moved out when I was very little and has always lived far away. I never met my grandparents or uncles. I wouldn't know where to turn to find family, and my parents are getting old and this information would be lost forever if their memory fails So some time ago I asked for all the information they knew about their parents, brothers, and sisters. Using this information and a little bit of genealogy research I've been able to connect with several cousins and talk with them regularly - some closer to me genetically some much further away but also interested in genealogy, I speak to a couple of my uncles online now, and I know the names of hundreds more living relatives I am yet to connect with. So I went from basically having no family to feeling like I'm part of something bigger, and I don't want this information to ever be lost, so that my kids and grandkids will know where they came from and where they can find their peers.
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JednoralskiPolishOrigins Patron
Joined: 31 Jan 2012
Replies: 12
Location: Salina, Kansas, USABack to top |
Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2016 12:00 am
Post subject: Why Family History - Why Do You Care??
Zenon and Aga, I enjoyed my time in Poland and seeing where my father's ancestors came from.
I enjoyed seeing the land that my Great Great Grandfather, Grandmother, and daughter, Anna, owned.
A highlight was meeting, Katarzyna Nalazek, Arleta Jednoralska Bloch, Hanna Jednoralska, Mirostawa Jednoralska Augustyska, and Henryk Jednoralski, in Chojnice. I wish Henryk's son, Krzysztof Adam Jednoralski could been there.
It was interesting that Henryk and his son, Krzysztof, are Agricultural Engineers in soils and water, in Poland
My degrees from the University of Illinois are a BS in Agriculture (College of Agriculture) and BS in Agricultural Engineering (College of Engineering) and major in siol and water conservation engineering, I was a licensed Professional Engineer in Water Resources, Ag, Civil engineering, from 1970 to 2016. I officially retired my license this year. I was licensed to practice in the States of Illinois, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kansas and Colorado. At the meeting, Henryk bought a blush wine to celebrate. If I had bought the wine, it would have been a blush wines.
I wish the Jednoralski family in the Gdansk area, of father and mother, Jan and Maria, and sons< Edward and wife Kataryna, Jan Bejajamin (banker) and wife Magdalena and son Jan III, and Andrzez Piotr would have come to the meeting in Gdansk. I had first contact with Jan, the banker, in 2001, when he was looking for John Jednoralski's in the world. But for some reason communications have broken off.
Katarzyna Nalarek thru Agnes Crajkowska, wife of Michael Jednoralski, b. 1799. Michael was the son of Jacobus and Barbara (first wife).
My line is thru Jacobus and Eva (second wife)'
Katarzyna found the marriage of Simon and Anna Jednoralczyk, in 1747 in Siciny, Jelencz Parish, plus Jacobus's brother, Andreas, b. 1750; and sisters Marianna, b. 1754, and Anna, b. 1760, (Thus what Katarzyna finds here is in her ancestry, as well as mine.)
Katharzyna has also find Ewa and Mathias at this same time period, but we do not know how they tie in.
When I was laid off from work in 2008, started putting the genealogical work by mu aunt, Mildred Minear, on my mother;s side into Ancestry.com She proved a direct line thru Kings Richard and John of England, William the Conqueror, to and thru Charlemagne of France.
I did this so that there would be a record of her work, and as i entered a name a green leaf appeared in Ancestry.com, meaning someone was agreeing with her hand work from the 1970's and 80's.
After I entered my mother's side, i started wondering about my father;s side, which was very secretive., with information which was not always true. For example, my Grandfather, Frank Xavier Jednoralski was born in Austria, on the way to the USA. But I come to found my Grandfather was born in Maly Medromierz, Jlencz Parish, Poland, 17 Sep 1883. The family did not go thru Austria coming to the USA, they went thru Bremen, Germany to New York City, a ship named, 'Eider. In the Jelencz Parish cemeteries, there is a grave marked Frank Xavier, where his 2-yr old sister, Marianna Catharina is buried. Since in Poland graves are reused, the grave no longer exists.
Knowing this information and what happened in Chicago, IL, plus wanting to find Simon Jednoralczyk's parents, i started using MyHeritage and creating other trees.
When I married in 1986, I changed my last name back to the family name, I do not think my father was too happy - like there was something to hide. I was married for 21-yrs before my late wife passed away. I wanted a son to continue the family name, but I guess it is not going to happen, since I am now 70 yrs old and have some health problems. BUT if I could find a young woman, who would want to try to have a child with a 70 yr old man, I may try.
_________________
Ancestor - Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor;
Ancestor - Fulk V, King of Jerusalem, buried - the Church of the Holy Sepulchre;
Three American Revolutionary War Ancestors;
www.jednoralski.us.com
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Agnieszka PawlusPolishOrigins Team
Joined: 10 Mar 2013
Replies: 748
Location: PolandBack to top |
Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2016 12:58 am
Post subject:
Neil,
Thank you for sharing your story about people and events that influenced your passion to genealogy. I know that all genealogy tours are not just a holiday - very often it is a crowning of many years of painstaking work. I hope that you will keep the good memories from Poland.
Wishing you good health and all the best!
Aga
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