BootsnAll Travel Network



Leave No Stone Undisturbed

Searching for any clue I can find to my family history, I request several tomes of parish and civil records at a time. The search is seemingly endless, but it’s still exciting trying to deciper patterns through incomprehensible cyrillic and quasi-comprensible Polish to pick up key words and phrases such as ages and places of birth. The poor archivists have the hard part- they need to take my requests, trudge up and down stairs to get my requested volumes (I scanned through some 30 books today), and worse yet need to sign and date a form for every book that I look at. I do feel some guilt, but what am I to do? At the state archives, the desk clerk was busily transcribing an old volume with crumbling pages, with pen and ink to a new blank notebook. At least I gave him a break from one tedious task to another.

For the researcher, though, the process is anything but tedious. I took a gamble today (the only negative consequence would be the diminishing strength of the poor archivist’s back) and decided to look at parish records for a parish neighboring the one where my great grandfather was born. Jackpot. Page 1, record 1, was an unknown sister of my great great grandfather, and with this record, mention of a great great great grandfather. Another 25 years back in history, and now I can trace my family back to 1825.

This search could go on forever, though presumably the discoveries would be fewer and farther between with time. But tomorrow, I will finally look for something a little more tangible than a record on paper. I will visit the tiny village which my great grandfather left behind some 100 years ago, and where today there is still a family by the same name.

Maybe they’ll run. Maybe they’ll bring out a bottle of vodka. Maybe they’ll take all my belongings and tell me to go back to America. There’s only one way to know.



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