Partitions Wars and Partitions

There was a lot going on in Poland during the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. Power brokers were busy waging war, making and breaking treaties, and redrawing national borders.

My third great grandfather, Johann Ganas was born in 1779 the village of Czerlejno in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth just after it had come under Russian control.  Johann’s son Adalbert was born in that very same village – probably on the very same plot of land, and perhaps even in the same house – in 1810 but Adalbert was born in Prussia. Here’s what was happening in the 32 years between Johann’s birth and the birth of his first son.

1772		First Partition of Poland - The Polish-Lithuanan commonwealth becomes a protectorate of the Russian Empire
1779			Johann Ganas	Birth
1790		The Polish-Lithuanian and Prussian alliance was a mutual defense alliance signed on 29 March 1790 in Warsaw between representatives of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Kingdom of Prussia. It was signed in the brief period when Prussia was seeking an ally against either Austria or Russia, and the Commonwealth was seeking guarantees that it would be able to carry out significant governmental reforms without foreign intervention.
1791		The Constitution of 3 May, 1791 (Polish: Konstytucja 3 maja) was adopted by the Great Sejm (parliament) of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a dual monarchy comprising Poland and Lithuania.
1792		The Polish–Russian War of 1792 (also, War of the Second Partition,[3] and in Polish sources, War in Defence of the Constitution (Polish: wojna w obronie Konstytucji 3 maja)[4]) was fought between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on one side, and the Targowica Confederation (conservative nobility of the Commonwealth opposed to the new Constitution of 3 May 1791) and the Russian Empire under Catherine the Great on the other
1793		The 1793 Second Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the second of three partitions (or partialannexations) that ended the existence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by 1795.
1794		The 1794 Greater Poland Uprising (Polish: Powstanie Wielkopolskie 1794 roku) was a military insurrection by Poles in Wielkopolska (Greater Poland) against Kingdom of Prussia which had taken possession of this territory after the 1793 Second Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1795		The Third Partition of Poland (1795) was the last in a series of the Partitions of Poland of the land of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth among Prussia, the Austrian Empire, and the Russian Empire which effectively ended Polish–Lithuanian national sovereignty until 1918.
1803			Johann Ganas	Marriage
1806		The 1806 Greater Poland Uprising was organized by General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski to help advancing French forces underNapoleon I in liberating Poland from Prussian occupation. The Wielkopolska Uprising was a decisive factor that allowed the formation of the Duchy of Warsaw (1806) and the inclusion of Wielkopolska in the Duchy of Warsaw.
1807		Abolition of serfdom. Serfs were free to buy the land on which they worked, and to move from the Noble's estate on which they worked.
1807		The Treaties of Tilsit were two agreements signed by Napoleon I of France in the town of Tilsit in July, 1807 in the aftermath of his victory at Friedland. The first was signed on 7 July, between Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Napoleon I of France, when they met on a raft in the middle of the Neman River. The second was signed with Prussia on 9 July.
1811			Adalbert Ganas	Birth

Poland disappeared from the map, but not from the hearts of her people.  

Timeline of Polish history adapted from Wikipedia

Coming out of a slump

I’d finished a project on which I’d worked intensely for some time, and then fell into a mental abyss.  It’s as though my battery had died and needed a recharge - a mental time out in the dog days of summer. So I puttered around for a while, reorganized some files, got a few things organized into binders and played some computer games. At times like this it feels that my brain is filled with fog.

I made a stab at getting going on my next story – about crossing the Atlantic as a steerage passenger in the 1880s; but it got to a certain point and then stalled.

Thank goodness, the time out did manage to get me recharged.  The fog has dissipated and I’m back.

I’m working on a report to send to my cousins. The steerage story will actually happen. And I’m going to revisit some LDS microfilms to make sure I’ve not missed anything on them.  Monthly Indian River Genealogy Society meetings resume this month.

Back into the fray.

Goodbye for now, Ancestry.com

Why?

• There are better sources for researching my Polish ancestors.
• I strongly dislike the new user interface for family trees.
• If I am not going to use it to maintain my trees, I cannot justify the cost
• If I am not a current subscriber, I cannot view sources that I had previously attached to my tree.

The new version leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Why must I lose access to existing source documents?  Money grubbing.  Turns me off.

I will keep updating my trees on Family Tree Maker and sync them with Ancestry as cousin bait.  My main online trees will be on MyHeritage.com and my main local trees will be on Legacy.

Fortunately, my library has a world wide subscription that I can use when Ancestry seems the best place to search’ but as long as I am concentrating on Poland, those times will be rare.

When I shift my focus back to my husbands’ early American ancestors, I’ll probably go back to subscribing for one month at a time for research.  Too bad.  I really liked Ancestry before they “improved” it.

(Note to grammarians: Yes the apostrophe goes after the s because I am researching both my current husband’s family and my ex-husband’s family)

Spiraling Down the Double Helix

I feel like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole.  I’m trying to get a handle on using DNA to find more cousins.

First  hurdle is understanding the terminology.  What defines a segment? What’s a Centimorgan; and why are all Centimorgans not the same “length”? SNPs? Phasing?

The good news is that every testing company has basic information about DNA and its use in Genealogy.  They’re very helpful. The user forums on these sites can be even more helpful.

23andme

Ancestry

Familytreedna

And there are other great online resources for learning

Beginner’s Guide to Genetic Genealogy

Contexo

Angie Bush administers a Google+ community called DNA Genetic Genealogiy Interest Community.  In August, 2015 she’ll resume doing videos and Google+ Hangouts.

23andme tested my DNA a couple of years ago when they still delivered health information gleaned from their testing. At that time, it was the health info that prompted me to test.

What’s both interesting and frustrating is that the three testing companies all use different algorithms to analyze the raw data, find matches in their database, and also show you the probable ethnic origins in your DNA. (According to 23andme, I’m 3% Neanderthal.)  You may find that a person who is high on the list of matches on one site doesn’t show up as a match on another site even though their DNA raw data is on both.

Then there’s GEDmatch which allows you to upload raw data from any of the three testing companies. You can also upload a gedcom file that will be associated with your data.  Familytreedna.com also permits you to upload your raw data from Ancestry and 23and me.

I’m on a steep learning curve trying to reconcile the analyses from three sites.

My head is spinning! I still have more questions than answers.

Quick Update to "Let's Talk About It"

Maybe it is Nature, after all.  Interesting article about genetic links to depression

I sure hope this is the start of a better understanding of this problem.

Multitasking

This is like work!!

I’m beginning to plan my next StoryPress story and also preparing a presentation for the Polish Interest Group of Indian River Genealogical Society (IRGS); and I’m awaiting the arrival of microfilms from LDS.

I committed to do a presentation on ordering and using LDS microfilms. There are quite a few people in the Polish group, but it seems that not many make use of the films from their ancestral Polish villages.  Some are comfortable viewing films from US sources but are put off by the language issues of international sources.  There are plenty of online language aids for genealogical research. My goal is to ease their anxieties and help them take advantage of these resources.  I am still in the process of finding the right balance – enough information to make them comfortable with the process; but not overwhelming the ones who are more timid.

I won’t be doing this presentation until October, but I started now to give me plenty of time to tweak it.  I work best by working intensely to get a good start then letting it sit for a while and then go back to it later with fresh eyes.

The next StoryPress project will take a look at what my ancestors faced on their voyages across the Atlantic.  From what I’ve read so far, it is difficult for us today to understand the conditions our ancestors faced traveling in steerage in the 1800’s. StoryPress is a very visual medium so I’ll have to find images to suit the story. So far I’ve been researching, and building a mind map.  Love mind maps.

And I’ve finally ordered microfilms of civil records in Poland.  There won’t be very many because Prussian Poland did not keep civil records until 1874.  Still, I’m hoping to find corroboration of some of the church records I’ve found. 

Fortunately my only deadline is a few months away and I can work at my own pace.  I love being retired.

Another Story Published

My new favorite medium for publishing family history stories is Storypress.com  It is incredibly easy to use. It’s still work to develop the story and find the right images, but it is an order of magnitude easier than doing the same thing for a Youtube video.

The biggest problem is my narration – voice, enunciation, and delivery.  I haven’t won a lottery yet, so I can’t afford to hire a professional reader. And I cannot seem to produce a narration that is more than just adequate. It eventually gets to the point where it’s either publish or go on redoing and revising forever. So it is done – for now.

This story is about my great grandparents Michael and Elizabeth Schipp in Prussian Poland.   You can find it here.  If you watch it, I’ll appreciate your comments and suggestions for improvement

On to the next project