Is There More than One Paulina Raczkiewicz?

 On this day (October 14) in 1962, Paulina (Raszkiewicz) Nalbach was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Grand Rapids, MI.  Since my grandmother’s name is Paulina (Skrobat) Raczkiewicz and SHE is also buried at Holy Cross, I wanted to figure out who the heck this person was.

Paulina Raczkiewicz is a good example of how difficult it is to do genealogy and that some questions need to wait for answers.  The first shock was finding someone with my grandmother’s name in the same city -- and it turned out to be  someone else.

 It was necessary to sort out records of a person with Paulina Raczkiewicz as her MAIDEN name versus a person with Paulina Raczkiewicz as her MARRIED name.  There is a Paulina Raczkiewicz who married Anthony Nalbach in Kent County between 1907 and 1910. Amazing to see that name but “our” Paulina would have been a young child, so that must be another person.  This Paulina is also buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Grand Rapids, Michigan where a lot of our relatives are buried. 

The second shock  was that Anthony Raczkiewicz had a sister with the same name as his wife. She was born in 1901 in Sabaudia--the same little village outside of Tomaszow that Anthony and his siblings had been born in. She was born about six years after my grandfather Anthony. Her birth record is not available online so to get it would require writing to one of the archives in Poland. 

Anthony’s sister Paulina married Jan Dubiel and they had 6 children, three of which I have verified. While I think she lived in the US, I have found a family referencing burial in Tomaszow.  

So at the end of the day--I THINK she was born in 1901 and haven’t verified it.  I THOUGHT for awhile that she married Anthony Nalbach in Grand Rapids until I did the math and determined it wasn’t possible.  I THINK she married Jan Dubiel and had six children.  And I SORT OF THINK she died in Poland in 1951. 

Her example shows how challenging it can be to re-construct family history.  There are many reasons for this. I do not have any connections with any information to help.  The records are newer so maybe are not online yet. Some records are available and some are not.  Volunteers work to put more and more genealogy records online and my research has benefitted from that.  Also, privacy laws mean some records are not yet available.  Later I will show you an example where I can surprisingly find out TONS about an ancestor who was born way before Paulina. 

So God rest the soul of the OTHER Paulina who died 58 years ago today.