New Found Relative: Mike Liszewski

I sent a note through Ancestry to a DNA match March 18, 2020 and his wife Connie Liszewski responded about a month later. I found out that her husband MIke grew up in Grand Rapids. Since MIke’s grandmother was a Kurkiewicz, I learned how to pronounce the name of my 2x great grandmother Paulina Kurkiewicz. (“Ker-kev-itch”--or is it is “ker-kiv-itch”????) She had worked on alot of genealogy but didn’t have alot of information about the side we are connected. We compared notes and found the connection. Her sister-in-law has done research and that was very helpful. Mike is my 3rd cousin, 1x removed. My 3rd great grandparents Jozef Kurkiewicz and Ewa Wisniowska are his 2x great grandparents. Ignatious was their son who had Mike’s family line. Paulina was their daughter (who married Jozef Kaszucka) to have my family line. We are 1x removed from each other because they are my 3x great grandparents and his 2x great grandparents. We are only about 10 years apart. I have also noticed a lot of overlapping of generations. One couple might have children for 20 to 25 years. Their oldest children start having their first children and they are having their last children. Connie is a great family tree researcher and we work together all the time. We ask for translations for many of our shared relatives and then have the opportunity to compare notes when things are confusing--which they often are! We have to figure out which record might be the right one since so many of the names are common so there can be many people with the same name--who may be cousins and may be born in the same year. We might try to find out who someone’s parents are and be disappointed that the record did not list the mother’s “maiden” name. Then we might decide to find a sibling and see if we can get the name. It has been fun learning about our relatives and Poland together. Maybe a trip to Poland in a few years is in our future?