Happy New Year! My Reasons for Doing Family History Research

My cousin LaJean Brown on my father’s side always had an interest in documenting the Longwell family tree. While I talked to her sometimes about this, I wish I could really pick her brain now that I am very curious but sadly she has passed away. People get into doing genealogical research for lots of different reasons. Some people who are adopted may be looking for birth parents or medical information. Being able to join the Mayflower or other heritage society is sometimes a goal. Maybe you want to see if we are related to someone famous. Those weren’t my reasons. Some of the reasons I am interested had to do with wanting to learn more about and document close family members. I want to make sure some of the stories and family traditions are remembered. I wanted to break down the brick walls that existed beyond my four Polish grandparents and I have been able to do that for the two for the Anthony Raczkiewicz side. I am just starting on the Pauline Skrobat side with only a tiny bit of progress so far. I wanted to know the great grandparents’ names and when and where they were born and died. Learning the same information about their siblings and ancestors farther back from them has been a bonus on the Raczkiewicz side. As I learn about them, I want to try to preserve some of the culture of the country my ancestors came from. It is interesting to see what “Polish traditions” my grandparents practiced, my mother’s generation and what it currently looks like there now compared to in the U.S. After I start to learn dates and places, I try to take the basic facts about my relatives and find the story that makes it come alive. Can I connect my family to the history of what was going on at the time? For instance, I am trying to determine their motivations for why they moved from Poland to the U.S.. Why to Grand Rapids specifically? Why did the Kaszuckis move from Uhnow to Tomaszow Lubelski? What about the occupations--what was it like working in them? What was daily life like in the past? Another idea was to see if it was possible to connect with living relatives still in Poland. I have begun to connect with family I never knew about that are still alive who were born in Poland and that has been awesome. Equally amazing though is to find all kinds of people that were born in Grand Rapids who are some level of cousin. Interestingly, the found Polish relatives are on the Raczkiewicz side and the found Grand Rapids relatives are on the Kaszucki side. Lastly, I want to share what I learn with my family. That started out with telling and texting--to my Mom, sisters, newfound friend Connie Liszewski who is working this tree as hard as I am. I thought vaguely about starting a blog or Facebook page on January 1 but then I attended via google a genealogy conference that addressed how to do this and decided to start immediately. I share the stories in the hopes that the shared history connects us together and sparks interest in our family’s past, present and future.