Author: Jackie Wisniewski

Seeking More Info on the Knap/Witek Descendants from Garki/Granowiec in Wielkopolskie & Dolega in Malopolskie

Jackie Wisniewski

Those of you who were lucky enough to have met Martha (Knap) Jucha know what a wonderful woman she was. Although my memory of her is very fuzzy because of how young I was when she died, I feel like I know her well from all the stories my mom has shared about her. By all appearances, she was an incredibly caring, kind, and understanding mother/grandmother, so a few years ago when I discovered she had a sister (Julia) that lived near her for many years, I was shocked when my mom said the only time she remembered her grandmother talking about her sister was when Julia died. That seemed at odds with the person I’ve come to know, how could such a wonderful woman NOT be close with (what I mistakenly assumed was) her only sister?

It was time to take a trip down the rabbit hole to see if I could find some answers.  Read more →

So, what’s new?

Jackie Wisniewski

I’m SUPER excited to announce that as of today, my “Home Movies” page is now live! I’m extremely proud to be able to share these videos with you, as it’s been quite the work-in-progress!

**Please note – I’ve triple-checked each video to ensure it works across multiple browsers and even on mobile devices. The videos are all there, but depending on your computer/internet speed they may need extra time to load/buffer. Now, on to the details… Read more →

A New Branch on the Wisniewski Tree!

Jackie Wisniewski

This past weekend, Saturday evening to be exact, I’m sitting at home watching the Stooges episodes I’ve seen ten times over, and I decide to catch up on some of my more overwhelming email accounts. The account I start with is subscribed to the Cook County IL Mailing List (located by visiting the awesome Cook County, Illinois USGenWeb). I barely made it through the first email, which announced that Read more →

Note to Self: Blog More

Jackie Wisniewski

Well, it’s been a lot longer than I’d hoped since I’ve updated this blog. Honestly, I had a great idea for a post and as I started working on it I realized I had enough details that I could turn it into a novel. So I’ve been working on that, as well as on tracing other Serwanski relatives that came and settled in the US in the early 1900’s. Unfortunately I’ve discovered that I’m pretty spoiled when it comes to accessing records in Cook County, IL as opposed to almost everywhere else. The Serwanski’s first settled in New York, and those records are not readily available for the time frame I’m looking in.

Read more →

If Only I Knew Then….

Jackie Wisniewski

I’ve only been doing genealogy since September 2010. Eight months may not seem like a long time when you consider how many people out there have been working on their family tree for 20+ years. However, in those 8 little months I’ve accumulated 1,850 people on my family tree. How many of you would want to stop researching and go back through those 1,850 people to add sources to each piece of information?

The following is a list of things I wish I knew from the start. It would have saved me lots of time and aggravation, but at this point I  hope it helps someone else out there who’s just starting to work on their own family tree.

  • I can’t stress enough to you just HOW important sources are. Once I began my tree, I went back to my parents to ask them about some of the stories I remember hearing over the years. I feverishly took notes on what they told me. I had papers scattered everywhere. On some I wrote whether it was my mom or dad that gave me a certain bit of info. On most I wrote the date down. But when I entered some of the info into my family tree program, I didn’t bother to source it. It’s not a fun task to go back through all of my pages and pages of notes, scattered throughout various file folders – trying to piece everything back together into a valid source citation.

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Beginnings….

Jackie Wisniewski

Welcome to the first blog post on my first-ever website! Unfortunately, I’m still learning all the ins and outs of this. If anyone should happen to stumble across this site (I haven’t sent the link out to family and friends yet due to lack of content), my first page lists the almost 400 unique surnames in my family tree. It’s something to look at lol

For privacy reasons, I chose to leave out details connected to each surname. In order to encourage Read more →