Two questions and no answers: A long search for my ancestry and identity.

There were those who ruled kingdoms,
and made a name for themselves by their courage,
those who gave advice because they were intelligent,
those who were prophets,
those who led the people by their wisdom and knowledge,
those who wrote music or poetry,
rich people, living peacefully in their homes,
all these were honored in their day,
and were the pride of their times.
Some of them have left behind a name,
so that others praise them,
but of others there is no memory,
they died without anyone knowing them,
but these also were Godly people,
whose good deeds have not been forgotten,
their children will continue forever,
and their glory will never be blotted out.
Their bodies are buried in peace,
but their name lives on generation after generation.

Ecclesiasticus 44: 1-10, 13-14.

 

 

 

When I asked my father where his father came from originally, I thought it was an easy to answer question. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened had he given me some names and dates, shown me some old family photos, and told me a bit about my grandfather's family. Would I have been satisfied and stopped asking questions? Would I ever have started family research at all, had I known how much time and effort I would have to invest into finding an answer to my question? Well, it's pointless worrying about it, because my father's answer was a simple "I don't know".

     I'm sure many descendants of immigrants to the United States have asked their parents the same question and got the same answer. At that time I couldn't understand how it was possible for my father to know nothing about his father's heritage. How could that be? Had they never talked about it in the family? "The adults talked about these things amongst themselves when we were kids", my father said, "but not with us". He didn't recall his father ever speaking about his family or home country when he was around, and, like many of us, he never asked about it while he still had the chance.

     Now, after many years of family research and learning more about the life of Polish immigrants and their descendants in the United States, I know that it wasn't unusual for the first generation of immigrants not to talk about their life in the 'old country' and for their children not to know where their parents came from. The majority of Polish immigrants to America at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century were peasants or descendants of peasants from the overpopulated south who had lived in rural poverty and for whom emigration was the only opportunity to escape a future of poverty and deprivation. However, they had to work very hard to earn their daily bread. Due to often low education levels and unfamiliarity of the language, most of them were recruited for hard-labor, low-paid, dirty, and often dangerous jobs in industry, construction, or coal mining, and had to invest all their energy in their jobs and in meeting the basic needs of their families.

     The conditions my father was brought up in during the years of the Great Depression in the 1920s and 1930s are unimaginable to us who, for the most part, never had to worry about where the next meal would come from, if we had decent clothes to go to school in, if we could afford to see a doctor and get the health care we needed, or if the rent would be paid on time. My father experienced his father's struggles to support his wife and 10 children working as a roofer in Chicago and his father's death from falling off a scaffold to the pavement below while working on a building. Like his father, he worked hard and invested all his energy in creating a better life for himself and his children than he had it when he grew up. Both generations, the immigrant generation as well as the first generation born in the United States, were too busy dealing with the present, with getting ahead economically and socially, to worry about the past. It is us, the grandchildren and greatgrandchildren of the first immigrants, who are asking the questions now and are rediscovering our ancestors' culture and roots in a country that is 'foreign' to us, whose language we don't speak, but to which we nevertheless feel deeply connected.

    People are sometimes surprised when I tell them that I'm researching my family history. Some are interested and ask questions, others argue that the past is over and done with and that it is more important to live in the present and to look at the future rather than wasting time dwelling on the past. I agree that we should live in the present and enjoy what we have now, but we must not forget that the good life most of us have today is the result of our parents', grandparents' and greatgrandparents' hard work and struggles. Like a tree that is blossoming and producing fruit because it is well connected to its roots, we are doing fine, not because we are separated from the past, but because we are connected to our roots and to the roots of past generations.

     I'm wondering sometimes who I inherited my love of animals and the simple life from, my need for independence, my interest in reading and writing, my stubbornness in pursuing what I want to do, why learning languages always came easy to me, while I have no feeling for numbers. When I got to know my birth father and his side of the family, I discovered that I have a lot from him, physically and emotionally, I see traits and characteristics in myself that are known to run on the maternal side of my family, and I see others that I don't know who I got them from. I'll never know for sure, I just know they come from the past, maybe the far past, from genes passed on to me from my ancestors, and that ignoring the past and the relationship between the past and the present would be ignoring what has shaped me into the person I am today.

     I began researching my family history in 1999, but my personal journey to the past began much earlier, in spring of 1983, when I began to search for my American birth father. I grew up in Germany, predominantly with my mother's parents, and knew nothing about my birth father except for his name, that he was from Chicago, and that he had been an American soldier in Germany after WW II. To make a long story short, I was in my late thirties when I finally found him and talked to him on the phone for the first time. I can't describe what it meant to me to get to know my father after all these years, it was as if a whole new world opened up to me. Over the next few years we exchanged letters and photos and told each other about our past and present life. Finally we met for the first time in 1989 and spent three weeks together that year, one week in Germany, where my parents saw each other again after 44 years, and two weeks in Chicago, where my father introduced me into his family and friends.

     One day during my stay in Chicago I asked my father to tell me a little more about his childhood and parents. He showed me the house he and his siblings had grown up in and told me about their life when he was a child. While he knew that his mother had been born in Poland, he had never found out where his father originally came from. The same day we went to Saint Adalbert Catholic Cemetery in Niles, a near suburb of Chicago, where my father's parents are buried. Saint Adalbert is a big cemetery, and it took us a while until we found their graves. I didn't bring a camera this day to take pictures of the headstones, but I quickly scribbled down the dates of birth and death before we left the cemetery -- Frank Roll, 1890-1940, Julia Roll, 1888-1973 -- not sure yet what I would do with it.

      When my father and I said goodbye at O'Hare Airport when I boarded my flight back to Germany I was hoping that we would meet again soon, but we never saw each other again. Soon afterwards his health began to deteriorate, and he passed away in 1996 after years of suffering. Getting to know my father and spending some time with him was one of the happiest experiences in my life, but there was also a lot of pain associated with the experience, times of deep sadness and despair that I lost him again so soon. I spent a lot of time thinking over things, what could have been if I had met him earlier in my life, if we had had more time together, and sometimes it still hurts, but I have learned to accept that things went that way. Even though my father was only in my life for some years, I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to get to know him at all and to learn more about my paternal heritage.

     I started family research in 1999 with the names and dates from my grandparents' headstones and the little information my father had given me. Within the last three years I had lost two people I dearly loved, my father and my mother's only brother, and my mother had been diagnosed with cancer. She was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, and I knew she wasn't going to live much longer. Today, when I reflect upon the reasons why I suddenly developed an interest in family research that at times almost became an obsession, I believe it was the shock of losing one whole generation of my family within a short period of time and the painful realization that I hardly knew anything about my ancestors.

     As a child and teenager I wasn't really too keen on family gatherings that usually took place at my maternal grandparents' home. I used to sit with the adults, but most of the time I kept quiet and just listened to them talk to each other about things going on in their lives, about relatives who were sick or had passed away, to my grandmother talking about her parents who had raised her with love and care, about her father's untimely death, and her first born son Paul who died of tetanus at age 11 years.

     My mother's brother, a hobby genealogist, used to bring along a folder filled with family records and a family tree he had put together and tried to get me interested in it as well, but it never seemed much fun to me. When I was young, I listened to and looked at all of this with only half interest and never asked any questions. Learning about the old people and things that had happened so many years ago was simply not important to me at the time.

     Now, many years later and in a different phase of my life, I was eager to learn more about my ancestors. I visited my mother two to three times a week during her sickness, and we sat and talked about her life growing up in a small town in Germany, her parents and grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, friends and classmates, and the things they did. We looked at the family tree her brother had put together and at old family photos, and there was usually a little story to go with each picture. I listened to her as she talked about her life, about happy years and about years filled with problems and disappointment. As a teenager, when I had asked her about my birth father, she hadn't answered my question. I never understood why, and although we got along well otherwise, that was something that always stood between us. Now she spoke openly about him and their relationship and tried to explain why she had been so reluctant to talk about him. Each fact that I learned about my mother and her difficult life helped me to understand her better and moved me closer to her. It was very important that I made peace with her in my heart, and I will always be grateful for the special time I had with her during the last months of her life.

     I learned quite a bit about the maternal side of my family during this time, but I still knew very little about my father's ancestors and nothing at all about where my paternal grandfather originally came from. When I began to browse the Internet, it was just out of curiosity to see if I could find anything on the family name Roll in the web. I was amazed by the large amount of genealogy information on that name, there were more than 400 entries on the name Roll in the Ellis Island database alone, and soon I spent all of my spare time at the computer searching ship manifests, census records, birth, marriage, and death indexes, posting messages at genealogy message boards, and corresponding with other family researchers and volunteers who did lookups for me. But although I searched at length for information on my grandfather, I made little progress until I ordered my grandparents' church marriage record and my grandfather's death certificate. My grandparents' church marriage record indicated that "Frank (Franciszek) Roll from Budapest, son of Jacob Roll and Rosalie Bejach, married Julia Szott from Pilzno, Poland, daughter of Jacob Szott and Agatha Obrych on August 6, 1912 at St. John Cantius Church in Chicago", witnessed by Joseph Bryjak and Anna Szott. My grandfather's death certificate again listed his and his parents' place of birth as Budapest, Hungary, his father's name as Jacob Roll, while his mother's name was missing.

     I now had the names of my grandfather's parents, and once again I searched all available databases to find a Hungarian-born Frank Roll, Jacob Roll, or Rosalie Bejach -- without success. The only thing I found was an entry in the Ellis Island database for a seventeen year old Franciszek Roll who arrived at the port of New York in June 1909, the manifest stating that his ethnicity was Polish, his citizenship Austrian, his place of birth Dlugopole, his nearest relative abroad his mother Rozalia Roll in Dlugopole, and that he was going to Chicago to join his brother Jozef Roll. What puzzled me was his Polish ethnicity, his Austrian citizenship, and that Dlugopole was a village in South Poland about 140 miles away from Budapest, while the records I had indicated that my grandfather was born in Budapest, Hungary. Also the age didn't fit, he would have been 18 years old in June 1909 and not 17 years, as stated in the ship manifest. No, that couldn't be my grandfather, there were too many pieces to the puzzle that didn't fit together!

      At that time I didn't know that official records are often incorrect regarding age, place of birth, spelling of names and locations, and so on, and that they should be interpreted with this in mind. I also didn't know yet that back in 1909 there was no such thing as "Hungary" or "Poland" as we know it today. Until World War I, Poland was partitioned into three parts, the Austrian, Prussian, and Russian part. Dlugopole belonged to the Austrian part, and a person born in the Austrian part was legally a citizen of Austria, regardless of his or her Polish ethnicity.

     My grandfather's obituary that had appeared in the "Dziennik Chicagoski", Chicago's leading Polish newspaper, when my grandfather died in 1940, added an important piece to the puzzle. Among his surviving relatives were a brother Jozef Roll and a sister Karolina Chrobak. I couldn't find Jozef Roll in the Ellis Island database, but I found an entry for an eighteen year old Carola Rol who arrived at the port of New York in September 1912. The information given in the ship manifest agreed with that in Franciszek Roll's: Her ethnicity was Polish, her citizenship Austrian, her place of birth Dlugopole, her nearest relative abroad her uncle Jendrzej Bryja, and she was going to Chicago to join her uncle Jendrzej Bryjak. I also found an entry for a Josef Bryjak from Dlugopole who immigrated to the United States in November 1905 to join his brother J. Bryjak in Chicago. Was he the marriage witness in my grandparents' marriage? Carola Rol's uncles' names were Bryja resp. Bryjak, and a Joseph Bryjak had been witness for the marriage of my grandparents in 1912 -- that could not be a coincidence! Marriage witnesses were often close relatives or godparents of the bride or groom -- there had to be a connection between the Roll and Bryjak families! But how were they connected? Could it be possible that my grandfather's mother's last name, that was listed as Bejach in my grandparents' marriage record, was misspelled? Was it Bryjak instead of Bejach? I knew it was clutching at straws. A search at the LDS website revealed that the Dlugopole parish records weren't microfilmed, and I had reached a point in my research where I needed somebody familiar with the language and area who could do research on my behalf in Poland.

     Again, I posted messages to genealogy message boards hoping that somebody could perhaps help me. And I had luck, a Polish genealogist responded and indeed found records that proved my assumption: Jacob Rol had been married to Rozalia Bryjak from Dlugopole. I couldn't believe it! I had found my greatgrandparents! In the course of the following months I learned that my greatgrandfather Jacob Rol and his ancestors were from Banska, a village a few miles over from Dlugopole, and that my greatgrandparents had never been to the United States. My greatgrandfather died in August 1894 at age 35 years in Dlugopole, my greatgrandmother stayed there and remarried, had two more children, and died in January 1954 at age 89 years in Dlugopole. Both of my greatgrandparents are buried in the nearby Ludzmierz cemetery. Their three children, Jozef, Franciszek, and Karolina emigrated to the United States.

     I have yet to track down my greatgrandparents' marriage record and their three childrens' birth and baptism records that couldn't be found yet up to now. While my grandfather's and his sister Karolina's birthplaces are listed as Dlugopole in the ship manifests, my grandfather's and his older brother Jozef's later records indicate that they were born in Budapest. Budapest was a booming city at that time that attracted countless numbers of people from nearby towns and rural areas to work in industry and construction. It is very possible that my greatgrandparents went there in search for work, got married there, and that their three children were born in Budapest during these years. However, they must have returned to Dlugopole at some point of time, because my greatgrandfather's death record indicates that their residence was at house no. 7 in Dlugopole when he died in August 1896. I don't know yet why my greatgrandfather died at such a young age, when my greatgrandparents returned to Dlugopole, and where exactly they lived in Budapest. I've been looking for information on how to find marriage, birth, and baptism records in Budapest, but finding records in such a big city without knowing where my greatgrandparents lived and which church they attended is very difficult. Perhaps, one day, I'm going to try, but that's another project.

     At the moment I'm happy that I found answers to my questions about my birth father and my paternal grandfather's origin, and thus my own ancestry and identity. I have over 1,300 individuals in my family tree so far, and the research goes on. My current research focuses on the Podhale region of southern Poland, where my paternal grandfather's ancestors lived and where they are buried. I look forward to learning more about them and what their life was like. I see my father's face smiling at me from a photograph on my desk and wish I could tell him about it. And I close my eyes and see my German grandmother's dear face. Her patience and unshakable love helped me to find my way in life, and I am deeply grateful to her. If only I had one more chance to listen to her stories and to ask her all the questions I didn't ask when I was young and that I don't find answers to today. I know it's too late, and I can do no more than remember the ones I loved and have lost and what they did for me. I don't want them to be forgotten.