In the course of the following months I learned a few more details about them. My great-grandmother Rozalia Bryjak was from Dlugopole, my great-grandfather  Jacob Rol from the nearby village of Banska. He died in August 1894 at age 35 years in Dlugopole. Some years later my great-grandmother remarried, had two more children, and died in January 1954 at age 89 years in Dlugopole. They are both buried in the nearby Ludzmierz cemetery. Their three children, Jozef, Franciszek, and Karolina emigrated to the United States.

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I started with family research in 1999, after my uncle’s passing, using the information he had collected on the maternal side of my family, the names and dates I had taken from my paternal grandparents’ headstones, and the information my father had given me about his parents. Within the last three years I had lost two people I dearly loved, my father and my uncle who was my mother’s only sibling. My mother had been diagnosed with cancer, and a relapse after undergoing chemotherapy and radiation had destroyed our hopes that she could win the battle against cancer. Today, when I’m reflecting upon the reasons why I suddenly developed such a strong 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 we hadn’t talked enough, that there were many open questions, and that I hardly knew anything about my ancestors on both sides of my family.

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