In a previous article, I mentioned my discovery about my 3x-great grandfather Josek Grajewski’s military record. If you haven’t already read that article, I accidentally stumbled on the record while conducting archival research in a small town in Poland in summer 2018. It was an astonishing discovery that completely changed the way I see my family. Not only that, but I was able to take a photograph of the record, print and frame it, and gift it to my grandfather, z”l.

In a previous article, I talked about some of the distant relatives I’ve discovered through my research. One of the first I discovered was Lois. To summarize, I traced my grandfather’s father’s family back through the decades from Warsaw to Lublin and finally to a stetl called Czemierniki, about ten miles north of Lublin. Working at my local family history center, I traced other branches of the family forward from Czemierniki to Paris, Massachusetts, California, Texas, and Upstate New York.

Note: This blog entry is an adaptation of my article published in The Galitzianer, the research journal of Gesher Galicia. For more details, see Joshua Grayson, “Family Evidence Books: Another Treasure Trove,” The Galitzianer, Quarterly Research Journal of Gesher Galicia 25, no. 2 (June 2018).

What if you woke up one day and found that you’re not quite who you thought you were? Imagine thinking you know everything about who you are, but then discovering something that makes you see the story of where you come from in a completely new way. While it may sound overly dramatic, revelations uncovered by genealogy research often have this kind of effect.

It is with the utmost sadness that I inform you of the passing of my beloved grandfather Rolf Grayson. To say that he was an inspiration does not even begin to do justice to this towering figure. In fact, Papa was the person who first introduced me to genealogy, captivating my youthful imagination with stories of his grandparents and great-grandparents.