Ponczoch

DNA Update

My Ancestry DNA gave me some new insight into my Ponczoch family. This family has been hard to research due to the often creative spelling of the surname in various documents. I outlined the information I had on this branch in this post. Since that post, I have found a few more interesting bits of information.

The Wisconsin Outagamie County Records 1825-1980, Land and Property 1879-1884, Vol. 51 (Image 538) has an entry for Johann Ponczoch purchasing land in Outagamie County on 3 November 1881. He bought lot 36 of south 1/2 of private claim #35 of about 1 acre for $150.00. John Ponczoch (my 2x great grandfather) was the only Ponczoch from his branch that was in the US at that time. The rest of the family began arriving from Europe in 1882. My previous research had only found John in Marathon County, Wisconsin as early as 1883.

The Wisconsin County Naturalization Records 1807-1992 index of Declaration of Intention for Outagamie County (Image 135) shows that Adam Ponczoch, August Ponczoch, and Fred Ponczoch filed their declarations on the same day, 22 October 1884.

Another clue was in my DNA result from Ancestry. I have 8 matches to people who descend from John Ponczoch. This is no surprise since he is my direct ancestor. A nice surprise was that I also have 2 matches to descendants of Frank Ponczoch. Frank was from the Kaukauna area and moved to Rozellville near John Ponczoch and family. While I have no direct evidence linking Frank to John, Frank is linked to Eva Ponczoch though mention in her obituary. The obituary states that she has 3 living siblings – Johanna, Frank, and Fred. ( August and John Ponczoch were both deceased at this time).

The evidence is strong enough for me to conclude that John was the brother to Frank based on my DNA matches. That combined with the previously mentioned evidence makes me feel confident that John was the son of Adam Ponczoch and Augusta Wiglinski. I will, of course, keep looking for records and I hope that future DNA matches will help confirm this conclusion.

If anyone has any additional information on this family, please contact me or comment!