INTRODUCTION TO THE POLLENZ FAMILY EXTENDED GENEALOGY
(Note: As discussed on the Home Page and in the Foreword, the provenance of this website was the 2-volume hardcopy Pollenz Family History which I completed in 2001. Thanks to the urging of Alan Pollenz and his fine design, this website was created in 2008.
Richard Pollenz)
What This Website Is About
This website both is and is not a genealogy. In truth, most genealogies are written to share information with other genealogists and become mainly formal and arcane tomes, bound by the rules of science and scholarship. While incorporating some of these aspects (the "is a genealogy" part), this offering is more of a family history (the "is not a genealogy" part). The work certainly abounds with dates and places, cold facts and figures. But in addition I have striven to incorporate personal stories and commentary to add as much warmth and fascination as possible. I have attempted to eliminate as much formalism as I could while retaining a traceable and verifiable database. Where relational assumptions have been incorporated into this database they are noted and rationalized.
Here the scholars among you may shudder. While I did not invent situations and circumstances, I have introduced, where appropriate, a certain amount of speculation concerning the milieu in which Pollenz family members lived and worked. It has been stated by genealogists and historians that "many of us are realizing that we live in a virtual historical vacuum, simply having no idea about our family experiences in the past." Filling that vacuum brings to many a great sense of unity, of completeness - an identification with the world-community. That is the reason I have taken the liberty to speculate at times. To that end I have inserted historical commentary into much of the narrative in an attempt to illuminate the characteristic thoughts and feelings of the times and places in which Pollenzes lived. This, I believe, helps to connect with ancestors in a way which tells much about who one is and how one fits into the universal scheme of things.
This Pollenz history is titled "An Extended Genealogy". Extended family genealogy has also been called "whole-family" genealogy and "cluster genealogy". Either way, the concept entails the widening of ones research to include not only a direct line of ancestors, but of brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, spouses and children in every generation. I have thus devoted a section to the families of spouses of direct Pollenz family members and have also included a number of stories by and about these individuals. I have tried to make this book as inclusive as possible and have not consciously eliminated any information or individual unless so instructed by the source. The problem, as mentioned in the Foreword, is that many family members, both close and distant, have been reluctant to share personal or even statistical family information. As a result, some of the six Pollenz family branches that I have identified are rather sparsely documented.
How This Website Is Structured
The Pollenz family genealogy is presented in modified narrative style. In researching genealogical data presentation schemes, I concluded that most formal methods are obscure and confusing at best. Thus, in Part One, I have chosen to err on the side of verboseness by narrating the story of the Pollenzes from the earliest known direct ancestor, Joachim Pollentz, born in 1753, down 9 generations to the youngest known family members. Inserted into the narrative are standard descendant trees as well as historical commentary, notes, illustrations, and photographs. In addition, Part One includes a formal Outline Descendant Tree.