I knew less about Lomza than about Suwalki when I started this project, which is why I focused on the three towns I knew a little about (Grajewo where my cousin Hank Mishkoff's family lived and Rajgrod and Szczuczyn where my ancestors lived).
Since others with ancestors from these towns, as well as additional towns, have joined the project, I thought we should review my original goals and add others' goals.
I started learning about the Suwalki and Lomza areas by reading Landsmen, which influenced how I think about family research in these areas. First, surnames are relatively recent and were not used consistently. People might change their surnames to avoid conscription and many changed their surnames again when they immigrated to England, America, South America and South Africa. Even in the mid 1800s, there are records of the Margolis family using the toponymic "Kalwaryiski" (derived from Kalvarija where they lived 50 years earlier). Surnames of females are absent from all but the later records of the Russian Empire. Also, many of our ancestors lived in small towns for 100 - 200 years, where many families in the town were related by marriage and blood. Cousins married cousins for generations. And when they emigrated, they often lived with, intermarried with, and were buried with landsmen for a generation or more.
Thus, I found that the best way to research family history is by putting a family in context -- understanding the village, town or city that they lived in, understanding the administrative district and its laws that influenced travel and marriage, and understanding the other families that were their neighbors and in-laws. While I start with the surnames that are known about my ancestors, I know that there are many other families in a town or village who are also my ancestors. My hope is that through understanding our ancestors in context and through DNA studies that we will each fill in some of the missing holes in our family history.
To that end, I list families, marriages, resources, and discuss geography and social history. Seth's discussion highlights how much we can learn also from Landsmenshaften and burial societies. Another thing I look at in my family are patterns of given names which can be traced for a hundred or several hundred years. My fourth great grandmother, born around 1780, was Hinde and there are descendants today named after her descendant, Hinde Beile, who was named after her.
What additional goals should we have for these regional projects?
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