STEP ONE FOR  POLISH GENEALOGICAL RESEARCH

If you are just starting your Polish Genealogy journey and aren’t sure where to begin-this list is  for you! 

To find records in Poland, you need to know what village and gmina your family came from.  Think of a gmina like a county. Just like the United States, names of villages/towns are  repeated all over Poland, the gmina will help pinpoint which village is the correct village. You  need to start with the village name, which you can find from U.S. records of your first arriving  family. Even if you think you know the village name, still check the records to verify the village  and the spelling. More info on that below.  

Chain migration is your friend. If you don’t know, chain migration is when one person brings  over the next person, and so on, until the entire village now lives in one area in the U.S. 

A correct spelling of the last name is important. You may think your spelling is correct, but that  is not always the case. Also, some Polish last names change for gender. These are names  ending in -ski, -cki, and -dzki. For a man, they will end in “i” but for a woman they will end in  “a.” In Poland, the name will always be changed for gender, but in the U.S., the woman’s name  may or may not change. Also, don’t worry if the spelling of the last name is different from  record to record in the U.S., there was confusion. Eventually, you will be able to sort it out. 

Other nations started erasing Poland from the map in 1772 and by 1795 Poland was gone, not  to be back until 1918. This is why you may not see the word “Poland” on your first arriver’s  records. It might say Austrian, Prussian or Russian, or a hyphenated description like “Russia Poland.” 

Polish Genealogical Societies are helpful and provide lots of resources to aid in our research.  The Polish Genealogical Society of America has resources for non-members and even more for  members. Check them out at www.pgsa.org. 

• Free sources for U.S. records: 

  • Familysearch.org

  • Stevemorse.org (awesome ship arrival records search engine) 

  • Heritage.statueofliberty.org (Ellis Island site) 

• Free sources for Polish records:  

  • There are tons of free Polish genealogy websites, but you need to be further along with your  research for most of them to make sense to you. There is one site, which is created by  volunteers, where you should start: geneteka.genealodzy.pl. More on this site below.  This site has records arranged by geographic area/parish. Info on how to find your parish  below. 

Where to Look For The Village Name in U.S. Records

• Village names repeat all over Poland, so even if you have a village name, you may need more  information to determine the correct village.  

• Never assume because they settled in a particular area in US, they must be from a certain  area in Poland, however, it could be a first place to look. 

Where to look for the village name in United States records  

• Marriage record, church and civil 

  • Great source since the actual person is giving the information 

  • Church records may have more and better information than civil records -Married in a Polish Church-best chance of good information and correct  spelling  

• Naturalization papers 

  • Great source since the actual person is giving the information  

  • Might be misspellings 

  • Might have bonus info on spouse, children, ship arrival information  

• Ship manifests 

  • Tricky to use-you need to know where they went in the USA or the contact person or  you might end up the wrong person 

  • Bad spelling/information/horrible handwriting 

  • Stevemorse.org is a really good source for looking for ship manifests 

• Records of last resort 

  • Military records, such as draft registration-only men, vague information.  -Early census records 

  • Death records-only as good as the informant 

  • Church baptismal records for children born in USA 

• Horizontal research 

  • Research other family members, (best are siblings of your first here person), using the  above methods. Their records may have a village, it might not be the correct village since people did move around in Poland, but usually not far, so your village is probably  in the vicinity of the horizonal village you find.  

What about that gmina thing? 

The easiest way to at least start to figure out the gmina is to google the village name and go to  the Wikipedia entry. Usually, it will tell you the gmina and wojewodztwo. There will probably 

be several villages with the same name, just look up and note the gmina and wojewodztwo for  each one. The map on the first webpage of Geneteka has the wojewodztwo’s on it. From  here, it gets complicated. If you can find a U.S. record (like ship arrival) that mentions one of  the partition names, that will help you figure out which part of Poland they came from. The  following Wikipedia map will help you with the partition areas. Paritions of Poland Wiki Page

What about the parish? 

SteveMorse.org 

This is a great search engine. You want to use the gold form for Ellis Island arrivals. It also  does searches for other arrival ports. When you get the list of search results, you click and it  takes you to the Ellis Island site. On the homepage of stevemorse.org, there is a place to sign  into Ellis Island, be sure to do that, it makes it easier. 

Geneteka

Geneteka includes all of Poland plus the eastern border countries of Lithuania, Belarus and  Ukraine. It also includes a category of “Pozostale tereny”-other areas of Polish records. To  efficiently use Geneteka, you need to know your Województwo (going forward-abbreviated as  Woj.) Knowing your parish will make the search easier. There is also an option to switch to  English on the website, by clicking the US/British flag, but that gives you strange translations  for the village names and last names, so try to do this without switching to English.  

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