Polish birth, death and marriage records in Russian scripts?

Is there anyone on the Forum willing to help with some Russian Scripts?

They are copied and from the dates between 1863-1889

ouch, a lot changed since then.
The Soviets had their cultural revolution and they were some changes in spellings etc. I remember trying to read a letter from 1890. No dice.

Hopefully some of our resident Russians and Ukrainians (who are really Russians too) will be of help.

Hi Pat, I have the same problem. I went to the Polish Archives and got the original records written in Russian for my family. Could possibly have someone, but I am still looking myself.

:) I am hoping lol I put them away for a while, cause to stare at them would be torture.


I sympathize. I tried to learn. but no dice. its very hard to distinguish when a word begins
or ends in some of these.

at least in polish i can see where the word ended and even the older records were not difficult to
read. hard to look at because of the ink/smearing etc. but you could tell where a sentence begins
and ends..

at one point I had 52 of them. so if I can get thru these with some help I will be doing good.

I can give it a shot Pat:)

I may be talking out of the place the sun dont shine from,but, Ive pretty basic russian,with a decent vocab' but even after 10 years can I buggery read handwritten russian :)

Im sure someone once told me the pre revolution Russian is closer to todays Bulgarian in many ways,maybe thats a path you could take?

Ive a lovely pre 1905 postcard which is in the Old russian(,it looks lovely but has a few extra letters ),a valentines card which I think was probably made in what should have been Poland as there is a kotwica not very well hidden in the photograph :)

Thank you :)

I have one on my comp, I will send it along see if you can read it.. I was told that
the person who wrote these had some fancy writing. I can only say I wouldnt even
know where to begin with them.

And I havent been able to get these translated for a long time. so I appreciate your assistance
greatly :)))

It is not so big problems to read 19-th century pre-reform russian texts. ;) Much more problems to write something correctly according to old rules. ;)

If you need help like non-professional translation of reasonable amount of text to English - let me know by PM. I'm not so often visit PF but I hope forum script will notify me by email about new PM. ;)

:) for me it was hard.. my very first record was my fathers aunts and his fathers record that
arrived in the mail in Russian script.. when i opened it, I was happy but lost. because I couldn't
read it and I had expected to be able to see the names at least.

A very sweet Russian Girl that was staying with a co-worker ( exchange program) helped me read them and it was a very exciting day for me.

she went back to Russia to finish school. that was in 2003 so its been a while since I have had them.

Yes, although I am not a Polish speaker, I can decipher the Polish texts quite well, so glad they stuck with the Latin alphabet. I learned just enough Russian, to recognize my surnames, but I am at a standstill, too.

so you have records in russian?

I have some really old 1820.. but very hard to see latin as well, The older records get
more blurry on the family history centers readers.

I am also stuck at the moment. but plan to get microfilm for another town close by
I want to think outside the box. check all the small towns in the area. least those I
found some records for.

I know you know what I mean.. :)

Yes, Pat. I have about a hundred records in Russian! But of that number, only a handful that are very important to me. I went to the Polish Archives directly and in a team of researchers, we requested all the village books we could get our hands on in the time we had booked. We scanned them for our surnames. If any of us spotted a surname from one of the others, or our friends back in the States, we put in a request for a xerox copy. We did not make them directly, but came back the next day to pick them up. We had thousands of copies and divided them up between us before flying home.

So, some may not really pertain to me, but I have a nice sharp xerox of the original parish books! It was unbelievable. Books two hundreds year old books and just plunked down on the table for us to browse!

I have not been to a FHC for a long time. But, I also have some records from that source as well. To save time, I began writing to the Archives for extractions of records. They do a great job, but you get the Russian or Latin or whatever language the records are in, typed into Polish. Which is fine, because I can read it.

However, in the case of my grandfather, I found that his birth certificate showed he had a different surname as a baby in Poland than the one he used in America, and that he was apparently born to an unmarried woman who later married and had his brothers and sisters. Since that family name was my maiden name, I began to wonder if all the research I was doing was for nothing, if the name had no biological connection.

By flying to Poland and getting the parish books, I found what many records have.....a later added marginal note. I was so hoping.....

It turns out that the biological father recognized his son a year and half later, married the mother and then they had the other children. I had help on translating that one from two people, but no longer have a source of help. It also was hard to tell if he just adopted the baby, or was the father. But, he was the father.

I also have documents pertaining to my other grandfather, grandmother and great-grands and I'd love to see what is written on the originals. You know from the FHC records that you can tell what occupation they had, who were the witnesses, etc. In the extractions you only get the name, mother and father and perhaps where they lived.

So, I am stuck. But, I've been so immersed in genealogy and gone on so many trips that I am taking a break anyhow.

PS. An after-thought. The Russian records often say the individuals were illiterate. I know that all my grandparents and great-parents could read and write. So, I concluded that because they could read and write in Polish or German, but not Russian, they were classified as illiterate for that reason.

Even if your ancestors were literate and you are not living on the other end of the World you could have a problem.
In example, my ancestors used to live in Podolia Province which belonged to Poland then Russian Empire then USSR then Ukraine. They were Catholics. In 1917 they have to escape and their nest was undoubtful smashed. But any documents could be in Moscov, Kiev, Warsaw, Vinnytsia, either Catholic or Orthodox or Greek Catholic or Unitarian Church. In Latin or Cyrillic. This is a bit of challenge to dig it out, now.

no kidding, I have yet to get more records myself, I am almost ready to but now I might have to find a new
person to copy, not sure if the same organist is still in the church I recieved mine from. its alot of work, time
and money.

Marianna zelaskiewicz

I was wondering if anyone might know of how and where to find information using Russian gov't archives to obtain birth certificate of children born to Polish parents during 1919 on Russian land? Our family including my grandma have contacted Polish and Russian embassies and archive office in Kazan to tried to find out information of getting a copy or some sort of record of grandma's birth.We followed the rules and methods of making requests as provided by both embassies, but we always got the same answer: They don't have a record of her? I strongly think, that someone somewhere must of made some sort of a note or something to indicate a birth of the child. We want to find out who was birth mother of our grandma!, I was just thinking, could someone give us the insides of how all the birth records might have been handled back then, so I could have an idea of how to approach officials to make of such a request. We thank All in advance for providing us with your suggestions and ideas.

thanx :)

PS. I think I placed my previous post in wrong category, anyway reposting again.