Thank you for giving me a site to look at. I live in England, in Derbyshire. My father was a dispatch rider after the war at a place called hardwick Hall near a little village called Bolsover.
Kristine, Village Konina belonges to the Saint Sebastian parish in Niedźwiedź. Commune Niedźwiedź, County Limanowa
If you want to obtain your grandfather birth cert. you have to write a request to Niedźwiedź Vital Records Office. They have records 100 years old and younger.
Urząd Gminy Niedźwiedź Kierownik Urzędu Stanu Cywilnego 34-735 Niedźwiedź 233 Poland
Copy of the record cost 33.00 polish złoty
(I’m not sure if you can write in English, maybe better have it translated) From his birth cert. you will know his parents. To find out more needs a regular research in State Archives, Archdiocesan Archives, Parish Archives and simply talk with people in the village.
I have a couple of Canadian resource that was my first clue in finding out that my Great Grandparents were Polish (well, originally the Austro Hungarian Empire I believe).
I have found ships manifests through the National Archives of Canada Genealogy Centre.
The National Registration File of 1940 was an invaluable tool for providing me info on my great grandparents. There is a fee, but the info is worth it.
Hope this helps my fellow Canadians whose Polish anestors came to Canada. There are many resources out there, I just do not have them at my fingertips at this time.
Hi. Several years ago I received some documents from Poland ie. birth,death certificates. In the remarks section (on several documents) was and item (for example) Jan Jaworski copy holder and carpenter.(in english) Can some one tell me what a copy holder was Thanks Bill
It's a digital library of various books, documents and other resources (also some newspapers) From nobility in Poland to address books and phone books well before 1939; names of villages and their owners etc etc
Most of the documents are in Polish, some Latin. It covers the area of Wielkopolska, but also partially Pomorze and other regions if it was within the administration of Poznan Principality or Gniezno archdiocese.
another one archiwum.plock.com/index_g.php
This is a link to a new project from National Archive in Plock. They are currently working on it but some of the documents, like birth/death/marriage certificates up to 1907 are online.
true, and one more thing worth adding - the digital library is a project undertaken across Poland so if put Biblioteka Cyfrowa in google/whatever search engine , you'll come across digital libraries from other parts of Poland.
Geographical localization of polish last names - a link.
I see here lots of posts inquiring if surname "xxx" is polish name etc. I think that in such cases and many others really helpful can be this map: moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/kowalski.html
you type your surname and it shows you how many ppl in Poland have the same surname and what powiat they live in.
A lot of people have recommended Cyndi's List, but this has not been very useful to me. It seems to just have links to random sparse facts.
I have traced my Polish family back to the 1700s and have a lot of useful info on how to do it. The best resource was the local Family History Center run by the Mormons. You must find the villages or towns where your family came from first, and then you might have to search around villages near there. Google Maps can help you find nearby towns.
The birth, marriage and death registers available through the Mormon Family History centers are very difficult to read in some cases. They are available on microfilm. For my family, which was Catholic, they are mostly in Latin. There is some Polish every once in a while. Mostly I have looked at church records, which were basically the same as civil records in the 19th century. Of course, back then, Poland was administratively part of Austria, Russia, Germany, Prussia, etc.
A couple of really, really good books are "Polish Roots" by Rosemary A. Chorzempa, and "A Translation Guide to 19th-Century Polish-Language Civil-Registration Documents", by Judith A. Frazin. The first one is readily available, probably on Amazon (or through Ancestry.com), and the second one is only easily available through the Polish Genealogical Society of America (at pgsa.org).
I have not found it useful either. the mormons do have a very large collection going and they now have a pilot site which is even more helpful then previously.
for anyone interested you will go to familysearch.org
then see prototype for searching millions of records
or just use the link below..
I used them and found quite a few more records then I had.. better resource then before.
Be careful. Many datasets contain typos and/or false information because the person entering the data couldn't read the old script on the original documents/ microfilms completely. Whenever you deal with genealogical data from the LDS, make sure that you personally double-check the details. Otherwise you will end up researching in the wrong direction.
Many datasets contain typos and/or false information because the person entering the data couldn't read the old script on the original documents/ microfilms completely.
that is the case with any genealogy service. in many cases they copy down what they see. the original document may also have the incorrect spelling. on my own birth cert it has a misspelling for my d.o.b and appears to say 30th rather than 13th.
however, it is certainly true that one should double check.
maybe with common surnames, but I have not experienced any problems and have actually matched both with documentation I currently have and what was online.
if you go on a wild quest finding every surname that matches of course your going to head in a wrong direction.. the pilot is just a upgrade to what they already had.. and its linked to ellis island as well.. mis-spellings are common problem like wroclaw has mentioned.. that will and can take you in a wrong direction.
but ellis island wont let us man-handle the manifest ourselfs, LDS-mormons did microfilm all of what is online and you can go view the source and any center , which are located in the states and europe.
have you used the steve morse website? very helpful for me as well I found my grandmother via misspellings on that website, without the ability to misspell the names or only type in three letters on each search box, I would not have found alot of my much needed documents that I know are definitely part of my family ( thru parents names) age verification etc.
I know what your saying, some sites you cant view the source and do have to rely on documentation you might already have or information you obtained via family.
anythings possible. ;)
Just FYI
this weekend is free on ancestry.com for the immigration.
I have found alot of good information and you are able to save to your computer or print
Civil vital registration in what became Russian Poland (the Kingdom of Poland, also known as Congress Poland) began in 1808 in the Duchy of Warsaw, and the records were kept in "Napoleonic format", a paragraph-essay style. For 1808-1825, Jewish registrations (and those of other religious denominations) were recorded in the Roman Catholic civil transcripts. Beginning in 1826, separate registers were kept for each religious community (Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, etc.) Records were recorded in the Polish language from 1808 until 1868, and were kept thereafter in the Russian language, until 1918, when Poland regained its independence.
My father, who is a keen genealogist pointed me to images of church books containing baptisms and births, marriages, burials and deaths for the parishes in the Częstochowa, Gliwice, and Lublin Roman Catholic Dioceses of Poland.
familysearch.org/search/collection/show#uri=hr-search-api:8080/searchapi/search/collection/1867931 Births end in 1910 and marriages in 1935.
* Katowice * Kielce * Lublin * Opole * £ódź
And also to images of church books containing baptisms and births, marriages, burials and deaths for the parishes in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Radom.
I have no idea whether it is of any help, but there you go.
