Travel and migration in late 19th - early 20th centuries

I'm trying to learn how my Polish ancestors lived. My best information is that they were farmers that came from Wolhynia, now part of the Ukraine. Hajki, the town my grandfather came from, is about 330 km/200 mi from Warsaw.

An application he filed in 1936 says he was born in Warsaw in 1893. Is it likely that people would have moved from the city to a small village 200 miles away? Did people move around that much? I wonder if Warsaw was a mistaken entry.

It also looks like most of his village left and went to the USA before the 1914-1918 war. A lot of them settled in the same area of the Brooklyn and Queens Boroughs of New York City. Was this migration encouraged by the government?

At that time, that region was under Russian occupation.


Try to come back with some coherent info if you want answers. What application?

Get your thoughts together, make some notes, and then post.


What does that mean? How would anyone know your grandfather's personal story?

a bit unfair, 1jola. but true none the less.

mikek420, search around google for polish social history of the period. then someone here might be able to expand on certain aspects.

It is possible. For example, if people bought some land or were resettled.


People left their home mostly due to widespread poverty and diseases.


At that time the region was part of the Russian Empire.

A bit harsh Jola, perhaps mikek means the social conditions, type of farms, lifestyle. He doesn't say he wants a story.

Likewise:


what kind of application it was might not be important (and I'm assuming it was in US), it just gives the dates needed. What he wants to know is simply whether it was common to be born in Warsaw to farmers and then grow up 200km away in the east. All the info and questions are there. No need to be nasty.

that is strange indeed.. if anything, people moved in the other direction but then you never know as anything is possible.. maybe they had some family over there and his folks died or something so he had to move that far away...


i don't know about encouraged but the russians forced a lot of people to move as they were russifying a lot of the areas under their control thus maybe you grandpa's people said "the hell with this" and moved on to usa.

What a snippy and uncalled for response. Mikek wasn't asking anyone to tell him how they lived, it was just an explanation of why he was asking questions.

I'm pretty much doing the same. Unfortunately, I have to guess at some things since there is no written record - I'm guessing my great-grandparents who came in the 1880's as children or teens probably were farmers since that's what they did here in the U.S. I never thought about them leaving because they were encouraged to leave.

Here are two genealogical outfit that may be able to help you re-create your ancestors' stories. Supply them with as many facts as you have and see what they say:

genealogy@pro.onet .pl
office@pol gen research com
Good luck!

That's helpful advice. I hope my next post will meet 1Jola's standards.