Polish Records - Case Study

This week I was assisting Sandy (a member of our group) in researching her ancestors from Poland. I am presenting this case study to you because it's applicable to everyone when searching for records outside of the United States. We were able to find records for them on Ancestry once they arrived in the United States, but no Polish records. In order to proceed it was necessary to do a little research to see how to search and where the records for Poland are located.

NOTE ~ ~ First and foremost, before you can proceed to search for records in Europe or other countries you will need to have found the town of origin for your immigrant ancestor (and preferably their parent(s) name(s)). If you don't know this information you will never know if you've found the right family line or not. In Sandy's case, her grandfather had told her the name, but she also found it on naturalization, birth and death records that she found on Ancestry. On her immigrant ancestor's death record we also discovered the name of her great grandmother's father. So armed with this information we knew where to begin the search in Europe. ~ ~

A GREAT starting point is the FamilySearch.org (Latter Day Saints website) "wiki" online genealogy records page. They have a "wiki" page for every county, state and country. It's an extremely valuable resource and a good starting point when the hints dry up on Ancestry.

There's two ways to find their "wiki" pages. One way is to go to: FamilySearch.org, hover your cursor over the "Search" button on the top tool bar. Move your cursor down to "wiki" which is the last item listed and click on it. Enter your county, state or country that you want to research. Or, the second way (and my favorite) is to simply Google "Polish (insert your city, state or country) Genealogy Records and click on the link to the Family Search wiki page.

In Sandy's case, I entered Poland and the "wiki" brought up a nice selection of links, as well as a listing of jurisdictions, research strategies, resources and tools.  It's a great primer on how to search for records that just might help you avoid the frustration of trying to figure out how to search for records in another country.

Click here for the Family Search Poland Online Genealogy Records page. 

Once you know the town and country where your ancestor was from, it's generally important to narrow that town down to the area, jurisdiction or state where that town is located today. For instance, her ancestor's city was once in the Kingdom of Galicia. It was also in Austria/Hungary at one time before ending up in the country of Poland. This information is not too difficult to figure out with the use of Google or any search engine of your liking. You're basically researching the history of your ancestor's city of origin or birth to see what state or jurisdiction it's located in today.

Image Source: http://www.lostshoebox.com/poland/online-records/

 She knew their city of origin was Zdziary, Poland. So a few Google searches helped us determine that Zdziary is located in the state of Subcarpathian today. Another Google search for "Polish Genealogy Records led us to the Lost Shoe Box website that contains Polish records. If you look at the map above, her region is in the lower southeastern part of Poland. It lists three numbers under that area: 3, 7, 12. To peruse the records for that area, she will need to click on those numbers listed below the map (see photo below).

Family Tree Magazine also has a page with articles and links to websites with Polish records, a guide to pronouncing your ancestor's hometown, plus much more. Click here to reach that page (scroll down to read the articles).

There is also a Polish Genealogy Group on Facebook that was extremely helpful to her research when we posted a question.

This information is a good starting point for Sandy to continue her family search, and is applicable when searching for records in other European countries, too.