Online Maps for Polish Research

by Ceil Jensen

            Maps are an indispensable tool for researchers. There are online maps that reference the historic partitions of Poland as well as interactive maps of modern Poland. The online collections make it easy to access maps relative to the time period you are researching. You can compare the period maps with current maps to see the village location in the 1800s and see if there are still viable communities. Careful study may reveal that the village has merged with other villages or has been incorporated into a larger town or city. A great feature of the online maps is that they need not be refolded.

            Identifying the changing boarders help clarify family stories that state the "family could see Russia from the back window" or "Grandpa could swim from Poland to Germany from his village". The older maps will show that a statement "They moved from Germany south to Poland" actually makes geographic sense when looking at East Prussia's position above Poland in the 1880s.

Described below are several websites with online maps useful to researchers interested in Poland.

Prussia (German Poland)
 The Atlas des Deutschen Reichs is a digitized version of Ludwig Ravenstein's 1883 Atlas of the German Empire. It is held in the collections of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries and is available at: <http://www.library.wisc.edu/etext/ravenstein/home.html >. Because of the map's scale (1:850,000) small towns and villages can be located and the local churches are identified. The maps are downloadable using Adobe's free Acrobat Reader. Each file is about 2.3 Mb, so it will be a long download if you are using a dial in connection.

            Here is a sample map. It is for the town of Dirschau, Westpreußen, Germany now Tczew, Gdansk, Poland. You can look up the map reference number by clicking on the Download Index link. Dirschau is found by clicking on Page 5, Ciexyn-Dövény. The reference is to Map IIIa F 3/4. Retrieve the map by clicking the Download Map link and choosing the Map 3a/F1-M5 link on that page. Also, a map legend (Erklärung) can be downloaded by clicking the Map9/F21-M5 link. The maps can be cropped in Adobe Acrobat reader before you print them out. They are in color and print out beautifully.

            By the way, if you need to verify the German name for a Polish village use Katenmeister at <http://www.kartenmeister.com/> to find the alternate name.

Congress Poland (Russian Poland)

            The Federation of East European Family History Societies (FEEFHS) Map Room has a map titled "Russia's Polish Provinces" at <http://feefhs.org/maps/ruse/re-polan.html>. The map is from the Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedic Atlas (CD&CA) dated 1902, scale: 1 inch = 80.9 miles. At first glance the map may seem confusing. But the bold yellow line on the eastern border is a good place to orient you. The areas outside the Russian province to the west and on the southern border are less detailed then the area representing the Russian partition. While this map is not as detailed as the other sets mentioned in this article it is one of the few online for this region. The site allows the map to be downloaded and printed.

            The need for a good Congress Poland map set is answered by a current project on the PGSA website. The society is coordinating the indexing of the 1907 reference The Illustrated Geographic Atlas of the Kingdom of Poland. Published by J.M. Bazewicza in Warsaw it is a detailed and colorful resource. It is a set of richly illustrated maps for Russian Poland. The maps have been scanned and updated with coordinates so that volunteers can index the maps. The 85 maps are already online and available for referencing and printing. If you are a map lover and have a few hours to spare there is still work to be done. Visit <http://www.pgsa.org/PolishAtlas.htm> to see how you can contribute. The atlas, cataloged in Polish as Atlas Geograficzny Illustrowany Królestwa Polskiego, is available through the Family History Library and its family history centers (FHL INTL Film 873,665 Item 3, FHL INTL Fiche 6,000,827).

 I compared the FEEFHS map with the PGSA map for Wojewodztwo, Płock, Mława, Map 59. I quickly found the village of Kuczbork on the PGSA map but the FEEFHS map's scale does not allow for such detail.

Galicia (Austrian Poland)

            The Eötvös Loránd University's Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics in Hungary provides an historical map that is extremely useful to Galician researchers. These are part of a series of digital maps of Austria-Hungary (ca. 1910) at <http:/lazarus.elte.hu/gb/maps.htm>. A subordinate page at this site leads to a clickable map index <http:/lazarus.elte.hu/hun/digkonyv/topo/3felmeres.htm> to topographic maps, scale 1:200,000. Each file is 3.5-5.5 Mb.

          
  Not all grid squares are linked to a map. If you hover your cursor over the map you will see in the lower left corner of the browser window which boxes are hyper linked. The maps are commonly referred two by longtitude and latitude and are named by the principal town located on the map. To find the location of my Zdziebko ancestors’village, I clicked on Tarnow (Map 39-50) which bought up a map that included the villages of Dębowiec (with church) and Zarzecze outside of Jasło. The maps can be downloaded and resized in your graphics program. This map set is also in color and will print out by section if you use your keyboard's "Print Screen" function. Note: this map set use Ferro as the Prime Meridian, which is 17˚ 39' 44"degrees west of Greenwich.  There is no index to these maps. You need to know the vicinity of the place you want to find and then scan the map.

Archiwum Map Wojskowego Instytutu Geograficznego 1919-1939

            The Map Archive of Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny (Polish Military Geographical Institute) 1919-1939 is a non-commercial project with scans of maps and geographic materials published by the Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny (WIG) in 1919-1939. The goal of the co founders Marek Zieliński, Andrzej Bargański, Henry Neugass, and Kazik Niecikowski is to collect and make available scanned maps and related material published by WIG. mapywig.gov

            The Institute developed and printed topographic maps which, in the 1930s were rated among the best in the world. The founders state that: Nowadays these maps are a fountain of information about pre-WWII Poland and, at the same time, can be still used in the field to locate villages which have long disappeared from the ground and cannot be found on modern maps.

            Files are approximately 15-22Mb. They have developed a website that has web 2.0 features. There is a ShoutBox where members can ask questions and post comments. A selection of Polish articles and reviews from the pre-WW II period on the subject of Polish and foreign cartography is included. This website also hosts articles including typographic symbols in four languages. They have created a PL-EN map vocabulary list: for example Br.-Browar—Brewery; Fw.-Folwark—Grange, manor; Szk.-Szkoła—School; and Z.-Zamek—Castle.

           
The Mapy WIG Collection is indexed in a place name search tool created by the Archiwum Map Zachodniej Polski at <http://igrek.amzp.pl/>. It is based on a U. S. database, cross-referenced with maps available through three partner sites, i.e. mapy.eksploracja.pl, mapy.amzp.pl, mapywig.org. , and with a link to the current location as displayed by googlemaps.

Current Interactive Maps of Poland

            Multimap <http:/www.multimap.com/> is based in Britain and offers maps of Poland in three formats: map, aerial, and hybrid. The homepage shows a map of the United States. Using the pull down menu under Find A Place on the left of the screen, select Poland. Enter the town or village you are looking for, you do not need to use diacritical marks. They have replaced scales with zoom levels. The zoom levels work in the following way: 1) Zoom level 1 aims to capture the extents of the world in one 256x256-pixel image, 2) Zoom level 2 captures the whole world in 4 256x256-pixel tiles, and 3) Zoom level 3 in 16 tiles, etc. They currently show 18 zoom levels. To see the zoom level for a map place the mouse icon below the zoom slider; the mouse-over text will indicate the zoom level.

            To close the sidebar move your mouse over the small half circle with an iron icon and click. It lets you toggle between Expand the Map and Show Sidebar. If you want to print out a map you have two choices: Standard to print just the map or Detailed which includes the map, overview, and directions. Both would be useful for your a trip to Poland.

            If you are not sure of the spelling of your village it is good to start with ShtetlSeeker on Jewishgen.org. The Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex system will return a list of possible villages. In addition to Multimap, the result set has links to Expediamaps, MapQuest, and Google Maps.

            When you have the correct spelling of the village you can use the Polish map site: <http://mapa.szukacz.pl/>. This website uses the latest technology to pinpoint a location in modern Poland. The Mapa site offers links to community web pages for the region you are searching. You can zoom in from 512 to 2 m. There is a distance calculation tool – click on Odległość. The tool will measure the distance between towns shown in the lower right hand corner. Mapa also had a printer friendly function. The icons for advertisers can be removed by selecting Nie pokazuj żadnych in the pull down menu.

            Poland’s famous cartoon character the slow-witted, but brave billy goat Koziołek Matołek‘s quest to find Pacanów  “where they make goat shoes” could have been streamlined by using Mapa. The search box is easy to use when the Polish commands are identified.

          
  The results for Pacanów show the location Koziołek sought: Pacanów wieś (village) świętokrzyskie woj. (province of Świętokrzyskie) buski pow. (county of Buski) buski gmina (district of Buski ).

 Using the suggested sites will help you during your research and enhance your printed family history. The 1883 Ravenstein Atlas will help researchers interested in Prussian Poland and beyond. The maps of this atlas also cover the bordering portions of present-day Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, the Russian Federation, and Slovakia. While the 3rd Military Mapping Survey of Austria-Hungary is beneficial for researchers of Galicia, the set also has maps stretching from Mainz, Germany to Kiev, Russia, Toruń, Poland to Arta, Greece. The Polish Military Geographical Institute set  is the best resource for Poland during the 1919-1939 era. The two modern sites, Multimap and Mapa.Szukacz.pl, allow for searches without the use of diacriticals, helpful for North American QWERTY keyboard users. Overall, the Polish researcher now has access to over one hundred and twenty years of vintage maps online.