Members will be citing the 1850 birth record they found on microfilm at the local Family History Center or their recent visit to the ancestral village in Poland.

They might not be able to speak or read Polish but that’s OK. Over the last twenty five years colleagues have been writing guide books and developing finding aids to help locate the ancestral villages and decipher records of the ancestors of Polish Americans. Books, CDs Maps websites and databases developed in North America and Poland support this effort. You are not alone in your research; there are many Pol-Ams! The 2000 US Census recorded 10. million Americans with Polish ancestry. It’s one of the top ten ethnicities in the US. , one notch below the Italians and one notch above French - Americans.

Step One

The first step to finding your Polish ancestors is here in the United States. The core records to look for are US Census, naturalization records, and World War I draft registration .The US Census will pinpoint the date of arrival in the US for the family members and state if the males held alien status or were naturalized. It will also offer the key to finding the region the family hailed from: German Poland, Russian Poland or Austrian Poland aka (Galicia). Poland was partitioned for 123 years and ethnic Poles carried papers stating they were subjects of the neighboring countries. Using the naturalization date contact the local courts or state archives for copies of the records. The Red Book, a staple of genealogy reference libraries, outlines where records are kept in each state and how to place an order. Many archives have websites with finding aids on line. PA has naturalization papers available for free via footnote.com.

1906 is a pivotal date for naturalization papers. The government expanded the range of information requested from the applicant. Previous papers offer little information but after 1906 the applicant supplied their place of birth and last place of residence. They also provided the means they arrived in the states, whether by rail from Canada or ship at a North American port.

Step Two

Previous research may have provided the name of the village in Poland but most researchers want the ship manifest to verify the passage. To begin the search for the passage put the given and surnames in the proper Polish form. Did the family anglicize their names in the US? Estelle Adamski traveled as Stanislawa Adamska, James Voight arrived as Jakub Wojtkowiak and Joseph Halper arrived as Jossel Dobroniewski from Białystok

There is an urban legend that names were changed by intolerant Ellis Island officials. Immigrants changed names informally or via probate court for political, economic and religious reasons. Consult The Polish Genealogical Society of American publications Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings, by William F. Hoffman and First Names of the Polish Commonwealth: Origins & Meanings, by William F. Hoffman and George W. Helon.

The books list first and last names in Polish and include variations of the name in German, Russian Latin and Hebrew. The primer on the Polish language makes the researcher aware that the Polish alphabet has 32 letters, 9 vowels and 23 consonants and that q,v and x are not normally used. The additional letters with diacriticals (marks on the letters) ą, ć; ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, and ż can be misinterpreted. Unaware, transcribers of the Ellis Island database entered the given name Władysław as Wtadystaw.and the surname Zdziebko as Fdziebko because the Z was written in the European manner with a short horizontal crossbar added through the middle.

Steve Morse has developed One Step Search tools to streamline the hunt for the manifests.His gold form allows for sounds like searches and uses the uses Daitch Mokotoff Soundex which is better able to handle some of the  sounds and spellings in eastern European names. The Gold Form allows for searchers at all possible ports, not just New York. Many Poles entered the US via Baltimore, Maryland. The form allows for searches by village, so you can find other villagers who came to the US. When names are misspelled the village may be the only way to locate the passenger as in the case of Władysław Wilmowicz indexed as Nladislaus Nilmouriez. His passage was located using the village of Mestin.

Step Three

With the name of the village known it must be placed in the correct województwo (province) powiat (county) gmina (district) - miasto or wies (town). Because of the changing boarders of Poland and the fact that many villages share the same name; a gazetteer is used to find the correct location. A gazetteer is a geographic dictionary index. that lists the location of the civil records office, regional religious and their churches and temples. Two useful online gazetteers help researchers identify their ancestral village in Galicia (Austrian Poland) and Prussia (German Poland).The Galician Town Locator is on http://polishroots.org. The information was compiled from the 1900 Census conducted by the Austro-Hungarian Empire which lists the location of Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, and Jewish records. Uwe-Karsten Krickhahn hosts the Kartenmeister at http://kartenmesiter.com. It’s a comprehensive resource to find the German/ Polish name changes for the provinces: Eastprussia, Westprussia, Posen, Pomerania, and Silesia. You have several ways or criteria to search. including the. German name, Kreis/County, or the current Polish, Russian or Lithuanian name.

Ancestors might cite their place of birth as one of the larger cities in Poland such as Płock, Łomza, Białystok Warsaw or Lublin. They are more likely to come from village or such as Kuczbork, or a shtetl like Ilza (Driltsh in Yiddish). A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population. Jewish Gen’s ShtetlSeeker is an online tool that generated suggested geographic locations in Poland, even if the village is misspelled.

The locations are linked to modern on-line maps: Expedia, Google, Mapquest and Multimap.

The Polish Genealogical Society of American (PGSA) has scanned the maps from the The Illustrated Geographic Atlas of the Kingdom of Poland (1907) and the atlas is online for download at http://www.pgsa.org/PolishAtlas.htm

Step Four

There are three ways of obtaining the Polish records of your ancestors. Visiting a local Family History Center and ordering the microfilmed records. If your village in not in the catalog order the records from the National or Regional Archive in Poland. If the books have not been sent to the archive request the parish priest to prepare a certificate.