Poland

Learn the essentials for researching families from Poland.
Step 1: Identify your ancestral town in a gazetteer and familiarize yourself with jurisdictions over time.
Step 2: Learn which archives and websites hold the relevant records.
Step 3: Learn to read the records.

Research Foundations

Map Pile
Step 1: Maps and Gazetteers
  1. Poland Historical Geography
  2. Finding Places in the Former German Areas of Poland Using the Online Gazetteer Kartenmeister.com
  3. Searching for places in Central Europe - The Historic Gazetteer GOV
  4. Polish? Austrian? Czech? Making Sense of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
  5. Russian Empire Gazetteers
Archives
Step 2: Archives

  1. Tracing Polish Immigrants in the 1900s
  2. Poland Finding Aids in the Wiki
  3. An Introduction to Using the Polish State Archives Website Szukaj w Archiwach (30 minutes)
  4. Szukaj w Archiwach
  5. Polish Community Newspapers in North America and Poland
  6. Polish Displaced Persons
Records on Shelf
Step 3: Deciphering Records

  1. Deciphering Russian, Polish, and German Names Written in Russian
  2. Das Allensteiner Indexierungsprojekt - Standesamtliche Digitalisate aus polnischen Staatsarchiven (in German)

Jewish Ancestry
  1. Crossing the Ocean - Finding Your Jewish Ancestral Home
  2. Using a JewishGen or JRI-Poland Index to Locate the Original on FamilySearch
  3. Udla, Udla, Udla! The Szatkowski Family: a case study in research

Partitions of Poland

nib pen and inkwell
Austrian Poland
Section of Poland under the Austrian Empire
  1. Genealogical Research in Galicia
  2. Tracing Polish Ancestors in the Austro-Hungarian Empire
old census
Prussian Poland
Section of Poland under the Prussian Empire (German)

  1. Pomeranian Perks: Resources for the former province of Pomerania
  2. Essential Websites for Research in East and West Prussia
  3. Finding Places in the Former German Areas of Poland Using the Online Gazetteer Kartenmeister.com
  4. EWZ Records
Russian Alphabet, Language and Handwriting Part 2
Russian Poland
Section of Poland under the Russian Empire

  1. Russian Empire Gazetteers
  2. Russian Historical Geography and Introduction to Record Types
  3. Research in Eastern Ukraine using Russian Empire Records
  4. Deciphering Russian, Polish, and German Names Written in Russian
  5. Locating Metrical Books in Archives Using the Metrics Website/Working with Archives

Related Content

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German
  1. Introduction
  2. The Alphabet
  3. Paleography Websites
  4. Key Words
  5. Key Abbreviations
  6. Process of Deciphering Records
  7. Practice Reading A German Church Record
  8. Practice Reading A German Civil Record
  9. Spelling Variations, Names, and Places
Russian Alphabet, Language and Handwriting Part 1
Russian
  1. Reading Russian Documents: The Russian Alphabet
  2. Deciphering the Handwriting and Understanding the Grammar
  3. Keywords, Abbreviations, and Common Vocabulary
Handwriting
Latin