Polish Vital Records On-line — A Survey #Genealogy, #Polish

Stanczyk is a bit uncertain. It seems like every day there are some new vital records indexes or even actual register scans themselves made available from congregations all over the Central European — Jewish, Catholic (Roman & Greek), Orthodox, Lutheran/Evangelical lands that make up Poland or a land that was once within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (the 1st Republic) or any of the variations between those times. So I thought I would step back and take stock of what was available. Yes, I know this will be out of date by tomorrow. But here is a quick & dirty, handy reference list of where to go looking. Clip & Save.

— — — — — — — — — —

Poland – Archives & Genealogical Societies

AGAD Księgi metrykalne – Eastern Borderlands (Ukraine, Russia Jewish Pale, etc.) —

http://www.agad.gov.pl/inwentarze/testy.html

(scans by Sygn.: http://www.agad.gov.pl/inwentarze/KMLw301.html#idp1765776 )

Prussian Poland Parishes

BASIA - http://www.basia.famula.pl/en/ - State Archives in Poznan, the Wielkopolska Genealogical Society (WTG “Gniazdo”) project.

Poznan Marriage Project - http://poznan-project.psnc.pl/

Pomorskie Towarzstwo Genealogiczne - http://www.ptg.gda.pl/

All Poland & Eastern Borders (PTG)

GeneSzukacz  / Geneteka (indexes, some scans) –  http://www.geneszukacz.genealodzy.pl/      &      http://geneteka.genealodzy.pl/

METRYKI (parish register scans)– http://metryki.genealodzy.pl/

Szukajwarchiwach (Poland’s National Archives online) - http://szukajwarchiwach.pl/

This is the latest project and is shooting to have 5.8 Million records by the end June (this month) scanned and on-line by Polish Archive or National Museum.

Jewish Record Indexing (JRI) – http://www.jewishgen.org/jri-pl/jriplweb.htm

The venerable project with new life provides indexes to registered users (free) and then you can purchase the actual church record. Great for Jewish Pale & Russian Poland, plus so much more.

Metryk.GenBaza.pl - http://metryki.genbaza.pl/genbaza,list,4,1 (AP GRODZISK). Archive in Grodzisk Mazowiecki (Russian Poland parishes near Warsaw).

Family Search.Org 

Besides the 5 parishes below, you might want to have a look at holdings for:

Austria, Germany, Russia & Ukraine

Poland, Częstochowa Roman Catholic Church Books, 1873-1948	Browse Images	14 Feb 2013
Poland, Gliwice Roman Catholic Church Books, 1599-1976	Browse Images	14 Feb 2013
Poland, Lublin Roman Catholic Church Books, 1784-1964	99,510	14 Feb 2013
Poland, Radom Roman Catholic Church Books, 1587-1966	18,916	21 Apr 2013
Poland, Tarnow Roman Catholic Diocese Church Books, 1612-1900	1,002,155	6 Jan 2012

Did I miss any? Email Me … Proszę !

Other (Inne)

http://regestry.lubgens.eu/news.php - from Valerie Warunek (PGSM). Database of Indexed church records (birth/urodzenia, marriage/malzenstwa,  death/zgony) from Lubelskie wojewodztwo. No scans (skans), but it does have record (akt) #’s.

Pocket: A Polish-Jewish Hero — #Polish , #Jewish, #History

c.michael eliasz-solomon shared with you: University Michigan, Wallenberg Medal Lecture Living history is so finite. I hope my blog captures the fragility and preserves history / family history before they are lost. Also, I know I am writing for a future. They will look back upon blogs and judge their quality when studying this era and what this era found important. I find Simcha Rotem, an eye witness / participant of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of World War II compelling and authentic. ‍   #History    #Poland    #Jewish    #HERO ‍ A Polish-Jewish hero economist.com - Article source

Don’t have time to view this now? Get Pocket

The Last Pandemic … 1918 — #Genealogy, #Polish, #War

 week ago Stanczyk wrote about Cholera and its 5th Pandemic. This week I was searching for ‘Status Animarum‘ (Latin for ‘State of the Souls’). That is a type of church census. Often these censuses include three generations. I stopped in a list of Google results. I stopped for Cleveland’s St. Stanislaus’ 1918 Status Animarum.

Now Stanczyk has a branch of the family in Cleveland and at the St Stanislaus parish. 1918 was the tail end of World War I. It was also the main year of the last epidemic,  … the flu,  sometime called the Spanish Flu. More people died from the flu than from the war. Pestilence won again. I am sure war had something to do with the pestilence and people weakened immune systems.

World War I was different then almost all other wars in US history. We had citizens training and fighting in two armies against a common enemy. You had Polish-Americans serving in the US Army and you had Polish Americans serving in the French colors (Blue Army), Polish-led (General Haller), Canadaian-trained, with men from the USA who were Polish ethnically. So a world war and pestilence both ran amok.

This Status Animarum was not the kind like in European parishes that listed two-three family generations and their home, census-like. This was a Status Animarum Report — summarized at the parish level …

 

Blessedly, with about one thousand men serving in the military (3/4 USA, 1/4 Polish) and the Flu Pandemic, only 18 men had died!

  1.8%  

Statistically, Cleveland’s St. Stanislaus had lucked out. The other statistic, 25% of the men served in Haller’s Army (aka the Blue Army). This device allowed the US men to have a presence in the World War, before the USA was ready … emotionally to end its isolationism and enter the war itself. I wonder if this percentage held true in all Polish parishes in the USA?

What desperate times were those? And yet, is today not like a hundred years ago? We shall see. It has been nearly a century since the last pandemic. Will the Chinese bird-flu be the next pandemic? Time will tell. Certainly, there is plenty of warfare about the globe and plenty of sabre rattling.

Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) — #Genealogy, #Jewish, #Polish

Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) 2013 begins in the evening of: Sunday, April 7
and ends in the evening of: Monday, April 8. In the Hebrew Calendar is 27 Nisan (see Stephen Morse’s Jewish Calendar Conversion tool) is Yom HaShoah and varies in the Gregorian calendar across the Months of April/May.

To honor my wife Teréza and our children let me add a Jewish Genealogy blog post. It is for a Polish village in the AP Grodzisk (Warsaw, Blonie) and is called: Góra Kalwaria. Góra Kalwaria can be found in PRADZIAD database. What is great about this news is that there is yet another project beyond the ones I have previously written about (SzukachwArchiwum.pl and Metryk in PTG). This village and its images can be found in: Metryki.GenBaza.pl (AP Gordzisk) for :

• Góra_Kalwaria_moj_1402

This is just one of many congregations (Catholic & Jewish) that they have scanned. There appear to be about 110 villages in total so far this Polish National Archive in Grodzisk (a branch office of Warsaw).  I picked this village because it is all about the Jewish congregation (that I provided the Pradziad link for). The records run from 1826 – 1910 inclusive and there no missing years. This is a remarkably complete/intact record of a Jewish congregation in Poland. The scanned records from 1826-1867 are written in Polish and then starting in 1868 the records are written in Russian all the way through 1910.

So for the Jewish-Polish genealogists who read this blog, here is a treasure trove to research. In actuality, many of the 110 villages have Jewish records. Look for the abbreviation ‘moj’ (short for mojżeszowe). So I hope this is a joyful news for the remembrance of this solemn occasion.

Good genealogy to all my readers!

–Stanczyk

.

Polish State Archives – Numbers — #Genealogy, #Polish, #Archives

The Polish State Archives via the National Digital Archives (NAC) recently announced the plans to release 2.4 Million scans of metrical book records online. In order to use this database (http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/) you will need to know the Archive’s number of the Regional State Archive that you are interested in (i.e. the Archive that has the data/scans of your ancestral village).

Stanczyk could not locate such a list. So this jester created one. Knowing that the IZA had a drop down menu of Archives,  I went there. Sure enough it had the archives … and the archive’s number. But it was a drop down menu and I could not copy/paste from the drop down menu. How could I get the data?

I put on my propeller beanie and it occurred to me that the HTML of the web page would have that data for the menu. So I looked at the page source and voila. After some editing to remove HTML tags I built the required list for all of to use with the new 2.4 Million records in http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/.

The list is below. One note, I notice that the list is out of date in the sense that there are regional archives that no longer exist. For example, I know to my own pain, that the Kielce regional state archive (Kielce Panstowe) office (oddzial) in Pinczow  (#23 in the list) was closed and the records moved to Kielce (the main office, #21). So please take note of this, as I am sure it happened to other offices as well.

Here is the PDF of the listed parishes/synagogues being scanned (for March):

http://nac.gov.pl/files/D’ASC1_02_2013v.3.pdf

Archive Number List

1 Archiwum Glówne Akt Dawnych (1)
2 Archiwum Akt Nowych (2)
4 Archiwum Panstwowe w Bialymstoku (4)
5 Archiwum Panstwowe w Bialymstoku Oddzial w Lomzy (5)
6 Archiwum Panstwowe w Bydgoszczy (6)
8 Archiwum Panstwowe w Czestochowie (8)
9 Archiwum Panstwowe w Elblagu z siedziba w Malborku (9)
10 Archiwum Panstwowe w Gdansku (10)
11 Archiwum Panstwowe w Kaliszu (11)
12 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach (12)
13 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach Oddzial w Bielsku-Bialej (13)
14 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach Oddzial w Cieszynie (14)
15 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach Oddzial w Gliwicach (15)
16 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach Oddzial w Oswiecimiu (16)
17 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach Oddzial w Pszczynie (17)
18 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach Oddzial w Raciborzu (18)
20 Archiwum Panstwowe w Katowicach Oddzial w Zywcu (20)
21 Archiwum Panstwowe w Kielcach (21)
22 AP w Kielcach Oddzial w Jedrzejowie – Oddzial zlikwidowany, akta przeniesione do AP K… (22)
23 AP w Kielcach Oddzial w Pinczowie – Oddzial zlikwidowany, akta przeniesione do AP Kie… (23)
24 Archiwum Panstwowe w Kielcach Oddzial w Sandomierzu (24)
25 AP w Kielcach Oddzial w Starachowicach – Oddzial zlikwidowany, akta przeniesione do A… (25)
26 Archiwum Panstwowe w Koszalinie (26)
27 Archiwum Panstwowe w Koszalinie Oddzial w Slupsku (27)
28 Archiwum Panstwowe w Koszalinie Oddzial w Szczecinku (28)
29 Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie (29)
30 Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie Oddzial w Bochni (30)
31 Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie Oddzial w Nowym Saczu (31)
33 Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie Oddzial w Tarnowie (33)
34 Archiwum Panstwowe w Lesznie (34)
39 Archiwum Panstwowe w Lodzi (39)
41 Archiwum Panstwowe w Lodzi Oddzial w Sieradzu (41)
42 Archiwum Panstwowe w Olsztynie (42)
45 Archiwum Panstwowe w Opolu (45)
48 Archiwum Panstwowe w Piotrkowie Trybunalskim (48)
49 Archiwum Panstwowe w Piotrkowie Trybunalskim Oddzial w Tomaszowie Mazowieckim (49)
50 Archiwum Panstwowe w Plocku (50)
51 Archiwum Panstwowe w Plocku Oddzial w Kutnie (51)
52 Archiwum Panstwowe w Plocku Oddzial w Leczycy (52)
56 Archiwum Panstwowe w Przemyslu (56)
58 Archiwum Panstwowe w Radomiu (58)
59 Archiwum Panstwowe w Rzeszowie (59)
60 Archiwum Panstwowe w Rzeszowie Oddzial w Sanoku (60)
61 AP w Rzeszowie Oddzial w Skolyszynie – Oddz. zlikwidowany, akta przeniesione do AP Rz… (61)
62 Archiwum Panstwowe w Siedlcach (62)
63 Archiwum Panstwowe w Suwalkach (63)
64 Archiwum Panstwowe w Suwalkach Oddzial w Elku (64)
65 Archiwum Panstwowe w Szczecinie (65)
66 Archiwum Panstwowe w Gorzowie Wielkopolskim (66)
67 Archiwum Panstwowe w Szczecinie Oddzial w Miedzyzdrojach (67)
68 Archiwum Panstwowe w Szczecinie Oddzial w Stargardzie Szczecinskim (68)
69 Archiwum Panstwowe w Toruniu (69)
71 Archiwum Panstwowe w Toruniu Oddzial we Wloclawku (71)
72 Archiwum Panstwowe m.st. Warszawy (72)
73 Archiwum Panstwowe m.st. Warszawy Oddzial w Grodzisku Mazowieckim (73)
75 Archiwum Panstwowe m.st. Warszawy Oddzial w Lowiczu (75)
76 Archiwum Panstwowe m.st. Warszawy Oddzial w Mlawie (76)
78 Archiwum Panstwowe m.st. Warszawy Oddzial w Otwocku (78)
79 Archiwum Panstwowe m.st. Warszawy Oddzial w Pultusku (79)
82 Archiwum Panstwowe we Wroclawiu (82)
83 Archiwum Panstwowe we Wroclawiu Oddzial w Jeleniej Górze (83)
84 Archiwum Panstwowe we Wroclawiu Oddzial w Kamiencu Zabkowickim (84)
85 Archiwum Panstwowe we Wroclawiu Oddzial w Legnicy (85)
86 Archiwum Panstwowe we Wroclawiu Oddzial w Lubaniu (86)
88 Archiwum Panstwowe w Zamosciu (88)
89 Archiwum Panstwowe w Zielonej Górze z siedziba w Starym Kisielinie (89)
90 Archiwum Panstwowe w Zielonej Górze Oddzial w Wilkowie (90)
91 Archiwum Panstwowe w Zielonej Górze Oddzial w Zarach (91)
93 Archiwum Panstwowe w Gdansku Oddzial w Gdyni (93)
307 Muzeum Pierwszych Piastów na Lednicy (307)
309 Archiwum Uniwersytetu Mikolaja Kopernika w Toruniu (309)
324 Stowarzyszenie Archiwum Solidarnosci (324)
325 Zarzad Oddzialu Zwiazku Sybiraków w Lodzi (325)
327 Glówna Biblioteka Lekarska im. Stanislawa Konopki (327)
701 Instytut Józefa Pilsudskiego w Ameryce (701)
702 Polski Instytut Naukowy w Nowym Jorku. Biblioteka i Archiwum im. A. Jurzykowskiego (702)

Waiting For Polish Archives 2.4 M Scans …

Stanczyk reported on 11 February 2013 , that the Polish Archives would be posting 2.4 Million scans of church/synagogue metric books on the Internet. The first phase which is due to be complete in March (this month) does not include any scans from Kielce Archive, which means that there will not be metric book scans of my ancestors in the first phase (Let’s be hopeful for something in June).

Well what can you do if your ancestors are from SwietoKrzyskie (the area from the old wojewodztwo Kielce)?

The website genealodzy.pl (polish website – some English user interface available) has a project called the Metryk project. Their Genealogical Society’s members are scanning metryk records from churches/synagogues. Once the scans are in place, they then index the image into their Geneszukacz databases that are searchable by Name, Event Type (B/M/D), Place. So you have two options Search Geneszukacz by index or scan the available images in Metryk (images are of Latin, Polish, or Russian language church records).

So what is available for SwietoKrzyskie? That information is shown in the above image. For this jester, I go to Buski (aka Busko-Zdroj).  There are, as of March 18th, 2013 a total of five parishes that have some scanned records (metryk / aktow).

You can see the five parishes in the image are:

Biechow,  Busko-Zdroj,  Dobrowoda, Gnojno,  Zborowek.

The right most column gives the years for which there are scanned records. For my research, Biechow and Zborowek were the most helpful. What I noticed was the Biechow images were much better than the images that the LDS had microfilmed. See my inventory of Biechow  records blog article (19 July 2011).

In fact, I was able to read some records better than previously and correct some of my translations. By the way, if you are researching the same area as Stanczyk, then just click on the ‘Powiat buski‘ image and it will take you to the genealody.pl website for that Buski powiat. So whether you have seen these images before or not, I would encourage you to look again at these quality images in the Metryk Project.

Hey PTG, can you guys PLEASE scan and index: Pacanow,  Swiniary,  Szczucin, and Stopnica parishes too?

I hope the Polish National Archives will be scanning records in the Kielce Archive for June proszę (please)?

Zasucha in Niagara Falls, Pacanow, Albion and Elsewhere — #Genealogy, #Polish

Two days ago, Stanczyk wrote about SNA/Cluster Genealogy and FultonHistory.com. So today I wanted to wrap-up some loose (odds and) ends. Its all about the Zasucha and that is my focus. But I must digress for one minute …

Historic Newspapers

I mentioned Tom Tryniski, the owner of FultonHistory.com whose Herculean efforts provides us with 21.8 Million pages to search through. Today, I wanted to extend to Tom, the offer to correspond (click on the Post Missive picture on this blog page). I have been an Historical Newspaper fan ever since I found my grandparents and the birth of my uncle mentioned in Dziennik Polski (Detroit). So I am hoping for a discussion on what Roots Tech he uses to maintain his website. Stanczyk after all is a STEM worker and loves IT (that is Information Technology, not ‘it’). That is my offer –  an interchange of ideas and perhaps a blog article. Tom, if you are looking for ideas on Newspapers to scan (in the NY region), how about the Buffalo area newspaper:  Dziennik dla Wszystkich (= Everybody’s Daily). Come on help this Polish jester out! Just a reminder, the Library of Congress ‘s Chronicling America projects lists about 220 Polish language, Historical Newspapers  [Polskie Gazety językowe]   (that it has holdings of?).

Zasucha

The last blog post listed four ZASUCHA families:

Martin (father of Andrew in the above death notice) – Andrew(the deceased), Roman, and Jan

Adam – Michal, John, Karol, Marya, and Feliks

Josef – Benedykt (son of Josef), Feliks (a 2nd much-younger Feliks, son of Benedykt)

Jan – Roman (a 2nd Roman), Teofil, Josef, and Pawel

Those were Niagara Falls Zasuchas. When I queried Ancestry Public Family Trees, I found another Zasucha family in the USA for the same timeframe:

Wojciech (aka Albert in USA, husband of Urszula) – Tomasz (aka Toma) and Tekla

These were Albion (Calhoun County, Michigan) Zasucha. If the owner of Brubaker and Zasucha Family Tree (silverandsienna) would like to compare notes on these Zasucha and/or Pacanow, then please by all means email me or comment on this blog post.

All of the above Zasucha are of interest to me because:

• They all came from Pacanow (where my grandfather was born)
• My great-great-grandmother was Anna Zasucha, wife of Martin Eliasz (of Pacanow)
• Karol & Feliks sons of Adam lived at 235 11th Street in Niagara Falls
• My grand-aunt Mary and grand-uncle John lived at 235 11th street in Niagara Falls

Now besides the Zasucha, I also found the following affiliated families living at 235 11th Street:

Adam Ziglicki,  Josef Ziglicki,  and (Filip Kulczyki brother-in-law of Adam Ziglicki).

The Ziglickich are intermarried to Eliaszow/Elijaszow in Pacanow (hence an affiliated family).

Finally, there was a Rozalia Zasucha last residence Samsonow, coming from her mother,  J. Zasucha living in Komorow to her brother-in-law Wawrz. Berusad(sp?) at 239 11th street in Niagara Falls on 7/1/1913 (SS Gothland). Now Komorow is a village in Pacanow parish. Samsonow is also related to my family tree as a residence for some Kedzierski related to my grand-uncle John’s wife, Pelagia. There is also a Feliks Zasucha at 239 11th street (who was son of Adam, going to brother Michal) at 239 11th street. So I am thinking I am going to add Rozalia to the Adam children [Michal, John, Karol, Marya, and Feliks] which are very connected to my ELIASZ family.

I am now guessing that Wawrz. (short for Wawrzeniec = Lawrence = Lawrenty) perhaps married Marya Zasucha (a theory I will need to test and verify).

So … any Zasucha out there? Particularly, the children of Adam [Michal, John, Karol, Marya, Feliks and now Rozalia] Zasucha. Let’s trade missives. The Social Network Analysis is trending towards a deeply connected family tree.

 

One very final aside …

Two other ELIASZ surfaced in this SNA research. Tomasz Eliasz (b. 6 September 1881 in Pacanow) son of Ludwik Elijasz. There was also a Stanley Eliasz (I believe a theater owner in Buffalo) who I believe was a cousin to my grandfather, but not the cousin that came to Detroit (aka Stanley Elyasz) who was the son a Martin Elijasz and Julianna Odomski. Tomasz was a 1st cousin twice removed and is in the family tree. I am aware of Stanley Eliasz (Buffalo theater owner) and his family, but as yet I have not been able to connect him to my tree. I think Stanley is also fairly closely related to our Detroit/Pacanow Eliasz family. It was interesting to see him turn up in the SNA (via City Directories).

SNA seems to find some very interesting and unknown familial relationships. At the very least it provides the fodder for future research to break through those genealogical “brick walls”. Please drop me a missive and let me know if you are using this technique and what successes you have had.

Post Office Department – Stanczyk’s Mailbag — #Polish, #Genealogy, Kuc, Kucz, Swiniary

From the Post Office Department

From Stanczyk’s Mail Bag …

Email From:   Barbara

I have been trying to do research in Pacanow but have not been very successful.  My Grandmother — Maryanna Kuc(z) is from Oblekon.  I wrote to the parish there — Parafia p.w. Najswietszej Maryi Panny Krolowej Swiata but never received a reply.  Perhaps they just couldn’t find any information.

My Grandmother:      Maryanna Kuc(z)

Born:                        March 15, 1886

Baptized                   March  25, 1887

Immigrated to USA:    September 1912

Father:                      Benedict Ku(z)

Mother’s first name:    Marianna

She had a sister Eva (born 1895)

 & a brother Jozef  (born 1893) both came to America.

I think she had other siblings but have not been able to find any records from Poland at all i.e. Marriage of parents, birth or baptisms or death of her parents.  I know her father was alive in 1912 when she came to America.

If you can help or shed any light on how I could obtain the information I am seeking, I would be extremely grateful.

Keep up the excellent work on your blog.

Thank you for any information in can provide and Thank you for your blog,  I learn a lot from it.

Barbara

I had told Barbara that I would search the Swiniary indexes that I have pictures of to see if I could find anything for her. When I searched my indexes, I found that her family name is spelled most as she had it: Kucz, but I did find one example where the priest wrote Kuć. There was also another family Kuzon, but I do NOT feel like they are the same family as her Kucz/ Kuć. Since this was from the era 1829-1852 the records were in Polish. I found one marriage index in the Swiniary parish:

1836 Franciszek Kuć marries Maryanna Duponką   [this is not your great-grandparents, but probably related]. 1836 was the only year that I had a marriage index picture.

1830-1840 no Kucz/ Kuć births in the indexes.

1841 Jozef Kucz birth record #23

1842 Maciej Kucz birth record #21

1843-1845 no Kucz/ Kuć births in the indexes.

1846-1849 I had no indexes (or pictures thereof)

1850 no Kucz/ Kuć births in the indexes.

1851 I had no indexes (or pictures thereof)

1852 Stanislaw Kucz birth record #28

I think I have seen Kuc in the surrounding parishes (Biechow & Pacanow).

First off, I checked the LDS website (FamilySearch.org). I wanted to see what microfilm they had. Your birthdates: 1886, 1893, 1895 are rather late (most LDS microfilm stop around 1884). Here is their inventory for Swiniary (you want “Akta urodzeń“, for births):

Family History Library Catalog (Place Search): Swiniary

Akta urodzeń 1686-1811 — małżeństw 1668-1863 — zgonów 1686-1811 -  INTL Film [ 939952 ]
Akta urodzeń 1797-1811, 1826-1865 -  INTL Film [ 939951 ]
Akta urodzeń, małżeństw, zgonów 1812-1816, 1818-1825 -  INTL Film [ 939949 ]
Akta urodzeń, małżeństw, zgonów 1878-1884 -  INTL Film [ 1808854 Items 9-15 ]

Akta zgonów 1797-1839 -  INTL Film [ 939950 ]

–

That is all the LDS (aka Mormons) have in their Family History Library that you can rent microfilm from. Next I checked the Polish National Archives via PRADZIAD . They did have books/microfilm for the date range you are seeking. Here is the contact info for the archive that has the data you seek. You would need to write them in Polish and they will write you back with their findings and instructions for wiring their bank the money they require (all in Polish).

PRADZIAD:

http://baza.archiwa.gov.pl/sezam/pradziad.php?l=en&mode=showopis&id=14781&miejscowosc=swiniary

Archive:

Archiwum Państwowe w Kielcach Oddział w Pińczowie – akta przeniesione do AP w Kielcach
28-400 Pińczów, ul. Batalionów Chłopskich 32
tel: (41) 357-20-02
fax: 357-20-02
email: pinczow@kielce.ap.gov.pl

I hope this helps you out!

–Stanczyk

Martha Stewart … Are We Related ?

Stanczyk, took note of when my friend and noted professional genealogist Ceil Wendt Jensen did an article for Ancestry.com magazine(2009, #3) on Martha Stewart’s ancestry. For a long time, I knew her maiden name was Kostyra. So when I noticed that Ceil had done an article and detailed much of Martha’s family tree, I asked her is she from Pacanow too?  [Now you may not know that both Stanczyk and his friend Ceil have ancestors from Pacanow]. I had asked because, I had Kostyra in my family tree. Ceil told me, ‘No.’

So when I noticed that 5/6/2012 episode on Finding Your Roots,  was going to have a segment on Martha Stewart, I watched again. It was interesting that Martha’s roots (and DNA) include Tartars and again they mentioned Kostyra and a few village names, but not Pacanow.

Now I read a column by the famous genealogist Megan Smolenyak (at Huffington Post??) on, “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Martha Stewart’s Family Tree – Huffington Post” on Martha Stewart. What caught my eye was …

If you have any of the following surnames in your family tree, you could be a cousin of Ms. Stewart’s: Adamczyk, Albiniak, Baran, Ciman, Flis, Grab, Grosiewicz, Grysztar Kak, Kielar, Kisielinska, Kiszka, Kostyra, Krol, Krukar, Krulicka, Kulpa, Lach, Lazinska, Litwin, Macuga, Misiak, Okon, Oleszko, Orzeł, Penar, Rajchel, Ruszkowski, Rygiel, Rzad, Siwy, Skubik, Strzalinska, Tomczyk, Wasi, Wojtan, Wolyniec and Zukowsa.

Now if you notice, I BOLDED, some of the above family names (many of the others I am not certain of) in the list of possible cousins. I cannot speak to the commonness of those names, but each one is from my paternal grandparent’s (Eliasz/Leszczynski) parishes and some of those are actually in my family tree.

By all means go read Megan’s article. It is another interesting piece on Martha Stewart (aka Jadwiga Kostyra).

So Martha perhaps we are cousins (albeit very distant ones). Any Eliasz/Elijasz, Leszczynski, Ozarow, Major, Wlecial, Kedzierski in your tree (Martha)?

How about you readers? Any of you have those names in your tree? Do you research in Biechow or Pacanow (villages in the old Kielce wojewodztwo)? Email me!

Genealogy Indexer – Logan Kleinwak — #Genealogy, #Historical, #Directories, #Military, #Yizkor

     Stanczyk’s prior article on Genealogy Indexer – the Logan Kleinwaks’ website that indexes historical city directories or other historical lists (i.e. Yizkor Books, Military Muster Lists, etc.) covered this amazing genealogical resource who deserves a much higher rating than #116 on the current Top 125 Genealogical Websites.

Since my first blog article about GenealogyIndexer.org , Logan Kleinwaks has added virtual keyboard (a software icon) for generating diacritical letters (think ogroneks and umlauts) as well as non Latin characters (think Hebrew or Cyrillic) to make searching easier. This jester even uses that excellent piece of coding to generate the text for articles or data entry into genealogy software. You may remember, I wrote about that in “Dying for Diacriticals” or any of the other dozen articles (some of which cover GenealogyIndexer).

Well in the last month Logan has really outdone himself in adding material to the website! I give up trying to keep up with the huge amounts of data he is publishing. You really need to follow Logan on twitter (@gindexer). Thank You Logan for your amazing efforts.

Slavic Roots Seminar — #Polish, #Genealogy, #PA, #PGSCTNE

Stanczyk, had a good day today. On a lark, I went down to see, with a new friend (Bob S.), the Slavic Roots Seminar at Nazareth Academy in Philadelphia, PA.

I thoroughly enjoyed the short one-day seminar put on by Lisa Alzo (The Accidental Genealogist),  Matthew Bielawa (HalGal.com),  and Jonathan Shea (this jester owns no less than four of his books — from which I learned to read Polish/Russian from his two volume series In Their Words: A Genealogist’s Translation Guide).

I know both Matthew and Jonathan are PGSCT&NE members (as is this jester) and I thought the comfort level/comraderie between the three of these presenters meant that Lisa too was also a member/officer of PGSCT&NE.

This free seminar was extremely well attended (dozens of people). When you reach that level of critical mass you can find another genealogist who researches in an area near to your own family. Sure enough, someone near Bob & I was speaking about their Lithuanian heritage (Bob’s family line).

The three presenters were very knowledgeable and also very personable — often the audience were amused at one of the presenter’s jests.

This jester was also happy to finally hook up with Donna Pointkouski, the very talented blogger, of  the rather literate genealogy blog, “What’s Past is Prologue“. While she was not a presenter today (pity), she too was a part of the seminar set-up / organization.

My thanks to all four of these expert genealogists, writers, and presenters — you made today a better day !

Happy Easter – A Dziennik Polski Cache From Steven Kalemkiewicz

fellow genealogist, Steve Kalemkiewicz was doing some research using the Dziennik Polski – Detroit, Historical Newspapers. He discovered, Stanczyk’s paean to that newspaper (at the preceding link) and graciously provided this jester with a slew of new data/funeral cards. He had collected a funeral card of his ancestor (Marta Dłubisz) and he thought to gather others as well from his research efforts and pass them along to my ever growing database of Detroit Polonia, as chronicled in the former daily newspaper, Dziennik Polski (Detroit). The new funeral cards (all from 1963) can be found with some already existing samples at the follow web address:

http://goo.gl/FYHPt

Here are the names of the new files (Funeral Cards):

Wrobel, JozefSr.jpg

Szwed, Teofila.jpg

Zysk, Stella.jpg

Zajaczkowski, JanK.jpg

Sitek, Katarzyna.jpg

Glowczewski, AntoniP.jpg

Kopycki, Franciszek.jpg

Switaj, Aleksander.jpg

Banka, Klara.jpg

Kosinska, CeciliaR.jpg

Rataj, EugeniuszV.jpg

Pawczuk, Kazimierz.jpg

Zamlynska, Wiktoria.jpg

Dlubisz, Marta.jpg

Dziennik Polski Detroit Newspaper Database App Search Page

Stanczyk,

was finally able to use his training from Steve Morse’s presentation at RootsTech 2012 to create a One-Step Search App for the Dziennik Polski Detroit Newspaper Database.

To search on 30,920 Polish Vital Record Events, just go to the new Dziennik Polski Detroit Newspaper Database App Search page (on the right, under PAGES,  for future reference).

FAQ

For more background on the Dziennik Polski Detroit Newspaper click on the link.

You can search on the following fields:

Last Name – exact means the full last name exactly as you typed it. You can also select the ‘starts with’ radio button and just provide the first few starting characters. Do not use any wild card characters!

First Name - exact means the full first name exactly as you typed it. You can also select the ‘starts with’ radio button and just provide the first few starting characters. Do not use any wild card characters!

Newspaper Date - exact means that you need to enter the full date. Dates are of the format:

06/01/1924 (for June 1st, 1924). Format is MM/DD/YYYY. Leading zeros are required for a match.

You can use ‘contains’ radio button to enter a partial date. The most useful partial is just to provide the Year (YYYY). Do not use any wild card characters!

Event Type - exact means the full event type. This is not recommended. You SHOULD select the ‘starts with’ radio button and just provide the first few starting characters. Do not use any wild card characters! Uppercase is not required.

Valid Events Types: BIRTH,  CONSULAR,  DEATH,  or MARRIAGE

Indexer - exact means the full indexer exactly as you typed it. You can also select the ‘starts with’ radio button and just provide the first few starting characters. Do not use any wild card characters!

The Indexer is meant to be informational only, but you could conceivably want to search on this field too, so it is provided.

Allen County Public Library – Hosts, “March Madness: Genealogy Style” March 18-22

Source: JOAN GRIFFIS - Commercial-News           ( With Additional Notes by Stanczyk) 

— The Genealogy Center @ Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN, will be hosting its annual “March Madness: Genealogy Style” March 18-22 to “jumpstart your research for your ethnic ancestor.”

Allen County Public Library is one of the nation’s finest genealogical resources. The Allen County Public Library –  Genealogy page is here: http://www.genealogycenter.org/ .

 March 18 -“Researching Your Polish Ancestors” will be 1-2 p.m.  The Polish Genealogy event  is  for 

 Researchers interested in their Polish roots are faced with a unique set of challenges, from the language to the infinite spelling variations and the shifting boundaries on the map. This program will explore these challenges, important American sources, both print and online, and research strategies that can shed light on your ancestral town in Poland.

Location: Meeting Room A.

To register for this class. Call 260-421-1225  -or-  Email: Genealogy@ACPL.Info.

For more information, or to view the March Madness brochure.

March 19 – “French-Canadian Research at the Genealogy Center” will be 2-3 p.m.

March 20 – “The Riches of First Nations Heritage: Beginning Native American Genealogical Research” from 2-3 p.m. 

March 21 – Learn about Revolutionary War Service in “It Was Everybody’s War,” from 2-3 p.m.

March 22 – Locate those “Shadowed Roots: Antebellum Era Records for African-American Research,” from 10-11 a.m.

To register or obtain more information, call Melissa Shimkus at (260) 421-1225.

To learn more about the genealogical collection at that prestigious library, visit http://www.genealogycenter.org.

Dying For Diacriticals … Beyond ASCII — #HowTo, #Genealogy, #Polish

Stanczyk mused recently upon a few of the NAMEs in my genealogy:

Bębel, Elijasz, Guła, Leszczyński, Kędzierski, Wątroba, Wleciał, Biechów, Pacanów, Żabiec

If you want to write Elijasz (or any of its variants) you are golden. But each of the other names require a diacritic (aka diacritical mark). Early on, I had to drop the diacritics, because I did not have computer software to generate these characters (aka glyphs). So my genealogy research and my family tree were recorded in ASCII characters. For the most part that is not a concern unless you are like John Rys and trying to find all of the possibly ways your Slavic name can be spelled/misspelled/transliterated and eventually recorded in some document and/or database that you will need to search for. Then the import becomes very clear. Also letters with an accent character (aka diacritic) sort differently than  letters without the diacritic mark. For years, I thought Żabiec was not in a particular Gazetteer I use, until I realized there was a dot above the Z and the dotted-Z named villages came after all of the plain Z (no dot) villages and there was Żabiec many pages later! The dot was not recorded in the Ship Manifest, nor in a Declaration of Intent document. So I might not have found the parish so easily that Żabiec belongs to. I hope you are beginning to see the import of recording diacritics in your family tree.

How?

The rest of my article today teaches you how to do this. Mostly we are in a browser, surfing the ‘net, in all its www glory. After my “liberal indoctrination” (aka #RootsTech 2012), I have switched browsers to Google’s Chrome (from Mozilla Firefox) browser. Now I did this to await the promised “microdata” technology that will improve my genealogical search experience.  I am still waiting,  Mr Google !!!   But while I am waiting, I did find a new browser extension that I am rather fond of that solves my diacritical problem: Virtual Keyboard Interface 1.45. I just double-click in a text field and a keyboard pops-up:

Just double-click on a text field, say at Ancestry.com . Notice the virtual keyboard has a drop down (see “Polski“), so I could have picked Русский (for Russian) if I was entering Cyrillic characters into my family tree.

But I want to keep using my browser …            OK!  Now I used to prepare an MS Word document or maybe a Wordpad document with just the diacriticals I need (say Polish, Russian, and Hebrew) then I can cut & paste them from that editor into my browser or computer application as needed — a bit tedious and how did I create those diacritical characters anyway?

I use  Character Map in Windows and Character Palette -or- Keyboard Viewer  on the MAC:

Now if I use one of these Apps, then I can forgo the Wordpad document  ( of special chars. ) altogether and just copy / paste from these to generate my diacritical characters.

What I would like to see from web 2.0 pages and websites is what Logan Kleinwaks did on his WONDERFUL GenealogyIndexer.org website. Give us a keyboard widget like Logan’s, please ! What does a near perfect solution look like …

Logan has thoughtfully provided ENglish, HEbrew, POlish, HUngarian, ROmanian, DEutsche (German),  Slavic, and RUssian characters. Why is it only nearly perfect? Logan, may I please have a SHIFT (CAPITAL) key on the BKSP / ENTER line for uppercase characters? That’s it [I know it is probably a tedious bit of work to this].

Beyond ASCII ?

The title said  beyond Ascii. So is everything we have spoken about. Ascii is a standard that is essentially a typewriter keyboard,  plus the extra keys (ex. Backspace, Enter, Ctrl-F, etc.) that do special things on a computer. So what is beyond Ascii? Hebrew characters (ℵ), Chinese/Japanese  glyphs (串), Cyrillic (Я), Polish slashed-L (Ł), or Dingbats (❦ – Floral Heart). You can now enter of these beyond ascii characters (UNICODE)  in any program with the above suggestions.

Programmer Jargon – others  proceed with caution …

The above are all UNICODE character sets.  UTF-8 can encode all of the UNICODE characters (1.1 Million so far) in nice and easy 8bit bytes (called octets — this is why UTF-8 is not concerned with big/little endianess). In fact, UTF-8‘s first 128 characters is an exact 1:1 mapping of ASCII making ascii a valid UNICODE characters set. In fact, more than half of all web pages out on the WWW (‘Net) are encoded with UTF-8. Makes sense that our gedcom files are too! In fact UTF-8 can have that byte-order-mark (BOM) at the front of our gedcom or not and it is still UTF-8. In fact the UTF-8 standard prefers there be no byte order mark [see Chapter 2 of UNICODE] at the beginning of a file. So please FamilySearch remove the BOM from the GEDCOM standard.

If FamilySearch properly defines the newline character in the gedcom grammar [see Chapter 5, specifically 5.8 of UNICODE] then there is nothing in the HEAD tag that would be unreadable to a program written in say Java (which is UTF-16 capable to represent any character U+0000 to U+FFFF) unless there is an invalid character which then makes the gedcom invalid. Every character in the HEAD tag is actually defined within 8bit ascii which can be read by UTF-8 and since UTF-8 can read all UNICODE encodings you could use any computer language that is at least UTF-8  compliant to read/parse the HEAD tag (which has the CHAR tag and its value that defines the character set). Everything in the HEAD tag, with the exception of the BOM is within the 8bit  ascii character set. Using UTF-8 as a default encoding to read the HEAD will work even if there is a BOM.

London, England – WDYTYA — #Polish, #Genealogy, #TV,#Show

At the London “Who Do YOU Think You Are?“, the largest genealogy event in the English-speaking world will be held this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in London, England @ a three-day expo at the Olympia Exhibition Hall (February 24-26, 2012).

Between February 24 and 26 the Kresy-Siberia Foundation will have a stand at the “Who Do You Think You Are?” — the world’s biggest family history show.

Tens of thousands of Poles imprisoned in Russian labour camps or “gulags” across the far reaches of Siberia between 1940 and 1941 were freed in 1941, when Russia decided to become an ally of Great Britain in 1941 the prisoners were freed to form the Polish Second Corps — who fought so heroically in North Africa and the Italian campaign of 1943-44, (i.e. battle of Monte Cassino).

Many of these men settled in and adopted as their home, the communities in Bath, Trowbridge and Bristol. Perhaps this event will lead to new connections between these displaced families and their ancestors/descendants in other parts of the world.

Stanczyk wishes to note that the Polish Second Corps included: Wojtek soldier bear – mascot of 22nd Artillery Supply Company, who I have written about a few times.

 

http://www.thisissomerset.co.uk/Chance-Polish-descendants-trace-roots/story-15298065-detail/story.html

 

Pączki Day – A Fat Tuesday Remembrance — #Polish, #Culture

Pączki Day – In the Detroit area suburbs, we always waited for Fat Tuesday to come around. Because, on the last day of Mardis Gras (Fat Tuesday) we would queue up in long lines — typically at an Oaza Bakery to buy our Pączki Donuts.

Now it has been over two decades since then and we do not have any Oaza Bakeries out here on the East Coast and there are few and far between Polish bakeries/delis of any kind around and none near where I live. I used to buy a few dozen Pączki Donuts and bring them into work to introduce the non-Poles to some Polish culture. Always a hit!

 

Tomorrow, Ash Wednesday,  is the beginning of the austere Lenten season. The forty day season of preparation celebrating the arrival of God’s Good News & Holy Spirit  into our midst that culminates in Easter. Alleluia !

 

I miss the Pączki Donuts. Fastnachts are just not the same. One year, I thought I would make Pączki Donuts for the family, so I gathered an authentic,  ”Old Busia”, recipe and bought a fryer and made my dough for the Pączki.   I picked out my favorite fruit fillings and fried my little masterpieces and sprinkled the warm donuts with powdered sugar.  These were passable  substitutes for the beloved Polish culture that I had left behind in MI. For a few years I carried proudly my scar of an oil burn caused by one of my over zealous little Pączki helpers. The scar has long since disappeared, but the memory remains.

 

Have A Blessedly Happy Lenten Season Everyone!

PA-Luzerne County-Wilkes Barre: Polish Genealogical Roundtable Today (1/21/2012)

Stanczyk, has been culling through his iGoogle page and Google News page on genealogy for things to do. Sorry for the last minute notice (it was just published today). Here is one local to the Greater Philadelphia area:

The Luzerne County Historical Society (LCHS)  is holding a roundtable discussion on Polish genealogical research from 10 a.m. to noon 1/21/2012 at the LCHS’s museum, 69 S. Franklin St., Wilkes-Barre. Call 570-822-1727 or email mrkburke@luzernehistory.org for reservations.

Discussion leaders are:  Hania Wictzak, a native of Poland & Polish history, culture and genealogy expert,  Anthony Paddock, a researcher who compiled the histories of Sacred Heart of Jesus Parochial School, Dupont, & Ss. Peter and Paul Church, Avoca,  and Joseph Habersky, retired high school science teacher & grandson of Polish immigrants and amateur genealogist.

On 1/28/2012, there will be two more programs: Polish Stories and Crafts for Children, ages 4 to 10, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. and a Polish Costume Embroidery discussion and demonstration by Alice Rae Kutish  in Luzerne County exhibit gallery from 1 to 3 p.m.