Over the last few weeks we have been discussing about Szukajwarchiwach.pl, the Polish website for “searching in archives” of the 2.4 Million Archive Images of historical vital records. So today we will look at the Suwalki Archive (Archive #63, http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/63#tabZasoby), in particular the WIZAJNY parish in which this jester has previously plumbed (for NARKIEWICZ / SZCZESNY).
First off, please take note of the two red circles in the image. The first red circle around the drop down menu is set to ’15’ by default. I usually choose the drop down value ‘100’. This drop down menu controls how many ‘Units’ are displayed on each page. So in order to minimize the number of pages and to maximize the number of items on each page, I routinely pick the ‘100’ from the drop down on each page.
Second, I was searching for WIZAJNY parish, But what I got/found was WIZAJNACH. You need to learn to recognize the root of the proper names/nouns in Polish. Fred Hoffman/Jonathan Shea call this applying the “chopping block” to get to the root of a word. So in the second red circle we find Wizajnach. That is the unit we wish to search.
Now notice the last column shows ‘5124’ (on 3 April 2013). This number is the number of “sheets” that have been scanned. So you should think images. The concept to take away is that if you see a ZERO, then there is nothing scanned; Try again later. But in our case we should expect 5,124 images were scanned across the year range: 1808-1905.
If you want to follow along, I picked the year 1822 which 86 scanned images and selected ‘100’ scanned images from the drop down which effectively shows all 86 scans one page. These 86 images are actually “thumbnail” images that you click on to see …
At the bottom of the image are two circles/icons. The ‘Z’ circle gives you a kind of magnifying glass for seeing a small part of the image, zoomed-in.
It is the other icon that we wish to click on (the square with the arrows at each corner, left of the ‘Z’). This icon left of the ‘Z’ pops up a window of the image more full sized. This full-sized image can be interacted with, zooming or panning or dragging the image around the viewing window. Please, note that at the bottom of this pop-up viewer window is a link you can click on to ‘Download‘ the scanned image to your hard-drive. So when you find your ancestor, you can download his/her scanned vital record.
Before I bring this post to a close. I wanted to point out how you can find the indexes (usually after the last record). This era of the 1820’s, the indexes are usually alphabetical with one letter per index page. So these kind of indexes look as shown below. You need to find the ‘Akt #’ in the index and then go to the scan that has the image of this Akt. The Akt #’s are on the outside of each image. They are on the left for the left-hand page and on the right for the right-hand page in the image scans.
As I mentioned in a prior blog article, the Wizajny parish is amazingly complete. It was also interesting because its records switch over in mid-year 1868. So you can see the records in Polish in early 1868, then in Russian starting in mid 1868. There are no Wizajny or even Suwalki records in genealodzy.pl (Metryk or Geneszukach) databases.
JEWISH GENEALOGISTS
Please note that in the Napoleonic era (about 1807-1829), the Catholic parishes in Poland were required to record the vital records for all faiths. So you will find Jewish birth / marriage / death records in the Catholic parishes books, if there were Jewish families in that area. For example, Akt #39 appears to be a Jewish birth record. Usually that is indicated in the text, but I did not see in Akt #39, BUT … if you look to the right of the record at the image on the left (you will see a ‘Zydow’ column with a ‘1’ in it) …
Prior Related Stanczyk Articles …
A Guide for Using Szukajwarchiwach.PL Poradnik
Stanczyk - Internet Muse™ 