Conscription Lists of Kieleckie Województwo — #Genealogy #Polish

On St. Patrick’s Day, Stanczyk wrote about two Conscription Lists (poborowi) from the 1930’s in Kielce Woj. There were 9,300++ records of families in this province/state whose son was born between 1891-1911.

Now this being an era immediately preceding World War 2, it is important to Jewish genealogists whose families lost 6 million family members, about 3 million in Poland alone (even 1 million Christian Poles) were lost to NAZI concentration camps. So alternative sources are critical.

That makes these Conscript Lists vital. In, my analysis of the smaller list (1933 had 2,000 families), almost 25% were Jewish families! So between 1932 & 1933 there were 9,300 families listed. If that 25% holds for both years, then Jewish genealogists can locate about 2,325 families (a conscript, man & his parents). The conscript is listed with his birth year, and residence. So that is some good data for genealogists, plus you can see the original spelling of the family name.

I am hopeful that I will have a laptop soon and be able to build a database of these vital records. Until then you can contact this jester via email and ask about your family (must be from Kielce Województwo) and I’ll look through the two Conscript Lists for you.

If your ancestor is from another Polish Województwo then you can search online archives or digital libraries for “poborowi” to locate conscript lists from those Województwa.

Holocaust Remembrance Day — 70th Anniversary

Today is the 70th Anniversary of the Anniversary when the survivors were freed from Nazi extermination camps around Europe. It is also the 27th Holocaust Remembrance day too [they coincide intentionally].

With the IS genocide and other crimes against humanity being performed by them and other terrorist organizations around the globe, it makes today more solemn, more imbued with God’s grace  than usual. Remember WWII ‘s horrors and strive to prevent these terrors ever again to honor that sacrifice of innocents from WWII.

 

— Stanczyk [for my wife & family]

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Family History Library – Teaches Russian Handwriting Classes — #Genealogy #Polish #Russian

If your family originates from Poland, … the partition that was under Russian Empire rule:

• Eastern Poland
• Ukraine
• Belarus
• Lithuania
• The Jewish Pale
• Western Russia (formerly Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth)
• Modern day Russian Federation or other former Russian Empire territories

then you need to be aware that the Family History Library has developed and will be teaching a class in Reading Russian Handwriting (and Printing) this November. It is a four-part class and open to all for free. Each class is two hours long.

The dates are Wednesdays:  November  5th, 12th, 19th, and 26th in classroom B2 starting at 2:00pm  (MT). 8 Hours of free Russian Handwriting instruction.

Classes will be taught by Dennis Everett .

For more details, see the FamilySearch Blog .

 

Stanczyk hopes the classes will be videotaped and posted on the Internet for those of us unable to go to Salt Lake City, UT this November [2014].

Family History Library can you make this a podcast or iTunes Class for downloading?

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Guide (Poradnik) for Using Metryki.GenBaza.PL — #Polish, #Archive, #Guide, #Poradnik

Stanczyk wrote about  metryki.genbaza.pl two months back and the fact they were posting online the state archives (civil) and church archives (diocese) and many people have asked me to write a guide (poradnik) on how to use  Metryki.GenBaza.pl  .

In this guide, I will be using a Macbook laptop with the Safari browser, but you should see just about the same thing with your PC or your browser. Obviously, if you are using a mobile device you user experience will be slightly different may not work if your smartphone is too small.

Œ Œ

Step By Step

Step One

            Go to the website: Metryki.GenBaza.pl 

You should see the web site with just the GRODZISK archive shown …

You will need to register for a free account in order to see of the available archives on metryki.genbaza.pl . The link to create a free account will take you back to GenPol.pl and you will need to fight your way through their poor user interface. Their interface (web app) did not indicate to me when it had created the account. But if you go back to metryki.genbaza.pl and click on the Login, you should be able to login to genbaza (using your email and your newly created password). If you are on a mobile device or a small/minimal browser window and do not see Login , then you should see a graphic button with three horizontal lines in upper right corner click on this followed by clicking on Login .

Now that you are logged in to genbaza you should see the following archives …

 

Step Two — Select An Archive

            For this guide, we will be working with AD_Kielce and AP_Kielce and the parish named Biechow. From the above screen shot you can see that we will be using the 1st and the 3rd archives. So if you are following along, then click on AD_Kielce (the church archive -or- Archiwum Diocesan).

You should see …

Notice it gives you the feedback that you are working with the AD Kielce “Album” contents. Think of this as an iPhoto photo album. Down the left side you will see a list of all available parishes that they have scanned images for. This is NOT a complete list of all parishes in the old province (wojewodztwo or Russian Gubernia) of Kielce, but just the ones they have some subset of images from the Kielce church archive.

The blue words, Bebelno, Bejsce, Biechow … etc. are just parishes. You will need to know the parish of your ancestral village to select the appropriate parish, but that is another blog or two. Let me take one step back, I said parishes, but there are also Jewish congregations / records  too in these online images. These parishes are just sub-directories of the AD Kielce Album. If there had been an image file also, it would be listed on the right side under the Album (or sub-directory) as a set of JPG (graphic file) files that viewable in a browser.

 

Step Three — Select A Parish (Congregation)

Let’s click on Biechow . You should see …

You will notice that I have scrolled down a bit from the top. At the top it lets you know that you are in the Biechow Album (sub-directory). There are no files here either. But down the left we see more blue text (that are clickable). Ignore the leading number before the underscore. The middle part is a year or a year range.  The last part, when it is present, is a set of letters.

The latest birth I can get from the AD Kielce (church archive) is 1855. [see 22_1835-1855_ur]. So please excuse me while I switch over to  AP_Kielce in order to work with Biechow births (ur) for 1886.

Decoding the ‘Letters’

These letters (or suffixes if you prefer) are fairly standard (with exceptions). If you see a suffix of,  “_ur”,  that is an indication that when you click on that sub-directory you will find online scanned images of Births (urodzony). So these suffixes are Polish abbreviations for Birth (ur), Marriage (sl), Death (zg) or Alegata (al). Each describes the type images you will see. What if there is no suffix? Then you will probably see  all of the event types: Birth, Marriage, Death and possibly Alegata too.

What is an Alegata (al)? These scanned images are requests to the church for a transcription from the church book or to lookup something like a birth or death possibly or most commonly to support a person’s need to re-marry by showing that s/he is widowed. These are transcriptions copied from the actual church register, by the current pastor of a past event (birth/marriage/death). These are usually accompanied by a fee, collected via stamps on the actual page. If these are present with the other event types, then they are at the end of the images.  Alegata are almost as valuable as the actual church entry. But the alegata can substitute when you do not have the actual church register (or image) available to you.

By the way the final set of letters that I want to mention are, “_moj”. If you see “_moj” as a suffix then that directory’s scanned, online images are of Jewish denomination records. The Moj. is an abbreviation for  mojżeszowe (Mosaic denomination as in Moses),

If you are following along, then you will need to click on the following to switch to 1886 Biechow parish in AP Kielce Archive:

At the top click on “Main page” at the top, then click on AP_Kielce (on left the next page), followed by  clicking on Biechow,  and finally clicking on 1886_023. After all of those clicks you should see …

Notice the website gives you a nice trail of breadcrumbs to find your way around all of these directories.  You should see between the top level and the “Album contents”, a line of clickable text:

GenBaza | AP Kielce | Biechow | 1886_023

These are your breadcrumbs that allow you to find your way back. Keep in mind that “Main page” at the top will always bring you back to the original set of Archives to pick from.

 

 

Step Four — Working With A List of Images

            On the right side you see Album Contents: 1886_023 with a list of scanned images named like :

_k_??????.jpg — where the ?????? are replaced by some consecutive numbers. These files contain one scanned image each. Typically the set of images is a parish register, including the front and back covers, such as they may be. So in practice I seldom look at the first or the last image, because I am too busy to look at book covers.

The images are number consecutively from front cover to last cover with all the pages in between as they are. There are a few possible arrangements of pages. Typically it is Births, then Marriage, then Deaths if the particular register you are looking at has two or more event types. I also see Marriage, then Birth, then Death. Death comes last always. In some parish registers you will also see Alegata and these come after Death if they exist.  Many times Alegata are in their own directory apart from the other vital record events.

Our goal is to avoid having to look at all pages one after another. To do that we must find the indexes that follow each vital record event. For example, after the Births, you usually find a page or two (or more) of an index of all of the births for that year — hopefully in alphabetical order. Sometimes the indexes do not exist. Sometimes the indexes have errors and sometimes a mistake is found and added at the end of the index. Always seek  out the index and look at ALL index pages for your surname(s) to catch these errors.

For this exercise I am going to click on the 27th file, named: _k_088054.jpg . I knew that this file contained the birth index scanned image. It is here that I want to say a few things about working with the scanned images. So clicking on _k_088054.jpg, you should see …

OK the text is in RUSSIAN/Cyrillic handwriting. Many of you cannot read this image. But some images are in Polish and a few are in Latin. So you can usually find somebody who reads these if you cannot read them yourself. But I do urge you to get the Jonathan Shea/Fred Hoffman book, “In Their Own Words” books and learn to read these church records.

In the upper left you will see two tool pallets. The top tool is for adjusting (from top to bottom):  Contrast, Brightness and Zoom. Mostly, you will not need to adjust Contrast or Brightness, but they are there for those who know how to use them to make the scanned images more readable. I do use the Zoom adjustments all of the time. The zoom tool (the bottom pick with a ‘magnifying glass’), you can zoom in (+) or zoom out (-). Depending on the scale of the image scanned and the health of your eyes, you will need to zoom in (+) 4 – 6 times to get a comfortable level of reading. Your eyes may differ.

As you zoom in, you will notice that a gray box in the preview too pallet  gets smaller.  This gray transparent rectangle is the area of image displayed in the viewer window. You can drag this gray square to quickly navigate the viewer window to area of the page I have focused on. The other method of navigating the image is to click on the image viewer, click-and-hold-and drag the image around. So whether you drag the gray box in the preview or click-drag (common called grab) the view image around make it so you can see the Russian ‘L’ and possibly Russian M on the index screen.

NOTE: You can scroll the viewer left-right and up-down, but I would not do that as you may not realize that you have NOT reached the image’s edge and that you need to click-drag some more to move the image to see the remainder of the image that scrolling cannot show you.

Now you my dear reader of this tutorial must indulge me. I want to call your attention to the 4th ‘L’ name in the image (лещунъска  виктория) — yeah, I know cursive Cyrillic does not look much like block letter Cyrillic characters, especially pre-1918 cursive Russian, which were before Bolshevik language reforms. It says, “Leszczynska Wiktorija” 118 (akt#) / 20 (Kart #). We use the Akt # as the record number in the parish register to find this record. This record is my grandmother!

Click on the 23. Do you see where it says “First photo  << 23  24  25   26  27 …  >> Last photo”? Click on the 23, which will take us 4 images before the image we are on (the gray highlighted 27 in the middle). You should see an image with a 124 in the upper left.  If you drag the image around in the viewer (or I find dragging the gray rectangle box in the preview tool) around the page you will see a total of 6 births on this page, number 124 through 129. The image looks like two pages of a parish register (book). The left page has records (akts) 124, 125, 126 and the right page has records 127, 128, 129.

We are looking for my grandmother who is act# 118. 118 is exactly 6 records before the first birth record shown on this page. Since we six births per page, my grandmother’s birth record should be the 1st record on the previous page. So let’s click on the 22 in the: “First photo  << 19  20  21   22  23 …  >> Last photo” near the top. After clicking on 22, you should see …

Do you see the Akt #118 at the upper left? We have found our record. These particular birth records list the baby’s name at the top. Do you see: Leszczynska Waleryja ? Wait a minute the index said, Wiktorija??? I said before the indexes contain errors. Waleryja Leszczynska is indeed my grandmother and I knew she was born in Biechow parish in 1886,  but it was not until GenBaza put the AP_Kielce images online that I actually could prove her birth date / place.  You can imagine my joy. Now imagine what your joy will be when you find your grandparents!

Notice there is a button at the top,  “Download photo” (Pobierz zdjęcie). The last thing you need to do is download this keepsake image you found.  On a Mac when you do this the image is downloaded to your “Downloads” folder. It also brings up a Preview of the image when the download completes. Close out of of Preview. In your browser is a new tab, “Untitled” with nothing in the window. Close this tab and you will be back in the image viewer tab.  In Windows you get a new browser window (named Untitled), your downloads  window opens and the images goes into whatever Windows directory you download into (typically called Downloads). Likewise, close the Untitled browser window and return to your previous browser window. One note, on the mac the image download is TIFF by default and in Windows it is JPG. So on the Mac when your Preview comes up … click on File menu, then Export menu item and select either PNG or JPEG to get a file format that you can use on the Internet (like on Ancestry.com) for example. The Internet browsers natively work with: JPG/JPEG, GIF or PNG (or PDF too). Keep your images in one of those formats.

There is one more thing I have yet to emphasize. I was trying to teach you that you can jump around the images by doing simple math. We were on Akt# 124 (of records 124 through 129) of six records per page. If my grandmother’s akt# had been 100 (instead of 118) then I would have had to click 4 pages left of page 23 or page 19 on the line,  “First photo  << 19  20  21   22  23 …  >> Last photo”. This little math tip can save you the time of scrolling page after page. I use this tip to navigate more than 4 pages at a time too, but I will leave that exercise for the reader to figure out.

Genealodzy.pl – Geneszukacz Database, Pacanow 1875-1908 — #Polish, #Genealogy, #Pacanow

On http://genealodzy.pl/  Stanczyk  saw that they have an updated GENESZUKACZ database.

My ancestral village, PACANOW, was indexed for BIRTHS (1875-1908). I was able to verify it was correct with my grandfather (whose Birth Record I have) and a few others. I also found some I did not know about !!!   I only wish they had the images (like in METRYKI database). Thank you: Wojciech Liśkiewicz (who I think was the indexer)!

Later in the day they(he) also added MARRIAGES(1875-1908) too.

BIRTHS

Eliasz Births

MARRIAGES

Eliasz Marriages

See Also:

Domagala, Hajek, Kedzierski, Odomski, Paluch, Poniewierski, Siwiec, Wlecial, Wojtys, Zasucha, Zdziebko, Zwolski

A Guide for Using Szukajwarchiwach.PL Poradnik — #Polish, #Archive, #Guide, #Poradnik

Stanczyk has been writing for a while about Polish National Archives announcing via their National Digital Archive (NAC) that Poland would be putting 2.4 Million digital images of church / synagogue metric images from their regional archives online. So today’s blog post is a guide (poradnik) about how to use szukajwarchiwach.pl to view these images.

It is easiest if you know the regional archive you are interested in, but you do not need to know it really. I will demonstrate with the RZESZOW regional archive. This archive was in Austrian-Poland partition, so its records should be for those locales to Rzeszow. Recall from my post, Polish State Archives – Numbers (13 March 2013) where I listed the archive numbers, that Rzeszow = 59.

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Step By Step

Step One

            Go to the archive of interest – http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/59#tabInformacje

You should see the web site with the information for the Rzeszow regional Archive.

Notice the two links: Poprzednie archiwum  and Następne archiwum . With these two links you go through the list of regional archives. The list of archives only includes those archives for which they are presently loading images. If you hover over my two links above you will see ‘Previous Archive’ and ‘Next Archive’.

Step Two

            Click on ‘Resource’ [see 2 in red circle] –  which brings you to the list of collections at Rzeszow. http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/59#tabZasoby

You should see …

Step Three

 Click on Collection Number ‘59/20/0‘ for the civil records from the Roman Catholic parish of Błażowej – http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/59/20/0#tabZespol

You should see …

Step Four

Click on ‘Units 20/20‘ in red circle – http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/59/20/0#tabJednostki

You should see …

Step Five

Click on ‘Reference Code 59/20/0/-/1‘ in red circle – http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/59/20/0/-/1#tabJednostka

You should see …

Step Six

Click on ‘Digital Copies 107‘ to see a table of 107 scanned images – http://www.szukajwarchiwach.pl/59/20/0/-/1#tabSkany

You should now see the scanned images …

There are 107 images [currently] and the data looks like it is in the Latin Box format. Since there is no index, you will have visit each image in turn and look at each row of boxes to see if that birth/baptism is for one of your ancestors.

So that is a visual guide for how you navigate the  szukajwarchiwach.pl website to get to the scanned images. Obviously, you will need to focus on the villages/parishes for your ancestor. That may be another Archive (besides Rzeszow) or if it is in the Rzeszow archive then you need to pay closer attention to the parishes in the Rzeszow collections and finally, you will need to select Birth/Marriage/Death (Urodziny/Małżeństwo/Zgony) for the year of interest to you.

You will still need to be able to deal with Latin or Polish or Russian or German language in the records to understand what you see in the scanned images. You will also need to be able to read the handwriting. But you can do this!

Good Luck!

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

1876 Marriage of Walenty Paluch to Magdalena Major – #Polish, #Genealogy

Genealogical Finds @RootsTech 2012

LDS Microfilm # 1192352 – Pacanów 1876-1877

Stanczyk’s, first find (after some time) was the 1876 Marriage of Walenty Paluch to Magdalena Major. I research mostly: Eliasz, Leszczynski, Solomon, and Wolf (my grandparent’s lines & my wife’s grandparents lines). Of a necessity, I record affiliated families and siblings in order to break through the brick walls, but mostly I trace direct lineage, with additions for lineages of 2nd/3rd cousins’ lines who are genealogists (since we work collaboratively and I wish to record these genealogists in the tree and preserve the connection to me). Also since my Social Network Analysis experiment proved out,  in my mind,  I keep an eye out for the affiliated families now.

Well when I saw a marriage record (Akt Małżeństwa/Брак запись) index in 1876 Pacanów parish (parafia) that names: Paluch & Major — I was very interested to see  who might be involved.

Record (in Russian/Cyrillic)

#15 – Paluch Walenty

Major Maryanna

Pacanów

The names are written in reverse order (fairly common in this parish, but not quite universally done).

On 15 March 1876 (Gregorian date, 2nd date of the double dates) there was a marriage between Walenty Paluch age 20 (born about 1856), born in Beszówa and the son of Jan & Agnieszka Paluch — wait a minute Jan & Agnieszka are my great-grandmother Maryanna Paluch Elijasz ‘s parents, therefore Walenty Paluch is my great-grandmother’s brother.

Ok so now this affiliated family name is of interest to me! Who is Walenty Paluch  marrying ?

Magdalena Major, age 18 (born about 1858), born in Dobrowodzie, but living in Pacanów parish, who is the daughter of Martin & Katarzyna Major — wait a minute these are my great-grandmother Aniela Major Leszczyński  ‘s parents. That means that Magdalena Major is my great-grandmother Aniela’s sister!  Wow this is amazing that two of my great-grandparent’s siblings are marrying each other!

OK so this is a marriage between an Elijasz great-grandfather’s affiliated  relative (brother-in-law) and a Leszczyński  great-grandfather’s affiliated relative (sister-in-law). I guess that Social Network Analysis pays another dividend to my research.

So how cool is that? If I had ignored Paluch and/or Major as not in my direct lineage, I would not have found this record and found two previously unknown siblings to my great-grandmothers. I also see that I need to research Beszówa parish for Paluch family data and that Dobrowodz village (I do not know this village or if it is a parish) is a place to go search for Major family data.

— RootsTech 2012 Treasure

Is GEDCOM Dead? Date/Place of Death, Please?

The RootsTech Conference is living up to its name. Everywhere there was a sea of: iPhones/Androids, iPads (in huge numbers), and laptops. Even the very elderly were geared up. Google, Dell, and Microsoft were at RootsTech. — why not Apple, especially since their customers were present in LARGE numbers??? [note to Tim Cook have Apple sponsor and show up as a vendor.]

According to Ryan Heaton (FamilySearch), “GEDCOM is stale.” He went on to speak about GEDCOMX as the next standard as if GEDCOM were old and/or dead. They were not even going to make GEDCOMX backwards compatible! In a future session I had with Heaton I asked the Million dollar question, “How do I get my GEDCOM into GEDCOMX”? After a moments pause he said they’d write some sort of tool to import or convert the existing GEDCOM files. Well that was reassuring??? So they want GEDCOMX to be a standard but FamilySearch are the only ones working on it and they have not had the ability to reach out to the software vendors yet (I know I asked).

My suggestion was to publish the language (like HTML, SQL, or GEDCOM). I asked for “railroad tracks“, what we used to call finite state automata, and what Oracle uses to demonstrate SQL syntax, statements that are valid with options denoted and even APIs for embedding SQL into other programming languages. Easy to write a parser or something akin to a validator (like W3C has for HTML).

Dallan Quass  took a better tack on GEDCOM. His approach was more evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. He collected some 7,000+ gedcoms

GEDCOM Tags

and wrote an open source parser for the current GEDCOM standard (v5.5). He analyzed the flaws in the current standard and saw unused tags, tags like ALIA
that were always used wrong, custom tags and errors in applying the standard. He also pointed out that the concept of a NAME is not fully defined in the standard and so is left to developers (i.e. vendors) to implement as they want. These were the issues making gedcoms incompatible between vendors. He said his open source parser could achieve 94% round trip from one vendor to another vendor.

Now that made the GEDCOMX guys take notice — here was their possible import/conversion tool.

The users just want true portability of their own gedcoms and the ability to not have to re-enter pics, audio, movies over and over again. RootsTech’s vision of APIs that would allow the use of “authorities” to conform names, places, and sources would also help move genealogy to the utopian future Jay Verkler spoke of at the keynote. APIs would also provide bridges into the GEDCOM for chart/output tools, utilities(merge trees), Web 2.0 sharing across websites / search engines / databases (more utopian vision).

GEDCOM is the obvious path forward. Why not improve what is mostly working and focus on the end users and their needs?

FamilySearch get vendors involved and for God’s sake get Dallan Quass involved. Publish a new GEDCOM spec with RailRoad tracks (aka Graphic Syntax Diagrams) and then educate vendors and Users on the new gedcom/gedcomx.    Create a new gedcom validator and let users run their current gedcoms against it to produce new gedcoms (which should be backward compatible with old gedcom to get at least 94% compliance that Quass can already do)!

Ask users for new “segments” in the railroad tracks to get new features that real users and possibly vendors want in future gedcoms. Let there be an annual RootsTech keynote where all attendees can vote via the RootsTech app on the proposed new gedcom enhancements.

How about that FamilySearch? Is that doable? What do you my readers think? Email me (or comment below).

P.S.       Do Not use UML models to communicate the standard. It is simply not accessible to genealogists. Trust me I am a Data Architect.

Pathways & Passages – Journal of PGSCT&NE — #Polish, #Genealogy, #Society

Stanczyk, thinks he just got the new issue of Pathways & Passages. I’m not certain because it says 2011 on the cover and in the page footers. But of course, who doesn’t have a hard time writing the new year on their checks.

That aside, their column, “Online Resources” was particularly good this issue (whichever it was, Summer 2011 -or- Summer 2012).

For the PA Polonia …

They had two online resources. For Schuykill County, PA (moje zona has family from that county — in fact I stumbled upon this site a few years ago). So I can state it is a very good from my own experience.

They did mention Lackawanna County, PA (but did not give the URL — so off to Google for you). There are marriages: 1885-1995 and an index to wills.

The Next Online Resources …

Passaic County, NJ – Naturalizations.  This turned out to be an EXCELLENT find! I found a Jozef Zwolski  whose ship manifest I had found before. Now Jozef was a brother of Roman Zwolski and both of these men are sons Jan Zwolski & Petronella Elijasz ! They happen to be from both Biechow & Pacanow parishes. Joseph’s Declaration of Intent was listed and you could view the image (and download a PDF of the document)! So I now have a birthday for Joseph and it matches up well to his ship manifest and his residences in Russian-Poland match up well too — so I am pretty convinced I have my ancestor.

Joseph apparently served in WWI and is taking advantage of privileges as a citizen soldier to become an American.

Antwerp Police Immigration Index. This last resource given, I would not have thought to look into (not having any Belgians in my direct lineage). But apparently, if you stayed longer than normal before your passage to American (from Antwerp port), you had to register with Antwerp Police. A good many Polish must have fell into that category. I did not find any of mine, but did find some whose last names match those in my family tree. If you do find your ancestor — you have a name and a village to ascertain that you have the correct person. But you will gain a birthday. This is another nice database from  FamilySearch.org.

I am glad I belong to some of the various Polish Genealogical Societies — these little resources sometimes pay big dividends.

A Little Bit of Blog Bigos … #Genealogy, #Website #Rankings, #SSDI

Stanczyk has a lot of catch-up to do. I blame it on the season and the Blood Red Lunar Eclipse — certainly that must be cause of the madness this December.

SSDI

So many blogs have written about the Social Security Death Master File and the many related issues. First millions of records were dropped by the SSA. Next the SSA, and this has probably been going on for months, started redacting the names of the parents on the SS5 Applications, thus eliminating the usefulness of that research tool. Now Congress has bullied the paid genealogy databases (and even Rootsweb) to drop the SS# from their databases on deaths in the last ten years. Rootsweb just dropped their Social Security Database altogether!

Now let me remind the lame (not lame duck) Congress that the Social Security Death Master File is used to inform banks/financials/loan companies/credit card companies etc. that these SS#’s are of the DECEASED and that they should not grant any NEW credit applications with the Social Security Numbers in the Social Security Death Master File! Ergo, having the SS# of a dead person should not avail any criminal and should in fact result in their arrest for fraud, as the afore mentioned companies are supposed to check the Social Security Death Master File against credit apps. Therefore, there is really is no need to  eliminate the SS#’s from Ancestry.com or any other database. By eliminating these numbers you cannot order the SS5 Applications — which is just as well since the SSA has made them much less useful. The result is: genealogists have less data available and the US Government has less MONEY($) available since the genealogists now have two reasons not to order the SS5 Applications any longer. The result is the US Government will now lose another source of income??? Boy, is this CONGRESS the biggest bunch of idiots or what?

Eastmans / Website Rankings

Dick Eastman’s Online Newsletter recently wrote about new website rankings and gave the URL/Link to a Anglo/Celtic website. Needless to say this is the website that caused this jester to produce a BETTER set of website rankings (please see my page above or at Genealogy Website Rankings). I ask you to please utilize my Genealogy Rankings as they are based upon resources in more common use in the USA (and Canada), such as SteveMorse.org or EllisIsland.org or CastleGarden.org or any Polish-related website or blog. So I am compelled — not because I am as popular as EOGN.com (#12),  vs Stanczyk (#120). But clearly leaving off the Steve Morse, or Ellis Island or the US NARA or Fold3 is not accurate in the USA and certainly NOT in the GLOBAL Genealogy market as a whole. Now this is foremost a blog about Slavic Genealogy (Russian-Poland overtly emphasized) and so I have made an effort to seek out and reflect Polish websites of Polish Genealogy websites/blogs (when their popularity reflects the need). I have intentionally not included GENPOL.com because its Global Ranking is too low. It is a very well known website to Polish Genealogists and I am sure in Poland itself it would be in the top 125 (just not Globally). So while this blog has a certain voice, my website rankings deserve as much attention as those that Dick Eastman writes about. Perhaps one day EOGN.com will notice this blog and its Genealogy Website Rankings List — you my faithful readers can help me by emailing Dick Eastman and informing him about my set of Genealogy Website Rankings which is very thorough and includes the Top 125 Genealogy Websites — including Polish & American & Jewish (re NonAnglo-Celtic) websites too. EOGN should not be allowed to perpetuate its blind-spot to other genealogies. Now let me hasten to add the other Rankings does in fact mostly agree with my own Rankings on the top 10 or 20 Genealogy Websites — his Rankings lack Polish/American/Jewish sites and my own Rankings miss a few Anglo websites and all of Ancestry.com’s other country sites (UK, CA, DE, AU, etc.) — which should probably be aggregated into Ancestry.com but due to their many domains their totals are segregated by Alexa (ratings agency) and this jester chose not to include so many Ancestry.com properties in the Rankings (which would exclude so many other worthy websites).

As before, let me remind new genealogists that this Genealogy Website Ranking could be utilized to create or augment your genealogy Bookmarks/Favorites. Obviously, they are valuable since a LOT of genealogists visit them.

MOCAVO

I forgot to mention about Mocavo.com (I put it into the newest Genealogy Website Rankings). I have briefly mentioned Mocavo.com before (when I found them in my blog analytics). They are a new search engine, akin to Google. However, they are a Genealogy Search Engine and as such is enhanced to understand GEDCOM, genealogy, dates, places, etc. and their search results are more intensely accurate then say what you would get from Google. They also have the ability search databases and include those in results, as well as GEDCOMs. You have the ability to submit your family tree (GEDCOM) to Mocavo and they can provide you with notices of potential new matches — much like Ancestry.com does for their subscribers. So instead of Googling you Family Tree, try MOCAVOing your Family Tree.

John Elijasz Eliasz Elias

In Michigan, the Big Boy restaurants are owned by the ELIAS Brothers (as opposed to Bob’s or Frisch’s in other parts of the USA). In fact, in MI the Elias name is somewhat common, especially among Italians and Syrians. So unless I see a name like Boleslaw Elias or Wladyslaw Elias — I tend to filter those names out as NOT Polish.

My Grand-Uncle Jan Elijasz was born in Pacanow on 6th-December-1880 the first born child of Jozef Elijasz and Maryanna Paluch. I have his church birth record. I also have his marriage record to Pelagia Kedzierski (also in Pacanow). I have his Ellis Island ship arrival record (as Eliasz) with his brother-in-law Wlodzimierz Kedzierski. Once Jan/John was here in the USA, his name varied back and forth between Elijasz and Eliasz, before settling on Eliasz. I have in the US Censuses from 1920 and 1930. I also had his WWI Draft Registration (which referenced my grandfather Jozef as the nearest contact). But I could never find a record of his death.

I constantly searched for him in Mt Olivet cemetery and its records, after all my grandfather, his brother was there (as were others). My father and one uncle told me he died after my grandfather (a short time my uncle said). My dad remembered a train going by the cemetery at the burial (he was young). So I searched for cemeteries in Detroit and also in Macomb County (last known residence from 1930 Census) that were near to railroad tracks and called cemetery after cemetery (year after year in case they found new records). Annually around the new year, I would post a searching-for plea in the MI genealogy mailing lists and Yahoo groups for MI (Wayne/Macomb). I even started researching historical newspapers of MI, vowing to search the entire decade of the 1930’s until I found him. That is how my efforts with the Dziennik Polski newspaper came about.

One year a fellow genealogical researcher (with Mt Clemens Public Library), Ann Faulkner, took pity upon my annual plea — being familiar with my Dziennik Polski efforts and she, unbeknownst to me, undertook a small search for the death of my great-uncle John Eliasz using the information I supplied in my posts. Well I have told this story before in my blog, about how this kind woman found John Eliasz and I was certain it was him because she found an obituary and a church burial record (transcription) that listed enough other details for her and I to confirm that this John ELIAS was my grand-uncle John Eliasz. With this info I did order his death certificate (see below). The death certificate listed my great-grandparents’ names, so I had yet another further confirmation. I have to admit if I had seen ‘John Elias’, I may have ignored it due to not being “Polish enough” and due to the fact that Syrians and Italians from MI outnumbered the Polish Eliasz by a good bit. I might have missed it, but Ann fortunately, did not.

I cannot explain how my grand-aunt, Mary Eliasz Gronek who reported his death had not corrected the various people, writing his obituary, his church burial record, and even his death certificate. My dear grand-aunt had a horrible record of mis-dating her brothers’ birth dates on their death certificates — so it is a VERY good thing I have their birth records from the church in Pacanow to have the correct dates. On my grandfather’s death certificate, she had even filed an affidavit to correct his birth date (which was very nearly correct) to a very much wrong birth date — I had so many birth dates for my grandfather, that if I had not found his birth record, I would NEVER have known anything more than a consensus birth of “late March 1885” [ignoring my grand-aunt’s May 15, 1887 which was an outlier guess]. Who knew you could file an affidavit to change data on a death certificate? Has any other genealogist encountered such an affidavit? How would I go about finding such an affidavit? Genealogy is very complex, having to winnow the truth from so much inaccurate chaff.

Quite a name evolution huh?  Elijasz to Eliasz to Elias. My grand-uncle John’s name kept getting shorter. Is it any wonder; since his paper trail was disappearing as fast as his last name over time. It is a major reason why I list the family tree as Elijasz/Eliasz/Heliasz which are all correct versions (Elias just being a typographical error). I have also had to accept Elyasz and Eljasz too as variants. Never mind that I have seen ELIASZ Polonia in St Louis, MO area “Anglicize” their name to Ellis. I have to feel sympathy for Donna Mierzejewski-McManus (fellow Polish genealogy blogger) as she sifts through the MANY variants of her Mierzejewski name.

There are quite a few morals to this over long tale…  Be persistent, Collaborate with others (particular experts in regions), Use Historical Newspapers, Do RAOGK for others, be creative in finding a way around genealogical road blocks. But genealogists who research Slavic names, must be prepared to try many, many variants of their last names, over and over again in ALL searches. You may have to go back to prior searches and retry a new name variant when you find the new variation.

 

John Elias (sic) Death Certificate

Social Security Administration (SSA) changed the Death Master File (SSDI); #Genealogy, #Sources

In a nice piece of Genealogical Journalism, Steve Danko (eminent Polish genealogist — see my blogroll on the right), posted about the Social Security Administration (SSA) changing its Death Master File (DMF), aka the Social Security Database or SSDI,  that we use as a major source of genealogical data. Their change, which you can read about in Steve’s blog, took place on November 1st (two days ago) without much fanfare or any fore knowledge. Now as an IT Expert for the last quarter century, I understand the SSA’s rationale — it is a data privacy / legal issue. Its impact is immediate. 4.2 Million records have been deleted from the former 89 Million records (approximately 4.72%) and have vanished because it was “Sourced” from various US States (and not updated from those States’ records). This article is not about discussing the whys and what-nots of the SSA’s decision. This post is about the ramifications of that decision for genealogy.

Two impacts are explicit. 4.2 Million source records disappeared. Going forward, 1 Million records per year will not be loaded (or is it more proper to say, will be in suspense until a source comes forward for that death). Let’s talk about the 4.2 Million records that disappeared 1-November-2011. Some percentage of those records were used in some genealogist’s family research and are documented therein. However, the source is now gone?? If you were diligent and documented the SSA’s DMF (aka SSDI) in your research and that record disappeared, then future researchers will be left wondering what happened. Is this researcher accurate? So,  I propose that everyone use their favorite DMF/SSDI and verify their source is still there (or that it is gone). Furthermore, if it is gone, then I propose a note be entered in your source documentation of this “Event” that happened 11/01/2011 and that a reference back to the state where the death took place (and/or county) be mentioned as the place to get extant documentation and that the previous source documentation was removed by the US Government pursuant to this “Event”.

Apparently, you will need to verify your DMF/SSDI source for ALL deaths from 2002 through to 11/01/2011. Before that , there are no changes that need to be verified. Use your family tree software, pull a report of deaths from 2002-2011 inclusive and work your way through the list.

I think it is still a FACT. The death is still a FACT; but the evidence to support the FACT is now missing unless you have a death certificate or other source for the death date / place. That is why I propose a note be placed into your documentation of your sources. What you know, has NOT changed. How you know of the death has effectively been changed (rug pulled out from underneath you).

There is so much more that could be discussed on this topic.  But this much is my topic and the subject of this post. Good Luck and get started.

–Stanczyk

P.S.

I guess to the litany of investigatory questions, we will now see/hear: …

“What did you know? When did you know it? Do you still know it? “

#Genealogy – Russian – Poland Administrative Regions

In my last article, I spoke about UKASE = Decree. Today, I wanted to write about another Ukase. By the edict (ukase) of Czar Peter the Great on December 18, 1708, he divided Russia into eight guberniyas. A Gubernya (aka Gubernia) is roughly equivalent to a State in the USA or a Province in Canada and is very equivalent to a Wojewodztwo in Poland. Gubernya is a Russian word and is written in Cyrillic as, губерния .

The number of Gubernya and the area they covered changed over time. So if you check out the map from my MAPS page from 1820, my ancestors would have lived in the Krakow gubernya. But by my grandparent’s time they lived in the Kielce (aka Kieleckie) gubernya — no their village of residence did not change, but the Russian Administrative regions had been  re-defined a few times.

A good Gazetteer should be able to give you the Gubernya for your ancestral village. Knowing the administrative region may help you locate where the records are for your ancestors. Obviously, you should check their parish first. But you will also want to know the region to locate the civil or religious archive that might have backup records (vital records, court records, military records, voter lists, etc) for you to research.

Also you should know the Russian, as well as the Polish words and spelling of your ancestor’s residence(s). If nothing else, so that you can Google for data on the Internet. The results you get from Googling “Gubernya” will be different the results you get from Googling, “губерния“.

If your family is from the same area as Stanczyk’s then you may see …

Келецкая губерния = Kielecka Gubernia

Trust me the “orange-ish” area is Kielecka Gubernia.

Near the bottom-right you will see Stopnica and Pacanow (стопнйча, пачанов).

–Stanczyk

Family Search Indexing Tool – #Genealogy – #Polish Radom 1866

Stanczyk wanted to take a moment to say, “Thanks”. You may recall I did my due diligence on the Genealogy Website Rankings. I added my own blog website for reference. At the time of the survey I was a little over 12.8 Million-th most popular website on the Internet. Out of the billions of pages, I thought that was a great start.

For kicks, I went to Alexa.com and inquired if my ranking had changed. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was now the 10.3 Million-th most popular website. That is an improvement of 2.5 Million in about one month !   So I just wanted to say thanks. I am hoping to eventually crack the top 1 Milliion (with perhaps a dream of being in the top 100,000 some day). I asked for your support and I can definitely see that I received it. Thank You very much for lending me your eyes.

I am also looking for people to help me in my volunteer efforts. If you can read Polish (or even Russian, I saw two projects for Ukraine-Kiev church records), then you can join with me on one of two projects: Lublin and/or Radom. I chose Radom as it was close to my grandparent’s ancestral villages (Biechow/Pacanow).

Most projects are for English language records. Of those, many are in the USA, so you could pick your local area and get a local genealogy society or historical society to pitch in. It will provide more data for all of us to research. If you want to thank me, but only read English then perhaps you can pick from a project for: Philadelphia, Buffalo, Toledo, Detroit (or Michigan in general). This is another way you can lend me your eyes and feel good about doing some volunteer work (Random Act of Genealogical Kindness, anyone?).

Two Polish projects open at present.

As I said, I chipped in some effort to read one batch (of 12 birth church records). The records I was given in my first batch were from 1866 in the Radom diocese. This data (index and images) will be free to search from their website: FamilySearch.org (Europe Record Groups) .

Good Luck & Thanks again!

— Stanczyk

#Genealogy #Polish – Searching ELA database, State Archives (Poland)

Stanczyk was visiting the State Archives in Poland website and he explained about the four databases:

• PRADZIAD – For vital records, both civil and religious. Birth,  Marriage, Death and Alegata records.
• SEZAM – A database containing  detailed descriptions of archival holdings preserved by the State Archives and a few related repositories. Some entries are rather lengthy.
  
• IZA – A catalog of all (really slightly more than a quarter of all) fonds, by archive that holds them and indexed by Key Words. It includes the Archive’s contact info (for each fond). I hope they get around to indexing the other 3/4 of fonds.
  
• ELA – A database of all population registers (Censuses, Lists, Indexes, etc.) in Poland’s State Archives.
  

When I wrote about ELA, I said it was not very useful. But I  wanted to correct my errant statement (due to my own misconception about what data they had available). By the descriptions, you can see that PRADZIAD is the most important to a genealogist, but that the ELA database with its population lists can provide additional opportunities to find an ancestor and in some context (a list of soldiers, those being deported, a census, eligible voters list, etc.) for some timeframe. Now let me hasten to add that in the Russian Partition of Poland you are not going to find much in the way of censuses — it seems you can find Russian Empire censuses in all Russian Gubernias, but the ten gubernias in the Polish Kingdom (of the Russian Empire, aka Congress Poland).

Using ELA

This is the English language version of the ELA database (click on link to go to ELA) search form.

You can leave “Town” empty and just search on the “Register’s title” field. Here are some possible search strings (enter Polish words):

1. Listy osób
2. Listy osób uprawnionych do głosowania w guberni kieleckiej
3. listy osób deportowanych z Cesarstwa Rosyjskiego

The first is just the generic, “Lists of People”. All strings must be in Polish (get your Google Translator out). The diacriticals (accents) are not required. The second is the list of eligible voters (in Kielce Gubernia).  The third one is a list of people deported from the Russian Empire.

Leave town blank if you want to search all towns. Fill in town or gmina or powiat (if these are also town names) if you want to limit yourself to an area where you know your ancestors were from. You can also use “Register’s title” if you want to search a whole wojewodztwo (gubernia) and not just the town Kielce.

I have family from the Kielce Gubernia, so I clicked on “more” to find out what FOND and Archive has this data of interest to me (#2 of the list above).

So I should use the contact info to go to the Kielce State Archive and ask for FOND # 59 to see the list of eligible voters in Kielce Gubernia in 1906.

Perhaps I’ll find Elijasz, Leszczynski, Wlecial, and Kedzierski families listed among the eligible voters. From that era, my paternal grandparents are still there  and I expect  that I’d find my great-grandparents too. Now I do not know that I will find more than their names. But perhaps, I’ll get ages and addresses too. Who knows what else (military service, occupation, date of prior elections or number of elections voted — who knows).

There is no actual data or images online. It just a big library catalog file of what you can expect to find, if you visit or hire a genealogist to visit the State Archives.

#Genealogy #Polish – Notes & Notices; Searching IZA

Stanczyk was visiting the State Archives in Poland and he saw the news…

The State Archive in Wroclaw is celebrating the 200th anniversary of its opening. They published a monograph, “The State Archive in Wrocław 1811-2011. Past and Present “, The main celebration  will take place on 28th of September. If the Archive is 200 years old, then I wonder how old its oldest documents are? Please note if you click on the Union Jack flag (for English) you will miss this announcement which only listed on the Polish language version of the page.

Shoemaker’s Guild

I wanted to search their IZA database to do a “Key Word” search across all State Archive Offices on the topic of Guilds, in particular Shoemaker’s Guild (cechu szewskiego). I have previously written about these guilds before in this blog. I used the ‘cechu’ AND ‘szewc’ as my keywords and I got back seven results:

I circled the Catalog Number (sygnatura) which is a link that can be clicked. When you click on it, you are taken to the specific page for the archive that has the material you need.

The first part of the four parts indicates the archive office (see drop down below). The second is “series”, the third is “sub-series” and the fourth part is file number. Now the material retrieved from the IZA database is in Polish, so if you are not fluent in Polish, you will need your Google Translate webpage.

So when you click on the Catalog number the top of the page should look like …

The address and phone number at the top left. Further down the page it describes the archival file(s) from your search — in Polish!

The initial database search screen also has a drop-down field that maps the State Archive Offices to the number (the first part of the Catalog Number). You may want to limit results to a specific office if you are only searching in a specific archive office when you visit Poland.

So you see at the bottom of my drop down that 32 = Krakow State Archive in the Nowy Targ office. The 32 was the first part of my catalog number: 32/1/0/64 .

You can click these images at the left to see a large size image that will be easier to read.

In terms of vocabulary, the series + the sub-series (parts 2 & 3) are the FOND. The fourth part, the file number, is also called ‘OPIS‘.

You will see these words used with the other databases, in particular, the PRADZIAD database that has the vital records (church registers -or- civil office records).

It is this jester’s hope that this info can help you navigate the State Archives of Poland’s three databases (also a fourth database, ELA which is not very useful):

• PRADZIAD
• SEZAM
• IZA

Musing about the Cholera Epidemic of 1831

I frequently browse my blog’s web analytics (who refers, what they searched on, etc.). I noticed that someone landed on my blog searching about Cholera in the Biechow parish (in Piestrzec to be specific).

First let me take a moment to pay due to Rosemary Chorzempa(Toledo Genealogical Society, author) whose book, Polish Roots, was my first genealogy book and from whence I began the study of this craft. I still refer back to it — a real classic. I bring her book up because it has a timeline in it and one of the entries is 1831 – “First[sic Second] Asiatic Cholera Epidemic“. This is when Cholera came to the villages: Biechow, Piestrzec, Wojcza, Chrzanow, etc. Besides the obvious HIGH death rates, we also saw low birth rates too.

Stanczyk has mentioned this before, but one of my ancestors, Marcin Heliasz, age 50 (b. about 1781) was listed as death number 232 (the last one) and Marcin and number 231 did not even have death dates or witnesses. I surmise that the parish priest as he visited on or before the Feast of Epiphany to inscribe the door lintel with the three wise men’s initials (K,M,B) he found these two villagers dead. Their record is after the other records and the end of year notation the priest usually makes.

The number of deaths were between 49-88 (from 1816-1827). Then 1828- 122 deaths, 1829- 149 deaths, 1830- 142 deaths, perhaps these might have been due to a growth spurt, but in 1831- 232 deaths (and cholera was noted in the church registers). In 1832- 80, 1833- 61, 1834- 71. So we see a return to normal death rates of the early 1820’s. This may also reflect the low birth rate in 1831- just 46. Typically, the birth rate exceeds the death rate by a handful (or a couple dozen in times of plenty) in this parish.

So for the year 1831 with only 46 births and then 232 deaths meant this parish had a net drop in population of 186 in ONE year! If we assume/project from the Parish Censuses (at the top of this blog) that Biechow’s parish population was between 1800-1900 people, then in one year they lost about 10% of the people ! Perhaps half a million Europeans died during this epidemic. In many countries there were actually Cholera Riots — as people were suspicious of their governments.

For more information on epidemics or Cholera Epidemics see Wikipedia.

#Genealogy #Website #Rankings – Revisited With A Documented Methodology

Stanczyk got one comment recently. It was the first one I ever deleted. It was rude and was in reference to my rant at Genealogy Rankings posted by EOGN. Eastman, had just reposted some blogger’s effort without checking the results (a genealogical mistake — which we all make at some time or other).

Stanczyk, however is a natural skeptic. So when I looked at the results and they differed from my experience … WILDLY. I knew they were wrong or at least that the methodology employed was flawed and the info was misinformation. So I searched for another more credible ranking — which I did find and repost myself. This info was more representative of the real world and while a methodology was also not documented for this, I did cite my source of data.

However, bothered I was by my comment that I deleted for its obvious bias and rudeness, I had to admit I needed to study this and document my methodology. The commenter proffered that ALEXA.com be the source. So I obliged. I used Alexa.com and made the following search for data:

• All countries (hint hint)
• Society->Genealogy [the topic]
• All languages (although come on, Genealogy is only genealogy in English)
• All rankings
• No filter
• I eliminated results without any numbers (how could they be ranked)
• I added a handful off the top of my head to see where they fit
• I used Global Ranking (since I wanted all countries/languages)

My Additions

I added FamilySearch.org,  I knew this must be big! I added Genealodzy.pl which most people probably do not know (unless they read my blog), because it was a credible Genealogical Society Website (and probably not the most popular genealogy website in Poland). I added Footnote (now Fold3) — I was sure this was huge too. I also added CastelGarden, SteveMorse, and my own humble blog for reference — I am sure many other Polish Genealogy blogs are higher ranked. My additions are  bolded and in RED.

I could not compare my results to his results because he used the URL instead of the name so I am not certain which of mine are his and vice-versa. Also since we did these studies at different times, our results differ slightly in numbers. I am also puzzled as to how he got so many .UK or .CA websites. These did not get returned by my Alexa.com search — perhaps he limited his methodology  or added in many websites that he knew. I think Alexa.com needs to return a consistent set of websites so rankings can be compared. I also think that some websites need to describe or META tag their website better so sites like Alexa.com and its competitors can do a better job of collecting statistics. I think GENEALOGY as a topic is MUCH more popular than Alexa.com shows. Also, perhaps Alexa.com data is NOT reproducible.  So maybe my critique of EOGN is unwarranted and the Anglo-Celtic blog is also correct (as I am too). That would not be a good thing for Alexa.com. I wish other competitors in Web Analytics would publish a Genealogy/Family History Ranking study. I hope they include genealogia or other foreign renditions of the English ‘Genealogy’ so we can get a true World-Wide study. I also question whether Ancestry.com (and Ancestry.ca, Ancestry.uk, Ancestry.de, etc) should be separate or combined.

When you view the rankings, the lower the number, the better. It means there are that many websites (-1) that are more popular. So for example, my blog that you are reading has 12.8 Million other websites (like Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.) ahead of me in popularity in the WORLD. Pay close attention to my additions, they are in bold/red and for the most part are near to the top.

Genealogy Websites top 113 (I am number 106 — come-on readers)

#	Website	Ranking
1	Ancestry.com	1,073
2	Familysearch.org	8,331
3	Genealogy.com	11,875
4	GeneaNet	13,684
5	The British Monarchy	53,320
6	Family Tree DNA	57,911
7	RootsWeb	62,662
8	Footnote.org (now fold3)	76,309
9	JewishGen	85,873
10	What’s New in Genealogy Today	116,942
11	Cyndi’s List of Genealogy Resources on the Internet	124,819
12	TribalPages	125,404
13	Stevemorse.org	137,026
14	Eastman’s Online Genealogy News	138,037
15	Access Genealogy	140,165
16	GenoPro	164,723
17	World Vital Records	186,504
18	Genealodzy.pl	187,329
19	One Great Family	203,284
20	Polish Genealogical Society of America	203,550
21	ProGenealogists, Inc.	230,037
22	Genealogy and Family History Data at DistantCousin.com	240,451
23	AncientFaces	271,220
24	Kindred Konnections	273,644
25	National Genealogical Society	300,259
26	Family Tree Magazine	304,602
27	Family Research	317,401
28	Legacy Family Tree	334,708
29	British Royal Family History	337,957
30	Curious Fox	450,455
31	museumsusa.org	478,027
32	Olive Tree Genealogy	478,202
33	GenealogyLinks.net	526,395
34	NCGenWeb	529,784
35	Family Tree Guide	540,734
36	Oxford Ancestors	540,969
37	Irish Genealogy	542,221
38	RootsMagic	546,245
39	CousinConnect.com	556,154
40	Family Tree Circles	560,472
41	Monmouth County Library	664,876
42	Castlegarden.org	736,651
43	Avotaynu	790,666
44	Genealogy Search Engine	794,553
45	Genealogy Search Engine	794,553
46	Genealogy Articles, Tips & Research Guides	867,921
47	CensusDiggins.com	903,350
48	Genealogy Blog	981,796
49	Reunion	988,538
50	Obituary Links Page	1,080,372
51	Dear Myrtle	1,084,424
52	Dead Fred’s Photo Genealogy Archive	1,149,953
53	GeneaLinks	1,168,516
54	Ultimate Family Tree	1,527,831
55	Holmes, Doug	1,569,874
56	RoyaList Online	1,608,515
57	Kerchner	1,624,302
58	phpmyfamily – Genealogical website builder	1,635,669
59	Jewish Web Index	1,713,993
60	Couch: USA	1,766,283
61	The Ohio Genealogical Society	1,792,377
62	Board for Certification of Genealogists	1,854,544
63	Ancestral Quest	1,856,546
64	GenealogyPro.com	1,892,255
65	Scot Roots	2,170,754
66	Genealogy Magazine	2,175,330
67	Black Sheep Ancestors	2,243,157
68	Eneclann	2,298,226
69	Sephardim.com	2,456,171
70	Odessa German-Russian Genealogical Library	2,531,031
71	Journal of Genetic Genealogy	2,585,838
72	Genealogical Journeys In Time	2,780,736
73	Colonial Ancestors	2,932,587
74	Genealogy Register	3,016,245
75	The Genealogue	3,033,136
76	Winslow	3,189,607
77	Family Chronicle Magazine	3,248,384
78	GEDitCOM	3,527,586
79	Gen Source	3,718,359
80	Brother’s Keeper	3,788,856
81	Surname Site	3,854,351
82	GenealogySpot.com	4,028,763
83	GenSmarts	4,070,308
84	Palatines to America	4,161,788
85	Looking 4 Kin Genealogy Links and Chat	4,650,889
86	Genealogical Forum of Oregon	5,079,038
87	Helm’s Genealogy Toolbox	5,229,636
88	Family Origins	5,240,600
89	Genealogy Research Associates, Inc	5,416,307
90	Surname Genealogy Archive	5,462,264
91	Spansoft – Kith and Kin Genealogy Software	5,477,484
92	Historic Genealogy in New England	5,550,789
93	Ancestor Genealogy Photo Archive	5,999,968
94	Genealogy Roots Blog	6,048,790
95	Lineages, Inc	6,852,004
96	Surname Guide	7,252,646
97	Debrett Ancestry Research	8,431,123
98	Geneabios	8,649,736
99	MudCreek Software	9,461,331
100	Family Tree Connection	9,693,244
101	Association of Scottish Genealogists and Record Agents	9,785,665
102	nbgs.ca	10,632,352
103	Scottish Roots	10,912,588
104	Georgia Genealogical Society	11,944,069
105	Rogue Valley Genealogical Society	12,287,030
106	mikeeliasz.wordpress.com (Stanczyk)	12,805,138
107	Genealogy Software News	15,592,001
108	Wheelock	20,518,710
109	FamilyWebHost	20,769,903
110	Genealogy Home Page	23,241,140
111	Root Cellar – Sacramento Genealogical Society	25,363,263
112	Upper Canada Genealogy	26,691,115
113	GenDesigner	26,900,547

It is clear that Great Britain is much more genealogy crazy than the USA. If I were to do this again, I would probably go through my favorites/bookmarks and add in a few blogs (Polish Genealogy), Polish Genealogical Societies (US & Poland), FindAGrave.com, Interment.net, and Everett Genealogy Magazine. What would you add?

–Stanczyk

#Jewish #Genealogy – A Continuing Homage to Moja żona – Biechow 1820

I am continuing my efforts to retrieve/extract the Jewish records from the Catholic parish of Biechow  (an homage to moja dobra żona, Tereza) during the years when the Catholic Church was ordered to act the civil registration authority for all parties/religions.  My previous postings were for the years 1810-1819  inclusive.

These are the Jewish Births from 1820 recorded in Biechow parish. Ergo, this posting brings us upto: 1810-1820 inclusive. The prior post is here .

As per usual, I give permission for all Jewish data that I have been posting to be included in the JRI project. In 1820, there were four Jewish births out of a total of 111 births recorded in the Biechow parish. That works out to be 3.6% of the total.

Year: 1820      Priest: Jozef Parzelski         Gmina: Biechow     Powiat: Stopnica     Departement: Krakow      111 Total Births     LDS Microfilm#: 936660

Record #8     Date: 1/24/1820

Father: Szmul  Abramowicz,  Handlarz, Age 30, Piestrzec   House #77 (recorded as Karol Jaworski’s house)

Mother: Wiktula z Berkow, age 36

Baby: girl Chanka

Witnesses:  Leyb Berkowicz, Handlarz, age 26 Piestrzec & Judka Moskowicz, Handlarz,  <no age>, Piestrzec

—-

Record #13     Date: 2/5/1820

Father: Leyb  Szlamkiewicz,  Szkolnik, Age 50, Wojcza  House #2

Mother: Faydosz z Herszkow, age 30

Baby: boy Szlama

Witnesses:  Walsa  Jaskowicz, Pakiarz, age 40 Biechow & Mendla Moskowicz, Pakiarz,  <no age>, Wojcza

—-

Record #54     Date: 6/30/1820

Father: Mendel  Moskowicz,  Pakiarz, Age 36, Wojcza  House #64

Mother: Serla z Lewkowiczow, age 36

Baby: girl Rucka

Witnesses:  Moska  Szymolowicz, Pakiarz, age 36 Wola Biechowska & Zelman Majorkiewicz, Pakiarz,  <no age>, Biechow

—-

Record #79     Date: 8/2/1820

Father: Zelman Steyberg,  Handlarz, Age 29, Biechow  House #46

Mother: Malka z Jaskowiczow, age 24

Baby: boy Herszla

Witnesses:  Jaska Wolfowicz, Pakiarz,  44, Biechow & Moska  Szymolowicz, Pakiarz, <no age>,  Wola Biechowska

–Stanczyk

Post Office Department – Stanczyk’s Mailbag

From the Post Office Department

From my Mail Bag …

 

FROM:   MaryAnne
MaryAnne asked about “readability” of the blog,

REPLY:

The format of the blog/website is due to wordpress (my blogging software and website provider). Their programs/widgets dictate the “style” which I have very little control over. I will try and write using a bigger “format” (ex. Heading 4 instead of paragraph). I cannot write in all bold as that will actually make things harder to read for more people.

But I suspect the problem is really your browser. Fortunately, most browsers now allow a “zoom” feature. I can give you help with either Internet Explorer or Firefox(Mozilla) browsers.

In Internet Explorer (popular in Windows computers), you would hit ‘Alt-X’. That is press and hold the ‘Alt’ key next to spacebar, and while still holding down the ‘Alt’ key press ‘x’. Hence Alt-x. This will bring up a “contextual” menu near the top of your browser window. “Zoom” is the third choice. It will bring up a list of zoom-levels. I recommend 125% or 150% for you. That should improve the readability for you.

In Firefox, you press “Ctrl-Shift-+” to zoom in and “Ctrl–” That is Control-plus to zoom in and Control-minus to zoom out. As with the “Alt” key, the “Ctrl” key must be pressed and held down while you type the other key(s).

Let me know if you use another browser. I do have Safari for Windows (sadly Stanczyk is making do with a Windows computer instead of his beloved MAC).

If the “zoom” feature improves your ability to read my blog, then I will not make any changes. You may also want to have someone to adjust the contrast/color on your monitor for you too. I know I had to really tinker with these Windows computers to get the colors to give me the proper contrast. This was something I took for granted in the MAC world.

Stanczyk too has “very aged” eyes from years of working on computers. Thanks MaryAnne!

 

—————————-

FROM: Jonathan

Jonathan asked about Pacanów and Kłoda, his Pytko family,  and how hard it is to read “Old Russian”.

REPLY:

Jonathan, thanks for writing. As for emails – you can send me A church record and I will be happy to read it for you and send you a translation of the “Old Russian” (pre-1918 reforms). You can write to me at: Stanczyk@eliasz.com . OK?  Any pictures you send me via email may or may not be used in the blog as part of the answer [fair use].

As for Pacanów, the LDS have four microfilm of the Pacanów(Busko-Zdroj) in Kielce(old woj.). There are a few Kłoda villages. Is yours the one near Radom? That Kłoda has parish of Magnuszew (no microfilm for this parish). Here are the four microfilm (1875-1884) for Pacanów(Busko-Zdroj):

Akta urodzeń, małżeństw, zgonów 1875 – FHL INTL Film [ 1192351 Item 10 ]
Akta urodzeń, małżeństw, zgonów 1876-1877 – FHL INTL Film [ 1192352 Items 1-2 ]
Akta urodzeń, małżeństw, zgonów 1878-1881 – FHL INTL Film [ 1807621 Items 8-11 ]
Akta urodzeń, małżeństw, zgonów 1882-1884 – FHL INTL Film [ 1807622 Items 1-3 ]

Akta urodzeń, małżeństw, zgonów = Birth, Marriage, Death records.

I have seen Pytko/Pytka in Pacanów and Świniary parishes.

–Stanczyk

Church Metrical Books … Embellishments, Oddities, and Notations #2

Today’s Church Metrical Book meme is on Marginalia. This margin note is from the birth of Tomasz Elijasz (Record #130) born (ur.) 6-September-1881 in Pacanow parish. Tomasz was the son of Ludwik Elijasz and Elzbieta Miklaszewski.

Your eyes are not fuzzy, both record and the marginalia are written in Cyrillic (Russian). Stanczyk loves reading marginalia, because it is almost like gossip. I read it from the context of the vital record of the birth. “So little Tomasz. I see you are going to grow up and marry(malz.) Marianna Wojczyk on 19-February-1912 and it will be recorded in the Pacanow church book as record #34 of 1912 Marriages.”

It is almost like you are acting in the role as a cleric angel for God. You know the future of this little baby!

Now I like these margin notes because I can often find the female Elijasz being married off. Once they are married, I often lose track of them, so these margin notes may be a last chance to find them until I see a death notice, if I do not have their marriage record. Since this is Russian-Poland, the records are in Russian from 1868-1918. Sometimes, the margin note is in Polish (say if the marriage happened in/after 1918). So you will have a Russian birth and Polish marriage notation.

So how is it that not every birth  record has a margin note? Well the list of possibilities should include…

1. The baby died in infancy or childhood
2. The “baby” emigrated before being married
3. The “baby” never married before dying
4. The “baby” got married somewhere else (in another parish/country or perhaps only a civil marriage)

Every once in a while you will see a priest still record the marriage if it was in another country or parish and the catholic priest of the remote locale wrote the priest in Pacanow. Not always, but sometimes this happens.

#Polish #Genealogy – Useful Websites … #6 Online Database of Poznan & Gniezno Nobility

Stanczyk has used and forgotten the following website many times over; It has been online for a LONG time. This website appears to an historical collection of data by a single individual. Here is my best guess as to the Inventory of Materials at the website (all in Polish):

Historical and Genealogical Materials on the history of the nobility of the Wielkopolska from the 15th-20th Centuries. Complete inventories of municipal and land books of the State Archive in Poznan and the books of vital records inventories framework of the same archive as well as the Archdiocesan Archive in Poznan and the Archdiocesan Archive in Gniezno. These were apparently collected by a man named: Włodzimierz Dworzaczek [US Libraries/Archives might call this,  his collected papers].

Website: Teki Dworzaczka – Biblioteka Kórnicka PAN  [a Polish Science Academy]

LINK/URL: http://teki.bkpan.poznan.pl/index_regesty.html

Ease of Use: Slightly Difficult for English Speaking and/or  non-residents of Poland

So if you have ancestors who were from and/or passed through the Western part of Poland, including Poznan and Gniezno, this site has indexed church mertykal records and a great deal of court records too. So far it has not been of use to me, as my known ancestors are predominantly from south-central Poland. But if you have some royal blood (for example Leszczynski), there are many records that can provide you abbreviated notes.

#Polish #Genealogy – Useful Websites … #5 Online Databases in Poland

Stanczyk is a Data Architect by trade. So if it is one thing I love it is databases. This posting is all about some online Polish Databases. The Parish Church Books is a website that collects and indexes and keeps it up to date . It points you to the website, but it is written from a Poland point of view. So I have decoded the website index and made them into LINKS (URLs) so you can click on them and go to the resource from their list. Enjoy!

Parish Church Books – http://www.ksiegi-parafialne.pl/

The above Polish website (from Poland and in Polish language) attempts to gather in one place index all interesting projects where Church Parish Indexes are being collected in online databases. This page is updated often. This makes it an excellent website for your bookmarks/favorites (or add it to delicious).

Index of Databases

BASIA – http://www.basia.famula.pl/en/

Geneteka – http://geneteka.genealodzy.pl/

Lubgens.Eu – http://lubgens.eu/portal.php

Pomorskie TG – http://www.ptg.gda.pl/index.php/ptgnews/action/basesearch/

The Pomorskie Genealogical Society (Pomorskie TG) website needs some explanation. It has a menu named “PomGenBase“;  Click on menu, then on the submenu, “Search PomGenBase” and click on the final submenu (one of five: Christenings, Marriages, Deaths,  Cemeteries or Monuments) to search.

Poznan Project – http://bindweed.man.poznan.pl/posen/project.php

T.G.Z.Cz. – http://www.genealodzy.czestochowa.pl/pl/start

#Polish, #Genealogy – Social Network Analysis work is progressing…

My Social Network Analysis is progressing, albeit slowly. Stanczyk is drawing his diagram and the bookkeeping is terrible. How do you distinguish one dot (person) from another? It is forcing me to make each dot much bigger so I can record a distinguishing bit of info. I have more lines than I thought because …

You have a father, a mother, a baby, 2 wtinesses, 2 God Parents (sometimes more) [in birth records], 2 sets of parents [in marriage records].

So here are my family names that I am working with: Elijasz, Zasucha, Paluch, Odomski, Wlecial, Miklaszewski, Zwolski, Major, Wojtys, Siwiec, Piotrowski, Lewinski, and my discarded names ( Grudzien/Grudnia, Poniewirski, Janicki, Pytka, and Kordos). The surprises  are that I needed to add Piotrowski and Lewinski and that I had to discard Janicki. We had no family knowledge or record of Piotrowski or Lewinski and I did have knowledge of Janicki (various spellings). Now dropping a name means less work. But adding a name means going back to the beginning and searching for them too. A lot more work.

Early on I have already found a new female (Tekla Elijasz) relative under her married name (Wojtys). So there is some fruit. But I can see some foreshadowing from the research already. First off my research is already predicting two new siblings(Ludwik and Petronella) for my great-grandfather Jozef Elijasz (as I suspected), one person inconclusive,(Franciszek) and the new TEKLA is an issue. If she is truly a new relative then she is most probably a sibling of my great-grandfather. However, there is another TEKLA in that era (although  the birth years are 3-5 years apart) and the looseness of ages in the Polish church records is presenting a challenge. If TEKLA is the exisiting TEKLA, then the research is telling me(predicting) that my great-great-grandfather (Martin Elijasz) has another  brother Gaspar/Kasper. The age of the “new” TEKLA fits in the gaps of my great-grandfather’s siblings so I cannot eliminate her on that basis. In fact the ages of all the “new” predictions seem to fill in the gaps of my great-grandfather’s siblings.

One of my candidate relatives also has church records in the adjoining Biechow parish, so I will need to look at her family name (and the new Tekla) in those parish records too, so more of my research parameters are being tweaked. I also had a finding of one social network dot having a Kalucki God Mother. Now this Kalucki is exceeding rare in the records I have access to. My Kalucki fixation is because my grand-aunt Genowefa Leszczynski married a Kalucki (source from an obituary of my grand-uncle Michael Leszczynski). Also, the lady in Poland who sent me my grandparent’s marriage records (Elzbieta Heliasz Kapusta) has her great-grandfather showing up in my research and he is connected to some of the same families she mentioned (Siwiec,  Zwolski) and I know Wojtys from American relatives of Elzbieta. So once again another reconfirmation that Heliasz are really Elijasz (and both are really ELIASZ, i.e. that all three are the same family name) .

#Polish #Genealogy – Blaziej Kalucki + Maryanna Plutow 1881 Marriage in Zborowek

This week Stanczyk is culling for Kalucki. My grandmother’s sister, Genowefa Leszczynska, married a man named Kalucki. I assume they got married in either Biechow or Pacanow or maybe Zborowek.

The only reason I know about Kalucki is that when my Grand-Uncle Michael Leszczynski passed away, his obituary listed his surviving sister Genowefa with a married name of Kalucki. Genowefa stayed in Poland with her brothers, Jozef, Szczepan and Wincenty.

I believe it was Genowefa who used to write to my aunt Alice (aka Aleksandra) Eliasz Stickney. So if anyone Knows a Kalucki or is related to Blaziej Kalucki (Zborowek) email me.