Giving a Boost to Your Polish Research in The Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library

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by Don Litzer

While the Genealogy Center’s collection for North America and the British Isles is enormous and deservedly renowned, don’t forget that it also contains valuable resources for finding your Polish ancestors.

If you’re starting out, gain a foothold with general research guides such as Rosemary Chorzempa’s Polish Roots (929 C45p) and Daniel Schlyter’s Essentials in Polish Genealogical Research (929 Sch8e).

Do you have a document written in a foreign language, and you don’t yet know its significance? Judith R. Frazin’s A Translation Guide to 19th-Century Polish-Language Civil-Registration Documents (943.8 F86t), Jonathan Shea’s and William F. Hoffman’s Following the Paper Trail: A Multilingual Translation Guide (929 Sh3f) and Shea’s In Their Words: Translation Guide to Polish, German, Latin & Russian Documents (929 Sh3in) may unlock those secrets.

The department’s extensive periodical collection includes titles that focus on communities of Polish ethnic origin, including journals at a national level like the Polish Genealogical Society of America’s Rodziny (929.19 P759a), and regional publications such as the Polish Genealogical Society of Michigan’s Polish Eaglet (977.4 P759ea) and News From the Wilno Heritage Society from Renfrew County, Ontario. You can browse through issues of the magazines or, through the PERSI index, identify articles of particular interest to you.

In a place like Poland, whose history is enormously complex, becoming conversant with maps and atlases is not optional, but essential. A range of materials, from the Times Atlas of the World (912 T48t), to Magosci’s Historical Atlas of Central Europe (911.43 M17h 2002), to Polska Atlas Samochodowy—Polish Road Atlas (943.8 P76p) will help you put your ancestors in an historical, political, and geographic context. If you have a place name, Stanisław Litak’s The Latin Church in the Polish Commonwealth in 1772 (943.8 L34), a gazetteer of parish names cross-referenced to a series of maps, may help you identify ancestral locations.

Because Poland’s territory was divided between Prussia/Germany, Austria/Austria-Hungary, and Russia from the late 18th century until after World War I, research materials for those countries may be valuable. For example, maps and gazetteers such as the 1:100,000 scale Karte des Deutschen Reiches--Maps of the German Empire (on microfilm), and the multi-volume passenger list compendium Migration From the Russian Empire (929.19 M588) include information about persons once Polish and places once and presently in Poland.

What’s in a name? William F. Hoffman’s Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (943.8 H76pa) may provide useful insight. Hoffman and George W. Helon’s First Names of the Polish Commonwealth: Origins & Meanings (929.4 H675f) gives you an idea of how Polish given names were transformed in a multitude of ways outside of Poland. You can even check Leszczyc’s Herby Szlachty Polskiej (929.809438 L56h) and Herbarz Polski (929.809438 S695h) as to whether your Polish surname has a possible noble connection. Janina Hoskins’ Polish Genealogy & Heraldry—An Introduction to Research (929 H787p) includes an extensive bibliography to resources located here and abroad.

A quality genealogical research project is built on a firm foundation that supports the framework of the names you accumulate—a foundation built on a familiarity with the history, geography and other circumstances in which your forebears lived. For genealogists with Polish ancestry, the Genealogy Center can be of great help in laying that groundwork, and invites you to avail yourself of its resources.

Article taken from the Genealogy Gems[1]: News from the Fort Wayne Library
No. 31, September 30, 2006