Polish parishes and organizations frequently issued
commemorative booklets to mark anniversaries of their
establishment or to chronicle an important event in
development of the organization. In most cases,
these booklets were issued on the 25th, 50th, 75th and
100th anniversaries of the church's or club's founding.
Publications of this type are filled with the names of
the persons who played active roles in the history of
the parish/club as well as the names of persons who
contributed to the publication of the booklet.
Numerous advertisements from Polish businesses and other
Polish organizations also appear with frequency, which
provide an economic portrait of the community.
Publications from the earlier part of the 20th century
are frequently in Polish with short summaries of any
textual material in English. As the century wore
on, many of these booklets became bilingual. In
most recent times, the principal language of the
booklets is English with short summaries in Polish.
Our database contains the names of persons mentioned in
these booklets. Multiple page numbers in the same
publication indicates that the person's name was
repeated on different pages. The letter codes
accompanying the page numbers are:
♦
A for Advertisement
- The person's name appeared in an advertisement for a commercial enterprise, as part
of a display advertisement for an organization in which the person served as an officer or
in special memorial to a deceased individual.
♦
T for Text
- The person's name appeared in the textual portion of the booklet or in a list of donors or list of memorials that were
not in the format of a display advertisement.
♦
M for Military
- The person's name appeared in a list of soldiers or military personnel. In the years during and shortly after
World War II, lists of parishioners or club members serving in the armed forces frequently appeared.
♦
P for Photo
- The person's name appeared in a captioned
photograph.
If you find an ancestor or
relative in the database and wish a copy of the page on
which their name appears, please send $1.00 per name
citing the exact page number and parish/organization as
well as the year of publication. A
self-addressed stamped envelope of the appropriate size
must accompany your request.
Please note that the exact
same name may appear twice with the exact same page
number. This could mean that there were two
individuals with identical names or the original
contained duplicate entries.
Anyone wishing to volunteer
to index a parish or organizational history for this
database is asked to contact the society. Please
check with us before beginning any indexing. Avoid
duplication. We have done many more indexes but
they have not as yet been posted on this website.
If you have any parish or organizational histories,
please condsider donating them to our collection which
no numbers in excess of 500 items
Uprzejmie dziękujemy!
