For some, one of the most challenging
aspects of research is finding the exact
birthplace of an ancestor
in Europe. This database contains geographical
information on immigrants taken from obituaries, church and
civil records, naturalization papers and any other document
that may have contained geographical information on the
origins of our families.
The community code designation (i.e. CTJ- New
Britain, Connecticut) indicates that the person had some
contact with that community. Either the individual was
married or died there or resided in the listed community,
even for a brief time, before moving elsewhere.
The names of females in the database may
be married or maiden surnames. Some of the womens'
surnames contain the Polish feminine grammatical endings (-ska
or -cka) so be sure to search under both versions (i.e.
Korzeniecki and Korzeniecka).
The majority of geographical information
provides a village or parish of birth. In a few cases,
there is only a county, province or partition or country.
This is because the document from which the information was
taken lacked more exact information. For example, a
marriage license may have listed the husband's village of
birth but for the wife the information was left blank or
merely had "Poland" or "Galicia" recorded.
A small number of the individuals in the
database were not immigrants but spouses of immigrants born
in the United States.
The database spans the first half of the
20th century for the most part and concentrates on the wave
of immigrants who settled here between 1895 and 1920
although there are scattered entries for later and earlier
settlers.
There may be multiple entries for the
same name. In most cases, these are different
individuals who shared the same first and last name.
However, if an individual had more than one spouse, that
person may appear twice. What appears here on line is
but a mere fraction of the materials we hope to post
eventually. Most of the material we have is taken from
selected localities in the states of Connecticut,
Massachusetts, New Jersey and Delaware. Even if you
think you had no family in any of these states, check the
database anyway. You never know where your relatives
may have been migrating before they settled down
permanently. Perhaps their lives touched a locality in
one of these states and you are unaware of this.
The database is, of course, not complete.
It is virtually impossible to document EVERY immigrant in a
given community. If you do not find a person listed
that you think should be there, it is because we have no
geographical information on that person at this time.
We will add such persons if you provide some documentary
evidence of the persons birthplace and their connection to
the listed community.
Some of the names are spelled
incorrectly. They may have been anglicized or contain
common errors made by record keepers who were native
speakers of Polish. Some names are dialect versions of
surnames. Check all possibilities!
There is a $3 fee per name. If you
happen to request an entry that says only "Poland" we will,
of course, refund your fee.
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