So I finally caved and subscribed to Ancestry.com, and last night I found the record of my great-grandmother’s initial arrival in the U.S. in 1907 with the oldest few kids. Which confirmed what I had long suspected her last name was in the Old Country, which turned out to be a village that is now in Poland (it was Austro-Hungary when they left). Now I just need to find my great-grandfather’s arrival, too, so I can figure out what his birth name was.
It’s a dinky village near Nowy Sacz. (One of two, anyway - I am getting mixed info about where she was actually born, vs. where she lived immediately before departing for the U.S., but either choice is a dinky village near Nowy Sacz.) The records have mostly not yet been indexed, let alone scanned and uploaded, to any of the regular genealogy sites that I use.
So how can I get a copy from the archives if I don’t speak Polish? I might be willing to hire someone local to do it if necessary. Any Polish Dopers near Nowy Sacz?
My family is Polish, but I haven’t tried getting any records from there.
Have you tried using Family Search? It’s the LDS genealogical research site, and they have a lot of information. Best of all, it’s free (although you’ll have to register). They might have some Polish records.
Nowy Sacz is in Galicia, at the other end of Poland from where I am (Lower Silesia). I don’t know to what extent historical records have been computerized over here, or for that matter if some of them are still extant, given the destruction of WW2. Obviously, the first thing you are going to need is names. It gets easier if you know the names of the villages (whether in Polish, German or Yiddish).
I don’t know if there are online genealogy sites over here, and if there are you can bet that they are in Polish only. I can ask here if anyone knows about such searches.
I have tried Familysearch, Ancestry.com, and JewishGen.org. None of them have records that are for sure my great-grandparents. Part of the difficulty is that their names changed at some point between their birth and my grandmother’s birth (they immigrated in the middle), and part of the difficulty is that they may have had one set of names that they used for secular purposes, and another set of Yiddish/Hebrew names (they were Jewish). And then I have to figure out where the vital records are housed for the dinky villages that they lived in - was it in the village, the slightly larger town nearby, or in Nowy Sacz? Some genealogical sources say the last of those is the most likely. And then, perhaps most importantly, there is the question of whether their births or marriage were registered anywhere at all.
(I really just figured out what their names were upon their initial immigration literally LAST NIGHT on Ancestry.com when I found the ship manifest of my great-grandmother’s arrival with the first few kids. I had long suspected the spelling, but just confirmed it - it’s a logical Yiddish spelling for the Americanized phonetic spelling they used in the United States. But having the details of the kids born aboard with their Yiddish first names in order of birth, etc. finally sealed the deal. My grandmother never even knew any of this when she was alive, and I asked her more than once!)
ETA: also, Familysearch.org has barely anything for areas east of Germany. Most of the Jewish records they have are by agreement with Jewishgen.org.
The relevant towns that I have found on my great-grandparents’ documentation are Labowa and Brunary, though I am not sure where exactly they were born (these towns were listed as the last residence before departure, so they were likely born nearby if not exactly there). I got the following response on a Polish genealogy Facebook group:
The records indeed are kept in Nowy Sącz. Brunary belonged to the Jewish community in Grybów.
National Archive in Krakow Nowy Sącz Branch has the following records for Jewish community in Grybów:
births: 1878-1881, 1883-1885, 1888-1889, 1900
marriages: 1878-1881, 1883, 1885, 1888-1889, 1900
deaths: 1878-1881, 1883, 1885, 1888-1889, 1900
I don’t know where they were married, and the birth years vary a bit on various records (they appear on several U.S. Censuses, as well as on the U.S. birth documentation of their younger children and my great-grandfather’s WWI draft registration card). So it’s entirely possible that even if their births and marriage were registered, the records were destroyed in WWII. I guess now I have to try a billion versions of their Polish-born children’s names to see what I can find…
In the meantime, I will have to try this after I get a decent night’s sleep.
Update: there is some info online from the Nowy Sacz archives. Maybe I will try emailing them via Google Translate and see what they say:
Good luck with it.
Just a few hints:
With Google Translate - always include your original English text with the translation. Sometimes the translation is unclear and there may be someone who has good enough English to work it out properly.
When you do searches for your billion versions of kid names, always write down each permutation, or you’ll find yourself reusing the same ones and missing others that may be a hit.
Agreed. Send the English original, Google Translate is somewhat hit and miss, and there is sure to be somebody in the local office that knows English.
When searching for the names, try the German, Polish and Yiddish versions, possibly also with dimunitives. And allow for misspellings!
I’d just like to throw in that it might be worthwhile to search for baptism certificates rather than birth certificates. Austria-Hungary (like Germany) was relatively late in establishing the Standesamt system of local offices where secular (i.e. government-run) authorities would register births, marriages and deaths. That came only in the late 19th century, and in rural areas possibly even later; but long before that you could count on the local parish priests keeping a register of baptisms performed by them. And Poland is a heavily Catholic country, so the likelihood of your great-grandparents having been baptised in the Catholic faith shortly after birth is high. So chances are that the parish church of the dinky village has a record of the baptism with data that might help you further.
They were Jewish. I am quite sure they were not baptized. And I will be very pleasantly shocked if any synagogue records have survived.
Have you consider asking the Holocaust Museum on Washington, DC for suggestions on how you might precede? I realize your ancestors left long before the Holocaust but the Museum is unparalleled in researching skills and access.
Ah, OK, sorry, I had missed that bit.
:: bump :: Many of the Polish websites that have genealogical records are either in Polish only or have English-language sites that simply don’t work. But I found the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, which a) has a site in good English, and b) encourages people to write their genealogy department for assistance in finding their Polish roots! I wrote them, attaching some U.S. documents for that part of my family, and will await with bated breath any guidance they are able to provide. Hmmm, I wonder whether they can also help find info for my family that is from parts of Ukraine and Belarus and Lithuania which used to be part of historical Poland? I swear, I think I need an animated historical map to keep track of which cities belonged to whom, and when! Even when archival documents have been digitized and are available online, and are in a language I can read at least a little bit, deciphering the handwriting is…an issue.