Finding the Record Images
The Family History Library (FHL) and its website FamilySearch
https://www.familysearch.org/ have discontinued microfilm distribution
services and are digitalizing their microfilm collection. Most of the microfilm indexed on this
website is now available online.
Some of the records you can view at home but the majority of them you will need
to visit a Family History Center to look at.
You can learn more about it here:
https://www.lds.org/callings/temple-and-family-history/familysearch-microfilm-discontinuation?lang=eng
About the Records
This index comes from 2 sources, Church Records and Civil Registration Records. The Church Records are written in
Latin (for Roman Catholic records) or German (for Protestant records) and the
Civil Registration Records are written, depending on the year, in either Polish
or Russian. The Latin is fairly easy
for English readers to decipher but they are very brief and have limited
genealogy data. Despite the
Civil Registration Records being more difficult to read, they are longer and
usually contain more family data.
The Church Records often only have a name, date, and place. The Civil Registration records will
often have bride and grooms’ parents, their mother’s maiden names, places of
birth, ages, and a great deal of genealogy information concerning the event. It is well worth your time to use the
Civil Registration records.
There are several books that can make this a little easier. The Useful Books section is further
on this page.
The early Church Records often only have first names, no surnames. There are also some records where the
writing is difficult to read. In
these instances UNKNOWN is used and you may want to try searching on that as
well.
The day and month are fairly easy to read on the Church Records. If the Church record doesn’t have a
day and month it usually means that the date from the previous record is the
same. If you see 8bris, it means
October (8=oct in Latin), not August (the 8th month). This applies for months September
through December.
The date is written out in longhand on the Civil Registration Records. When there are multiple Civil
Registration books, on occasion the record numbers will not be the same from one
Civil Registration record to another for the same event. Please search the surrounding records
if the numbers do not match. Your
record is probably still there, but it will have a different number than it did
in the other Civil Registration book.
The records are written in cursive.
You will need a chart of Russian cursive letters, there are many different
sources for this. The Polish and
Latin letters are written similar to English letters from the same time period. If you can read a will from 1850
America, you should be able to make out the letters in a Polish record from
1850.
About Slupca
The town of Slupca has a delightful
website that everyone should see. It can be found here (as
translated by Google):
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=pl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.miasto.slupca.pl%2Findex.php%3Fsekcja%3Dstrona%26id%3D4
Here is another Slupca website
translated by Google:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=pl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slupca.pl%2F
Google Translate does a better job with
some web pages than it does with others.
Name Structure
The given names differ from the Latin to the Polish records. I have used the Polish spellings
(Wojciech instead of Adalbert, Jadwiga instead of Hedwiga) as much as I could in
an effort to keep the records as consistent as possible from one source to the
next. I have tried to keep the
surname spellings consistent.
Sometimes that is difficult as well.
In the earlier records, Y was common but became J in the later records (Heyna
became Hejna, Bleywas became Blejwas).
I have also only used the male spelling for both male and female surnames
(only Kwitowski, instead of both Kwitowski and Kwitowska). This makes searching surnames a bit
more consistent. Sometimes Ch will
be interchangeable with H, so names such as Hajewski and Chajewski are usually
the same names. On occasion a W will
be dropped, so names such as Kuzniewsk and Kuzniecki are typically the same
name.
Useful Books
I can’t read Polish, Latin or Russian and needed help to decipher these records. These are the books I used. All the records are written in the
same format. Once you figure out the
format, you will only have to translate some of the words in the record.
For Polish records, these are the books I found most useful:
A Translation Guide to 19th-Century Polish-Language
Civil-Registration Documents (Birth, Marriage and
Death Records), Compiled and edited by Judith R. Frazin. The current edition was recently
published and information about the book can be found here:
https://judithrfrazin.com/
Polish Roots By Rosemary A.
Chorzempa
Published by Genealogical Pub., 1993
ISBN 0806313781, 9780806313788
240 pages
This book has many handy chapters, but I most frequently used Common Polish
Names (it gave both the Polish and Latin versions of common first names) and her
Russian Alphabet chart, which includes typed and cursive Russian letters and
their English equivalent. You can
get comparable Russian Alphabet charts elsewhere, but hers fit on 1 page.
Russian language documents from Russian Poland : a translation manual for
genealogists
Author Shea, Jonathan D.
Edition 2nd ed.
Publisher Buffalo Grove,
Ill. : Genun Publishers, a division of Genealogy Unlimited, Inc., 1989.
Description ii, 73 p. :
facsims., maps ; 28 cm.
Subject(s) Genealogy
Poland. Bryzgiel
This book may be out of print. You
may want to try Interlibrary Loan.
Poland: A History
by Adam Zamoyski.
This is an excellent history book that will help you understand where
your ancestors came from
https://www.amazon.com/Poland-History-Adam-Zamoyski/dp/0781813018/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513466437&sr=1-1&keywords=zamoyski
Useful Websites
Maps
Maps are very useful when doing genealogy.
The marriages and family relationships make more sense when looking at a
map.
This website has some of the most detailed Polish maps around. The town of Slupca is on map number
P39 S26. The town is in the lower
left corner and in order to get all of Slupca district you will need to get the
4 maps that meet at the corner; Slupca, Konin, Pyzdry and Wrzesnia. You have the choice of maps from 1933
and 1935. These are large maps, so
be patient while they download.
http://igrek.amzp.pl/mapindex.php?cat=WIG100
From the same website, but not quite as detailed.
Slupca is on the Poznan map, number 53.
http://igrek.amzp.pl/mapindex.php?cat=WIG300
Poland: The 49 Provinces, 1975-1998
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~polwgw/49provs.html
Polish Alphabet
The Polish alphabet uses more letters, with accent marks, than does the English
alphabet. This website has the
Polish alphabet and pronunciation.
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/polish.htm
Russian Cursive
Often, in the Polish records written in Russian, the Polish names will first be
written in Russian cursive and then, in brackets, written in Polish. This makes finding your record a bit
easier. However, you may still have
to find your name written in Russian.
Here are some websites to help recognize Russian cursive letters.
http://www.learn-russia.com/lessons/alphabet.php
http://members.tripod.com/~allbell/cursive/russalph.html
http://masterrussian.com/blalphabet.shtml
Help with
Translating
Translation Aids:
http://www.sggee.org/research/translation_aids
You may need help translating these records. If you can read the letters in the
record well enough to type them, try Google Translate:
https://translate.google.com/
There is a genealogy website in Poland frequented by people who can read Polish,
Russian, German, and English. They are very helpful when asked. It
is here:
http://www.wtg-gniazdo.org/
The website Polish Origins can help with translations:
http://forum.polishorigins.com/
The State Archives in Poland can also help with research and translating.
They have a set fee for services. There are several different branches of
the State Archives. The Poznan State Archives are here:
http://www.poznan.ap.gov.pl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=67&Itemid=50