Research While In Poland

I do not have information on this question but want to register my interest in the same question: tracing Polish ancestors.
Anne Ogonowski

I have also started looking into my Polish heritage. My maternal grandparents immigrated early 1900's through Ellis Island, my grandmother was from Krakow & my grandfather from a village in the eastern part of Poland.

Doing internet searches, there are some organizations in Poland that will essentially do research for you there. They are able to make
contacts to look at church & civic documents, translate, & organize tours in Poland around this research.

I haven't contacted them yet, as I am waiting on documents coming from other family members. The organization is called Polish Origins.

I don't have Polish heritage (or anything else interesting in my background), but I wonder whether there might be some useful information for you on the website of the very good Emigration Museum in Gdynia.

Start with the Polish Genealogical Society of America pgsa.org
A lot of states have their own Polish genealogical societies. You can find information on their websites on how to do research in Poland.
There are also family history researchers in Poland that can help you, for a fee of course. When we were in Przemysl in 2018 one of them went to the archives there with my husband to help him find the information he was looking for.

This doesn’t sound like your situation, but for anyone looking for Jewish ancestors, the Jewish Historical Institute is an outstanding resource. You might need an appointment but they can help with translation or giving you a direction when so much was lost in the war.

I have been very successful in finding my roots in Poland and have found family and visited them several times in the last ten years. I wrote a book that is on Amazon or in some Polish Genealogy society bookstores: Travel Back to Your Polish Roots. The book will show you how to start and then hop over the pond for research. The first step though, is finding all the records you can in the USA. Best to find their ship manifest from Ellis Island or the port of Baltimore and then see if they had any naturalization paperwork. These docs usually provide the name of the village/parish/town. You need that info to research in Poland.

I also just released a book that most of you would find interesting: Our Galician Ancestors" the history and culture of the people from Poland and Ukraine from the Middle Ages to WWI. I have traveled and researched extensively to show people how their ancestors lived. This is not the usual political history book. Once again, on Amazon and some Polish genealogy societies.

BTW- your trip will be SO much better if you work hard on this research before you go. If you aren't successful, be sure to at least visit one ethnographic village to get a sense of what your grandparents' lives were like. There are dozens of them in Poland.

As khrystia said, there are companies that will do research for you, for a fee. The advantage is that they know where to go and where to look for documents, and of course they can deal with language issues. One of these is Polish Origins. I would hesitate just showing up at municipal or church offices and expecting them to drop everything to help you. Or the records could be in another city. It's a pretty common thing to have descendants come looking for their roots, and not something that workers have time to deal with unannounced. So a guide or researcher setting things up in advance is more than helpful.

The records they can find include birth, baptism and death certificates. The old documents can have parents, names, grandparents, addresses. But it really helps to have some idea of where they came from. Records were often kept by churches, not civil authorities. Up to 1918, Poland was divided up between the Russian, German, and Austrian Empires, so immigration records could indicate those three countries as nationality, with Polish ethnicity.

Take a look at the Poznan Project. I got some hits on Konarzewski there.

Following this topic. My great grandparents were born in Poznan. And I have several scanned copies of documents from a great uncle. I'm going to Prague in September and thinking of tacking on a few days to travel to Poznan. Will definitely contact Polish Origins for more info.
Jacqui