Steve's Genealogy Blog

On Sunday at the Annual Conference of the Polish Genealogical Society of America, Paul Valasek discussed Haller’s Polish Army in France and how the records of Haller’s Army can be of use to family historians.

Paul Valasek

SOURCE: Photograph of Paul Valasek. Photographed by Stephen J. Danko 30 Sep 2007.

The Polish Army in France, also known as Haller’s Army, was recruited from American and Canadian residents mainly of Polish ethnicity. This volunteer army fought in France at the end of World War I and continued to fight for Poland’s independence in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921.

Recruitment centers were formed in Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Wilkes-Barre, New York, Boston, and Bridgeport starting in October 1917. Recruitment for the army for Polish independence continued until February 1919.

Because the US government opposed the training of a foreign army on US soil, recruits were trained at Butler’s Barracks at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada. The first troop left for France in December 1917.

The commanding general of this force, Jozef Haller, was born in Galicia (Austrian-Poland) near Krakow. He served as a colonel in the Austrian Army in World War I and traveled through Russia to France.

As Europe’s borders were redrawn after World War I, Haller’s Army joined with former prisoners of war and Pilsudski’s Legions to establish Poland’s eastern borders with the Soviet Union.

At the end of the Polish-Soviet War, many members of Haller’s Army returned to North America to rejoin their families.

Paul Valasek has published a book on Haller’s Army, including much historical information and details of records generated by the army:

Valasek, Paul S. 2006. Haller’s Polish Army in France. [Naples, Fla.]: Whitehall Printing.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

Orvill S. Paller, Collection Management Specialist for Poland at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, presented a lecture on Polish Genealogy & The Family History Library. His discussion included:

1. Identifying & Prioritizing Records
2. Acquisitions in Poland
3. Records at the Family History Library (FHL)
4. Family Search Indexing
5. Records Search

The process of finding and obtaining new records for the collection of the FHL involves a process of identifying records, visiting the archives, prioritizing records, and collaborating with the archives.

Collection management at the FHL:

• Identifies and prioritizes records to be acquired, learning what types of records are available: church records, civil registration, census records, etc.
• Identifies the time periods and locations the records encompass
• Identify the archives that hold the records

Acquisitions in Poland began in May 1967 by the Genealogical Society of Utah (now referred to as FamilySearch). The content management specialist for Poland focuses exclusively on archives and repositories in Poland. The goal is the long term preservation of records through digital storage. Storage is in transition from microfilm to digital capture.

Current preservation efforts include records from Radom, Lublin, Czestochowa, and Opole. Only Opole records are being microfilmed. Records from the other areas are captured digitally. The initial focus has been on diocesan and archdiocesan archives.

Digital images are not yet available to the public.

Current negotiations are underway with both church archives and state archives in Poland for new acquisitions. As microfilmed records are converted to digital format in preparation for dissemination of those records via the Internet, existing contracts must be renegotiated. Earlier contracts did not include digital publication rights, and so all previous contracts must be renegotiated to enable the FHL to publish microfilmed records to the Internet.

Microfilmed records are maintained on master copies held at the Granite Mountain Records Vault near Salt Lake City. Over 2.7 million rolls of microfilm are currently housed at the Granite Mountain Records Vault. Copies of most of these films may be rented through local Family History Centers throughout the world, but a small part of the collection cannot be circulated outside of the FHL due to stipulations in the contracts with the owners of the original records.

Preparation is important when searching for records in the collection of the FHL:

• Who is the immigrant ancestor?
• In what Polish village was he or she born?
• Where is this village located?
• What religion did the ancestor practice?
• Where is the parish for this village?

FHL catalog entries use specific gazetteers. A single village may be listed under more than one name, in more than one country, due to the changing borders of Poland. In Poland, villages are named according to the Spis. In Germany, places are named according to Meyer’s Ort. When conducting a place search in the FHL catalog, diacritical marks are not needed.

If the film notes for a particular microfilm states VAULT, the microfilm is not physically located at the FHL, but may be ordered in advance, before a visit to the FHL. Otherwise, the staff requires between one and three days to transfer VAULT films from the Granite Mountain Records Vault to the FHL.

When searching the FHL Catalog, be aware that errors may exist. One may obtain different results depending on how the catalog is searched. For example, a village that is currently in Poland but was previously in Germany may display two record sets under the listing for one country, but only one record set in the other country.

The current effort to bring microfilmed records to the Internet is enlisting volunteers to index the records. http://www.familysearchindexing.org allows volunteers to download free indexing software and then index the records of their choice. Two current indexing efforts are the 1900 US Census and the 1871 Census of Canada. The FHL currently has 30,000 volunteer indexers at work and hopes to enlist the efforts of 100,000 indexers by the end of the year.

Eventually the FHL intends to revamp the FamilySearch website and deliver images through that portal.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

Matthew Bielawa’s third lecture on Saturday was about Polish repatriation and resettlement after World War II.

As World War Ii drew to an end, the Allies met to redraw the map of Europe. The United States, USSR, and United Kingdom held three historic meetings at Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam.

In the end, Poland’s borders moved 200 km west. Poland lost 178,000 sq km to the USSR in the east, but gained 101,000 sq km from Germany in the west.

As a result of these changes in Poland’s borders, there was a massive population exchange. Ethnic Poles in the Ukraine moved west. Ethnic Germans in Poland, moved west. Ethnic Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Lithuanians outside the USSR moved east.

In effect, these movements amounted to government sanctioned ethnic cleansing.

Understanding these movements helps explain why Polish relatives no longer live where they did before World War II, helps one locate records regarding resettlement, find relatives who moved to different regions of Poland, and understand how relatives born in Lviv died hundreds of kilometers to the west.

After World War II, Poles fled westward for many reasons including fear of the Soviets (remembering the events in 1939) and fear of Ukrainian nationalists “Banderowcy”. Many people thought the relocation was temporary. It was not. Theoretically, those relocated did so voluntarily and were compensated.

Relocation involved a difficult journey on crowded trains with lack of food, freezing temperatures in winter, and massive delays.

On occasion, those being relocated were stuck in train stations as they waited for the Germans to leave the war-damaged houses that were to become the new homes of the displaced.

Challenges to the genealogist include finding the location to which people were relocated, dealing with many different archives across national borders, and dealing with changing names of villages as Polish villages became Ukrainian and German villages became Polish.

The Polish government created the agency Państwowy Urząd Repatriacyjny” or PUR, to oversee the resettlement after World War II. Documents created by this agency include:

• Registration lists of repatriates and resettlers
• Village and town records of repatriates and resettlers
• letters concerning individuals
• memos regarding the living situations, transportation, and conditions of the people

The collection of papers assembled by PUR is found all over Poland, mostly in the State Archives closest to the location with which the documents are concerned. Unfortunately, the documents in the PUR collection are sorted by county (Powiat) and not by the names of the people mentioned in the documents.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

On Saturday, Matthew Bielawa presented a seminar on Researching Polish Ancestry in Ukraine.

Matthew Bielawa and Stephen Danko

SOURCE: Matthew Bielawa and Stephen Danko photograph . Digital photograph taken 29 Sep 2007. Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko.

Matthew described the rationale and strategies for researching Polish roots in Ukraine. Many genealogists researching Polish ancestry may find that their families resided at some time within the current borders of Ukraine and, thus, will want to understand the history of Poland and Ukraine in order to better understand their family history and to find records relevant to their families.

Despite the fact that Poland and Ukraine are different countries today, the historic territory occupied by Poland and the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth once included much of the area currently within Ukraine.

In the 1340s, Casimir the Great inherited Red Rus (Ukraine). In 1386, with the Union of Krewo, the Polish Jadwiga married the Lithuanian Jagiello, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was established in 1569 with the Union of Lublin.

In 1648, Bohdan Khmelnytsky led a great revolt against the Polish rule and in 1654 Khmelnytsky formed the Treaty of Pereyaslav with Russia. This treaty, intended to protect the independence of Ukraine, led to the domination of Ukraine by Russia and, later, by the Soviet Union.

In 1918, with the independence of Poland, much of western Ukraine again fell under Polish control. After the invasion of Poland by Russia in World War II, the borders of the region were again redrawn, establishing Ukraine as part of the Soviet Union. In 1991, with the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine finally gained its long-sought goal of independence.

While Poland and Ukraine share a common history, many basic difference between the two cultures are apparent. While both languages are Slavic, Polish is a west Slavic language using the Latin alphabet, and Ukrainian is an east Slavic language using the Cyrillic alphabet. For the most part, most Poles are Roman Catholic, while most Ukrainians are Greek Catholics.

After the Council of Trent in 1563, Catholic priests were required to keep the records of baptisms and marriages. In 1613, Catholic preists were also required to keep records of deaths. Both Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic priests could maintain these records, and so records of baptisms, marriages, and deaths may be found in the records of either Roman Catholic or Greek Catholic parishes.

The records themselves are now located in a number of different archives, including those in both Poland and Ukraine:

• Archive of Old Documents (AGAD) in Warsaw
• Zabużański Collection in Warsaw
• Provincial State Archives throughout Poland
• Archdiocesan Archives in Lubaczów, Poland
• Archdiocesan Archives in Przemyśl, Poland
• Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine, Kyiv
• Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine, Lviv
• Provincial State Archives throughout Ukraine

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

On Saturday at the Polish Genealogical Society of America Conference, Dr. Małgorzata Nowaczyk presented a seminar on the Liber Mortuorum or the Book of Deaths, a register written in Latin containing details of all deaths in a Polish parish. In addition to information on the date of death and name and age of the deceased, the Liber Mortuorum frequently includes the cause of death, and the cause of death was the subject of the bulk of Małgorzata’s talk.

All too often, the cause of death is listed simply as:

• Senectus, marasmus senilis: old age
• Naturalia: death of natural causes
• Ordinaria: ordinary cause of death
• Indetermina: cause unknown

However, if one is lucky, the disease may be described by a description of the external signs of the disease or the name of the diseased organ:

• Dolor ventris: abdominal pain
• Dolor pectoris: chest pain (e.g. heart attack, pleurisy)
• Subita mortis: sudden death (e.g. heart attack, brain hemorrhage)
• Tussis: cough (e.g. tuberculosis, pneumonia)
• Dyspnea: difficulty breathing (e.g. cancer, tuberculosis, asthma)
• Hydropsis: edema
• Dolor capitis: headache (e.g. brain hemorrhage, stroke, brain cancer)
• Delirium: delerium (e.g. fever, brain infection)
• Paralysis: paralysis (e.g. stroke, chronic nervous system disease)
• Apoplexis: apoplexy (e.g. stroke)
• Convulsio: convulsions (e.g. epilepsy, stroke, tetanus)
• Tumor, massa, tuber: cancer
• Variola: smallpox
• Varicella: chicken pox
• Rubeola: measles
• Febris: fever
• Mors puerpera, mors ad partum: Complications due to pregnancy, labor, or delivery
• Morte in aqua embrio: neonatal death
• Trucidatio, homicidio: murder
• Venetatus, venetata: poisoned
• Casus bellicus: victim of war
• Grassans: highway robbers
• Submersus aquii: drowning
• Combustion: death by fire

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

Friday was a busy day at the Polish Genealogical Society of America Conference, despite the fact that the sessions didn’t officially begin until 4 PM.

I attended four sessions: Hands-On Approach to Learning the Cyrillic Alphabet, Genetics and Genealogy, The Polish Project, and Polish Research at Footnote.com.

Hands-On Approach to Learning the Cyrillic Alphabet

Matthew Bielawa walked the audience through the Cyrillic alphabet, a first step Polish researchers need to take in order to find and read genealogically-relevant records in the Russian-controlled areas of Poland after the partitions.

In 1867, the Russian government required that all parish records in Russian-Poland be recorded in Russian rather than Polish. For that reason, those researching records in that region must be familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet in order to effectively find and read parish documents recorded between about 1867 and 1918.

Matthew examined the letters in the Cyrillic alphabet, grouping the letters into those similar to English characters, those that resemble English characters but are different, and those that are distinctively different than English.

In the process of showing the audience the Cyrillic letters, Matthew also described the proununciation of those letters and the equivalents in the Polish language. One particular point to note is that the Cyrillic alphabet was created with Slavic languages in mind, while the Latin alphabet was not.

Thus, only one Cyrillic character is required to describe a single sound in Russian, while as many as four Latin characters may be necessary to describe the same sound in Polish, leading to the common szcz letter combination that tends to befuddle those whose first language is English.

Genetics and Genealogy

Dr. Malgorzata Nowaczyk presented a brief introduction to genetics, starting with a history of genetics and moving on to a description of how genetics can help uncover our links to the past.

Malgorzata described “The Seven Daughters of Eve”, known in Poland as “The Seven Mothers of Europe”, a book by Bryan Sykes that analyzes the major genetic groups of people in Europe, based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA can be used to trace one’s matrilineal origins, that is, the inheritance of DNA through one’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother.

In another example, Malgorzata showed how analysis of mitochondrial DNA provided the possible identification of a number of skeletons thought to be those of the Romanov family executed by Lenin at the time of the Russian Revolution. She also mentioned a recent report that two other skeletons have been discovered that may be Prince Alexei and Princess Maria. DNA analysis may help determine if those two sets of remains match the royal family’s genetic makeup.

The Polish Project

Larry Mayka is the volunteer project manager for the Polish Project at Family Tree DNA.

Larry presented an overview of the types of DNA tests available through Family Tree DNA and described how those tests may be useful in researching one’s origins.

In particular, Larry told the audience how they can participate in the Poland Project and compare their DNA results with other project participants and with external databases.

The project webpage is located at https://www.familytreedna.com/public/polish/ . Larry emphasized that the Poland Project includes everyone from the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, including present-day Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

Those who wish to have their DNA analyzed by Family Tree DNA receive a discount if they are members of a project such as the Poland Project.

Polish Research at Footnote.com

Orvill Paller, Beau Sharbrough and Gary Green

SOURCE: Orvill Paller, Beau Sharbrough and Gary Green. Photographed by Stephen J. Danko 29 Sep 2007.

Orvill Paller is Collection Management Specialist (Poland) for the Family History Library; Beau Sharbrough is Director of Content Acquisition for Footnote.com; Gary Green is a friend and former Houston high school buddy of Beau Sharbrough.

Beau Sharbrough described the Footnote.com site, a relatively new venture to make images of historical documents available on the web.

Many of the images on Footnote.com are obtained from the National Archives and from the Family History Library. At present, images of interest to genealogists include military records, immigration and naturalization records, city directories, vital records, and state census records.

In addition Footnote.com provides a wealth of other historical documents, including the papers of the Continental Congress and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Beau further described how users can add their own images to the site and share them with others. The owners of uploaded images maintain control of their images and retain the ability to remove them at some future time if they no longer wish to share them. Footnote.com does not claim user-contributed content as its own.

Furthermore, users can annotate documents on Footnote.com, adding transcriptions, abstracts, and additional information.

What’s more, a basic membership to Footnote.com is free. Searches are free. Even the ability to view low-resolution images and additional information about the images is free. Users only need to pay when they wish to view, download, or print a full-resolution image. Even then, users can choose to pay-per-view, purchase a monthly subscription, or purchase an annual subscription.

Tomorrow: A full day of seminars at the Annual Conference of the Polish Genealogical Society of America.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

The Bridges to the Past Conference of the Polish Genealogical Society of America begins on Friday, September 28, 2007 in Schaumburg, Illinois (just outside of Chicago).

The conference includes twenty sessions over three days and over 200 people are expected to attend.

Stephen P. Morse

SOURCE: Stephen P. Morse. Photographed by Stephen J. Danko, September 29, 2007.

The featured speaker is Stephen P. Morse who will present four seminars:

1. One Step WebPages: A Potpourri of Genealogical Search Tools
2. What Color Ellis Island Search Form Should I Use?
3. Playing Hide & Seek in the US Census 1910-1940
4. Deep Linking and Deeper Linking: How I Get the Most Out of Existing Search Applications

I intend to report on the conference each evening, assuming my laptop cooperates. As is does whenever I’m conducting critical genealogical research, my laptop has recently gone into overheat and shutdown mode. So, if I’m a bit brief these next few days, it’s because I’m trying to finish writing before the laptop shuts down!

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko