PolishOrigins(TM) Forum

Historical maps of Poland Congress Poland

looking for clues — Thu Jul 13, 2017 8:15 pm

Author: looking for clues

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 8:15 pm

Like the original poster, forest109, I too struggle to put ancestor's locations on a historical map of the time of the event.

I like this map of Congress Poland from 1831 since it shows the larger towns.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Congress_Poland_1831.jpg
It was published under the "Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_the_Diffusion_of_Useful_Knowledge It even has a pronunciation key for some Polish sounds. You can click to enlarge.

I am looking at it in conjunction with this map showing the Administrative Division of Congress Poland in 1830 which also shows the voivodeships and district borders. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Administrative_divisions_of_Congress_Poland_in_1830_ENG.png
I have not yet been able to figure out if the districts were named for the capitals of the districts.

Re: Historical maps of Poland

Henryk — Wed Mar 01, 2017 2:30 pm

Author: Henryk

Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 2:30 pm

From Gen Dobry vol 18 no 1:
http://easteurotopo.org/
and the map of pre-partition Poland?Lithuania:
http://easteurotopo.org/images/regional%20maps%20of%20eastern%20europe/Poland-Lithuania/Poland%20in%20the%20year%201771(1895)%20Jan%20Babirecki.html

Re: Historical maps of Poland

forest109 — Tue Feb 28, 2017 5:55 pm

Author: forest109

Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 5:55 pm

Thanks! Yes, very detailed, even to elevation contours. What I'm looking for, though, are maps or gazetteers that show not only the town or village, but also the boundaries of the province, county, and even gmina if possible, that the town was located in at that particular time. Parish boundaries would be a bonus, although the records on the Geneteka Genealodzy website give the parish and town/village in the transcribed information. The main time frames/boundary divisions after 1806 seem to be the Duchy of Warsaw (1807-1815), early Congress Poland (1816-1860s), and later Congress Poland (late 1860s, after the Warsaw uprising-1918). The general maps I have found cover those three periods, but aren't detailed enough to show anything except lager towns/cities. Any maps prior to 1806 would be great, too, although I haven't got that far back yet in any records. It just seems like a database that includes this information would be really useful. The ability to overlay maps from different time periods would be even better!

By the way, I tried the PGSA map link that Magroski49 provided, and it does not work at this time. I contacted PGSA, and they said they are in the process of reorganizing a lot of their online resources, and it will be up soon.

Re: Historical maps of Poland

BobK — Tue Feb 28, 2017 4:46 pm

Author: BobK

Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 4:46 pm

One of the best set of maps can be found at http://igrek.amzp.pl/mapindex.php

Most are old German maps, and Poland is divided, on that site map, into numerous sectors, each of which
is minutely detailed. Each sector map is quite large, and most have multiple choices of size & detail.

Re: Historical maps of Poland

Anonymous — Mon Feb 27, 2017 7:06 pm

Author: Anonymous

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 7:06 pm

forest109 wrote:

Thanks! I'm a PGSA member, but I wasn't aware of this source. Hopefully there is something similar out there for other time periods.

Maybe here:
https://www.sggee.org/research/village_maps.html

Gilberto

Re: Historical maps of Poland

forest109 — Mon Feb 27, 2017 5:50 pm

Author: forest109

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 5:50 pm

Thanks! I'm a PGSA member, but I wasn't aware of this source. Hopefully there is something similar out there for other time periods.

Re: Historical maps of Poland

Anonymous — Mon Feb 27, 2017 4:55 pm

Author: Anonymous

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 4:55 pm

forest109 wrote:

I'm new to the Forum, so this may have been discussed previously, but I would like to know if anyone is aware of any source of detailed maps (to at least a county/powiat level) of Poland during it's many geo-political iterations in the past two to three hundred years. As I research my Polish ancestors and document their origins (entering them in Family Treemaker, in my case), I always try to record town/village locations both as they were known at the time and as they are known today, in order to make them easy to locate on a modern map. Obviously, Poland did not exist on a map 100 years ago, and our ancestors would have just said they were born in Russia (or Prussia, or the Austro-Hungarian Empire - I have my grandmother's passport, issued in 1903 by the Russian Empire). I'm aware of the history of the partition of Poland in the late 1700s, the creation of the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw by Napoleon, it's re-partition in 1815, and it's reorganization following full integration by Russia in the 1860s. I have found a few maps on the internet that broadly show the boundaries of the various governates/provinces within the Duchy of Warsaw, the governates/gubernia/voivodeships (provinces) in Congress Poland in the period from 1815 to 1918 (with the administrative boundaries changing somewhat in the western provinces sometime between about 1845 and 1869), and the counties within each province from about 1869-1918. But, none are very detailed, and certainly not to the level of gmina. Most of these maps are available in Wikipedia articles.

Is anyone aware of any more detailed historical maps that show boundaries to at least a county/powiat level, and the towns/villages within them, or of any data bank that lists what towns were within what gmina, county/powiat and province/governate/voivodeship at any particular time in the past? Wikipedia and Google Maps are great for identifying the present day location of any town, but there isn't a lot of historical perspective on what was located within what in the past. In some cases, villages don't even exist anymore, or the names have changed. It looks like the original information is out there in the scanned parish records available on the Geneteka Genealodzy website (a fantastic source that I was directed to recently by members of this forum - thanks a million!), but you have to be able to read handwritten Polish and Russian to translate them, and I'll need another lifetime to be able to do that.

And, speaking of parish records, have parish boundaries remained constant over the years, or have they also changed? I've noticed that a few villages seem to be in a different parish now (based on Google Maps) than when a record was entered, say, 150 years ago.

Any help would be much appreciated!

By the way, all of my Polish ancestors (almost all of whom settled in and around Norwich, CT) are from the area in and around the Kampinoski National Forest, about 25 miles west of Warsaw (past Warszawa governate, present day Mazowieckie voivodeship). So, all were within the Russian Empire from 1815-1918.

Hi, this was a good source but it seems now it is only available to PGSA members:
http://pgsa.org/maps-of-poland-in-1907-by-wojewodztwo-and-powiat/

Gilberto

Historical maps of Poland

forest109 — Sun Feb 26, 2017 10:09 pm

Author: forest109

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2017 10:09 pm

I'm new to the Forum, so this may have been discussed previously, but I would like to know if anyone is aware of any source of detailed maps (to at least a county/powiat level) of Poland during it's many geo-political iterations in the past two to three hundred years. As I research my Polish ancestors and document their origins (entering them in Family Treemaker, in my case), I always try to record town/village locations both as they were known at the time and as they are known today, in order to make them easy to locate on a modern map. Obviously, Poland did not exist on a map 100 years ago, and our ancestors would have just said they were born in Russia (or Prussia, or the Austro-Hungarian Empire - I have my grandmother's passport, issued in 1903 by the Russian Empire). I'm aware of the history of the partition of Poland in the late 1700s, the creation of the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw by Napoleon, it's re-partition in 1815, and it's reorganization following full integration by Russia in the 1860s. I have found a few maps on the internet that broadly show the boundaries of the various governates/provinces within the Duchy of Warsaw, the governates/gubernia/voivodeships (provinces) in Congress Poland in the period from 1815 to 1918 (with the administrative boundaries changing somewhat in the western provinces sometime between about 1845 and 1869), and the counties within each province from about 1869-1918. But, none are very detailed, and certainly not to the level of gmina. Most of these maps are available in Wikipedia articles.

Is anyone aware of any more detailed historical maps that show boundaries to at least a county/powiat level, and the towns/villages within them, or of any data bank that lists what towns were within what gmina, county/powiat and province/governate/voivodeship at any particular time in the past? Wikipedia and Google Maps are great for identifying the present day location of any town, but there isn't a lot of historical perspective on what was located within what in the past. In some cases, villages don't even exist anymore, or the names have changed. It looks like the original information is out there in the scanned parish records available on the Geneteka Genealodzy website (a fantastic source that I was directed to recently by members of this forum - thanks a million!), but you have to be able to read handwritten Polish and Russian to translate them, and I'll need another lifetime to be able to do that.

And, speaking of parish records, have parish boundaries remained constant over the years, or have they also changed? I've noticed that a few villages seem to be in a different parish now (based on Google Maps) than when a record was entered, say, 150 years ago.

Any help would be much appreciated!

By the way, all of my Polish ancestors (almost all of whom settled in and around Norwich, CT) are from the area in and around the Kampinoski National Forest, about 25 miles west of Warsaw (past Warszawa governate, present day Mazowieckie voivodeship). So, all were within the Russian Empire from 1815-1918.