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Felicia

Joined: 03 Jan 2011
Replies: 43
Location: Chicago, Illinois
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Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2013 6:08 pm Post subject: Poland's Civil Records

Hi, my books and notes are still boxed up after my move so can anyone tell me when Poland started keeping civil records of births, etc. ? My grandmother was listed as German so lived in the Prussian area of Poland and my grandfather was listed as Russian. So, though he came from a nearby village, the line separating Prussian from Russian Poland must have run right through that area.

Thanks for your time. Very Happy

Magroski49
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Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2013 6:54 pm Post subject: Re: Poland's Civil Records

Felicia wrote:

Feliciia,

I am not sure but I think it started with the Napoleonic Code.
http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/government/code/book1/c_title02.html

Gilberto

dnowicki
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Joined: 28 Dec 2011
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Location: Michigan City, Indiana
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Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2013 7:39 pm Post subject:

Felicia,
There is no simple answer to your question because of what happened not long after the Third Partition of Poland. After that partition Prussia probably took control of the part of Poland where your grandparents lived. As far as I know civil registration of births, marriages and deaths did not occur from 1795 until 1807. When Napoleon defeated Prussia and Russia and as a result of treaties between France and Prussia and between France and Russia, Prussia had to give up its claim to a large portion of Polish territory which it had taken in 1795. Napoleon set up the Duchy of Warsaw out of those lands as state allied with France. The Duchy of Warsaw existed from 1807 until after Napoleon's defeat and the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Napoleon drew up the constitution for the Duchy of Warsaw and included the Napoleonic Code which Gilberto mentioned. The keeping of civil registrations began in 1808 in the Duchy and continued until the Duchy ceased to exist. As a result of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 some of the lands which had been part of the Duchy were given to Prussia and other lands of the Duchy were made into the so called Congress Kingdom of Poland (Russian Poland) which was a ruled by Russia with the brother of the Czar as "king" of the Congress Kingdom. The same system of civil registrations which had been instituted in the Duchy continued to be used in Russian Poland until the end of World War I when Poland once again became independent. In Russian Poland the records were kept in Polish until 1868 and then had to be kept in Russian. After Poland regained independence the same system of civil records continued to be used and the records once again were kept in Polish. I'm not sure when civil registrations began in German Poland. My ancestors also lived in German Poland and in Russian Poland. My maternal grandmother's family was from German Poland and my maternal grandfather's family was from Russian Poland. (In contemporary Poland they both would live in the same province---Kujawsko-Pomorskie.) In researching my maternal grandmother's ancestors in German Poland I relied on LDS films of Catholic Church records. About a year ago I've come across some civil registrations from German Poland from the 1870s in German and am not sure whether they first began to be kept at that time or whether they started earlier. My impression is that in German Poland the parish priests made copies of the church registers (in Latin) and submitted them to the civil government, but I cannot say that with certitude. Sorry to give such a long answer, but there is really no simple answer to your question.
If your grandparents were married in Chicago before 1915 an index of marriages in Polish parishes is available on the website of the Polish Genealogical Society of America (www.pgsa.org) and if you know the names of your grandmother's parents a good place to look for information about their marriage would be on the site of the Poznan Project.

Best of luck in your search.

Dave

Felicia

Joined: 03 Jan 2011
Replies: 43
Location: Chicago, Illinois
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Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:42 pm Post subject:

Dave,

Wow! You are quite the historian! I just want to find civil birth (and other) records for my grandparents because I can't find any church records. I may be looking in the wrong place but I don't think so. They may have been destroyed because the places they lived are not listed in the front of the book with the other villages.

Oh, and thanks for the heads up regarding the marriage records!

Felicia

Joined: 03 Jan 2011
Replies: 43
Location: Chicago, Illinois
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Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:47 pm Post subject:

Gilberto,

Thanks for the interesting link! It gives me renewed hope.

Magroski49
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Posted: Wed Oct 02, 2013 8:36 am Post subject:

Felicia,

In your search in Stropkowo and Dziegielewo records, have you ever find the surname Stypurski?

Thank you,
Gilberto

Henryk
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Joined: 05 Dec 2008
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Location: London ON, Canada
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Posted: Wed Oct 02, 2013 12:55 pm Post subject:

Vital records keeping is a very old requirement of the Catholic and other churches. In Poland the Catholic Church was responsible for civil records, which included Jewish records for a period. Here is an online example for Sokolina Parish, then Kraków province, later Kielce:
Księgi metrykalne parafii rzymskokatolickiej w Sokolinie
(Urodzenia-1672-1683)

dnowicki
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Posted: Wed Oct 02, 2013 8:22 pm Post subject:

Henryk et al.,

The requirement of keeping Sacramental records in the Catholic Church came about as a result of one of the canons of the Council of Trent in about 1575. The Church requirement was not to keep what we would call vital records as such but was to keep records of the Sacraments of Baptism, Communion, Confirmation, and Marriages as well as records of Christian burials. Things like date and place of birth for baptismal records was not the primary purpose of the records but was often included to give more detail to the record. The reason the Council of Trent required the keeping of Sacramental records was part of the Catholic Church's response to the Protestant Reformation. Since being Christian in Europe no longer meant either being Catholic or Orthodox the Catholic Church wanted to have a means to identify those who were baptized Catholic and received the other Sacraments. This was especially important since some Protestant groups did not share the same Sacramental Theology as the Catholic and Orthodox branches of Christianity. Church records doubled as civil records since the state in those centuries had no system of civil registration and of keeping civil vital records and so ecclesiastical records filled that void.

As an interesting side note, I have seen baptismal records fro the parish of Szaradowo in the mid 1700s where the parish priest baptized children of Protestant parents with Protestants serving as sponsors (Godparents) with no expectation that the child would be raised Catholic rather than Lutheran. I guess it was an early form of ecumenism. I know that I have copies of such baptisms and will post an example if I can locate the record easily.

Dave

dnowicki
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Posted: Wed Oct 02, 2013 8:46 pm Post subject:

Here is a Catholic church baptismal record of a child of non-Catholic parents from 1781.
Translation: Szaradowa: In the year of Our Lord 1781 on the 8th day of December was born an infant of the legally married Non-Catholic parents Piotr and Rozalia Tessman who was baptized by me as above on the 10th of December to whom I gave the name Krzysztof. The sponsors were the lord Stanislaw Szerner and the worker Maryanna Hartska, a maiden.

Dave

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Felicia

Joined: 03 Jan 2011
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Location: Chicago, Illinois
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Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2013 3:50 pm Post subject:

Gilberto, my problem is that I cannot find Stropkowo and Dziegielewo church records. That's why I am looking for civil records. I cannot find them for Lipowiec or Pokrzydowo either. These towns are all in the same area, so I guess I need to find which church would be holding them.

Dave, I had no idea non-Catholics would be married by a Catholic priest! Very interesting, since one of my ancestors supposedly went all the way to Spain and brought a Spanish lady back with him. I don't know if she was Catholic.

Felicia

Magroski49
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Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 6:08 am Post subject:

Felicia wrote:

Felicia,

According to a 1934 index, Lipowiec had no parish. People attended masses in Pokrzydowo. Both villages are in gmina zbiczno, powiat brodnicki, kujawsko-pomorskie.
I think records may be in Zbiczno, AP Torun, see http://baza.archiwa.gov.pl/sezam/pradziad.php?l=pl&miejscowosc=zbiczno&gmina=&wojewodztwo_id=0&wyznanie_id=0&rodzajaktu_id=0&search=szukaj

RC Church in Pokrzydowo http://www.diecezja.torun.pl/par_pokaz.php?idpar=32

Stropkowo and Dziegielewo had no parishes, either. The former was in Jezewo, the latter in Gozdowo.

Jezewo in State Archives: http://baza.archiwa.gov.pl/sezam/pradziad.php?l=pl&miejscowosc=jezewo&gmina=&wojewodztwo_id=48&wyznanie_id=0&rodzajaktu_id=0&search=szukaj

Gozdowo in State Archives: http://baza.archiwa.gov.pl/sezam/pradziad.php?l=pl&miejscowosc=gozdowo&gmina=&wojewodztwo_id=48&wyznanie_id=0&rodzajaktu_id=0&search=szukaj

Jezewo in LDS microfilms: https://familysearch.org/eng/library/fhlcatalog/supermainframeset.asp?display=topicdetails&subject=342902&subject_disp=Poland%2C+Warszawa%2C+Je%26%23x17c%3Bewo+%28Sierpc%29+-+Church+records&columns=*,0,0

Gozdowo in LDS microfilms: https://familysearch.org/eng/library/fhlcatalog/supermainframeset.asp?display=topicdetails&subject=342874&subject_disp=Poland%2C+Warszawa%2C+Gozdowo+%28Sierpc%29+-+Church+records&columns=*,0,0

RC church in Jezewo: http://www.diecezjaplocka.pl/index.php?akcja=spis_wyswietlParafie&p_id=199

RC church in Gozdowo: http://www.diecezjaplocka.pl/index.php?akcja=spis_wyswietlParafie&p_id=3

Gilberto

Felicia

Joined: 03 Jan 2011
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Location: Chicago, Illinois
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Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 11:27 pm Post subject:

Gilberto,

I am just blown away by all the information that you have provided! Are Jezewo and Gozdowo the provinces for Stropkowo and Dziegielewo? I'm asking because on two of the links I had the search page translated into English and what is being asked for is confusing. For one thing they ask:

"Enter the name of the commune on the territory of which the town searched for is located, or the county on the territory of which it was located before the war:" and

"Select the name of the province within the 1975-1998 or 1918-1939 borders"

So I am not sure what to type for the first one, and what to select for the 2nd one. ????

Felicia

Magroski49
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Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 5:51 am Post subject:

Felicia wrote:

Hi,

Make sure to scroll down the page to its end, so you can see the results for the place. Then click on the word Wiecej, in red, to see what State Archive holds the records you need.

Answering your questions:
- the first field asks for the name of the gmina, if you already know it. If not, leave it untyped.
- the second asks for the name of province. same as above.
- the third asks for confession and
- the forth asks for the type of record.
No.
Jezewo, Gozdowo, Stropkowo and Dziegielewo are places in Plock province.
Pokrzydowo and Lipowiec are places in Kujawsko-pomorskie province.

Because Stropkowo and Dziegielewo had no churches there, their parishes are in Jezewo and Gozdowo.
Jezewo belongs to Dekanat (a group of parishes) sierpecki, whereas Gozdowo belongs to Dekanat bielski.
Both dekanats are part of Plock Diocese.
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategoria:Dekanaty_diecezji_p%C5%82ockiej

Gilberto

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Felicia

Joined: 03 Jan 2011
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Location: Chicago, Illinois
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Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 2:17 pm Post subject:

Gilberto,

The 3rd asks for confession? I don't understand.

Felicia

Magroski49
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Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 4:07 pm Post subject:

Felicia,

The third field is for confession: roman catholic, jews, ewangelical, orthodox, etc . It helsp to narrow your seach if the place you're looking (specially major cities).

Gilberto

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