Once you determine the specific place your ancestors came from, you’ll need to research it: Verify the correct spelling, identify which country it’s in now and when your ancestors lived there, and locate it on a map. You also will need to know what province, county, or district had jurisdiction over the place. Why is this so crucial? Your Polish, Czech, or Slovak ancestors’ records are organized by locality. Without understanding the where, you can’t unravel the who, what, when, and how of your family tree. This chapter will cover tools to help you get to know your ancestors’ hometown.
As you may have discovered, locating your ancestral town isn’t necessarily as easy as searching for its name on Google Maps <www.google.com/maps>. Modern maps may not contain your ancestor’s home village at all (or not by the name you know it). Your search might turn up many places with the same name—which of the nine (or more) Dubravas in Slovakia is your family’s town? Or might it actually be Dubravica?
This is why you’ll need to use a combination of geographical references—maps, atlases, and gazetteers, both modern and historical—to research your family’s Eastern European village. Let’s first walk through the resources and how to access them; we’ll recommend key references for each country later in the chapter.
In addition to telling you the location of your ancestral town, maps provide context for your research. Was your ancestor’s village in a forest, in the mountains, or on a seacoast? Was it a suburb of a major city or far away from any other town? If you can’t find your ancestors in that town, what nearby towns might have records? What are the closest administrative centers likely to have civil registrations?
The easiest place to begin is with online maps. You’ll find a wide variety of modern and historical maps on the Internet; these are a few of my favorites for Eastern European research:
The David Rumsey Map Collection website contains English-language historical maps of Eastern European countries. As this 1901 map of Austria-Hungary illustrates, it’s important to look for period place-names on old maps: The labels Czech and Slovakia weren’t present until after World War I, for example.
Of course, don’t overlook offline maps—an extremely useful map might be sitting on a library shelf in printed or microfilm format. Check major public libraries’ map collections, college and university libraries, and genealogical libraries such as the Allen County Public Library <www.acpl.lib.in.us> and FamilySearch’s Family History Library <www.familysearch.org>. You can order microfilmed maps from FamilySearch for viewing at a local FamilySearch Center. See if other repositories lend the items you need through interlibrary loan.
Most maps from Eastern Europe lack indexes to the towns they show—a helpful feature you’ll typically find in atlases. Historical atlases are especially useful, as they describe the growth and development of countries. They show boundaries, migration routes, landowners, settlement patterns, military campaigns, and other historical information. While modern maps might not show Great-grandpa’s village, historical atlases will give an accurate picture of the region during his time. One excellent atlas to have on your reference shelf is The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Eastern Europe by Dennis P. Hupchick and Harold E. Cox (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). Also bookmark these online atlases:
Consult the country-specific resources and search the FamilySearch catalog to find more. Atlases are typically categorized with maps.
Gazetteers are geographical dictionaries that summarize and cross-reference villages, districts, and other geopolitical divisions. When you look up a place, you’ll learn which administrative district it’s in, as well as about local churches and other social statistics.
In addition to helping you locate your ancestral village, a gazetteer will give you the correct spelling (or alternate spellings) of its name and help you locate the associated religious parish so you can find church records. Some gazetteers even shed light on life in the ancestral village, including the village’s population, physical size, religious composition, and history. Gazetteers often list civil records offices too, opening up new avenues of research.
You may also gain insight about the surrounding area: Gazetteers can describe the city or town’s parent county, canals, mountain ranges, rivers, natural barriers to migration, and transportation networks that may have influenced your ancestors’ decisions. Information about neighboring villages can also give clues about where “missing” ancestors may have come from or gone to. Be sure to check multiple gazetteers, as parish boundaries often changed.
FamilySearch has an excellent collection of Eastern European gazetteers. You can access them by checking the online catalog for microfilmed items you can borrow through your local FamilySearch Center. You also can find gazetteers in reference sections of most libraries. Specific gazetteers for each country are recommended later in this chapter.
To access FamilySearch resources recommended in this chapter, search the catalog <www.familysearch.org/catalog-search> for the item title. The catalog detail page will provide you with the film numbers so you can rent the film for viewing at a local FamilySearch Center. To order a film on FamilySearch.org, you’ll need to set up an account and select your preferred center. Alternatively, you can search WorldCat <www.worldcat.org> to find nearby libraries that have the item or can receive it via interlibrary loan.
The Family Tree Historical Maps Book: Europe (Family Tree Books, 2015) contains reproductions of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and early twentieth-century maps organized by country. It’s a handy reference for visualizing how Eastern European boundaries changed over time. Learn more at <www.shopfamilytree.com/family-tree-historical-maps-book-europe>.
Whether or not you have Jewish ancestry, JewishGen <www.jewishgen.org> offers two helpful online gazetteers of sorts: The JewishGen Communities Database covers six thousand localities and the JewishGen Gazetteer (formerly called ShtetlSeeker) covers one million. The ability to search for similar-sounding locations is particularly useful.
Note that your results may not list some common name variations. You might also get hits on the name in multiple countries—for example, there is a Kučín in present-day Belarus, two places with this name in Slovakia, and other variations of this village name in Poland, Russia, Lithuania, and Croatia. Narrowing the search criteria by modern-day place can help.
When using the JewishGen Gazetteer, you may need to experiment with different variations of the search criteria in order to locate a place. Even then, keep in mind that these databases do not contain all localities in Eastern Europe, so you should also consult other print and online resources.
Because of Poland’s turbulent history, administrative jurisdictions have changed numerous times. Historically, powiaty (counties) were the basic geographic division; while those still exist, the government introduced województwa (literally, “voivodeships,” but commonly called provinces) in 1975. In 1999, it consolidated Poland’s forty-nine former województwa into sixteen. PolandGenWeb’s map <www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~polwgw/polandgen.html> can help you sort out that reshuffling. Parish boundaries have shifted over time, too—and they don’t follow those of political jurisdictions.
The internal administrative structure of former Polish territory was different in each partition. In the Prussian partition (modern western Poland), the land was divided into provinces and then by kreise (similar to US counties), notably Poznań (Posen), West Prussia (Prusy Zachodnie/Westpreussen), East Prussia (Prusy Wschodnie/Ostpreussen), Pomerania (Pomorze/Pommern), and Silesia (Sląsk/Schleisen). The Austrian partition (modern Ukraine and southeastern Poland) was divided into powiaty. In the Russian partition (parts of modern Lithuania, Belarus, and central and eastern Poland), land was divided into gubernias (provinces), then into ujezds (counties). Gubernias with large Polish populations were Łoznan, Suwałki, Siedice, Warsaw, Kielce, Lublin, Radom, and Płock. Many Polish speakers also lived in the western provinces.
From the 1700s to the 1860s, the Habsburg Empire created a series of detailed maps for taxation and agricultural reforms. Called cadastral maps, these resources enable researchers to pinpoint the exact plot of land where the ancestral homestead was situated. They provide numerous details about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century life, including size and type of land, field plots, and individual yards. The government created three versions of these maps (a field sketch, a draft, and a full-color version), so at least one iteration is available for most villages.
Researchers interested in exploring cadastral maps should consult the Gesher Galicia Map Room <maps.geshergalicia.org> and its Cadastral Map and Landowner Records Project <www.geshergalicia.org/projects/cadastral-map-and-landowner-records>. Cadastral maps were also made in the modern Czech Republic and Slovakia. See Mollova mapova sbirka (Moll’s Map Collection) <mapy.mzk.cz/mollova-sbirka> for maps from the Czech lands and Slovakia. Slovak researchers can also check out the Cadastral Portal online at <www.katasterportal.sk/kapor>.
Begin orienting yourself to Polish geography with the Internet map of contemporary Poland <www.mapa.szukacz.pl>, the Polish Geographic Atlas <pgsa.org/polish-geographic-atlas>, and World Atlas Poland <www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/pl.htm>. Consider buying a modern road atlas of Poland, too; you’ll find these on Amazon <www.amazon.com> and at other booksellers.
For historical maps, explore the online Archiwum Map Wojskowego Instytutu Geograficznego 1919–1939 (Map Archive of the Military Geographical Institute) <www.mapywig.org>. And look for these two useful maps series on FamilySearch microfilm: Karte des Deutschen Reiches (Map of the German Empire) (Reichsamt für Landesaufnahme, 1914–1917) and Mapa Polski (Taktyczna) (Tactical Maps of Poland) (Wojskowego Instytutu Geograficzny, 1926–1938).
The best gazetteer for Polish genealogy is Słownik Geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego (Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland, or SGKP), a fifteen-volume gazetteer published between 1880 and 1902 by Filip Sulimierski. Like other gazetteers, Słownik provides a snapshot of your ancestor’s life in a Polish village, including the town’s geographic placement, information on a town’s agriculture and trade, and historical surveys (image B).
The Słownik gazetteer provides details about your Polish ancestors’ town. Entries will usually include a brief description of the locality, plus information about where it’s located. The entries for Hajnin and Hajowe are annotated to show roughly what each section of the entry is describing, with the English translation in italics.
As we discussed in chapter 4, the parititions of Poland can be difficult to understand. In addition to knowing what part of Poland your ancestors lived in during the Partitions, you’ll also need to know in what region their hometown ended up as governing partitions readministered the land. The list below explains how the administrative divisions of Partitioned Poland changed from the Three Partitions to Poland’s independence in 1918. Note that some important divisions were created after the Partitions, namely the Duchy of Warsaw (1807–1815), the Grand Duchy/Province of Posen (1815–1918), “Congress Poland” (1815–1915), and the Province of Prussia (1829–1875). In 1815, the Duchy of Warsaw was broken up into the Grand Duchy of Posen (Prussia), the Free City of Kraków (administered by the three powers), and Congress Poland (Russia).
During the Partitions, Russia organized its Polish lands by expanding existing or creating new guberniyas (governates), though this became part of the Duchy of Warsaw after 1807. In 1815, the Congress of Vienna created “Congress Poland” out of most of Russia’s Polish territory and divided it into eight voivodeships (equivalent to provinces) and, later, eight similar guberniyas. These divisions largely remained the same until they were consolidated into five guberniyas in 1844, then ten in 1867. Congress Poland was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland during World War I, then became part of independent Poland in 1918. Learn more at <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_division_of_Congress_Poland>.
Be cautious when using Soviet Union maps (including Ukraine) printed between 1930 and 1990. The Soviet Union falsified public maps of the country; rivers and streets may be misplaced, boundaries distorted, and geographical features omitted.
You can view the entire Słownik gazetteer online <dir.icm.edu.pl/pl/Slownik_geograficzny>. The site is in Polish, but you can use Google Translate <translate.google.com> to view an English translation. The Polish Genealogical Society of America (PGSA) has translations of some of the Słownik entries and offers helpful tips for understanding entries <pgsa.org/polish-history/translated-descriptions-of-polish-villages-and-provinces>. Consult PolishRoots’ detailed instructional guide before diving into this digitized version <www.polishroots.org/Portals/0/pdf/How_to_use_Polish_Gazeteer_Online(rev.2011_02).pdf>.
For researching Polish places between the world wars and later, consult these helpful gazetteers:
See a complete listing of Poland gazetteers available through FamilySearch at <www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Poland_Gazetteers>.
There are fewer resources for the areas of Poland once under Russian control than for those areas under Prussian or Austrian jurisdiction. One publication, Skorowidz Krolestwa Polskiego (Polish Kingdom Index) (W Drukarni, 1877), contains place-names for the various Polish communities that were ruled by Russia. You can view the gazetteer online at <www.sbc.org.pl/dlibra/docmetadata?id=10795&from=publication>; you’ll need to have installed the Java plug-in <www.java.com> to view the two-volume collection. The Federation of East European Family History Studies (FEEFHS) also has a more general map of the Polish provinces of Russia in 1902, which is available online at <feefhs.org/maplibrary/russian/re-polan.html>.
For ancestors from the Polish provinces of Prussia (detailed in chapter 4), you’ll be dealing with place-names in German and Polish. Consult Uwe-Karsten Krickhahn’s Kartenmeister (German for “Map master”) <www.kartenmeister.com/preview/databaseuwe.asp> to sort through German/Polish name changes for the German provinces of East Prussia, West Prussia, Posen, Pomerania, and Silesia. This database lists most towns and geographic features: mills, some bridges, battlefields, named trees, cenotaphs, etc. You can search by the German name or the current Polish, Russian, or Lithuanian name.
Another useful resource is Atlas des Deutschen Reichs <uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/German/Ravenstein>, a digitized version of Ludwig Ravenstein’s 1883 Atlas of the German Empire. The atlas is color-coded and marks the locations of churches. An accompanying table gives statistics on the religious denominations found throughout the German Empire down to the Regierungsbezirk and Kreis administrative divisions.
The definitive gazetteer for German place-names is Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs (Meyer’s Gazetteer and Directory of the German Empire), available on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch microfilm. For each town, this German gazetteer indicates the location of vital records offices, gives the former German province, and states whether it has its own parish or synagogue. For help using Meyers Orts-, see FamilySearch’s tutorial <www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Step-by-step_guide:_Using_Meyers_Gazetteer_Online>.
Another helpful gazetteer is Gemeindelexikon für das Königreich Preußen (Verlag des Königlichen Statistischen Bureaus, 1887–1888). It has separate volumes for East Prussia, West Prussia, Pomerania, Posen, and Silesia. Ancestry.com has a searchable version accessible to subscribers <search.ancestry.com/search/DB.aspx?dbid=34415>.
In addition to the aforementioned resources, two websites will help orient you to Galicia’s place-name complexities—even the region itself has been called by various names throughout history. Genealogist Matthew Bielawa’s website Genealogy of Halychyna/Eastern Galicia <www.halgal.com/galicia.html#eastgal> provides a helpful breakdown of those names by time period, based on Paul Robert Magocsi’s book Galicia: A Historical Survey and Bibliographic Guide (University of Toronto Press, 1983) and other helpful reference material. The website of Eötvös Loránd University’s Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics in Hungary <lazarus.elte.hu/hun/digkonyv/topo/3felmeres.htm> offers a series of digitized historical maps of Austria-Hungary, including places in Galicia.
You should also consult Gemeindelexikon von Galizien: Gemeindelexikon der im Reichsrate Vertretenen Königreiche und Länder (Gazetteer of Galicia: Gazetteer of the Crown Lands and Territories Represented in the Imperial Council) (K.K. Statistische Zentralkommission, 1907), available on FamilySearch microfilm and online at <wiki-de.genealogy.net/w/index.php?title=Datei:Oesterreich-12.djvu&page=1>. In the gazetteer’s appendix, you can use district and village names to determine the parish where the church records were kept for your ancestors’ village.
Since 2000, the Czech Republic has consisted of thirteen regions (kraje, singular kraj) plus the capital city, Prague (Praha):
Those thirteen kraje encompass seventy-six districts (okresy); each okres is divided into municipalities (colloquially called malé okresy, or little districts). Note that some kraje have changed boundaries over time, meaning that records from these regions might be housed in another kraje. Visit <www.wwjohnston.net/famhist/czech-research.htm> for tips on how to search for local records.
FamilySearch has an excellent collection of Czech maps and atlases; you’ll find them in the catalog under the heading Czech Republic–Maps. Consider getting a modern road atlas to familiarize yourself with Czech geography; you can purchase one through an online bookseller or borrow one from a library.
A helpful historical atlas available through FamilySearch is Militär-Landesaufnahme und Spezialkarte der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie (Detailed Map of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) (Das Institut, 1875–1918). Visit Old Czech Maps <oldmaps.geolab.cz> to view old military survey maps going back to the mid-eighteenth century. Other websites of interest include Czech Vanished Localities <www.zanikleobce.cz> and Lexicon of Towns in North and Northwest Bohemia <www.soalitomerice.cz/slovnik/slovnik.php>.
Aside from the possibility of multiple language variations, there’s another potential stumbling block to locating your ancestral village: Many Czech localities have similar names that can be easily confused. The FamilySearch Wiki <familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Czech_Republic_Gazetteers> gives a great example of this: Kámen, Kamenec, Kamenice, Kamenička, Kameničky, Kamenka, Kamenná, and Kamenné are all separate Czech towns. Additionally, Czech grammatical endings can change place-name spellings. If your ancestors live “in Kamenka,” they would say v Kamence in Czech, but to say they come “from Kamenka” in Czech is z Kamenky. Having a solid knowledge of counties and administrative districts can help you sort out these similar words. Use historical maps and gazetteers to compare documents you have for your ancestor to see which spelling is correct.
Not every village in the Czech Republic had its own parish. Often, several small villages belonged to one parish. Use the following gazetteers—all of which are available on FamilySearch microfilm—to determine the proper record-keeping jurisdiction.
Like its Czech neighbor, Slovakia is divided into kraje (regions), currently having eight (note that these names are spelled differently alone when including the word region):
And similar to the Czech Republic, Slovakian kraje are divided into okresy (Slovakia has seventy-nine), which contain obec (municipalities) and, more significantly for researchers, jaras (county-like administrative districts). Civil records were housed in the registrars’ offices of individual jaras, though accessing them requires handwritten permission from the person’s Slovakian ancestor.
All localities in Slovakia have names both in Slovak and Hungarian, with many places also bearing German names. For instance, the capital, Bratislava, is Pozsony in Hungarian and Pressburg in German. In the area of Subcarpathian Russia, localities had names in Ukrainian.
Place-names are often misspelled in American sources. Difficult names got shortened and diacritical marks omitted. And take care not to confuse jurisdictions—Slovakia has a city and a region called Trenčín, for example. You’ll encounter multiple villages with the same name or similar names, too, such as Jeskova Ves and Jeskova Ves nad Nitricou (the latter meaning “Jeskova Ves on the Nitra River”). As you should do in Czech research, seek corroborative evidence (i.e., information from multiple, independent documents) for the greatest accuracy, and double-check a town’s spelling in historical resources to trace how a place-name might have changed over time or have been modified in records. Learn more about sorting out place-names at <www.iabsi.com/gen/public/ancestral_village.htm>.
You’ll want to have a current road atlas for the Slovak Republic so you can learn the lay of your ancestors’ homeland and have an index to current place-names. Search for one on Amazon or another bookseller. The SuperNavigator website <www.supernavigator.sk> can help you narrow in on specific areas. Explore FamilySearch’s holdings for microfilmed maps you can rent; look in the catalog under the heading Slovakia–Maps.
In the realm of historical cartography, remember that you’re looking for maps of Hungary or Austria-Hungary, as Slovakia didn’t exist independently in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An excellent choice is the online Osztrák-Magyar Monarchia vármegyéi (Austria-Hungary 1910 County Maps) <lazarus.elte.hu/hun/maps/1910/1910ind.htm> and Third Military Mapping Survey of Austria-Hungary <lazarus.elte.hu/hun/digkonyv/topo/3felmeres.htm>.
The helpful German Towns in Slovakia & Upper Hungary: A Genealogical Gazetteer by Duncan B. Gardiner (Family Historian, 1991) was created specifically for family history researchers. Check for availability via interlibrary loan. You also should consult Návzy Obcí na Slovensku za Ostatných Dvesto Rokov (Place-names in Slovakia During the Last Two Hundred Years) by Milan Majtán (Slovenskej Akademie Vied, 1972) on FamilySearch microfilm or in print form via interlibrary loan.
Because of Slovakia’s historical ties to Hungary, you will also be looking at Hungarian gazetteers. These are typically organized by county, district, and village. The most useful Hungarian gazetteer for genealogists is Magyarország helységnévtára tekintettel a közigazgatási, népességi és hitfelekezeti viszonyokra (Gazetteer of Hungary with Administrative, Populational, and Ecclesiastical Circumstances) by János Dvorzsák (Havi Füzetek Kiadóhivatala, 1877), known as the Dvorzsák Gazetteer for short (image C). The entire gazetteer is available on FamilySearch microfilm; volume 1 is online through the University of Pécs <kt.lib.pte.hu/cgi-bin/kt.cgi?konyvtar/kt03110501/tartalom.html>.
This page from Volume 1 of the Dvorzsák Gazetteer indexes localities within the Cszaka and Kisucza districts (járás) of Trencsén county (megye). You can see name variations in parentheses.
Here’s how the Dvorzsák Gazetteer works: Volume 1 indexes all Hungarian communities, with cross-references for variant names, by county and district. Counties are numbered at the heads of the pages. Additional names for the locality are in parentheses. Use the numbers from the index in volume 1 to find the entry for your town in volume 2, which gives specific information about the locality. The names of farmsteads, settlements, and mills that belong to the locality are sometimes listed within brackets. Population figures by religion follow. For help, consult Bill Tarkulich’s excellent Dvorzsák Gazetteer tutorial <www.iabsi.com/gen/public/dvorzsak_gazetteer.htm>. Jordan Auslander’s handy Genealogical Gazetteer of the Kingdom of Hungary (Avotaynu, 2005) and the Hungarian Village Finder <www.hungarianvillagefinder.com> are both based on the Dvorzsák Gazetteer.
The Carpatho-Rusyn Society provides a list of Carpatho-Rusyn villages located within modern Slovakia, Ukraine, and Romania, based on the 1910 Hungarian census for the Prešov region and Subcarpathian Rus’ <www.carpatho-rusyn.org/villages.htm>. Data for the Lemko region—villages located in what is today southeastern Poland—are based on the 1921 Polish census.
You may also wish to purchase a copy of Carpatho-Rusyn Settlement: A Map and Gazetteer by Paul Robert Magocsi, available from <www.rusynmedia.org>. This large-scale wall map displays more than fourteen hundred villages and towns with majority Carpatho-Rusyn populations in the early 1900s, with Rusyn areas indicated clearly in color. It shows the present-day borders of Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, and Hungary, as well as the pre-World War I Hungarian county and Austrian district boundaries. The gazetteer portion lists forty-five hundred current village and town names with cross-references to alternate names in Croatian, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Rusyn, Serbian, Slovak, or Ukrainian.