Polish Immigration · Heritage Month
October is Polish American Heritage Month. It celebrates the contribution of Polish Americans to the United States, and for many families it is the month they finally start asking where in Poland their ancestors came from.
Why October
Polish American Heritage Month has been celebrated in October since the early 1980s, when it was launched by the Polish American community in Philadelphia and taken up by Polish-American organizations across the country. October was chosen for two anniversaries: the arrival of the first Poles at Jamestown, Virginia, on 1 October 1608, and the death of General Kazimierz Pułaski, the father of the American cavalry, on 11 October 1779 after he was wounded at the Siege of Savannah.
How it is celebrated
- Pulaski Day parades, the largest on Fifth Avenue in New York on the first Sunday of October
- Festivals, concerts and exhibitions organized by Polish parishes, clubs and museums
- Proclamations by governors, mayors and, in many years, the President
- School and library programs on Polish history and Polish-American figures
Ten ways to start your family history this October
- Interview the oldest relatives and record what they remember, including place names
- Collect the family papers: naturalization certificates, prayer cards, letters and photographs
- Find your immigrant ancestors in the 1950 and earlier censuses
- Look for their naturalization papers and the 1917 or 1942 draft cards
- Find the passenger manifest of their arrival
- Visit or contact the family’s Polish parish in America
- Photograph the family graves, reading the Polish inscriptions
- Learn how Polish surnames and first names changed in America
- Work out which partition of Poland the family came from
- Search Geneteka once you have a likely parish
Each step is explained in our Polish genealogy guides, starting with how to trace your Polish ancestry from the United States.
A few hours with the family papers and an older relative will often do more than weeks of searching online. Start there.
How we can help
If the trail stops at the village, our research projects pick it up: Ancestral Village Identification is the right first step for most families.
Keep reading
How to trace your Polish ancestry