Frequently Asked Questions

Usually yes. A surname, a rough arrival date and a US city are often enough to locate an immigration record, and that record frequently names the village. FOCUS10 with the goal Ancestral Village Identification exists for exactly this situation.

Almost certainly. Between 1795 and 1918 there was no Polish state, so American records list Polish immigrants under the empire that ruled their village. “Russia” on a census usually means the Russian partition of Poland. We use the empire as a clue to which archives to search.

No - this is the most common misconception. Losses were severe and uneven. Some parishes lost everything; others have unbroken registers back to the seventeenth century. Duplicate copies were often kept separately from the originals and survived. Which situation applies to your family is itself a research question.

No. Everything is done remotely: you order, complete the intake form and receive the report by email. Requests to and visits at Polish archives are part of the research, not something you arrange.

Yes. Poland’s historical communities kept their records separately: Jewish civil registers, Lutheran parishes, Greek Catholic parishes. Tell us the family’s background if you know it, so the search goes to the right registers.

Because answering your question properly is the work. Deciding whether a family can be traced means examining records, and that takes research time. Publishing fixed prices is what lets every client receive a considered answer rather than a guess - and you know the full cost before you commit.

Projects start at $1,290 for ten research hours and one goal. Every price is on the projects & prices page, with what each project includes. Archive fees, copying, correspondence and translation are included; there are no extras.

Through Stripe, using a card, Apple Pay or Google Pay. We never see your card details. ESSENTIAL25, STANDARD50 and PREMIUM100 can be split into three payments.

No. Prices and scope are published so that you do not need one, and the FAQ answers the questions we are asked most. If your goal turns out not to fit the project you chose, we tell you in the research plan before any hours are used.

Time spent in records, correspondence with archives, reading and translating, analysis and writing the report. It does not include waiting for an archive to reply.

FOCUS10 usually takes 3-5 weeks, ESSENTIAL25 6-10 weeks, STANDARD50 3-4 months and PREMIUM100 4-6 months, counted from the day we receive your intake form. Polish archives answer written requests in their own time, typically four to six weeks; when one is slow we tell you and continue with the parts of the search that do not depend on it. See all delivery times.

Whatever the question needs: parish and civil registers, population books, conscription lists, land and notarial records, passport files, European departure lists, American manifests, naturalization files, draft cards, Social Security applications and Polish-American parish records. The four chapters describe each of them.

Yes. Nineteenth-century Polish records are written in Polish, Russian Cyrillic, German Kurrent script or Latin, often in the same family. Every record we find is translated in full into English.

We work with documents, not DNA. If DNA matches point to a Polish village or surname, send them with your intake form: a match’s family tree is a lead we can test in the records.

Many former Polish parishes lie outside today’s borders. Their registers may be in Warsaw, in Lviv or in a regional archive across the border. We establish where the books are now and tell you in the research plan which of them the project can cover.

A written narrative in English, an image of every document found, full translations, a complete source list including unsuccessful searches, family group sheets and, on larger projects, a pedigree chart. Delivered as a PDF.

A negative result is documented in full: every archive and register searched, the years covered and why the search failed. It has real value - it stops you or a future researcher repeating the same work. The refund policy states the financial terms.

Yes. The report is yours: share it with family, publish it, or pass it to another researcher.

We do not edit online trees on your behalf, but on request we include a GEDCOM file of every person found, which you can import into Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilySearch or any genealogy program.

Yes. The Printed Heirloom Report is your report printed on archival paper in a cloth-bound binder, shipped to a US address.

We help with the part that decides most cases: assessing your line of descent against Polish citizenship law and obtaining the Polish records an application needs. We are researchers, not a law firm, and we do not promise an outcome. Start with the Citizenship Assessment, or read how citizenship by descent works.