Polish America · New York & New Jersey
Most Polish immigrants landed in New York, and many never went further. Polish communities grew in Manhattan and Brooklyn and across the harbor in the factory towns of New Jersey.
New York City
The first Polish parish in New York City, St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr, was founded in 1872 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The largest community, though, grew in Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, around St. Stanislaus Kostka parish, founded in 1896. Greenpoint remained a Polish neighborhood through the postwar and Solidarity-era waves of immigration.
New Jersey
Polish communities grew in Jersey City, Bayonne and Newark, in the textile towns of Passaic, Garfield and Wallington, and in Perth Amboy, South River and Trenton. Poles worked in the refineries, docks, textile mills and factories of the state’s industrial north and center.
Records to search
- New York City vital records: historical births, marriages and deaths are held by the New York City Municipal Archives, which has put many online, while newer birth and death records are handled by the city health department and marriage records after 1949 by the City Clerk
- New York State censuses of 1905, 1915 and 1925, and New Jersey state censuses of 1905 and 1915
- New Jersey vital records: older records are held by the New Jersey State Archives in Trenton
- Naturalization records from the many city, county and federal courts of the area
- Parish registers, held by the parishes, the Archdiocese of New York, the Diocese of Brooklyn and the New Jersey dioceses
Five boroughs, several counties and dozens of courts can hold records for one New York family. Pin down the borough and the address from the census before ordering certificates.
Sources and research tools
How we can help
Immigration & Passenger Records sorts out the New York and New Jersey side of a family across its many archives and courts, and Ancestral Village Identification carries the search to Poland.