Polish Immigration · The partitions
If an American record says your Polish grandfather was born in Russia, Germany or Austria, it is probably right. From 1795 to 1918 there was no Polish state, and the partition your family lived in decides which records exist, what language they are in and where they are kept today.
Three partitions, 1772 to 1795
In three steps, in 1772, 1793 and 1795, the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Habsburg Monarchy divided the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth among themselves. After the third partition Poland disappeared from the map for 123 years. Napoleon created a Duchy of Warsaw in 1807, but the Congress of Vienna in 1815 redrew the borders, and those borders held until the First World War.
| Partition | Main regions | What US records usually say |
|---|---|---|
| Russian | Congress Poland (Warsaw, Łódź, Lublin, Kielce, Radom, Płock, Suwałki), plus the eastern lands | Russia, Russian Poland, Russia-Poland |
| Prussian | Province of Posen (Poznań), West Prussia, with Upper Silesia as part of Prussia | Germany, Prussia, Posen, German Poland |
| Austrian | Galicia (Kraków, Tarnów, Rzeszów, Przemyśl, Lwów) | Austria, Galicia, Austria-Poland |
From 1920 on, many of the same people told the census taker they were born in Poland, and some were recorded as born in Poland with the old empire added. A family that appears as Russian in 1910 and Polish in 1920 has not moved; the border has.
The Russian partition
Most of central Poland was the Kingdom of Poland, known as Congress Poland, a state under the Russian tsar. It had the most useful record system of the three. From 1808 parish priests acted as civil registrars and wrote every birth, marriage and death in two copies, one kept in the parish and one sent to the civil authorities. The second copies are why records often survive even when a church burned.
- Language: Polish until 1867, Russian from 1868 to about 1917, then Polish again
- Format: narrative paragraphs naming parents, witnesses and the time of day
- Where kept today: Polish State Archives, diocesan archives and the parish; many online
The Prussian partition
The Province of Posen and West Prussia were part of Prussia, and after 1871 of the German Empire. Catholic parish books were kept in Latin or Polish, and from October 1874 all births, marriages and deaths were also registered at the civil registry office, the Standesamt, in German. Emigration from this region peaked in the 1870s and 1880s, earlier than from the other two.
- Language: Latin, Polish or German in parish books; German in civil registration from 1874
- Format: church books in columns; civil records on printed German forms
- Where kept today: Polish State Archives, diocesan archives, and some records in Germany
The Austrian partition
Galicia, in the south, was the poorest province of the Habsburg Monarchy and sent huge numbers of emigrants to America from the 1880s to 1914. Parish priests there kept the official registers, usually in Latin, on printed forms with columns. Greek Catholic parishes served the Ukrainian population in the east of Galicia, and many villages had both.
- Language: mostly Latin, sometimes Polish
- Format: printed grid forms with house numbers, very useful for linking families
- Where kept today: parishes, diocesan archives and Polish State Archives; records from the east of Galicia in Ukraine
Why this matters for your research
- Use the country in American records as your first clue to the partition
- Confirm the partition with any place name you have, since the same village name can exist in all three
- Search the archives and databases that cover that partition
- Prepare to read Latin, Polish, Russian or German, depending on the place and the year
“Born in Russia” on a census does not mean your ancestor was Russian. Before 1918 it usually means he was born in central Poland under Russian rule.
How we can help
Ancestral Village Identification starts by working out the partition from your American records, because it decides which Polish archives and languages the rest of the research will involve.
Keep reading
Four languages, one family: Polish records before 1918