The American Documents That Name a Polish Village
Which US records give a town rather than just “Russia” or “Austria”: post-1906 manifests and naturalizations, the 1917 draft card, alien registration, the SS-5, and Polish parish records in America.
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Four Languages, One Family: What Polish Records Look Like Before 1918
Polish, Russian, German and Latin - one family’s records can be in all four without anyone moving house. What to expect in each partition, and why reading the page is the real barrier.
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Why the Village Name on Your Ancestor’s Papers Is Probably Wrong
Ship manifests and naturalization papers were written by clerks guessing at Polish spellings. Here is how the errors happened, what a “village name” can really mean, and how a researcher works backwards from a wrong one.