Pole Vaulting

Are you ready to trace your Polish immigrant ancestors back to their town of origin? If you’re among the more than 10 million Americans with Polish roots, you can now begin your research right from your easy chair. Polish genealogists have traditionally faced difficult challenges: Poland did not officially exist as a country for 123 years, and border changes and shifting political boundaries make it difficult to know where to search.

Whether your ancestors hailed from the Austrian, Prussian or Russian partitions, you can search and view online millions of index entries (and, in some instances, original record images) from archives all over Poland. These Polish genealogy websites (most of them free) can save you loads of legwork in locating ancestral hometowns and figuring out where to look for records.

While it is possible to research your Polish ancestors on the big genealogy websites (see the sidebar on page 53), you can get to the “good stuff” faster by tapping into these 10 Polish genealogy websites:

1. ARCHIWUM GLOWNE AKT DAWNYCH (AGAD)

<www.agad.gov.pl/inwentarze/testy.html>

Archiwum Glowne Akt Dawnych (AGAD; The Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw) provides access to online registry books