[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Place Names in Pedigree Database

[AlbertMuth at aol.com]

Place names in Poland are identified by four parts:  village, county, 
province,
country.

Jan Textor is absolutely right to point to the numerous redrawings of
administrative districts in Poland over the last century (the term for this 
in
the United States is "gerrymandering").  While it might be of interest to 
trace "your" village's history, it is pointless to do so when one deals with 
hundreds of villages as I do.  

Pre World War I documents in your possession will reflect the 
contemporary administrative divisions.  It is virtually impossible that 
19th century documents will use the same divisions as the ones I use, 
or the ones that are currently in use in Poland.

The LDS church bases its library catalog place-name classification on the
territorial divisions of 1945-1975.  At the time they made this decision, it
made sense since these were the divisions then in place.  Furthermore,
the system of provincial archives was created at this time. It is highly 
likely that the records for a given area were sent to the provincial archives
AT THAT TIME pertinent.  I particularly like Jan Textor's example of  what
is going on with the town of Wloclawek (=Leslau) because it illustrates
exactly the issues we are both talking about.  Those of you who can
trace ancestry to parishes in central Poland should take a look at the
LDS catalog entry for the parishes (such as Dabie, Chodecz, Gostynin,
Konin, etcetera)--every catalog entry will identify the archives holding
the records where the LDS church filmed.

Now, the library catalog only lists places of record.  The Lutheran church
at Wloclawek encompassed all the surrounding villages, probably a few
dozen (I have never counted them, but I suppose I could!).  In the church
records themselves, each event (birth/death) usually gives the place of
the event in two places:  1) the current citation form (the one you'd find 
in a dictionary) is in the margin; and 2) within the text, usually after a
preposition "w" or "z".  (English prepositions in, on, at etcetera usually
are syllabic; it amazes me that a single consonant has meaning!).  When
following the preposition, the place-names have declensional endings
tacked on the end of the word.

To determine the four-part description of the parish of Gostynin, the LDS 
church uses information found in the SPIS gazetteer, the slang way for
referring to Spis miejscowosci Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej.  

And this is why it is Gostynin, Gostynin, Warszawa, Poland. (FHL 
microfiche #6000369-6000383; should be in every family history center).
It is arranged in alphabetical order by village (column 1).  Column 3 has
the county, column 4 the province (with a nasty ending on it; see the first
fiche with its introduction in English to see what the citation spelling of
the province should be).

Notice that I did not include marriage records in the previous discussion.
A lot of different things can go on, depending on the location and the
time frame.  There is some folklore that I have heard from Family History
Center volunteers in more than one FHC that "the place in the margin
is where the marriage occurred".  Hogwash.  A very high percentage of
marriage records include TWO place-names:  the residence of the groom
and that of the bride.

In the marriage records of a given parish, the very first line usually states
something like  "Dzial~o sie~ w Pl~ocku", indicating that the information
was given at Plock.  Now, in the earliest periods of many parishes (late
1820's and early 1830's), this initial phrase may contain the name of
a village that is not the place of record--say, Plock.  This is the best
indication that I know of that the minister was itinerant:  the marriage 
took place elsewhere than the place of record (home base for the
minister).  The marriages at Bardzynska Huta almost consistently 
show in the initial phrase the bigger town of Aleksandrow (in the vicinity 
of Lodz)--I suspect here that there was a minister covering two parishes.

Please note that I am discussing only post-1808 records written in 
Polish and Russian in Russian Poland, not the earlier records in 
German for Wladyslawow or Ilow--which would require a separate
discussion.

I do not know what the LDS church suggests for recording place names
in Volhynia.  No one in my family went there, so I have never researched
in that area.

I will further mention that, like Poland, a similar redrawing of districts 
has also occurred in Czechoslovakia; the LDS church uses a different
place description than the one currently in use. 

This is probably more than the average person wants to know (my own
family allows me about two sentences before their eyes glaze over), but if
you are putting together your family history, you do need to make some
decisions about data presentation.  For lack of inventiveness, I prefer to
conform to standard LDS practice and this is what I have described.

Happy Mother's Day!

Al Muth