[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] AGAD archive in Warsaw

[pnswork at aol.com]

Hi Paul,

    I visited the AGAD archive in 2001 and managed to find some very useful information.  However, based on that experience, I have the following recommendations for you:

1. Review the archive holdings on their web site and identify collections that you want to search before you go.  Any on-site listings will be in Polish, but the web site may have some of the indexes translated for you.  AGAD does nothave a card catalog like we are famliar with in US libraries.

2. At least one month in advance (preferably two months or more), contact the AGAD archvive via email or letter to inform them that you plan to come, and list the dates that you plan to be there.  AGAD may require that you receive a confirmation letter, guaranteeing you a spot in their reading room.  Without this confirmation letter, you may not be granted access to the reading room and the documents you are interested in.

3. Plan to have an interpreter with you for at least the first part of the first day.  When I visited in 2001, no one could (or would) speak English, so I had to muddle through as best I could until I could arrange for an interpreter.

4. Review the costs published on the web site for copies and fees if you plan to get copies.  I recommend the full-size copies of a scan (on CD).  The scans are high resolution and excellent quality.

BTW, AGAD also has the original settlement records for many German villages for the 1795 - 1806 time frame, including the Lodz area (referred to as South Prussia in many documents).  If you know the exact village, you might find something there also.  During my visit, I found original settlement documents from several villages in the area between Plock and Warsaw north of the Visla River.  These documents are all in German because Prussia controlled the area at the time.

Good luck!

    -Paul Work





-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Rakow <rakow at ifh.de>
To: ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org
Sent: Thu, Sep 2, 2010 11:55 am
Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] AGAD archive in Warsaw



  Dear All,
        I'm planning a visit to the AGAD central archive in Warsaw,
 to investigate a little, and see what they have. This will be my
 first time there, though I've been to several regional Polish
 archives before (Szczecin, Lodz, Poznan, Bydgoszcz).
        Does anyone who's been to the Warsaw archive before have advice
 or suggestions of what to look for?  Most mentions I've found on the
 SGGEE site are to do with church records from Western Volhynia, but
 my own ancestry is from Heimtal and Zhitomir parishes, so this is
 probably not so useful for me.
        I will probably be concentrating more on tax records and
 government records from the Lodz area, Poznan/Posen province and
 the Netzedistrikt - so if anyone has done research in Warsaw on
 these areas, I'd be most interested in hearing what you found.
               Thanks in advance for any tips,
                     Paul Rakow
                    rakow at ifh.de

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