[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Konin Archives posts more digital records

Fri Apr 27 16:41:46 PDT 2012

I completely agree with the approach that Jerry is taking; one
must keep it manageable.

That being said, SGGEE members with ancestors in
the area covered by the Konin archives (this would include
the Lutheran parishes of Dąbie Koło Konin Grodziec Sompolno
Maślaki, just to name a few) must, I repeat, MUST, in
your research consider researching in Catholic parishes
before the 1840's if their villages lay more than 5 kilometers
from the Lutheran parish center.  The same principle is
true of the Posen region in the late 18th century.

Remember, you must start from the specific information
that you have.  Taking your family back another generation
for an individual requires that you have

   - an approximate birth year, and
   - the names of his/her parents (from a death record or, preferably, a
   marriage record)

The Catholic parishes of the first third of the 19th century
in many areas (not all) of Russian Poland may include
between 20-40% German Lutherans.

The marriage records are particularly valuable, since they
often specify the parish of birth for groom and bride.
Lutheran parishes in 1810, the few that there are,
ALMOST NEVER DO.  And it is the luck of the draw
for you as a researcher--people married where they
married.  The records are not usually double-listed.
Sometimes, the records have become lost over time,
or, speaking optimistically, "have not yet been found."

So far, research methods on Germans in Russian
Poland and Volhynia have been very different.  Most
records in Russian Poland were kept on the parish
level and records survive for many in the archives.

In Volhynia, the records that have survived, that we have
access to, and which have been indexed (THANK YOU
all you volunteers, you know who you are) are kept
at the consistory level, in St. Petersburg.  For a map
of the consistories, see
http://www.feefhs.org/maplibrary/russian/re-elcr.html
Haven't you ever wondered about the "stpete records"?
For background, read the excellent SGGEE page on
Lutheran records for this area at
http://www.sggee.org/research/parishes/church_parishes/LutheransInVolhyniaKievPodolia.html

The methods do NOT need to be different.  I am fairly
certain that the same ones will be applicable in
Volhynia, and other gubernias not in the 19th century
Kingdom of Poland (Russian Poland, Congress Poland).

Roman-Catholic records in Volhynia (NW Ukraine) have
been filmed, but you would never locate them in the FHL
library catalog by searching under the name of the parish.
They were filmed, not on the parish level, but on a higher
ecclesiastical level, that of deanery. The website
http://www.szlachta.com.pl/?page=62  lists all of
the Volhynian parishes and the villages that belong to
each. For each parish, the appropriate deanery is named.
The website also provides the same information for the
Kiev and Podol'e gubernias, from where no records are
yet provided anywhere, to my knowledge.

My understanding is that the first Lutheran parish in
Volhynia (Żytomierz, spelled variously, known in
Ukrainian now as Житомир) covered the entire
region.  I am sure that many, many births and marriages
were not recorded in the Lutheran church. It was simply
too far for the average person to travel.  Life became
easier with the foundation of Rożyszcze in 1862, but

There is a "financial issue" with the records being
filmed at the deanery level (FHL uses the term DEKANAT).
Like the stpete records themselves, they were filmed year
by year.

I have no personal connection to Volhynia and so
cannot spread myself thinner and conduct experiments
on films from there.  Someone else (a lot of someone
elses) needs to pick up the ball and start trying out
ideas.

I do not think this will work for later times (after 1870,
let's say), but again, I simply cannot state so in a
definitive way.  No one can; the experiment has not
been conducted.

You will need to correlate the map of villages for
Volhynia (say, the ones that SGGEE has provided)
with a map of Catholic parishes, which a local
FamilySearch Center may have in its collection.
I still regularly use the print version of Stanisław
Litak's "The Latin Church in the Polish Commonwealth
in 1772: A Map and Index of Localities", which is now
available on CD only (www.pgsa.org has it for about $20,
see http://www.pgsa.org/store/cart.php?target=category&category_id=58

The URL link to the list of deaneries tells you which deanery each
parish belongs to.  I do not know how complete the list of
villages under each parish is; I do not research in this area.
Polish spellings for the villages are a must, not transliterations.

The questions from the Volhynians in this group always seem
to be the same ones about history.  Isn't there anyone with
Volhynian roots who wants to do genealogy beyond what
has already been done in the stpete transcriptions (VKP records)?

Al Muth

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 6:26 PM, Jerry Frank <FranklySpeaking at shaw.ca>
wrote:
>
> Just like to further point out to all that we are trying to keep up to
date with these on line records as apply to the LUTHERAN church and you can
link to them directly from our web page
http://www.sggee.org/research/parishes/church_parishes/LutheransInRusPoland.htmlrather
than going through a drawn out search process.  There is no big fan
fare announcing additions so we rely on people like Al and our other
readers to keep us up to date on what is available.
>
> We are not including Catholic records at this time.  They may be valuable
for some locations and situations, but you will have to search for them
manually per Al's instructions.  We are also not including the entire
Poznan province - only that part that became part of Russian Poland.
>
>
> Jerry Frank
> SGGEE Webmaster
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Albert Muth <albertmuth734 at gmail.com>
> Date: Friday, April 27, 2012 12:23 pm
> Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Konin Archives posts more digital records
> To: Ger-Poland-Volhynia <ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org>
>
> > The website of the Polish State Archives in Poznań has posted
> > an April update to the list of digital images online of church records
> > from the Konin. I reported on the last updates in December 2011.
> >
> > Currently, only some five branches are participating in a beta
> > project called “Zintegrowany System Informacji Archiwalnej
> > ZoSIA” (baza ZoSIA, for short), including Warszawa, Lublin,
> > Poznań, and Konin. The only online inventories of which I am
> > aware are for just two of them:
> >
> > for Konin:
> >
http://www.poznan.ap.gov.pl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=116&Itemid=80
> >
> > For Poznań, see
> >
http://www.poznan.ap.gov.pl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=133&Itemid=80
> >
> > (from December 2011, this may update very soon))
> >
> > Remember, these are just links to the inventories. They lack
> > hyperlinks to take you to the records on a different website.
> >
> > You need to keep track of two numbers: that of the branch archives
> > and that of the parish. The number for the branch archives in
> > Konin is 54;
> > you will find the number for the parish in the first column of the
> > inventory, labelled “Numer zespołu”.
> >
> > If you wish to see records from the first parish on the Konin list,
> > Białków (52°10' N 18°35' E), you need the Konin number 54 and
> > the number 726 that you found in column one for Białków.
> > The website where you will find scanned records is:
> > http://szukajwarchiwach.pl/54/726/0/-/.  This was the easy part.
> >
> > Look mid page, on the right side for "Title of the Fond" (against
> > a grey background). Above this line, on the right side, there are
> > three tabs: description of the fond, series, and units. Select the
> > second tab, for series. From here, I usually look for the line that
> > says: urodzenia, małzeństwa, zgony ("births, marriages, deaths").
> > Click on it. Then, select the year that interests you, click on it.
> > From here, you are on your own. For records in the Poznań
> > archives, the process is similar. Its number is 53.
> >
> > There is no search box for you to type in a surname. You will
> > need to look for your names record by record, page by page.
> > Using the records will be somewhat easier if you already have
> > familiarity with the format of church records that have been
> > microfilmed. Do keep track of where you found the index for
> > the year, as they are unmarked and tedious to locate.
> >
> > Use of these records is intended for people who know how to
> > determine which parish they should look in (hint: you must use a
> > gazetteer).
> > Al Muth
> > Michigan
> > _______________________________________________
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