Galicia region forum

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Permalink Reply by John LaLiberté on July 11, 2009 at 7:47am

My grandparents also came from Galicia. I found their names on the Ellis Island passenger lists (grandfather first followed later by the rest of the family). Due to world politics, my homestead has been part of Austria, Poland, and today the Ukraine. I too have just started this family area. After getting as much information from relatives, some on-line possibilities include Ancestry.com, WorldVitalRecords.com, and FamilySearch.com. Get as much side information (passenger lists, census records, vital records, etc) before crossing the sea. These preliminaries will help narrow the search in the Old World.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Drake on July 11, 2009 at 7:48am

Remember that most European nations have/had record archiving very similar to our own. Churches, deeds, taxes, death, wills and administrations, civil and criminal decisions, courts' orders, parish records (where applicable), and a map and short user-friendly history. The problem is mainly that you don't know the names of those record facilities. For starters, make an email contact with an English-speaking researcher in the country you need and ask him/her how they have named each of those categories of records. After that, you will need a how-to-research booklet about the chosen nation. Don't forget that much eastern and central European researching follows the what we call German record keeping. And surely do noit forget the church records - Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist Orthodox, etc, and a historiical map. So, to begin learn their label and follow the churches.

Good luck Paul

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Permalink Reply by Michael J Marcy on July 11, 2009 at 10:57am

I travelled to the Galicia region last summer. I found the towns of my gr grandparents from their Naturalization Records, found at the County Courthouse (in Buffalo). If you know the towns, you can then look for church records on LDS films. During my visit to Poland, I hired a Polish-speaking genealogist to guide me around. The Civil Records of these particular towns did not help, but I gained a lot of information from the Church records.

Michael Marcy

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Permalink Reply by Judi Zimmer on July 12, 2009 at 9:25am

If they are Jewish, JewishGen.org is a great place to start. Even if they aren't, that site has tons of information on the region since so many Jews have Galician roots. I have also just added several forums for my ancestral towns in Galicia, focusing on Jewish families; they are Buczacz, Radomysl nad Sanem, Mikulince and Nisko. Another must is the Ellis Island website, although I've found that it's sometimes a challenge to find your ancestor due to spelling variations--you have to be very creative. Steve Morse's site is much better than Ellis Island's: http://stevemorse.org/ and use the "gold form" for your search. And of course, ancestry.com has tons and tons of information that might help.

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Permalink Reply by Amy Abbey on July 12, 2009 at 10:43am

HI Randi,
I too have relatives from what is considered Galicia. They came from Pilzno, Poland - the surname was Chilowitz. I have managed to get back to my great-great grandparents Samuel and Golde Chilowitz. I did use JewishGen and went into their Polish Indexing which I found to be very helpful.

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