How to trace an ancestor

How to get from a surname to a particular record in the sources on this site: where to begin, which source covers which years, how to read the deed window and the marks in a reading, what the family trees tell you and where to look next. The example throughout is Michał Jasiński of Jasionka, baptised in 1792, died in 1855.

Where to begin

Start with what you know for certain: the earliest person whose given name, surname, approximate years of life and place are confirmed by documents — civil registration records, parish registers, family papers. From that person work back generation by generation, and check every link in a source before you take the next step. A surname alone settles nothing: around Jasionka the same surname was usually borne by several families at once, and the same given names recurred in them generation after generation.

First it is worth seeing where the surname occurs at all. The list Surnames in all sources gives, for every surname, the number of records in each edition on this site, and the overviews Jasionka in all sources and Jasińskis in all sources bring together in one place the records of one place and of one surname.

The Search page and search options

The main tool is the Search page; the same field stands on the home page. Type a surname, or a given name and a surname. Capital letters and Polish characters do not matter: “jasinski” finds “Jasiński”. The masculine form also finds the feminine and inflected ones (Jasińska, z Jasińskich), and a surname also its older spellings: Jasiński and Jasieński are one surname.

Below the field are the collections: the pages of the site, notarial deeds, mortgage registers, the Tribunal extracts, tax registers of the 17th and 18th centuries, castle court records and armorials. At first the search covers all of them at once. Clicking a collection narrows the search to it, and each further click adds another — so you can search notarial deeds and mortgage registers together, leaving out the rest; “Everything” returns to the whole. Each collection shows its number of hits, and a hit leads to the edition with the query already filled in.

Under the “Search options” button:

One person — the given name and surname must belong to the same person, in any order and inflection (“Michała Jasińskiego”). It turns on by itself when the field holds a given name and a surname; without it each word is searched for separately, and the results will also include records in which Michał and Jasiński are two different people.
Years from year to year — only records from those years. The years can also be added in the field: Michał Jasiński 1850–1855.
Similar-sounding surnames — also surnames spelt differently but sounding the same, e.g. Krasuski and Krassuski, Dąbrowski and Dombrowski. There are more results, but some of them from other families.
Older and Latin forms of given names are known to the search itself: Ioannes finds Jan, Casimirus — Kazimierz, and an old spelling finds the modern one (Woyciech — Wojciech).
Plus and minus: +Jasionka — the word must occur in the same record; -Chromiński — leaves out records containing that word. Type a woman’s maiden name as the records give it: z Jasińskich or z domu Jasińska.

The search in the edition Notarial records of Łuków and Siedlce also has the fields “Role in the deed” (party to the deed, person mentioned, witness, neighbouring landholder, official) and “Place” — where the deed was drawn up, or the place of a person, e.g. Jasionka. By default it leaves out witnesses, officials and neighbouring landholders there: witnesses were often neighbours and acquaintances with the same surname, frequently from a family other than the one sought. When you are looking for someone who may have been only a witness, choose “All persons, witnesses included”.

When nothing matches, “Did you mean: …” appears below the field with the closest spellings from the index — the easiest way to reach a surname that the scribe wrote differently from how it is spelt today.

Which source for which period

Each source answers a different question and reaches different years. From the oldest:

The poll tax of the Łuków Land
1673, 1674 and 16766 892 named records334 places
Registers of the poll tax, drawn up by parish and by group of estates: the petty nobility by given name, cognomen and surname, whole royal places as a single collective item. They let you check whether a family was settled in a given place in the 1670s.
Łuków extracts in the records of the Crown Tribunal of Lublin
1673–1793377 entries
Official extracts from the Łuków castle and land court records, which the parties submitted as evidence before the Tribunal in Lublin: depositions, protests, documents entered into the records, powers of attorney, recorded sums — often with family relationships. Each entry in the original language and in full translation.
The Łuków castle court records
1743–17442 132 entries569 surnames
Entries of the castle court in translation: protests (manifestations), court ushers’ reports, documents entered into the records and depositions of the nobility of the Łuków Land, with kinship, places and estates; for many families — fragments of trees.
The hearth tax of the Łuków Land
1775–1794161 places387 family headwords
Extracts from the hearth-tax rolls — who paid and for how many hearths, with cognomen and office where the card gives them — and the number of inhabitants of each place from the 1787 census.
The Siedlce mortgage registers
1810–18264 165 entries
Registers of the Mortgage Office (Urząd Konserwatora Hipotek) in Siedlce: debts, dowries, pledges and sums secured on landed estates and houses. With each entry, the persons — often with parents, spouse and the wife’s maiden name — and the deed on which the entry rests; when that deed is in the edition of notarial deeds, a link leads straight to it.
Notarial records of Łuków and Siedlce
1810–185546 884 deeds2 102 wills and inventories
Deeds of the notaries (scriveners, rejents) of Łuków and Siedlce: sales, debts, dowries, partitions, acts of respect before marriage, and wills. With each deed, the persons with their role, status and family relationships; read in full are above all wills, inventories and deeds of the Jasiński family, most of the others from the first page, some only from the notary’s repertory or index.

Older still are the entries on the Jasińskis in the castle and land court records of the Lublin region from the 16th century and the Łuków surveys of 1653 and 1659–1660. Armorials speak of noble families, but they are print, not records: the authors wrote from various sources and often contradict one another, so people from the armorials are not linked to the trees or to the records. All sources on one timeline — on the page Sources.

The deed window: reference, scan, archive

In every edition the number of a deed or entry opens its window. For notarial deeds it shows the date and place of drawing up, the wording of the repertory — the register the notary kept day by day — a short summary and the persons with their role in the deed and family relationships; for deeds read in full also the full reading, and for many — the manuscript pages, which can be enlarged.

For further research the most important line is Szukaj w Archiwach: the number of the archival fonds, the reference number of the unit (volume) and the scan numbers. The links lead to the Szukaj w Archiwach service — the first to the fonds, the second to the unit; when the unit is not in that service, the reference and scan stand as plain text. For a deed known from its first page the scan on which the deed begins is given, for a full reading — the range of scans; “right” and “left” mean the page of the opening on the scan. In the mortgage registers and the Tribunal extracts it is the same: fonds, reference of the book or number of the unit, and scan.

Below are the permanent address of the deed with the “Copy the address” button — it opens this deed straight away and can be saved or sent — a ready citation under “How to cite this deed”, and the “Report a correction” link for when a reading raises doubts.

In the table of persons the given name is in its modern form, the surname in a standardised form and the place under its present-day name; below, in small print, the wording of the deed (“in the deed: Michał Jasieński”). The deed always decides: the description in the repertory sometimes differs from the content of the deed, and every finding is worth checking on the scan.

Example: Michał Jasiński. On the Search page type Michał Jasiński 1850–1855 and choose the Notarial records collection. Among the hits is a public will drawn up in Jasionka, in Michał Jasiński’s house — deed Skawiński 30/1855. The date has two forms, 23 VI / 5 VII 1855: the deed gives it in both calendars, Julian and Gregorian. The Szukaj w Archiwach line points to fonds 62/105/0 (rejent Franciszek Skawiński), reference number 1 and scans 73–75. In the table of persons Michał is the son of Jakub and Scholastyka née Głuchowska, the husband first of Elżbieta née Wysokińska and then of Julianna née Jasińska, and the father of children from both marriages.

Among the same hits is deed Zawadzki 394/1851: his daughter Anna Kurowska née Jasińska, with the consent of her husband Ludwik Kurowski, gives her father Michał a receipt for her dowry. In the will four years later the same Anna appears as a daughter already provided for. The two deeds are linked by several clues at once — the father, the daughter’s maiden name, the husband — not by the name alone.

The marks “[?]”, “[…]” and “?”

A reading of a manuscript is not always certain, and the site does not hide it. The same marks are used throughout:

[?] — a letter or word that is illegible or read only as probable, e.g. “Krzę[?]ewska”. Before you base a conclusion on such a reading, check it in the manuscript.
[…] — a gap: letters or words that were not read, e.g. “Bor[…]a” in the poll tax; in the transcriptions of the armorials — a passage of the print left out in transcription.
? after a family relationship (“brother?”) — the deed does not name that relationship outright; it follows from the content, e.g. a child’s parents named without the word “spouses”. It is a conjecture to be checked, not a finding.
? after a present-day place name — a probable identification, e.g. where a letter is illegible.

Two words in the deeds are easily mistaken: “niegdy” (the late) beside a person means that he or she was no longer alive, and “Urodzony” (Well-born) before a name is a nobleman’s title, not a date of birth.

Trees and “Selected families”

Trees of the family itself — with parish register entries, deeds and links to the sources — are in the sections Jakub's Family Tree and Jasiński Family Trees. Michał from the example above belongs to Jakub’s branch: he is the son of Jakub and Scholastyka née Głuchowska, and in Jakub’s Family Tree he appears with his baptism entry of 1792, the confirmation of his nobility of 1855 and a mention of his will.

The editions of notarial deeds and mortgage registers have a “Selected families” tab, and the surname entries of the castle court records have fragments of trees. These are trees built from the relationships recorded in the deeds themselves. The same person in different deeds is linked only when, besides the given name and surname, an anchor agrees: father, mother, spouse, cognomen, children or siblings; a different father, a different mother or a different cognomen rules out a link. When there is only one clue and the name is common, the persons are not linked — the card then says “possibly the same person as in deed …”, to be checked.

A tree is a hint, not proof: two different people may be taken for one, or one person split into two. Check every relationship in the deed — the deed numbers stand beside the persons. Read the links between sources carefully: in the Tribunal extracts “in the notarial deeds: …” means only that the same surname or the same place also appears there, while in the mortgage registers a link to notarial deeds of the same person is given only when at least two clues agree.

Surnames on today’s map

How many people bear a surname today and in which voivodeships they live is shown, from the PESEL register, on the page Surnames on today's map of Poland, with the area of Łuków and Siedlce highlighted. It is a present-day picture and is no evidence of kinship or of where a family came from: the migrations of the 20th century scattered surnames across the whole country, and the same surname is borne by families unrelated to one another. Ancestors have to be sought in the sources of their own time.

Where to look next

Search engines, scans of registers, archives, armorials, maps and places where you can ask others are gathered on the page Useful websites; the most important ones are also listed in the “Looking for an ancestor?” box on the home page. The records behind the editions of notarial deeds and mortgage registers are held by the State Archive in Siedlce, and the Tribunal extracts by the State Archive in Lublin; scans of the volumes are in the Szukaj w Archiwach service, to which the links beside the deeds lead.

If you find a mistake in a reading or have a more certain one, write about it through the “Report a correction” link in the deed window.