The archives in Gdańsk have digitized the police records for the city of Danzig. The Allensteiner Indexierungsprojekt organized the collection on their website which can be viewed here. The list is quite long, and the card index starts at reference number 10/14/0/5/7000, which can be found towards the bottom. The collection itself is housed on the Polish Archives’ Szukaj w Archiwach under the series “Kartoteka.”

What’s especially nice about Szukaj w Archiwach is that one may download entire collections as a ZIP file. This allows for a greater degree of flexibility for reading on different devices, and it conveniently allows secondary preservation of archival holdings by those who want to keep personal copies.

The Meldekartei are important documents for those whose family members traveled. The Prussian government required that individuals register in places upon arrival. These people could be day laborers seeking work or apprentices on their Wanderjahr. This was also true for those arriving in port cities for immigration.

The image for Karoline Friederike Dawurskÿ, however, demonstrates some inaccuracies in the record keeping. According to my records, she was born August 1, 1831 in Rambow and was baptized on August 7 of the same year. Her confirmation in the church of Groß Dübsow in 1846 helps support her birth year, as does her death certificate, and no other people with that name were born to that parish in the surrounding years. Furthermore, her name was spelled two different ways on the same form. Her brother, Wilhelm Ludwig’s Meldekartei also shows his birth month as March when he was born in February in Alt Darsin. His place of birth is also corrupted, showing “Drosien” as his birthplace.

However, even though there are discrepancies between some personal information, these records prove to be valuable to helping narrow down timeframes and locations. As shown below, the Meldekartei for the Lemke family from Demmin gives the entire family’s histories, listing birth dates and places. It appears this family moved around frequently, from Demmin and Stargard to Potsdam and Danzig.

Special thanks to the Pommerscher Greif and Kolberger Lande for sharing this discovery on their Facebook pages. I would encourage you to like and subscribe to them to receive updates on newly found or published materials relevant to your research.

Christopher DeWuske

I founded this website to help others make connections with their genealogy. I've been at my own family history since 2014 and have made significant progress since then. My hope is to one day determine where my family name came from. In the years since I started my genealogy, I've become something of an expert on the resources and history of Pomerania. I'd like to share what I've learned with you to help you on your own journey to discover your heritage. With the right information and enough patience, I believe researchers like us can break down the barriers to our family histories and make more freely available so others can trace their families as well. Let's work together to rebuild the stories of our ancestors!