Driving in a foreign country can be a frightening experience, but it doesn’t need to be. Prepare for Driving Abroad: Know the Traffic Signs By the time I arrived in Goleniów and was squared away with my rental car, it was close to 1 a.m. and I still had an hour and a half to […]
Read More →
If you’re looking to cover a lot of ground quickly, the best way to get around the Polish side of Pomerania is to rent a car. While Poland does have public transportation available, there are a number of reasons not to consider it as an option for your trip. The primary concern with Polish transportation, […]
Read More →So you want to visit your Heimat? Lots of people have asked what to expect when visiting Pomerania. What is it like? How should I plan for it? How do I travel around? This guide has been promised for some time, and I’m happy to finally have the time to share my experience with you. […]
Read More →
After a rather productive six-and-a-half years of family history research, I encountered a terrible problem. My downloads folder had over 4,000 files, most of them related to my genealogy work. I’m German through-and-through, and I have been living up to the organizational reputation. “Ordnung,” as my Opa-in-law would say. However, at times, it is much […]
Read More →
Landsberg an der Warthe was a busy center for military and commerce situated on the Warthe River in Neumark. Today, it is known as Gorzów Wielkopolski. Numerous churches line the street corners. It was also a very populous city, meaning that there were hundreds of births registered to the Hauptkirche annually. I loved visiting the […]
Read More →
I was doing some family history research tonight and tracing some of the people who match me on Ancestry. That led me to a quandary. The image was not shown in Ancestry. The church books were readily available and digitized on FamilySearch. But… you guessed it! LOCKED! It’s okay. It’s happened before. One of the […]
Read More →
This video demonstrates the significant differences between Ancestry and FamilySearch results for the same search information. In this case, Cook County, Illinois death records were the source of information. However, this is a common occurrence with other record sets as well.
Read More →
When one thinks of Pomerania, it is difficult not to recognize the historical significance of Stettin. It was once the regional capital of Pomerania. Today, the city houses some of the oldest and most important artifacts from German times. The city is still beautiful and vibrant with plenty of things to do along boardwalk. The […]
Read More →
It might be repetitive for me to state, but even if your ancestral village’s birth, marriage, and death records have been lost, there is still hope to advance your family tree. It might come as a surprise that whole families can be found in land registers, among other documents. The only way to know for […]
Read More →
Without a doubt, the State Archives in Koszalin (Archiwum PaÅ„stwowe w Koszalinie) are one of the most valuable resources for uncovering more in your family tree. While in Poland, I visited three major branches of the State Archives: Gorzów Wielkopolski (Landberg an der Warthe), Koszalin (Köslin), and Szczecin (Stettin). Of these, the branch in Koszalin […]
Read More →