Parish books · Mazowieckie & Łódzkie · 1868–1917
Find the record. Connect the generations.
Your ancestors’ births, marriages and deaths from Russian-era Poland were written in Cyrillic. We locate the exact entry, read it, and link parent to child to grandparent — so you get a family line, not a pile of scans.
Waitlist only. Early access opens in small batches. No payment now.
Not a translation tool
Translation services start once you already have the document. We start before that: searching the annual indexes (skorowidze) at the back of each parish book, finding the act, and chaining it to the next generation.
The hard part is rarely the alphabet. It is knowing which parish, which year and which spelling — and then doing it again for the parents.
How it works
- Tell us what you know. A surname, an approximate year and a parish or town. A birth, marriage or death you are looking for, if you know it.
- We search the indexes and pull the matching acts. Name variants are tried in Polish and Cyrillic spellings, year by year.
- You get a plain-English report. Each act summarised, sources cited, and the next generation identified — with the search path we followed.
Sample report excerpt
Birth no. 284 · Zwoleń · 1885. A child of the Wysocki family; both parents named, the father’s age and occupation stated, two witnesses.
Next generation: the father’s stated age points to a marriage some 25 years earlier — search the marriage indexes of Zwoleń and neighbouring parishes.
Illustrative format only — not a verified real case.
Where the records are
Typical situation for Catholic parish books in our area. Individual parishes vary.
| Area (then → today) | Years | Language of the act | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warsaw, Płock and Radom gubernias, parts of Łomża and Siedlce → Mazowieckie | 1868–1917 | Russian (Cyrillic) | State Archives (AP) branches; scans on szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl; partial name indexes on Geneteka |
| Piotrków and parts of Kalisz and Warsaw gubernias → Łódzkie | 1868–1917 | Russian (Cyrillic) | AP Łódź and branches; szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl; Geneteka |
| Same parishes | 1808–1867 | Polish | Same archives; often better indexed |
| Same parishes | after 1917 | Polish | Births over 100 years and marriages/deaths over 80 years go to the State Archives; newer books stay at the civil registry office (USC) |
Honest note
- Some books are lost or not digitised. If we can’t find an act, we’ll say so and explain why.
- Every act is marked found, probable (needs a second source) or not found, with the books and years we checked.
- We work only with records over 100 years old. We do not research living people.
- This is historical and genealogical research. We do not issue certificates or official documents.
Questions
Why are records from 1868–1917 in Russian?
From 1868 the parish registers of the Kingdom of Poland had to be kept in Russian. Earlier books are in Polish, and Polish returns after 1917. So the same family can switch alphabet halfway through.
Do you translate documents I already have?
That is what translation services do. Our work is finding the acts you don’t have yet and linking them into a line. If you already have one act, tell us — it is a good place to start the next generation.
Which areas do you cover?
Parishes in today’s Mazowieckie and Łódzkie voivodeships, Russian-era books 1868–1917. If your family came from elsewhere, say so in the form; we open new areas by demand.
What does it cost?
Nothing now. This is a waitlist. No payment is taken, and pricing will be stated clearly before anyone is asked to pay.
What if the book is missing?
Then the act is marked not found, with the reason (book lost, not digitised, or name variants exhausted). We don’t guess.
Will I receive images of the documents?
Reports are text only. Each act comes with its archive reference, so you can view the original scan free on the archive’s own site.
Waitlist
Early access opens in small batches. Tell us one ancestor — it helps us decide which parishes to index first.
Privacy
We keep only what you type in this form (email, surname and, if given, place, year and record type), in a Cloudflare database, to write to you when we open (GDPR: consent, which you can withdraw at any time). No cookies, no advertising, no tracking pixels. Any visit counts are aggregate and cookieless, by Cloudflare, our host. We never share or sell data. Remove yourself at any time: