How do I find the history of a Polish last name??

Question

Trying to find the history of my family and I can't find anything on my grandfather's last name. Know of any good search engines???

Answer 1

Look at census records and immigration records. Poland was partitioned for more than a century before WWI. The Prussians (who later became part of the unification of Germany), Austro-Hungarians and Russians each held a large chunk of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Slovakia...calling the totality of the pieces "Polish", though the people living there might disagree a little with the title. Any records pre-1918 will list immigrants and alien residents as "Russian" or "Russian Pole", "Prussian" or "German Pole", Austrian "Galician" or "Slovak".

Then you look for the passenger records and see where they came from. If they came through Ellis Island, both their town of birth and place of last residence should be filled in and the address of their nearest living relative back home should be listed. If they came over pre-Ellis Island, they weren't Russian Poles and were probably German Poles. Galicians only started emigrating in the mid-1880s. Also look at their WWI Draft registrations. That usually lists the town of birth and often lists the home address of their parents back in Poland.

Also contact the church they belonged to for a little history. Poles were recruited village by village to come over. They got a package deal of cheap ship passage (they even did their own cooking), cheap rail passage and land for between $1-2.50/acre in exchange for working out a contract in a lumber camp, mine or sawmill in the Midwest. Once they worked out their contract, they'd get another 50-80 acres to clear and farm. So all the young men from one village would come over as a group, build their own church and live close together in their new areas. Those who followed later were more likely to stay in the east, particularly Pennsylvania and NJ, and they tended to be more Lithuanian/Russian Pole. Pittsburgh was their mecca, followed by Jersey and Statin Island. Eventually they'd find the slaughter yards in Chicago as they started travelling west on the railroad. Chicago is split between German Poles on the NW side and Galician Poles/Lithuanians on the South side. It's claim, per the Census Bureau, is that it's the most Polish city outside of Warsaw.

Once you get a feel for who they were, when they came and what they did, you can start tracking records back to Poland. Poznan is getting extremely nice to research. The Carpathians are particularly hard to research. How much luck you have depends on what you find.

Answer 2

G's mom is absolutely our resident expert on Polish research. Probably the only thing that I can add is that in looking for FAMILY history, your goal is looking for the persons.  History of a last name is not the same thing at all.