01
Church Registers
Metrical books for baptisms, marriages, and burials from Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, and Jewish communities.
What We Research
Polish family records are rarely in one place. The search has to be structured.
We combine archive-led work with portal research so every lead is grounded in the right locality, denomination, and historical jurisdiction before time is spent on the wrong village or the wrong surname spelling.
02
Civil Records
USC birth, marriage, and death registrations, plus duplicate civil copies transferred into archival holdings.
03
Database Research
PRADZIAD, Polish State Archives portals, Geneteka, FamilySearch, and Ancestry collections used to identify the right fonds quickly.
04
Military Files
Conscription lists, Austro-Hungarian and Russian partition-era service traces, and post-independence military documentation.
05
Emigration Trails
Passenger manifests, Ellis Island-era arrivals, naturalisation files, and hometown clues preserved in diaspora paperwork.
06
Surname Variants
Cross-checking spelling shifts across Polish, German, Russian, and English-language records to keep one person on the same paper trail.
Key Archives
The right Polish archive depends on the year, the partition, and the confession.
Polish genealogy is not one portal and one query box. We move between archive systems depending on whether the family line runs through imperial administrations, diocesan structures, or diaspora records abroad.
Archiwum Państwowe Network
Regional state archives hold the backbone of 19th- and 20th-century Polish civil and parish research.
FamilySearch Poland
LDS microfilm collections often surface parish books and civil registers that are difficult to access locally.
AGAD, Warsaw
Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych is critical for older central records, noble files, and pre-partition documentation.
Diocesan Archives
When parish copies are missing from state repositories, diocesan archives can still preserve sacramental books and visitation records.
Challenges We Solve
Why families stall out before they find the right Polish records.
The difficult part is not usually searching more names. It is understanding which script, archive, and historical jurisdiction produced the record in the first place, then proving that the person in that register is your ancestor.
01
Cyrillic, Latin, and Gothic handwriting across different archive systems
02
Partition-era research under Russian, German, and Austrian administrations
03
Surname spelling drift between village records, passports, and immigration forms
04
WWI and WWII record destruction that forces alternate-source reconstruction
Our Process
Four steps from family clue to documented Polish ancestry report.
The work stays disciplined so you do not pay for random searching. Every step narrows the paper trail before the next archive request goes out.
01
Intake
We review the names, dates, family stories, and diaspora records you already have to anchor the search to a locality.
02
Archive Search
Koreni searches the right Polish archive networks, church books, databases, and emigration sources instead of scattering requests blindly.
03
Document Retrieval
We obtain and interpret the most useful records, translating key details and reconciling conflicting spellings or dates.
04
Report
You receive a clear findings report with sourced family links, document references, and next-step recommendations.
Polish Research FAQ
Questions families ask before hiring a Polish genealogy researcher.
If you want to understand the records landscape first, our Polish guide explains the DIY side in more detail.
Read: How to Trace Your Polish AncestorsHow much information do I need to start Polish genealogy research?
A surname alone can help, but the strongest starting point is at least one hometown clue, migration document, or a relative's approximate birth year. Koreni can often work backward from US, Canadian, British, or Australian records to identify the right Polish locality.
Can you research ancestors from partition-era Poland that is now outside modern Poland?
Yes. Many Polish families came from territories that are now in Ukraine, Belarus, or Lithuania. We account for historical borders, archive transfers, and multilingual place-name variants when tracing those lines.
How long does a Polish family records search usually take?
Timelines depend on locality, archive responsiveness, and whether the records are digitized. Many projects begin producing meaningful findings within a few weeks, while deeper archival cases can take longer.
What if records were destroyed during the wars?
Destroyed parish books do not always end the search. We look for duplicate civil copies, military files, tax lists, emigration records, notarial papers, and archive inventories that help rebuild a family line indirectly.
Start Your Polish Family Search
Start Your Polish Family Search
Tell us what you know, even if it is only a surname, an Ellis Island story, or a single village name. We will take you to the Koreni contact form and turn that clue into a structured Polish records search.
Go to the Contact Form