“My grandparents were Polish.” It’s a sentence millions of Americans say — and it’s true, in the way they mean it. But if you’ve started researching your family history, you may have discovered something confusing: the village your family came from isn’t in Poland anymore. It might be in Lithuania. Or Ukraine. Or Belarus. Or…
If you’ve tried to research your Polish family history and hit a wall, you’re not doing anything wrong. Polish genealogy research is genuinely more complex than researching ancestors from most other European countries. Understanding why will save you a lot of time and frustration. The Three-Partition Problem For most of the 19th century, Poland didn’t…
If you’re ready to hire a Polish genealogist, you’re probably past the stage of browsing Ancestry.com and hitting dead ends. You know your family came from Poland — or from what is now Ukraine, Lithuania, or Belarus — and you want someone who can actually find them in the archives. What a Polish Genealogist Actually…
Your DNA Test Says You’re Polish. Here’s What It Can’t Tell You — and How to Find the Rest The email arrives, you open the results, and there it is: “38% Eastern European.” Maybe it names Poland outright. Maybe it’s a wider smear across the map — Poland, Lithuania, a little Ukraine, all bleeding into…
