How to Find Polish Immigration Records
If you have Polish ancestors or are conducting a genealogy research project, you will need to find Polish immigration records. Immigration records usually contain passenger lists, immigrant names, towns of origin and may contain information on immigrants’ family members. Finding Polish immigration records may require a bit of patience, but you can find a wealth of information in old documents.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Check census records to find out what year the Polish resident immigrated to the United States. The 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930 U.S. Individual census records show the year of immigration, which is important to know when searching for the rest of the records. You can access census information on microfilm at many libraries. If your local library does not have the information you need, call the National Archives Microfilm Rental Program at 301-604-3699 for information on how to rent microfilm to research Polish immigrants. Individual records are kept private for 72 years after the census is taken, so 1930 would be the last census with publicly available individual records as of 2010.
-
2
Visit your local library and check records of passenger lists for the ports to which your Polish ancestor is most likely to have traveled. The “Morton-Allen Directory of European Passenger Arrivals at the Port of New York, 1890-1930” and the “Morton-Allen Directory of European Passenger Arrivals at the Ports of Baltimore, Boston, and Philadelphia, 1904-1926” are excellent sources to find out at which port your ancestor arrived. The Morton-Allen directories are arranged chronologically, so it is best to start by finding the month and year your ancestor immigrated. The books are broken down further by ship and then arranged alphabetically by name. You may need to scan through several ships if you do not know the name of the ship on which your ancestor arrived.
-
-
3
Look through books that relate specifically to Polish immigrants, such as “The Polish Genealogical Society of Texas” and “Hamburg Passengers from the Kingdon of Poland and the Russian Empire.” These books index several Polish immigration lists.
-
4
Search the Ellis Island database at jewishgen.org, which is listed in the "Resources" section of this article, by inputting information you know about your ancestor, such as his name, town name, port name, ship name, year of arrival, ethnicity and year of birth. The search feature includes options for phonetic spellings of names in case you do not know the correct spelling.
-
5
Visit trusted genealogy websites, such as Ancestry.com, USGenWeb.org and FamilySearch.org. Some of these sites require a paid membership to access all of the records, but they can be a good source of information if your other efforts have not provided you with the information you need.
-
1
