Finding These Distant Relatives

How do you find that information (or even the existence) about about your parents, parents parents that stayed back in Poland? In short a lot of research and luck.

The first place is to see if you can find that old family bible, which unfortunately in my case was given to someone after my grandfather's passing and we haven't been able to figure out to whom now 40 years on. If you are fortunate enough to have access to it it was a tradition to list all the family events (births, deaths, marriages, etc) on the inside covers.

There are great places to begin searching on the Internet, of course. The first I would recommend if you believe your forefathers came through New York the the Ellis Island web site (http://www.ellisisland.org/). It's free but you do have to register. There you can just begin typing in surnames at the very least and results will appear. Keep in mind that the more information you might have, such as year of arrival, will get you better results. But on the flip side you just don;t know how those registrars entered these eastern European names. I have found our name as Piszczor, Pescor, Piszczur, Piszcsor - just to name a few. When you locate someone you believe is in your line and select the entry you will first get a summary of general information, but you will also have access to a copy of the actual manifest!

This is the official record from the ship Captain of everyone aboard the ship. It will also tell you a bit about the person; the town they came from and a family member there, their final destination and who they plan to stay with. Be aware that most of these records go across two pages, so be sure to look for both!

Above is an example of the arrival of Andrew Piszczor Sr on the S.S. Wiemer in 1904. This is the first page of the record and he is listed on line # 7.

I continue next time with other places to search!