WHY USE THIS GAZETTEER FOR GALICIAN RESEARCH ?

To successfully access records for genealogy and family history, one needs to first accomplish the following four tasks. All of these tasks can be aided or accomplished by use of the gazetteer:

1. Geographically locate the ancestral community (village, landlord estate, town, or city) or estate on historical maps. Once the desired place is located in this gazetteer, the researcher can use the set of key maps in Appendix E as a finding aid to directly identify the map numbers for the two most common Austrian historical map series. By associating each community with a larger nearby town or city in the gazetteer, it is possible to locate any community on virtually all detailed maps having a scale of 1:200,000 or better.

2. Determine the names of places that were the various jurisdictions for each community/estate. For any community/estate, the researcher can look up the locations of all major historical jurisdictions including the Current Country (Poland or Ukraine) and the seats of the Administrative District, Tax District, Court District, Roman Catholic parish and diocese, Greek Catholic parish and eparchy, Evangelical Lutheran/Reformed parish, Jewish Registration District, Greek Orthodox parish, Armenian Catholic parish and Cadastral Community.

Records, of all types, are housed in archives and other institutions and are catalogued or recorded in inventories according to the title of the record book or file. This title almost always includes the name of the place that was the seat of the appropriate jurisdiction for the desired types of record or file. For example, Roman Catholic parish registers are listed according to the location of the parish. Inventories do not normally list the names of each place within the parish. Land records are listed according to the name of the “Cadastral Community”. While the Cadastral Community is often the same name as the village itself, this is not always the case. The same is true for other jurisdictions and inventories.

3. Determine the most likely archives and institutions housing the desired records or files. The gazetteer includes higher level jurisdictions such as the Roman Catholic diocese, Greek Catholic eparchy, Judicial District, Tax District, etc. These higher level jurisdictions often provide the information needed to determine the location of an archive or institution for a particular “collection” of a certain type of record or file. For example, one location (there are many) of Roman Catholic records for the diocese of Przemysl would be the Diocesan Archive in Przemysl. Land Records might be kept at the office of the Tax District, etc.

4. Determine the most likely archives or institutions for any particular type of record, for any specific community/estate. The gazetteer contains copious information about which archives and institutions have particular collections of records. Information is given on known inventories for collections in archives that may be accessed. Addresses of all major archives in Poland, Ukraine and Vienna for Galicia are also given.