Help me find my ancestors from Niedźwiedź pow. Limanowa

[Adrian13sk]

Hello everyone!

My name is Erik and I'm from Slovakia. I've started doing a research about my ancestors and it's been couple of months since I've started doing so. So far on my journey I've figured out, that I have ancestors from "Niedźwiedź pow. Limanowa".

I know the name, exact date of birth and potential names of the exact person parents. Unfortunately I have no idea, how to begin a search for them in Poland. So far, I've been doing all the research online via "FamilySearch" and so far I've found everything I needed. But with Poland it is completely different.

Could you please help me out somehow? I'd really appreciate any tips or any help from you!

Thanks!

[Janowski_Paweł]

https://geneteka.genealodzy.pl/index.ph ... =&to_date=

[Michal_Sk]

Niedźwiedź pow. Limanowa has extensive indexes available at geneszukacz:

https://geneteka.genealodzy.pl/index.ph ... p&lang=eng

I think the UI is quite straightforward. The original records seem to have been recorded at the parish itself, so they are likely not available for distribution.

[Majewska_Renata]

Hello,

Only two villages from the Niedzwiedz parish are indexed: Konina and Lubomierz.

Greetings,
Renata

[Adrian13sk]

Hello,

Only two villages from the Niedzwiedz parish are indexed: Konina and Lubomierz.

Greetings,
Renata

I've noticed that, when I used the index sites posted here. Although, I might have found some people, that might be my ancestors, but I haven't found the person I was looking for. To be more exact, birth records of the lastname I've searched for, are only up to year 1853 and the person I'm looking for was born in 1882.

So if only these two parishes are indexed, is there any way to access the records on my own? Most of the Slovakia's records are available online or you can access them in archives. How about Poland? Is there any such option? I don't say that indexes are bad, but it would help me more, if I could see them with my own eyes.

Anyways, thank you for your responses!

[Majewska_Renata]

Hello

You made a mistake: these are not indexed two parishes, but two villages belonging to the parish Niedźwiedź. I don't have access to records from this parish. They obtained them on their own and edited by Allen and Eugeniusz.

The availability of metrics in Poland depends on the region. Just in Małopolska, there are very few metrics available online.

Please sign your posts with your name because that's the custom here.

Greetings,
Renata

[Michal_Sk]

To give historical background on the region - as this was part of Austria-Hungary, the birth/marriage/death records were only collected by the church (or other religious organizations).

These records for catholic church can be now found in several places:

- at the parish, likely the full range of available records (the local priests have effectively unlimited autonomy over granting access to the records)

- at the (arch)diocese archives, likely a second set of books from 1780s onward

- after WWII, when the new civil records system was introduced, the state took 1890-1945 records from the diocese archives in the region of the former Austria-Hungary as there were no alternative sources for B/M/D. These don't seem particularly relevant to you, so I'll skip those


In case of Niedźwiedź near Limanowa the relevant archive is that of Archidiecezja Krakowska (https://archiwum.diecezja.pl/). They do have births for 1882 (https://archiwum.diecezja.pl/wp-content ... tualny.pdf). The archive is located in Kraków and only allows in-person visits, and as you can imagine - it's closed due to COVID.

Now as to online availability - these records are not digitized. In general these church archives are poorly funded and understaffed (although this varies from one diocese to another due to large autonomy), and if they do get funding for digitization or other kind of preservation, these records are typically not considered a priority. As it happens the Kraków diocese does have a program for digitization (2020-2022), with around 500k scans planned, including some B/M/D records:

https://sdm.upjp2.edu.pl/obiekty-archiwalne

but as far as the scope of the program goes - I'm not sure if Niedźwiedź is going to be covered, or when it's going to be available. I do recall there being some issues with the vital records being published in particular, but I don't know any details.

This project seems quite active on facebook, so you can try sending them a private message to see if they would be willing to share something about Niedźwiedź:

https://www.facebook.com/CAAKr/

edit:

I've actually just found which ones from Kraków are going to be digitized - Niedźwiedź is not on the list:

https://ornatowski.com/wiadomosci/archi ... metrykalne