Indexed parishes include:

Jastrząbka Stara | Lisia Góra | Mąkowarsko | Nagoszyn | Przecław | Zasów | Zdziarzec

Some General Notes

These indices are intended as finding aids and are not to be used as a primary source of genealogical data. Rather than having to read the microfilm line by line, the indices help locate persons more rapidly. The indices were prepared as finding aids for my own research but other researchers may find them useful as well. Approximations of illegible surnames were made.  It is the researcher's responsibility to go to the filmed records for verification.

The names of the parents were not always provided for inclusion in the index.

The enumeration number reflects the numerical order in which the marriage was recorded for a given year and is compiler assigned rather than priest assigned. This is important because the priest did not always number his records nor did he always number them correctly.

If you need more family information on the spouse, look for the marriage record under the spouse's surname. Each marriage is indexed twice-- once according to the bride's/groom's name and once according to the spouse's name. While the marriage record is listed twice within the index, family information (if available) only appears once.

A "w" in the status column indicates that the person was a widow or widower. For example, Stanley Augustyn is the widower of Eva Glowacz. A widow retained her deceased husband's surname until she remarried. Therefore, to find the maiden name of a widow, a record of her previous marriage must be found. Finding such a record is not always possible.

The given names in the church records were the Latin equivalents of the Polish names. The index gives Polish equivalents of the Latin names. In some instances, Apolonia was used interchangeably with Paulina. There also seemed to be some confusion with the names Agnieszka and Agata.

The completeness of any year's entries is uncertain. Marriages for some months may have been missing and there is no way of telling if that was the case.

The accuracy of the microfilmed records from which the index was prepared is presumed good, but remember that errors were inevitable. The index attempts to correct some errors but may have created others. The most common difficulties encountered were: smudged ink, deteriorated paper, or illegible handwriting. Names and dates were deciphered as best as possible. In some cases it was debatable whether a valid name had been extracted. These names were included in the index anyway and left for you to judge.

Another difficulty was the variation in the spelling of names. These occurred for at least two reasons. The first was that the different priests over the years wrote the names with different spellings depending on how it sounded to him. The second reason was that suffixes were added to surnames of women, particularly in the older records. In either case, names which appeared to refer to the same family were indexed together. Hence, a single consistent spelling, although not necessarily the preferred spelling, is provided in the index. In this regard, you need to shed any notion that a surname has one and only one "correct" spelling. Consider other spelling variations.

The most common spelling variation noted was in the usage of vowels. For example, names like Cwiok, Mytis, and Gajowski as observed in compiling the index are the same names as Cwiak, Mytys, and Gajewski. These latter spellings appear to be common spellings in the United States. Simple substitution of vowels is all that has occurred. The use of the Soundex⁷ is encouraged because the vowel substitution problem is eliminated as well as many of the consonantal variations. Remember, though, that while it is helpful, The Soundex system is not foolproof. In particular, it will not handle w which should be grouped with v, or rz which should be grouped with s, or j which should be treated as a vowel, or ą or ę which are sometimes expanded to om, on, em, or en.

One of the spelling problems that is much harder to anticipate is that arising from the similarity of handwritten cursive characters. For example, it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between a cursive t and ł, z and r, and S and L. Therefore, is it "Potak" or "Połak"? This is just a sampling of the most common problems encountered. The Soundex system cannot handle these cases at all.

Copyright law is intended to protect authors so they can be justly compensated for their time and effort.  Unauthorized use of copyrighted material is theft and totally unethical.  Amateur genealogists need to conduct their research as scholarly as they can, giving credit where it is due.   These statements are included because unethical people think that they can use of others work without acknowledgment if it serves their purpose.