Last changed 2026-09-30 · first mapped 2026-09-23 Follow what changes.
Comes out as a sheet for the reading room — what to ask for, who holds it, and every link written out in full.
This place
Where to begin
You know your family came from Poddubye. Here is the order I would work in, cheapest and easiest first — and what to do when that runs out.
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Work out which country your year belongs to
This is the step almost everybody skips, and it is the commonest reason a record that exists cannot be found. The ground did not move; the border did. A baptism here in one decade may sit in a different country's archive from one twenty years later.
Years Who governed Whose archive 1226–1525 State of the Teutonic Order no archive holds this yet 1525–1871 Duchy, then Kingdom, of Prussia
archion · bundesarchiv · familysearch 1871–1945 German Empire — Province of East Prussia
archion · bundesarchiv · szukajwarchiwach 1945–2026 Russia in the north; Poland in the south; Lithuania at Memel
archion · bundesarchiv · szukajwarchiwach · archyvai-lt Do this: take the year you are looking for, find its row, and note the archive. That is the one to search — not the one the village is in today.
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The things that catch people out here
1945–2026, Russia in the north; Poland in the south; Lithuania at Memel. THE BIGGEST TRAP OF ALL, AND IT RUNS THE OTHER WAY. The population fled or was expelled and — unusually — MANY OF THE CHURCH REGISTERS WENT WEST WITH THEM. East Prussian Protestant registers are largely in Berlin and Leipzig, NOT in Kaliningrad. Looking for Königsberg records in Russia is the classic wasted year of German genealogy.
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Find the parish, because that is where the book was
Before civil registration, the parish priest kept the register. A village without its own church was written into a neighbour's book.
- Saints Cyril and Methodius Orthodox church in Bolshakovo
- Kirche Popelken
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When you run out — and you will
Everything above is what this atlas knows. It is not everything there is. Nine places in ten on this map have never been surveyed by anybody, so a gap here is usually our silence rather than the record's absence.
Do this: write to the archive named in the era table for your year, even if we hold nothing for it. Then tell us what you found — a gap somebody has personally closed is the most useful thing a stranger can give this map.
The archives named above: archion · bundesarchiv · familysearch · szukajwarchiwach · archyvai-lt. What each one holds and why.
Whose archive this ground was
Poddubye sits in East Prussia. Which empire held it decides which archive holds its records — and for some of these years that is not the archive you would guess.
| Years | Who held it | Whose archive that means |
|---|---|---|
| 1226–1525 | State of the Teutonic Order | no registers survive Before registers. |
| 1525–1871 | Duchy, then Kingdom, of Prussia | Archion · Bundesarchiv · FamilySearch Overwhelmingly Lutheran, so the church books are Protestant and Archion is the route to them. |
| 1871–1945 | German Empire — Province of East Prussia | Archion · Bundesarchiv · Szukaj w Archiwach Civil registration by Standesamt from 1 OCTOBER 1874, as everywhere in Prussia. |
| 1945–2026 | Russia in the north; Poland in the south; Lithuania at Memel | Archion · Bundesarchiv · Szukaj w Archiwach · Lietuvos archyvai (Lithuanian State Archives) THE BIGGEST TRAP OF ALL, AND IT RUNS THE OTHER WAY. The population fled or was expelled and — unusually — MANY OF THE CHURCH REGISTERS WENT WEST WITH THEM. East Prussian Protestant registers are largely in Berlin and Leipzig, NOT in Kaliningrad. Looking for Königsberg records in Russia is the classic wasted year of German genealogy. |
No volumes recorded here yet.
The ground worth walking
Within 25 km — 1 place · 2 parishes · 5 burial grounds.
A register belongs to a parish, not to a village. A hamlet with no church of its own was written into the book of the church it walked to — and that book is catalogued under the other place's name. This is the ground to search before concluding a record does not exist.
Correctly placed and unread. A gap here is this atlas's silence, not the record's — the registers may well exist and nobody has walked them.
The nearest parishes
A church is a parish and a parish is where a register is kept — the register of a hamlet with no church of its own is kept at the church it walked to, so the distance is the useful part. Wikidata's coverage is very uneven: 34,612 churches in England against 105 in central Istria, so a short list here means thin data and not an empty landscape. Unchecked, and only inside a mapped record region.
Where the burials are
The other end of a parish: the register records the burial and the ground holds it, and a family that left no other trace very often left a stone. These are points on a map, not record collections — from Wikidata and OpenStreetMap, nobody here has visited one, and whether the burial register survives is a question for the parish or the municipality above. Grounds OpenStreetMap has not named are here too. They used to be left out, on the reasoning that a shape with no name is not a place anyone can ask about — which cost Senj its own graveyard, 2 km away and unnamed, while a named one 7 km off was all this page would show. Being unnamed is a fact about the map data, not about the ground. Only inside a mapped record region.
- A burial ground ↗ unnamed in OpenStreetMap 3 km OpenStreetMap
- A burial ground ↗ unnamed in OpenStreetMap 4.1 km OpenStreetMap
- A burial ground ↗ unnamed in OpenStreetMap 7.2 km OpenStreetMap
- A burial ground ↗ unnamed in OpenStreetMap 8.6 km OpenStreetMap
- Кладбище немецких солдат времён Первой мировой войны ↗ 10.8 km OpenStreetMap
1 volumes catalogued here
The level below «a collection covers this place»: which book, for which years, and the link that opens its images. From FamilySearch's own catalogue. Nobody here has opened any of them. You can, though — mark the pages you have searched on any row below and this browser will remember where you stopped.
National sources for Russia, unverified
From Wikidata, CC0 — the national archive and the national library where the country has one. Nobody here has opened these. The link answered when it was asked and that is the whole of what this map knows about them. They are listed because a country with no named source at all is the worse answer: 199 of the 237 countries here had nothing but the worldwide services, which cover everywhere and therefore say nothing about anywhere.
- State Archive of the Russian Federation ↗ national archive
- Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library ↗ national library
- Komi National Library ↗ national library did not answer this checker
- National Library of (the Republic of) Mordovia ↗ national library
- National Library of Russia ↗ national library did not answer this checker
- National Library of the Mari El Republic ↗ national library
The sources for Russia
National and regional sources that cover this ground whether or not anybody has walked it here — which makes them the answer, not the consolation, for a place with no volumes recorded on it.
- Российский государственный архив древних актов (RGADA) Nobody has walked this one yet Moscow, Russia
The Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts — pre-1917 fonds, the deepest of the Russian state collections and the one a genealogist working before the revolution is sent to. Named and located from its own Wikidata item; NOT yet opened, so no claim is made here about what a visitor can reach. - Bundesarchiv A catalogue entry only — the paper is not photographed Koblenz, Germany
The German Federal Archives. Civil and military administration of the Prussian provinces, the wartime records, and the card indexes of the expelled — much of it for ground that is no longer German. - Государственный архив Российской Федерации (GARF) On paper, in the building Moscow, Russia
The State Archive of the Russian Federation — the central holder of the Russian and Soviet state record. OPENED 2026-09-29: the site is a reading-room archive, not an image portal. Its own front page is notices about reading room No. 1, delays issuing files from the storage of central administrative, political and state-security bodies, and — dated in the notice itself — the relocation of part of the holdings to Obninsk, closing the federal legislative, executive and judicial fonds entirely from 07.09.2026 to 15.11.2026. Anyone planning a visit or a written request in that window should read those notices first. This is the row Russia did not have: until today the atlas's only Russian source was the GERMAN Federal Archives, tagged for ground the Prussian empire once held — true, and silent about Moscow, the Volga and Siberia.
Sources that cover everywhere
Not about Russia in particular — these reach most of the world, which includes here. They are listed after the local sources because a body that holds this ground's own paper is a better first stop than one that holds a little of everywhere's. Worth knowing they exist all the same.
- Internet Archive Images, free, no account
Full-text search across millions of digitised books, including parish histories, nobiliaries and local monographs that name ordinary people. - Arolsen Archives Images, free, no account
The former International Tracing Service. Concentration camp, forced labour and displaced-persons records for some seventeen and a half million people, free and fully indexed. - BillionGraves Images, free, no account
GPS-tagged headstone photographs. Smaller than Find a Grave but its coordinates are per-stone, which Find a Grave's often are not. - Find a Grave Images, free, no account
Volunteer-photographed headstones and cemetery indexes, worldwide, with very uneven coverage. Owned by Ancestry but free to read. - WikiTree Images, free, no account
A free, single shared tree with an unusually strong sourcing culture. Not a record source. - Yad Vashem — Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names Images, free, no account
Names and testimony pages for victims of the Shoah, free. - FamilySearch Images, free, account needed
The largest free collection of record images and indexes in the world. A free account is required, and a minority of images are restricted to Family History Centres and affiliate libraries. - Geni Images, free, account needed
One shared world tree. Useful for finding other researchers on the same line; not a record source, and its assertions are only as good as their citations. - JewishGen Images, free, account needed
The central Jewish genealogy resource — town-level KehilaLinks, burial and Holocaust databases, and revision lists for eastern Europe. - Geneanet Partly free, partly paid
Member-contributed trees and transcriptions, strongest in France. Much is free; a Premium tier gates some search and images. - Ancestry Images, behind a paywall
The largest commercial collection. Strong on the English-speaking world, censuses and immigration; weak on continental parish registers. - MyHeritage Images, behind a paywall
Commercial, with a large tree network and good European newspaper and directory coverage. Search is free; opening a record is not.
FamilySearch collections that reach here
A collection is a claim over an area, not a book standing in this town — so these are ranked by how specifically they reach Poddubye. A free account is needed to open the images, and some are restricted to a Family History Centre.
Worth searching, and worth knowing it is a national index rather than a local one.
- Poland, Church Books, 1568-1990 ↗ 1568–1997 5,179,396 records 340 km
- Poland, Tarnow, Roman Catholic Diocese Church Books, 1612-1900 ↗ 1612–1900 671,409 records 340 km
- Poland, Lublin, Roman Catholic Church Books, 1784-1964 ↗ 1784–1964 310,044 records 340 km
- Poland, Radom, Roman Catholic Church Books, 1587-1966 ↗ 1587–1966 101,352 records 340 km
- Poland, Częstochowa Roman Catholic Church Books, 1226-1950 ↗ 1226–1950 0 records 340 km
- Poland, Evangelical Church Books, 1700-2005 ↗ 1700–2005 0 records 340 km
- Poland, Gliwice, Roman Catholic Church Books, 1599-1976 ↗ 1599–1976 0 records 340 km
- Estonia, Church Books and Synagogue Registers, 1590-1941 ↗ 1590–1941 6,983,400 records 527 km
- Estonia, Lutheran Church Family Lists, 1603-1980 ↗ 1603–1980 2,804,748 records 527 km
- Estonia, Petseri County, Surname Register Cards, 1921-1923 ↗ 1921–1923 0 records 527 km
- Estonia, Population Registers, 1918-1944 ↗ 1918–1944 0 records 527 km
- Ukraine, Kyiv, Orthodox Consistory Church Book Duplicates, 1723-1931 ↗ 1723–1931 12,819,561 records 3243 km
- Ukraine, Donetsk, Church Books, 1809-1928 ↗ 1809–1928 2,853,390 records 3243 km
- Ukraine, Western Ukraine, Catholic Church Book Duplicates, 1600-1937 ↗ 1600–1937 465,533 records 3243 km
- Ukraine, Kyiv, Confession Lists, 1741-1934 ↗ 1741–1934 51,059,892 records 4442 km
- Russia, Tver, Church Books, 1722-1918 ↗ 1722–1918 16,353,040 records 4442 km
- Russia, Samara, Church Books 1748-1934 ↗ 1748–1934 12,721,432 records 4442 km
- Russia, Tula, Church Books, 1722-1936 ↗ 1722–1936 12,344,829 records 4442 km
- Russia, Tobolsk, Church Books, 1722-1930 ↗ 1722–1930 9,495,255 records 4442 km
- Russia, Olonets, Church Books, 1718-1940 ↗ 1731–1930 9,108,809 records 4442 km
- Russia, Zhytomyr, Metrical Books, 1795-1916 ↗ 1795–1916 3,003,750 records 4442 km
- Russia, Tomsk, Church Books, 1752-1918 ↗ 1752–1929 2,279,587 records 4442 km
- Russia, Tver, Confession Lists, 1728-1913 ↗ 1728–1913 1,627,470 records 4442 km
- Belarus, Grodno, Church Books, 1649-1915 ↗ 1649–1915 1,476,823 records 4442 km
- Russia, Kazan, Church Books, 1724-1924 ↗ 1724–1924 1,299,245 records 4442 km
…and 15 more.
See who held Poddubye between 1800 and 1920 →
The jurisdiction answer — which empire held this ground, and therefore
whose archive — could only be got at from the map until now. This opens it there, on
1863; drag the year from any point between 1226 and
2026.
Everything in Russia · All 40266 places · Correct something on this page