Record Atlas
7 eras · 1795–2026 · 425 places

Congress Poland — the Russian partition

Warsaw, Łódź, Lublin, Kielce. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Where researchers lose records here

1868–1918 — From 1868 the registers are written in RUSSIAN, in Cyrillic, and they stay that way until 1918. The same parish, the same priest, the same form — in an alphabet most researchers cannot read and most indexes transliterate inconsistently. A family that seems to end in 1868 has not ended.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1795–1807 Russian Empire — the third partition Szukaj w Archiwach · Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych (AGAD) · Geneteka

Church registers in Latin, kept by the parish, as before the partition.
1807–1815 Duchy of Warsaw Szukaj w Archiwach · Geneteka · Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych (AGAD) · FamilySearch

The Napoleonic Code arrives, and with it civil registration — kept by the parish priest acting as a civil registrar, in a long narrative paragraph rather than a column. These are the most informative Polish records there are.
1815–1868 Kingdom of Poland, in personal union with Russia Szukaj w Archiwach · Geneteka · Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych (AGAD) · FamilySearch

The Napoleonic long-form register continues, in POLISH from 1826 and in separate volumes per denomination. Jewish civil registers begin as their own series in 1826 and are the single best source for Jewish Poland.
1868–1918 Russian Empire — the Vistula Land Szukaj w Archiwach · Geneteka · Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych (AGAD) · JewishGen · FamilySearch

THE TRAP. From 1868 the registers are written in RUSSIAN, in Cyrillic, and they stay that way until 1918. The same parish, the same priest, the same form — in an alphabet most researchers cannot read and most indexes transliterate inconsistently. A family that seems to end in 1868 has not ended.
1918–1939 Poland, restored Szukaj w Archiwach · Geneteka · FamilySearch

Polish again.
1939–1945 The General Government and the annexed western districts Arolsen Archives · Yad Vashem — Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names · Bundesarchiv · JewishGen

The ghettos, the camps and the near-total destruction of Jewish Poland fall here. Yad Vashem and Arolsen are the name sources; the Polish civil registers of these years are often the only paper a person left.
1945–2026 Poland Szukaj w Archiwach · Geneteka · FamilySearch

Registers pass to the state archives after 100 years for births and 80 for marriages and deaths; anything more recent is at the local Urząd Stanu Cywilnego and is not online.

The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.

See the whole span, 1795–2026, on the map →

The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.

425 places on this ground

The 200 carrying the most collections are listed; 225 more stand on this ground. Every place has them all.

16 FamilySearch collections reach this ground

Ranked with the regional ones first — a collection for a province is usually a better lead than a national index, though the national index is often where a name is actually written down. A free account opens the images.

All record regions · The map