Lublin Digital Archive Search Utility
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General Information
To learn more about how the Lublin Research Team project evolved and how it cooperated with the Lublin Trinity Evangelical Church, please visit our Lublin Research History page.
BEFORE USING THE LUBLIN SEARCH UTILITY, IT IS IMPORTANT TO READ AND UNDERSTAND THESE INSTRUCTIONS. You may want to print them out to have at hand while doing the searches. Note that many of the reference links referred to in this discussion are at the top of this page for your convenience as you become familiar with the use of this search utility.
This page is used to search for records found in the Lublin Trinity Evangelical Church Digital Archive. After searching the database, most records can be viewed at FamilySearch without the need to hold an account. We have posted instructions for finding records of interest as presented by our Lublin database search engine. The link to this instructional page is included in the upper right box above for your convenience. Eventually we plan to include direct hyperlinks in the database search results page to the corresponding FamilySearch page presenting the image folder for each identified record.
Records are either in German, Polish, or Russian. Disks 1-20 are of the Napoleonic format (1838-1889) and are written in either Polish or Russian. Most records on disks 21-71 are in German but many Polish or Russian documents are found as well. Additional Napoleonic records may also be found such as those from the Konskowola parish. A more in depth discussion of the records encountered in this archive can be found on the Examples of Record Types page.
This represents a project that has taken the effort of over ten years of many volunteers. A description of what is found in different disks / folders including color coding for the progress of indexing is found in the Lublin Disk Descriptions file. A listing of disks included in the database and the running tally of numbers are provided on the Data Inclusion Summary.
The searchable database, when completed, will point to most documents in the Lublin Digital Archive. These are primarily birth / baptism records, death records, and marriage records. Occasionally other accompanying documents associated with people found in the former records are included and these documents are included in the file number filed for the pertinent record or in the Special NOtes field of the Search Results. The records extend from 1838 to 1959 (years 1840-1845 are lacking), although virtually all Germans left this region in 1940 through the action of Einwandererzentralstelle. To protect the privacy of individuals who may still be alive, FamilySearch has not included any image folder from the original digital archive that contained birth records after 1913. Our database includes all records but births occuring more recently than 90 years ago, where no corresponding death record for that individual was found. In such cases the given name is indicated as "Living". To summarize, most deaths and virtually all marriages are included in the FamilySearch Lublin library, but births after 1913 are not accessible. In many cases the indicator for a folder of alegata after 1913 may have the descriptor "births" in Polish (Urodzenia) leading the FamilySearch staff to believe those records should not be displayed. If that folder included death records then those records will also be omitted from the library. Often alegata for marriages after 1913 have copies of birth records that precede 1913 and these aliegata likewise will be missing from the online library. We will attempt to communicate this concern with FamilySearch to assure them such folders should be included since it was only the marriage, not the birth, of the individuals indicated that occured after 1913.
Nature of the Data
Specific data elements have been used to construct this database. These data elements and their descriptions include:
1- Last Name (P) (as spelled in Polish or translated from Russian by the transcriber)
2- Given Name (P) (same as 1 above)
3- Last Name (D) (a typical German spelling is given here)
4- Given Name (D) (same as 3 above)
5- Event Type (B=birth/christening, D=death, M=marriage, X=other)
6- Month (Gregorian calendar month that the record was written or event occurred)
7- Year (Gregorian calendar year that the record was written or event occurred)
8- Father (Given name of the father - German equivalent only)
9- Mother or Bride (P) (as described for Polish names in 1 above)
10- Mother or Bride (D) (German equivalent as described in 3 above)
11- Village (where the family or husband resided or where the death occurred)
12- Disk (can be from 1 – 71) - This value is important to locate records at FamilySearch
13- Folder (folder on the disk in which the record is found) - This value is important to locate records at FamilySearch
14- File (file identifier for this record) - This value is important to narrow your search for the appropriate image contained within the folder link at FamilySearch
15- Reg. # (Register number for the record. Many files / FamilySearch images have multiple records)
16- Groom’s Parents (names are the German equivalents)
17- Bride’s Parents (names are the German equivalents)
18- Spouse(s) (names are the German equivalents)
19- Special Notes (optional remarks pertinent to the information on the record)
Other Tips and Comments
Searching Event Type
The search utility varies depending on the Event Type that you are searching for. Only data elements relevant to a search for that Event Type are available to search. For example, you cannot search for Bride’s Parents on death records as there is no bride on a death record. Documents that are of the “Other” Event Type are searched only as births. Last and given names are included on those documents.
Searching By Year(s)
Years can be searched by including a single year.
Villages
Villages from the Lubelskie province have been given standardized spellings. Please check the Lubelskie Village List to know how a village should be entered into this optional search box. Some records include locations outside of the Lubelskie province (such as death records from the World War I deportation period) where spellings have not been standardized.
The parish in Kamien was started in 1876 at which time people living in the more eastern and southern sectors of the Lubelskie province tended to report here (see the Lublin and Kamien Parish Boundaries Map). The records in this archive show a noticeable under-representation from these villages. The Napoleonic records of Disks 1-20 show this transition starting after 1875 where only towns represented within the Lublin boundaries are retained (except for occasional marriage records where the families went to Lublin rather than Kamien). It is hoped that greater coverage of the Kamien sector will be found as more disks from 21-71 get completed.
Searching by Name
When searching for Names the complete name need not be given. This allows for greater flexibility in finding pertinent records that might not have an exact spelling. Although the use of “Polish” and “German equivalent” names may seem redundant, this was necessary to in effect standardize how names should be written (in German) as many pastors or kantors over 100 years often had their own convention of spelling names. Having both versions of the names spelled out also helps the church staff verify that they have found the correct record with the expected people listed. Names that are of Polish or Russian/Ukrainian origin generally were kept as written.
Stillborn Cases
Babies that were stillborn or died shortly after birth (and not given a name) are found in either birth or death records. For consistency in this database all such cases are indexed as deaths with the given name “stillborn {male/female}”.
Data Entries Containing Question Marks or Brackets
Some search results include names of people or towns with embedded question marks. This is because these handwritten records can be difficult to accurately interpret if the transcriber had sloppy penmanship. Particularly for records in Cyrillic it can be difficult to distinguish among several possible letters or combinations of letters.
Other entries may have brackets [ ] surrounding a name. This corresponds to information that was not included on the record but this information could be deduced from other records.
Confidentiality
As a final note, to protect the confidentiality of those likely to still be alive, identities of people who were born 90 years ago (after 1920 - 1926 as our extraction of this data proceeded during 2010-16) will not be revealed unless an accompanying death record was also found. A search for birth records will reveal any potentially living person born in 1920 or later with the Given Name shown as “Living”. Note that names of the parents will be seen allowing you to determine if there is a possibility the family you have an interest in is present in the indexed records. Note that FamilySearch uses a 100 year grace period where births after 1913 are not accessible on their site.