Dobrzyn (Golub-Dobrzyn) Records in the Dulsk Parish

I was doing some research on a family from Dobrzyń, now known as Golub-Dobrzyń after the merging of two towns on opposite sides of the river Drwęca. Dobrzyń was a part of the parish in Dulsk and part of the Russian partition of Poland. I was surprised the records were written in Polish as most of what I have worked with has been in Latin or German. I was puzzled by two dates always being given next to one another. I later realized that one date was the Gregorian calendar date we commonly use and the other was the Julian calendar date being used in Russia at that time. There was a twelve day difference between the calendars during the 1800s. Records beginning in 1868 and thereafter were writtin in Russian. Fortunately, some of the indexes and records include names using the Roman alphabet (rather than the Cyrillic alphabet of Russisan). Besides Dobrzyń, the Dulsk parish also took in Wilczewo, Wilczewko, Sokołowo, Kamionka, Zaręba, Frankowo, Białkowo and maybe some other small villages. The records were written in paragraph form which makes them VERY difficult to find names (not as easy as scanning down an orderly list of names). Fortunately, the records were indexed at the end of each year-- which is why I am writing this.

If I was looking for someone in this parish, it would be inefficient to try to read paragraph by paragraph knowing that there are end of year indexes. I just need to know how to bring up the index and search the list of names. For one of the Dulsk 'films', I have found and recorded the entry points to the index pages for you. If someone I was researching was born in 1858 I would use the table below to see that births for 1858 are indexed on image 417. I would go to the following web page: Entry point to this 'film' and enter 417 in the image box to bring up the birth index for 1858. If you find a name in the index, you can note the record number and find it among that year's entries (we will know it's after image 397 which ends 1857 and before image 417 from the table below). The web page I gave you above will work for births, deaths and years I have in the table below. The marriage index entry points are 'clickable' on the year and will take you directly to the index page. The table may also tell you the approximate number of records for a given year which may not be useful but was interesting. Be aware that sometimes the name is recorded wrong in the index or the page that the record should appear on is missing (sigh). In the cases the page was missing, it was more likely that it was skipped during imaging rather than having been lost. If the page had been lost, there would be a discontinuity in numbering from the left side of the image to the right side. Instead the discontinuity occurs from one image to the next.

I got carried away and indexed the marriages (so theoretically you wouldn't need to access the index pages). The marriages were added to the main marriage index on this site. Since I created the index from an index of just the grooms and their brides, it does not contain the detail you will find within the actual marriage record. For example, I did not include the full date (just the year), parents or former spouses, or actual page number. You are provided a link to the entry point of the collection and the image number that you would use to access the image where the marriage record begins. Use the Enum. # to locate the record on the page. The paragraph format is very difficult to read. The record usually starts with the date on the Julian calendar. The witnesses come after the date. I then looked for the word między (between) which indicated information about the groom followed. In this parish, information about the bride followed the conjunction a (and). The layout is something like: a marriage between groom, son of parents and bride, daughter of parents. If a widower or widow, the previous spouse might be named. The record also gives three other dates which are the dates the banns were published.