geography

This gazetteer of the Republic of Poland from 1933 is valuable because it is a single resource for all of Poland back then. Prior to the restoration of the Polish state, you often needed a different gazetteer specific for the partition you were working in. Furthermore, modern gazetteers do not include the eastern territory that was taken from Poland after World War II. This gazetteer includes the parish that a locality belonged to so you know where to looks for parish records.

It can be difficult to find the ancestral villages of our ancestors in Poland. The first difficulty is finding documentation that even attempts to provide the place name. Some church records and immigration/naturalization records provide this information, but not always. The next hurdle is the spelling. The person who filled in the record probably did not have knowledge of the geography (or maybe even the language) to complete the record correctly. While we may have some familiarity with our own city or state, few of us know all the cities in all the states.