As I had mentioned in an earlier post, if you are going to do research in the churches in Poland you have to allow extra time in case
you are not able to find what you are looking for and have use another avenue of research. I have a perfect example of this from my research here in Poland this year. I had discovered that some of the family I was searching for did belong to this church, but books were kept for each of the nearby villages. One of those villages were where the ancestors were from. About 10 years ago, a new church was built in the village of Żarnówka & all the associated books were move to the new parish.
I needed time to also go visit that parish. As it turned out, the priest was out of town for a few days, but would be back the day I had planned to leave. Arrangements were made for a visit to look up records I needed. This was outside of normal church office hours, so he was doing me a big favor. The priest did not seem too excited about genealogists, so I knew had to make a good impression with him, so that others that followed may have an easier time. I was well prepared with dates I had gotten from other documents and the indexes in Maków Podhalański. After I was finished I left a generous donation and his demeanor changed & he even thanked me in English & used a few other short simple phrases in English. This just shows how if you are doing research in a church, a nice donation can go a long way in helping the next person looking to do research in a parish.
I needed time to also go visit that parish. As it turned out, the priest was out of town for a few days, but would be back the day I had planned to leave. Arrangements were made for a visit to look up records I needed. This was outside of normal church office hours, so he was doing me a big favor. The priest did not seem too excited about genealogists, so I knew had to make a good impression with him, so that others that followed may have an easier time. I was well prepared with dates I had gotten from other documents and the indexes in Maków Podhalański. After I was finished I left a generous donation and his demeanor changed & he even thanked me in English & used a few other short simple phrases in English. This just shows how if you are doing research in a church, a nice donation can go a long way in helping the next person looking to do research in a parish.
