Hi List, i'm in a funk as i just looked at a reel of film >from the LDS
suwalki records late 19th century. they're supposed to be birrth, death
adn marriage records, but i got such a shock when i looked at them..
they're just paragraphs written up in cursive, sometimes polish, sometimes
russian with no indication of what i'm looking at. no forms like in
hungarian records. is this all there is? what am i looking at? i don't
even see any names of parents, just a lot of scrawl. how does anyone work
with this? jenny

Dear Jenny,
I just attended a lecture on this subject....Mr Brenner suggested 2
helpful books, one of which is Shea's "Following the Paper Trail" and the
other, Judith Frazin's book, which LDS doesnt have, but she's coming out with
a new editiion this month, so there should be some news on the list about it
with the title....Mr B also said that all these records, whether in Polish or
Cyrillic, follow a traditional form.....he drew it on the board and
apparently all these records start with the phrase, "Appeared before the
magistrate today....then the person's name, then some form words, then names
of the persons parents or witnesses, etc........anyway, check Dr Shea''s book
and you'll see more clearly what is meant...I noticed myself that if you look
very carefully, you may see the person's name in Roman letters too, after the
Cyrillic version...it takes a lot of perseverence..Mr Brenner also suggested
having a Cyrillic / Roman alphabet guide handy and trying to decipher any
names that are only in Cyrillic letters...Jane

Jenny-

Yes, it can be discouraging at first, but it gets pretty simple once you
get the hang of it. The records have a fairly consistent format, at
least within a particular jurisdiction at a particular time, so you just
have to figure out the format to find the names. They'll be in the same
place >from record to record.

I recommend that you pick up a copy of the Jonathan Shea or Judith Frazin
translation guide books. (Shea's is for Russian records, Frazin's I
haven't seen but is always recommended by others.)

Good luck!

Gary

On Sun, 10 Oct 1999 00:01:11 -0500 "JRI-Poland digest"
<jri-pl@...> writes:

Hi List, i'm in a funk as i just looked at a reel of film >from the LDS
suwalki records late 19th century. they're supposed to be birrth,

death

adn marriage records, but i got such a shock when i looked at them..
they're just paragraphs written up in cursive, sometimes polish,

sometimes

russian with no indication of what i'm looking at. no forms like in
hungarian records. is this all there is? what am i looking at? i

don't

even see any names of parents, just a lot of scrawl. how does anyone

work

with this? jenny

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Hi:
Through the permission of Judy Frazin, we have
set up several pages of samples on our JRI-Poland
web site. Look here:
http://www.jewishgen.org/jri-pl/frazin.htm

Regards,
Steven
----

garymaher@... wrote:

Regarding transliterating the birth, death and marriage records, there are
several pages on the <Jewish Records Indexing-Poland: transliter... > site
that have Polish and Russian characters that can be printed out. When I was
doing this for some of the Siedlce records, I used this chart to try to
decipher the printed, written and Roman characters for the Polish, some
pre-1917 orthography, and also some German written in Roman, Fraktur and
written styles. I'm sorry, but the exact web page address did not show up on
the printout, but I hope that this will help anyway.
Barbara Seidman

The Frazin site is fantastic. Would it be presumptious to ask for
similar renditions of German Gothic print records?

Sharon Roesler

In a message dated 10/12/1999 10:49:47 AM EDT, drsr@... writes:

The Frazin site is fantastic. Would it be presumptious to ask for
similar renditions of German Gothic print records?

Sharon Roesler

Jewish Records Indexing - Poland would welcome the contribution of
a similar German Record site >from one of our readers...

Stanley Diamond
Project Coordinator, Jewish Records Indexing - Poland

Hi

A very good idea if someone could offer ideas on German script as
well. Regards, Vera