Weltenwanderer

No. 90

Pilchowice, 17th of November 1904.

The frater Theodor Aulich, living in Pilchowice in the monastery, personally known, appeared in front of the signing registrar today and reported that the invalid Joseph Wawrosch, 62 years old, Catholic, living in Swiniowice district of Gliwice, born in Swiniowice district of Gliwice, married to Josepha née Solisch, son of the *Häusler* [=small farmer] Johann Wawrosch and his wife Marie née Subert (both died in Swiniowice), has died in Pilchowice in the monastery on the 16th of November 1904 at 10 o’clock in the morning.

The reporting person states that he was present when the deceased died.

Read, authorised and signed

Fr.[frater] Theodor Aulich

The registrar.
Sdralek

[…]

*****

Given that he was an invalid, I’d guess that he was in the monastery for care.

Just a couple of links that I use quite often:

– christoph-www has more or less all (freely) available records for all of Silesia listed on its page. If a place is not listed, check Kartenmeister (see below). The registrar’s office (Standesamt) records stored at the Landesarchiv Berlin are in the process of being uploaded to this collection on Ancestry, but aren’t explicitely mentioned on this site (because $). The same goes for churchbooks stored at the Evangelisches Zentralarchiv Berlin (EZAB), which are published on archion.de ($).

– geneteka.genealodzy.pl: This site provides user-submitted indexes for church and civil records for the area of nowadays’ Poland (see this map for the position of indexed villages).

– forum.ahnenforschung.net: The largest German-language genealogy forum. The interface sadly cannot be changed to any other language, but you’ll survive just fine with Google translate. Just post your list of surnames in the appropriate subforum and see if someone is related or can help you out (make sure you subscribe to your threads so as to get notified about any new messages).

– meta.genealogy.net genalogy.net is the largest German genealogical site. It combines many databases and user-submitted data, and can easily searched via the link above. Mind that there may be more results than the site is able to display; if that is so, the affected databases will be listed at the bottom of the search results. The site also has a geographical register, and mailing lists that you can sign up for. Consider submitting your tree to GEDBAS. The loss lists of WWI can be seen as a very neat census helping you map where certain surnames were common. Ortsfamilienbücher (OFB, local family history books) are huge databases that contain info on all people from a specific location (see this map for the position of villages with an own OFB).

– kartenmeister.com: Large database with German/Polish place names and their parish / registrar’s office jurisdictions. Make sure to locate your places and then list the surnames for those places and your email adress. Of course, you can also browse for genealogists searching for the same surnames or researching the same village, for example.

– Births in the Schlesische Provinzialblätter newspaper 1785-1845: Incredibly useful if you have nobles, military officers, Prussian officials or clergymen in your family tree. The marriages have been published in a separate book (Eheschließungen in den Schlesischen Provinzialblättern), and you can request information from that book here. Of course, you can also simply browse the newspaper here. In the „Historische Chronik” part of the publication (6 per book), the writers published births, marriages, deaths, accidents, suicides, promotions etc., but mainly from Lower Silesia.

– Schlesienkartei: A digitalised version of an old genealogical paper file card database.

– Mailing lists: There are two mailing lists for Silesia – Niederschlesien-L and Oberschlesien-L. Simply posting your surnames in the appropriate list may give you some hits.

– szukajwarchiwach.pl: The website of (most of) the Polish state archives. Just search for your surnames or your town; maybe it will turn up a document regarding your ancestor.

– archeion.net: The website of the state archive of Wroclaw. Truly horrible search system, so make sure you enter every place you’re looking for in German, Polish, and Polish locative case.

– meine-ahnen.eu: Only useful for research in the district of Milicz (Militsch). Since almost all records from that district are lost, people are pooling data and documents on this website. A registration is required to view the contents.