Marriage Records from Poland
A marriage entry can connect two Polish families and help test the names recorded in a later British document. Start with the couple’s identities, an approximate date and the locality where the marriage may have taken place. Then compare the entry with the evidence you already hold: similar names alone do not establish that you have found the right couple.
Professional record service
Would you like us to find the marriage record and obtain the right copy?
Find the marriage entry
We locate the relevant civil or religious entry and obtain an available scan or ordinary archival copy.
Single-record searchesObtain an official copy
We assess the issuing authority and the document format required for citizenship, probate, marriage documentation or another formal procedure.
Quoted for the authority and purposeWhat a Polish marriage entry records
A marriage entry usually names both sets of parents, so one record can take two families back a generation. Most entries also give the couple’s ages, occupations and places of residence, and many name the witnesses.
Civil and church marriage registers
Which register you need depends on where and when the couple married.
- In the Duchy of Warsaw and later the Kingdom of Poland (the Russian partition), marriages were recorded from 1808 in civil-religious registers kept by the parish clergy acting as civil registrars, in Polish and from 1868 in Russian. These entries are written as a narrative and give the couple’s ages, birthplaces, parents, residence and witnesses, and the dates of the banns. In the Prussian partition, state registry offices recorded marriages from 1874. In Galicia there was no separate civil register; the parish register was the civil record.
- Before civil registration, and in Galicia throughout, the parish marriage register is the record. Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox parishes kept their own, some from the 16th century. Older entries are short, often in Latin, and may give only the couple, the witnesses and sometimes the fathers.
Where civil marriage registers are kept
Marriage registers less than 80 years old are kept by the local civil registry office (Urząd Stanu Cywilnego, USC), which releases copies only to people with a legal interest. Older registers are transferred to the regional State Archives.
Part of the State Archives’ (Archiwa Państwowe) holdings has been scanned and can be viewed online. The Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw (Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych) holds parish registers brought after 1945 from the pre-war eastern provinces, now in Ukraine.
Finding church marriage records
Before the 19th century, church registers are usually the only source.
They are held in diocesan archives or in the parish itself, where access depends on the diocese or the priest. Some were microfilmed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and can be viewed through FamilySearch; the rest have to be requested from the parish or diocesan archive.
What we need to search
The full names of the couple, an approximate year and the parish or town are enough to start. Without a place, the right register cannot be identified.
Our vital record search identifies the registry office, archive or parish that holds the register, finds the entry and sends you a digital image. If you need an official copy for a formal procedure, tell us which authority it is for and we quote for it.
Details to compare
When you have an entry, check each detail against what you already know:
- the full names of the bride and groom, including the bride’s maiden name
- their ages and birthplaces, which point to the baptism entries
- the parents’ names, including the mothers’ maiden names
- occupations and house numbers
- the witnesses, who were often relatives
- the date and parish of the marriage
Languages, borders and missing registers
Entries are in Latin, Polish, German or Russian, depending on the period and partition. Registers from the pre-war eastern territories may be in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus or Lithuania.
Some registers were destroyed in the wars. Where one copy is missing, a duplicate kept by the civil authorities or the diocese may survive, so a search can cover more than one repository.