Where to start - thoughts please
I am trying to find records/information for some one who's English naturalization document shows that they were born in 1874 at Bialestock in the province of Grodna. The document also lists the names of his parents and notes that they were both subjects of Russia. I am struggling to find any information and wonder if the group could please point me in the right direction!
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a good day! Grodno was part of the Russian Empire, now it is Belarus. FamileSearch has some metric books for Grodno and the province:
https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/652462?availability=Family%20History%20Library
it makes sense to find a metric book for this locality- Bialestock
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Bialystok County (Belarusian: Belastotski pavet, Polish: Powiat białostocki) is an administrative unit within the Bialystok region and Grodno province, which existed in 1808-1920. The county town is Bialystok.
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there is a small archive of tape numbers related to the Grodno province, later I can send the tape numbers
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until 1808 the territory of Poland. in 1808 - Belostok district in the Russian Empire. In 1843, the county was transferred to the Grodno province. In 1920, the county went to Poland.
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HI @MichaelBunting4!
Thanks for your question. As Alex pointed out, Bialestock/Bialystok is a district as well as a location. So your ancestors could be from the city itself, or the broader region. That's something important to keep in mind. As for your question as to Jewish research, although the record types will be the same, some of the resources might be a little bit different. Have you tried checking out JewishGen (https://jewishgen.org/) or JRI-Poland (https://jri-poland.org/)? These are both amazing websites that are very helpful with Jewish research. Both of these places offer free indexes of Jewish records from this area. I'd start by checking there to see if you can find any matches for your surname in the Bialystok/Grodno area.
You could also check the JewishGen Family Finder which is a database of names and villages that other Jewish researchers are looking at. It might be helpful to see some of the towns associated with your ancestral surname: https://www.jewishgen.org/jgff/
And another aspect of Jewish research that can get a bit tricky is names - there can be lots of variations, Americanization of names, Hebrew names, etc. Check out this page for some more information about that: https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/givennames/search.htm
Hope this helps!
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It just occurred to me that the people I am looking for were probably of the Jewish faith - would this make any difference with where to search?
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No, if need help-welcome
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