The Bukowsko Gmina Archive

This is a list of some of the church books that were available in the civil archive in Bukowsko, Poland as of June, 2003. Other books are available for some of these villages in the archive in Przemyśl.

Click on the image for a larger version.

What's missing from this list? The books are stored on two sets of shelves; the top shelf is dedicated to Bukowsko records from the 1900s. The list below covers only the second shelf which is where all the non-Bukowsko records are. I don't know why the records are not continuous and complete, nor do I know why some villages are well represented while others are not.

If you go to Bukowsko to look at these books in person, there's a few things you should be aware of. First, Polish law states that records don't become public until they are 100 years old. My experience is that you are allowed to read but not copy newer records. Second, the books are labelled on the spine with the village name(s), the years spanned, and some combination of the letters UMZ. These are abbreviations; U = urodzenia = births, M = małżeństwa = marriages, Z = zgony = deaths. In my experience the contents are written in Polonized Latin. They're not hard to read once you get the hang of it, and assuming the handwriting is good. I have seen some contents written in Cyrillic. For instance, book 15 covers a Lemko village. The 1800s records use Latin characters, the 1900s records use Cyrillic.

In the table below, the book number is the number assigned by the archive that's clearly visible on the spine of the book. B/U is the English/Polish abbreviation for births, M/M is for marriages and D/Z is for deaths. White cells indicate that the records are contained in the book; for instance book 3 contains only birth records. UMZ are the letters that appear on the books in the archive.

All contents © Philip Semanchuk 2004 under a Creative Commons License.