Mark Halpern - Understanding Your Galitzianer Family through Vital Records

A great many Galician researchers have acquired copies of family records

from repositories in Poland and Ukraine or online images provided by the

State Archive or Genealogical organizations. Over the last twenty years, the

work of Jewish Records Indexing - Poland and Gesher Galicia has made

these records more readily available to all Galician researchers.

This session offers an in-depth examination of vital records along with a

strategic framework to help researchers in acquiring Galician records to

further their research. We will provide a historical perspective covering the

regulations that governed Jewish recordkeeping. We will make sense of the

regulations covering civil marriages that impacted the legitimacy and

surnames of children. Close examination of sample birth, marriage, and

death records will reveal the information contained in the records, identify

the records having the most genealogical value, and discover surprises

found in many of these records.