The Bukowsko Gmina Archive

This is a complete list of the church record books that were available in the civil (gmina) archive in Bukowsko, Poland in May 2008. I started this list in 2003 and Debbie Greenlee provided an update in May 2008 that completed the list and told us that some of the oldest books had since moved to Sanok. These are noted in the table below.

Introduction

The record books can be split in two main categories. The newer books cover 1946 to the present for Bukowsko only, and the older books cover Bukowsko and other villages from parts of the 1800s to 1945.

Most of the older books (and perhaps the newer books, but I haven't seen them in person) 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 in the table below covers a Lemko parish. The 1800s records use Latin characters, the 1900s records use Cyrillic.

If you go to Bukowsko to look at these books in person, be aware that Polish law states that records don't become public until they are 100 years old. My experience is that you are allowed to read and hand-copy records less than 100 years old, but mechanical copying (photocopy, camera, etc.) isn't permitted for these newer records.

If the records you're hoping to find aren't listed here, that doesn't mean they don't exist! It just means that they're not in the Bukowsko gmina. For instance, books for some of these villages are available in the archive in Przemyśl. The best place to ask for help in finding records for a particular village/year is on the Bukowsko Triangle mailing list.

Records from 1946 to the Present (Bukowsko-Only)

This group covers only Bukowsko and appear to provide complete records for the past 62 years. That is, births, marriages and deaths from 1946 to present are covered. One exception is that the spine of the most recent Bukowsko births book says it only covers 2006. My guess is that it actually covers 2006 to the present (2008) but they won't bother to update the book spine until that book is full.

There's not much else to say about these records.

Records From 1945 and Earlier

These records cover Bukowsko and nearby villages. They're a mishmosh of various record types, places and years so they're a little complicated to describe.

Click the image to see a larger version.
This photo is from 2003.

As you can see in the photo on the right (taken in 2003), the books are labelled on the spine with a number, the village name(s), the years spanned, and some combination of the letters UMZ. These letters are abbreviations –

• U = urodzenia = births
• M = małżeństwa = marriages
• Z = zgony = deaths

In the table below, the book number is the number assigned by the archive that's clearly visible on the spine of the book. Record types are UB (for urodzenia/births), MM (for małżeństwa/marriages) and ZD (for zgony/deaths). If a cell is empty, that means that those records are not present for that combination of place, year and record type.

All contents © 2008 Philip Semanchuk under a Creative Commons License.