Anniversary Book Records

About the Anniversary Book Records

Polish parishes and organizations frequently issued commemorative booklets to mark anniversaries of their establishment or to chronicle an important event in development of the organization.  In most cases, these booklets were issued on the 25th, 50th, 75th and 100th anniversaries of the church’s or club’s founding.

Publications of this type are filled with the names of the persons who played active roles in the history of the parish/club as well as the names of persons who contributed to the publication of the booklet.  Numerous advertisements from Polish businesses and other Polish organizations also appear with frequency, which provide an economic portrait of the community.

Publications from the earlier part of the 20th century are frequently in Polish with short summaries of any textual material in English.  As the century wore on, many of these booklets became bilingual.  In most recent times, the principal language of the booklets is English with short summaries in Polish.

Our database contains the names of persons mentioned in these booklets.  Multiple page numbers in the same publication indicates that the person’s name was repeated on different pages.

The letter codes accompanying the page numbers are:

• A for Advertisement – The person’s name appeared in an advertisement for a commercial enterprise, as part of a display advertisement for an organization in which the person served as an officer or in special memorial to a deceased individual.
• T for Text – The person’s name appeared in the textual portion of the booklet or in a list of donors or list of memorials that were not in the format of a display advertisement.
• M for Military – The person’s name appeared in a list of soldiers or military personnel. In the years during and shortly after World War II, lists of parishioners or club members serving in the armed forces frequently appeared.
• P for Photo – The person’s name appeared in a captioned photograph.

If you find an ancestor or relative in the database and wish a copy of the page on which their name appears, please send $1.00 per name citing the exact page number and parish/organization as well as the year of publication.  A self-addressed stamped envelope of the appropriate size must accompany your request.

Please note that the exact same name may appear twice with the exact same page number.  This could mean that there were two individuals with identical names or the original contained duplicate entries.

Anyone wishing to volunteer to index a parish or organizational history for this database is asked to contact the society.  Please check with us before beginning any indexing.  Avoid duplication.  We have done many more indexes but they have not as yet been posted on this website.

If you have any parish or organizational histories, please consider donating them to our collection which numbers in excess of 500 items Uprzejmie dziękujemy!