How to find the town your family came from in Europe

Most families know the country their ancestors came from, or think they do: Russia, Poland, Austria, Hungary. Records in Europe, though, are kept town by town, so a country is not enough to find them, and neither is "near Warsaw". Learning how to find where your ancestors came from means finding one exact town, and then finding it again on today's map, where its name and even its country may be different.

This guide lists every American record that can name the town, with what each one gives, and then explains how to identify the town today with the gazetteers that match old names to places. Researchers call the first part of this work a source map: every spelling of every name and every town, written down before any search. The example on this site began the same way.

Why the town matters

Births, marriages and deaths in Eastern Europe were registered locally, and in Russian Poland Jewish births were entered in the register of a synagogue district. The registers stayed in the town or went to the regional archive, and the indexes that let a family search them, such as JRI-Poland's, are arranged by town. Without the town there is nowhere to look.

What country are my ancestors from?

The country on an American record is the country of its time. Before 1918, Russia usually meant the Russian Empire, which then included most of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. Austria often meant Galicia, now divided between Poland and Ukraine, and Hungary covered what is now Slovakia, part of Romania and the far west of Ukraine. A grandfather listed as Russian in 1910 and Polish in 1930 may have come from one town that changed hands. The town settles the question that the country cannot.

Start with the family

Ask the oldest relatives first, and write down exactly what they say, however it is spelled. They often remember the town by its Yiddish name, which may differ from the name on any map. Ask also for the nearest big city, the river, the province, and the towns where cousins lived. Many chassidic families are known by the court they followed, such as Belz, Ger or Bobov, each named for a town; the court is a clue to the region, though the family may have lived some distance from it.

Then gather the papers at home, among them naturalization certificates, a ketubah, which gives the place of the wedding, and photographs with a studio's stamp on the back. How to trace your ancestry describes what each family paper gives.

The records that name the town

Each of these records was made by a different clerk for its own purpose, and each may spell the town differently. Find as many as you can for each immigrant, since two that agree are worth more than one that seems certain.

From the US National Archives, the National Park Service, JewishGen and the Social Security Administration. Checked October 2026.

Naturalization papers

After September 27, 1906, the declaration of intention and the petition were standard forms, and they usually give the date and town of birth. Earlier papers often give only a country. A certificate at home gives the court and the date, which is what you need to request the file. Read the town with care, since many immigrants gave the nearest city a clerk would recognize. How to trace your ancestry explains the request.

Passenger lists

A list from 1907 on can name the town twice, as the last residence and as the place of birth, often in two spellings, with a relative's address there. How to search Ellis Island records covers the search and goes through each column.

Gravestones and burial society plots

Jewish cemeteries in America were divided into plots owned by burial societies, many of them landsmanshaftn, the societies of people from one town, and the name on the gate of a plot is often the name of the town. The cemetery office can say which society owned the plot. The YIVO Archives in New York hold papers of more than 1,000 landsmanshaftn. The stone itself gives the Hebrew name with the father's name, and an older stone sometimes names the town.

Draft cards

Three registrations for the First World War, held by the National Archives, cover about 24 million men. The first, on June 5, 1917, was for men aged 21 to 31, and its cards ask for the exact place of birth, often down to the town; the second, on June 5, 1918, asked for the place of birth too. The third, in September 1918, did not ask it. In the Second World War, the registration of April 27, 1942, was for men born between 1877 and 1897, and its cards also give the place of birth. For a man who never naturalized, a draft card may be the only American record of his town.

Letters and postmarks

Letters from the family that stayed often name the town most plainly, in a return address or a postmark. A postmark gives the post office's name in the official language of its time, which may be Russian, Polish or German. Letters in Yiddish or Hebrew name brothers, sisters and in-laws as well; how to get old letters read and translated explains how to have them read.

Social Security applications

Social Security began in 1936, and the application each worker filled in asked for the place of birth and the full names of both parents, in the applicant's own words. The Social Security Administration supplies a copy of a deceased person's application for a fee; ask for the application itself, since the typed summary it also offers can leave details out.

How to identify the town today

A town found in an American record is still only a spelling. Before any archive can help, it has to be matched to one real place, with its name in each period and the country it belongs to now.

One town, many names

Most towns of Jewish Eastern Europe had a Yiddish name used by the family and an official name in Polish, Russian, German or Hungarian, and many have a different name again today. An immigrant might give any of them, and a clerk would spell it as he heard it.

The JewishGen Communities Database gives the other names of each community, including its Yiddish name.

Borders that moved

Before the First World War most of the region was divided among the Russian Empire, the German Empire and Austria-Hungary. Between the wars Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Czechoslovakia were independent, and Romania had grown. After 1945 Poland's borders moved west: its eastern lands went to the Soviet republics of Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine, and German lands to the west became Polish. Munkatch was Hungarian until 1920, Czechoslovak until 1938, Hungarian again until 1944, then Soviet, and since 1991 it has been in Ukraine, so one family from there could be Austrian, Hungarian or Czechoslovak in American records.

A town's older registers are usually held in the country where it lies today, though some were moved. The Jewish registers of many towns in eastern Galicia, now in Ukraine, are held by the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw, and Gesher Galicia lists them. How to write to a European archive explains how to find the right one.

Towns that share a name

Many names belong to several places. Poland alone has a number of towns called Nowe Miasto, which means new town, and names such as Dąbrowa and Wola belong to dozens of villages. When a gazetteer offers several matches, test each against what else you know: the province or district on the records, the nearest city in the family's memory, the river, and whether the place had a Jewish community. A small village with no Jewish community may still be right, since many Jewish families lived in villages, but their births were then registered in the nearby town that kept the register, so look for both.

Gazetteers that match old names to places

A gazetteer is a dictionary of places. The ones below were made for this kind of question, and between them they cover the towns of the old Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian lands.

FamilySearch's Research Wiki explains how to read the Polish and German gazetteers. For Galicia, Gesher Galicia's town locator of 1900 shows the parishes and synagogues that served each place.

When the records give different towns

Records often disagree for a reason. The last residence on a passenger list is where the emigrant lived when he left, which may be a city he had moved to for work, while the place of birth is the town he was born in. Naturalization papers often give the nearest city a clerk would know. A Jewish birth may be registered in the town that kept the district's register, a few miles from the village where the family lived. Write each town down with its record, and look for the one two independent records agree on.

Once a town looks right, test it against the town's own records before building on it. An index can mislead here too: in the research for the example, an index gave a birth under the name Tarko where the original register reads Marko, and how to check that a record really belongs to your family tells how it was found.

Learning about the town, and what a shtetl was

A shtetl is the Yiddish word for a small town, from shtot, a city. It is pronounced SHTET-l, and its plural is shtetlekh, also spelled shtetlach, or shtetls in English. In family history it means one of the market towns of Eastern Europe where Jews were a large part of the people, often most of them, with a shul, study houses, a market square and the trades that served the farms around. Most Jewish families from Eastern Europe came from towns like these, or from the cities nearby.

Once the town is known, its history can be read. Many towns have a yizkor book, the memorial book its former residents published after the war, and JewishGen's Yizkor Book Project has translated many of them into English; what a memorial book is explains where to find one. JewishGen has also translated many entries of the Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities, which describe a community's life before 1918 and between the wars. KehilaLinks, a JewishGen project, has pages on many towns made by volunteers, which JewishGen does not check.

In the example, the first chapter is built this way. In 1897 more than four thousand of the people of Przedbórz were Jewish, and the chapter sets the family's trade and street inside the town's history, drawn from its memorial book and its registers.

Finding the town, step by step

1. Write down every place the family remembers, exactly as they say it, with the nearest city, the river and the province.
2. Gather the papers at home and note every place named on them, on the envelopes and on the backs of photographs.
3. Request the naturalization file of each immigrant who naturalized after 1906, and read the town of birth.
4. Find each immigrant's passenger list, and read the last residence, the place of birth and the relative at home.
5. Look for draft cards of 1917, 1918 and 1942 and for the Social Security application, and read the place of birth.
6. Find each grave, and ask the cemetery which society owned the plot.
7. Match every spelling in a gazetteer, and list the possible towns with their positions and the country each belonged to in each period.
8. Choose the town that two independent records point to, and write down why.
9. Find which archive holds that town's registers today, and check the town against them.

From the town to the family's history

With the town fixed, the European research can begin in the town's registers of births, marriages and deaths, and in the lists of its residents. How to write to a European archive explains where a town's registers are usually held and how to ask for them, and more guides are in finding family records.

Some of these records can be searched from home. Others are held by archives that answer only written requests, in Polish, German, Russian or Yiddish, and some files have never been indexed at all. A Zichronos commission includes that work and its archive, copy and translation fees, and ends in a finished book. Every book begins with the map of names and towns this guide describes. How we work sets out the steps, the examples page shows what a finished book holds, and what a family history book costs compares the options.

Sources: the US National Archives on First World War draft registration, passenger arrivals and naturalization; the National Park Service on what passenger lists record; JewishGen on its Communities Database and Gazetteer, the Yizkor Book Project, KehilaLinks and the draft cards; the YIVO Archives; Avotaynu on Where Once We Walked; FamilySearch's Research Wiki on the Polish and German gazetteers; Gesher Galicia; the Social Security Administration. Checked October 2026.