bout Polish Thread
Weaving the Threads
of Your Family History
Genealogy is like weaving. It requires patience to find the loose ends and skill to tie them back together. I help you reconstruct the fabric of your family’s past.
About
Hi, I’m Martyna — and I know exactly how it feels to stare at a blank family tree and wonder where to even begin.
Polish genealogy isn’t just complicated — it’s uniquely complicated. Records scattered across partitions. Archives in three countries. Documents in Polish, Russian, German, and Latin. Villages that changed names, borders, and governments multiple times within a single lifetime. Most people hit a wall fast, and that’s where I come in.
I’ve spent the last several years working hands-on in Polish State Archives and civil registry offices, building deep expertise across the regions where most Polish-American families have their roots — Galicia, central Poland, Congress Poland, and the Prussian partition. I know which records survive, where they’re held, and how to read them when they do.
I also work with records from the Eastern Borderlands — particularly eastern Galicia and the areas of present-day western Ukraine, where many Polish families have roots that are genuinely difficult to trace without knowing exactly where to look.
My clients are mostly Polish-Americans and families applying for Polish citizenship by descent — people who need more than a name on a document. They need context, clarity, and someone who treats their family’s story with the care it deserves.
Every case I take on is handled personally, from first contact to final report. No outsourcing, no shortcuts.
The City of Textiles
Why “Polish Thread”?
I was born and raised in Łódź, known as the “Manchester of Poland.” For centuries, this city was the beating heart of the textile industry. The sound of looms and the sight of red brick factories are part of my DNA.
Just as the weavers of Łódź spun individual threads into intricate patterns, a genealogist takes scattered dates, names, and places to weave a coherent family story.
“The name of my company is a tribute to my city’s heritage and a metaphor for my work: finding the thread that connects you to the past.”
My story
Unraveling the Mystery
My path from the archives of Łódź to helping clients worldwide.
The Tangled Knot
Like many people, I started with a knot in my own family tree. A missing document — needed for legal reasons — forced me into the State Archives in Łódź for the first time. I had no idea what I was doing. The rows of bound registry books, the smell of old paper, the handwriting I couldn’t yet read — it was overwhelming and fascinating in equal measure.
Learning the Patterns
I realized that reading old records is like reading a pattern. Once you understand the structure, the logic, the repetition — it starts to make sense. I mastered paleography in Russian Cyrillic and 19th-century German Kurrent to decipher the complex history of central Poland, where the same family might appear in Latin church registers, Russian civil records, and German administrative documents within a single generation.
FROM ONE ARCHIVE TO MANY
What started in Łódź expanded outward. I began physically visiting State Archives across Poland — learning which collections survive, which have been digitized, and which still require an in-person visit to access. I discovered that the most important records are almost never the ones that appear in online databases. Less than 30% of Polish historical records are available online. The rest are waiting in basements, parish sacristies, and regional archive branches.
POLISH THREAD — FOUNDED
I founded Polish Thread less than a year ago to offer a boutique service: personal, detailed, and handcrafted — just like the textiles my city was famous for. Since then I’ve helped families from the United States and multiple other countries trace their Polish roots, retrieve documents for citizenship applications, and recover histories that go back to the 1700s and 1800s. Every case has taught me something new. Every family story has been worth telling.
Expertise
What I bring to your research
Archive Access
I work directly with Polish State Archives, Civil Registry Offices (USC), and church archives. When records require a physical visit, I go in person — across Poland, not just Łódź.
Languages in Old Records
I read and interpret historical documents in the four languages that appear in Polish genealogical records across all three partitions and centuries of record-keeping.
Regional Expertise
Deep expertise across Galicia, central Poland, Congress Poland, and the Prussian partition — the regions where most Polish-American families have their roots. Also covering eastern Galicia and present-day western Ukraine.
“We don’t just find names. We stitch lives back together.”
Living in Łódź, surrounded by history, I’ve learned that the past is never truly gone. It’s just waiting to be uncovered. Whether you need citizenship documents or a full family tree, I treat your history with the craftsmanship it deserves.
I work directly with Polish State Archives (Archiwa Państwowe), local Civil Registry Offices (USC), and church/diocesan archives. I visit archives in person across Poland — not just Łódź — to access records that cannot be requested remotely.
I read and interpret historical documents in Polish, Russian Cyrillic (19th century), German Kurrent and Sütterlin script, and Latin — the four languages that appear most frequently in Polish genealogical records across the three partitions.
My deepest expertise covers the regions where most Polish-American families have their roots: Galicia (southern Poland and western Ukraine), central Poland and the Łódź area, Congress Poland (Russian partition), and the Prussian partition (western Poland). I also work with records from the Eastern Borderlands — particularly eastern Galicia and present-day western Ukraine.
Let’s find the missing thread
I’d be honored to guide you further on your journey.