If you’re researching ancestors from the Galicia region of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, chances are good that you’ve come across vital records which mention a house number where your ancestor lived at the time he married, died, or had a new baby baptized. Moreover, if you’re interested in genealogy, chances are good that you’ve used Google Maps to obtain a street view of a home located at a particular address where your ancestors lived. So it’s inevitable that those researching Galician ancestors would want to use the house number from an old church record to find that ancestor’s home on a modern map, or at least see what exists in that place now. Unfortunately, this process is not quite as straightforward as it seems. In this post, I’ll provide a little background information about Galician cadastral maps, which can be used to assist in this process, and then walk through the steps needed to locate a Galician ancestor’s house on a cadastral map so you can then determine the corresponding location on a modern map.

What is a Cadastral Map, and What Cadastres Exist for Galicia?

A cadastre (kataster or kataster gruntowy in Polish) is a land or property register typically created for purposes of taxation, and it normally includes both detailed maps and corresponding property registers. In order to create those detailed maps, a survey of the land is required at an appropriate scale so that every separate plot of land can be distinguished on the map, e.g. 1:2,880 or 1:7,200 rather than the scale of 1:28,000 which was typical for a military survey. In Austrian Galicia, there were essentially three land surveys that are important for genealogy. The first of these, known as the Josephine Cadaster (Kataster Józefiński), was conducted between 1785 and 1789 during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. Detailed maps were not created from this survey, only field sketches (Brouillons or Feldskizzen).¹  However, “surveyors were instructed to identify all houses, to record the number of livestock, to describe woods, rivers, and roads, and to indicate the nature of terrain on the maps. Joseph II said of it: ‘If one is to rule countries well, one must first know them exactly.'”² Although no detailed maps were created to accompany this survey, the property registers (Metryka Józefińska) and some of the field sketches remain, and these have genealogical relevance.

The second important Galician cadastre, the Franciscan Cadastre (Kataster Franciszkański), began with a patent issued by Emperor Franz I on 23 December 1817. Also known as the Stabile cadastre, this cadastre was planned as an ambitious, long-term project for which a land survey was conducted at a scale of 1:2,880. It included such information as detailed descriptions of each parcel of land and its use (agriculture, pasture, forest, pond, etc.) in addition to noting landowners and homeowners — all of which was intended for the purpose of determining appropriate taxes. In recognition of the fact that this cadastre would take a long time to complete, orders were issued in 1819 for a provisional survey largely based on the Josephine Cadastre. This provisional survey was to be used for tax purposes in the interim, while surveying for the longer-term project was being carried out.³ The resulting property registers from this provisional survey of 1819 are known in Poland as the Metryka Franciszkańska. Since they were largely based on the Josephine surveys, the parcel numbers are almost always the same between these two sets of documents.

Meanwhile, the long-term cadastral survey, based on the patent issued by Francis I in  1817, was an ongoing project until it was finally completed in the Austrian part of the Empire by 1861. “A total of 30,556 cadastral parishes with a ground area of 300,082 square kilometers divided into nearly 50 million land parcels were surveyed. This was an astonishing rate of progress, achieved because the surveyors worked from sunrise to sunset, six days a week, and because much routine work was done by assistants.” ⁴ It was finally implemented in the province of Galicia some 30-35 years after the original patent date, and the resulting cadastre includes a series of maps of Galician villages along with the corresponding descriptive documents, collectively known in Polish as operaty (or operat, singular), all of which were produced between about 1848-1854. To distinguish it from the provisional land survey registers created circa 1819, the documents from this comprehensive land survey are known as the Kataster Galicyjski (Galician Cadastre). Note that the parcel numbers resulting from this survey are almost completely different from the parcel numbers recorded in the Metryka Józefińska and Metryka Franciszkańska, so it’s important not to try to extrapolate too much from those earlier surveys.

There are many types of documents, tables, and statistical data included in the operat for a village and they constitute a treasure trove of information for serious scholars. However, the two that are perhaps most useful and accessible for armchair genealogists are the Alphabetisches Verzeichniss, which is the alphabetical list of parcel owners, and the Hauser Verzeichniss, which lists all the houses in the village. These are the all-important documents that are needed in order to use a cadastral map in combination with the house numbers found in Galician vital records. This will be discussed further shortly, but first, we need to find copies of both the cadastral maps and the corresponding operat documents for our village of interest.

Where Can I Find A Cadastral Map for my Ancestral Village?

Fortunately, a large number of Galician cadastral maps and descriptive property documents have survived, but due to the upheavals of war (and perhaps bureaucracy), the ones you need may be housed in different archives. For example, the cadastral maps for my ancestral village of Kołaczyce belong to the Archiwum Państwowe w Rzeszowie, but the operat for Kołacyzce that are necessary for interpreting these maps are housed in the Archiwum Państwowe w Przemyślu. You may need to hire a professional researcher to access them for you as only a small fraction of these maps and indexes are online, but the maps themselves are inexpensive–16 zloty (about $4.39 U.S.) each, based on current prices from the Archiwum Państwowe w Rzeszowie. Some cadastral maps may be found online as well, mainly those in possession of the state archives in Przemyśl and in Kraków. Those maps and operaty owned by the archive in Przemyśl are found in collection 56/126/0, Archiwum Geodezyjne. Those maps and operaty owned by the archive in Kraków are found in collection 29/280/0, Kataster galicyjski. Although none of the cadastral holdings of the Archiwum Państwowe w Rzeszowie are online, a list of maps which can be ordered from this archive can be viewed here. Gesher Galicia also maintains a searchable inventory of cadastral maps and cadastral records for Galicia which includes voter records, tax records, school records, and Polish magnate documents, in addition to Galician cadastral records. Last, but not least, you can always search Szukajwarchiwach for maps and related documents for your village of interest, whether that village was in Galicia, or was located elsewhere in Poland.

Although the earlier Metryka Józefińska and Metryka Franciszkańska documents should not be used with the cadastral maps from the 1850s, they may be of interest nevertheless. The Central State Historical Archives in Lviv, Ukraine is the repository for the Metryka Józefińska and Metryka Franciszkańska documents for a large number of Galician towns and villages, and a complete list of these holdings can be found here (note that this document is in Ukrainian).

Locating an Ancestral Home on a Cadastral Map

Now that we know where to find a cadastral map and the accompanying property registers for our ancestral village(s), we can turn our attention to locating our ancestors’ homes on those maps. The Alphabetisches Verzeichniss for my ancestral village of Kołaczyce was dated 1850, and I found it helpful to keep this time frame in mind when perusing the list for my Kołaczyce ancestors (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Cover page of Alphabetisches Verzeichniss for Kołaczyce.⁵ 

Let’s use this index to locate my Łącki ancestors in Kołaczyce. Here is the relevant entry for Franciszek Łacki, boxed in red (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Franz Łącki in the Alphabetisches Verzeichniss for Kołaczyce.⁶

Before we jump in, let’s take a moment to orient ourselves to the layout of the page. On the far left side, we see that Franz Łącki is entry number 133 in the alphabetized list of homeowners. The Roman numerals in the next column indicate the map sections on which we’ll find his parcels of land (more on that below). Circled in green, we see the all-important house number–“191b.” Leaving aside the “b” designation for a moment, this is the same as the number that is mentioned for Franciszek Łącki in vital records from Kołaczyce, such as his 1847 death record  (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Death record for Franciszek Łącki from Kołaczyce, 12 December 1847, with house number (191) underlined in yellow.⁷

The fact that Franciszek Łącki died in 1847, and the homeowners list is dated 1850, explains the word that comes after his name in that alphabetical homeowners list: “erben,” meaning “heirs.” What this entry tells us is that Franciszek Łącki’s heirs continued to live in house number 191 after his death in 1847 — at least through 1850 when the index was created. We can gain a bit more insight into this situation thanks to another document in the operat, the Hauser Verzeichniss, which I’ll come to in a moment.

Going back to the page from the alphabetical homeowners list (Figure 2), we see 16 different numbers in the middle of the entry, and these correspond to the numbers of land parcels which were owned by Franciszek Łącki. At the bottom of the entry, we see in red ink, “Bauparzelle 347.” The word “Bauparzelle” means “building parcel,” and the number that follows this term (347) is the number we need to use in order to locate Franz Łącki’s home on the map. This is the key point — if we assume that Franciszek Łącki’s house number, 191, corresponds to parcel 191 on the map, we’ll be looking in the wrong place. 

Now let’s take a look at the map itself. The map of Kołaczyce was provided by the archive as a series of five high-resolution TIFF files which were scanned from the five individual cadastral maps contained in this set, showing Kołaczyce and the adjacent hamlet of Kluczowa. Each segment of the map has one or more Roman numerals on it. For example, the “downtown” area of Kołaczyce is found on map section IV (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Section from cadastral map of Kołacyzce, showing map section number (IV) boxed in red.⁸

However, this is not the section of map that we want, since the alphabetical homeowners list stated that Franciszek Łącki’s land was located on map sections I and II. Zooming in on map section I, we see that Franciszek Łącki actually lived on the outskirts of Kołaczyce, in the Kluczowa neighborhood (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Extract from map section I showing Kluczowa district, with map section number (I) boxed in red.⁹

Zooming in still further, we can now see where Franciszek Łącki’s land and home were located (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Detail from Kołaczyce map section I, showing Bauparzelle 347 and some of the other lots owned by Franciszek Łącki, noted in green.

As evidenced by this map, Franciszek Łącki’s home, which was called house number 191 in the vital records, is the yellow rectangle marked with the black number 347. The red, black and yellow colors are original to the map, along with the charming little “trees,” complete with tree shadows, that dot some of these parcels of land. I’ve underlined in green some of the additional parcels of land owned by Franciszek Łącki that appear on this section of the map.

To find this location on a satellite map, we need to zoom out again and identify some points of reference that can be seen on both the cadastral map and the satellite map. Here’s the cadastral map again, with Franciszek Łącki’s home circled in green and some prominent roads similarly marked in green, near the northern edge of Kołaczyce (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Cadastral map showing Franciszek Łącki’s home in relation to main roads and waterways. 

To some extent, we can also use waterways such as the Wisłoka River to orient ourselves, although some waterways which appear on the cadastral map (e.g. the Bukowska River, which forms part of Kołaczyce’s northern border) no longer appear on the modern map. Now here’s the satellite view of the same location, with the same features marked (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Satellite map of the northern Kołaczyce area, showing approximate location of Franciszek Łącki’s home (circled in green) in relation to main roads and waterways, courtesy of Google Maps.

When I zoom down to the street level on the satellite map, none of the houses appear to be old enough to date back to 1850, so I’m not certain that I’ll find any trace of Franciszek Łącki’s home if I visit that area on my next trip to Poland. Nonetheless, this technique gives a pretty good idea — at least to within a hundred meters or so, based on my mediocre map skills — of where in the world my great-great-great-great grandfather lived and worked, raised his family, and took his last breaths. I think that’s very cool.

Now let’s go back to Figure 2, the entry for Franciszek Łącki in the alphabetized list of homeowners. Remember how the house number was described as “191/b”? That suggests that there was another landowner who owned house number 191 jointly with the heirs of Franciszek Łacki, who would be found under the designation “191/a.” Who might that be? To answer this question, we can check the Hauser Verzeichniss for Kołaczyce (Figure 9).

Figure 9: Cover page of the Hauser Verzeichniss for Kołaczyce.¹⁰

This brief index is a list of the house numbers for each home in the village, along with the name of the homeowner. The answer to our question about the other owner of house number 191 is found at the bottom of page 13 (Figure 10).

Figure 10: Extract from Hauser Verzeichniss for Kołaczyce showing owners of house number 191.¹¹

This indicates that the home was jointly owned by (a) Jakob Dąbrowski and (b) the heirs of Franz Łącki. From a genealogical perspective, this is interesting information, although unsurprising. Vital records tell us that Franciszek Łącki was married first to Tekla Stadnik or Stachnik, with whom he had five children, only two of whom lived to adulthood—daughters Marianna and Klara.¹² Klara married Jakub Dąbrowski, who is undoubtedly the same as the Jakob Dąbrowski mentioned here.¹³ After Tekla died, Franciszek married Magdalena Gębczyńska and had five more children with her.¹⁴ By 1850, at the time of the Galician cadastre, both Franciszek and Magdalena had passed away along with their three youngest children, leaving 15-year-old twins Jakub and Anna as the remaining residents in the house, in addition to their older step-sister Klara, her husband Jakub, and their children, Jan, Stanisław, and Andrzej.¹⁵ 

Genealogy and a love of old maps seem to go hand-in-hand for most of us. Our ancestors’ stories are rooted in the time and place where they lived, and cadastral maps help us to understand the element of place in a uniquely specific way. Fortunately, Galician cadastral maps and registers are widely available, relatively inexpensive to obtain, and not difficult to use, once you understand the need for the appropriate homeowner lists. So if you have ancestors from this region, why not poke around a bit in the archival collections mentioned here, to see what’s available for your villages of interest? You might gain a whole new perspective on your Galician heritage as a result.

Sources:

Featured image: Detail from Stadt Kolaczyce mit der Ortschaft Kluczowa, Kreis Jaslo, Provinz Galizien [Miasto Kołaczyce z miejscowością Kluczowa, pow. Jasło – Galicja], scan 59_1313_2848_04; file 2848, collection  59/1313/0 Kataster gruntowy; Archiwum Państwowe w Rzeszowie, Rzeszów, Podkarpackie, Poland.

¹ Kain, Roger J.P., and Elizabeth Baigent. The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State: A History of Property Mapping. (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 194; digital images, Google Books, (https://books.google.com : accessed 25 September 2018).

² Ibid., p. 195.

³ Nowak, Daniel. “Metryki Józefińskie 1785-1788 r. i Franciszkańskie 1819-1820 r. nie tylko dla genealogów.” Pamięć Bliskich, http://pamiecbliskich.com, accessed 25 September 2018.

⁴ Kain and Baigent, The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State, 198.

⁵ Alphabetisches Verzeichniss der Gemeinde Kolaczyce sammt Ortschaft Kluczowa, Kreis Jaslo, Steuer Brzostek, Provinz Galizien, 1850, page 27; file 4, “Zbiór dokumentów dworskich;” series 543, Kołaczyce; collection 56/126/0 Archiwum Geodezyjne; Archiwum Państwowe w Przemyślu, Przemyśl, Podkarpackie, Poland.

⁶ Alphabetisches Verzeichniss der Gemeinde Kolaczyce sammt Ortschaft Kluczowa, Kreis Jaslo, Steuer Brzostek, Provinz Galizien, 1850, entry for Łącki, Franz, page 74; file 4, “Zbiór dokumentów dworskich;” series 543, Kołaczyce; collection 56/126/0 Archiwum Geodezyjne; Archiwum Państwowe w Przemyślu, Przemyśl, Podkarpackie, Poland.

⁷ Roman Catholic Church, St. Anna’s Parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Podkarpackie, Poland), “Zgony, 1826-1889,” Stare Kopie, 1847, record #152, death record for Franciscus Łącki, 12 December 1847, Archiwum Archidiecezjalne w Przemyślu, Przemyśl, Podkarpackie, Poland.

⁸ Stadt Kolaczyce mit der Ortschaft Kluczowa, Kreis Jaslo, Provinz Galizien [Miasto Kołaczyce z miejscowością Kluczowa, pow. Jasło – Galicja], scan 59_1313_2848_04; file 2848, collection  59/1313/0 Kataster gruntowy; Archiwum Państwowe w Rzeszowie, Rzeszów, Podkarpackie, Poland.

⁹ Ibid., scan 59_1313_2848_01+03.

¹⁰ Provinz Galizien Kreis Jasło Steuer Bezirk Kołaczyce Hauser Verzeichniss der Gemeinde Kolaczyce im Jahr 1850, file 4, “Zbiór dokumentów dworskich;” series 543, Kołaczyce; collection 56/126/0 Archiwum Geodezyjne; Archiwum Państwowe w Przemyślu, Przemyśl, Podkarpackie, Poland.

¹¹ Ibid., p. 13, house no. 191.

¹² Roman Catholic Church, St. Anne’s parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Podkarpackie, Poland), “Urodzenia, 1784-2015,” 1818, baptismal record for Simon Łącki, born 26 October 1818; and

Ibid., 1821, baptismal record for Marianna Łącki, born 1 February 1821; and

Ibid., 1823, baptismal record for Clara Marianna Łącka, born 9 August 1823; and

Maciej Orzechowski, “Kolaczyce Births,” baptismal record for Valentinus Casimirus Łącki, born 8 February 1826, transcribed from the collection, “Roman Catholic Church records, St. Anna’s Parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Małopolskie, Poland), “Urodzenia, 1826-1889″, Stary Kopie,” report to Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts on 9 January 2015; Excel spreadsheet held by Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts; and

Ibid., baptismal record for Stanislaus Łącki, born 22 March 1829.

¹³ Maciej Orzechowski, “Kołaczyce Marriages,” marriage record for Jacobus Dąbrowski and Clara Łącka, 28 September 1843, transcribed from the collection, “Roman Catholic Church records, St. Anna’s Parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Małopolskie, Poland), “Śluby, 1826-1889,’ Stare Kopie,” report to Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts, on 9 January 2015; Excel Spreadsheet held by Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts.

¹⁴ Roman Catholic Church, St. Anna’s Parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Podkarpackie, Poland), “Urodzenia, 1826-1889,” Stare Kopie, 1835, baptismal record for Jacobus Łącki and Anna Łącka, born 24 July 1835; and

Maciej Orzechowski, “Kolaczyce Births,” baptismal record for Josephus Łącki, born 7 February 1838, transcribed from the collection, “Roman Catholic Church records, St. Anna’s Parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Małopolskie, Poland), “Urodzenia, 1826-1889,” Stary Kopie,” report to Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts on 9 January 2015, Excel spreadsheet held by Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts; and

Ibid., baptismal record for Catharina Łącka, born 16 April 1841; and

Ibid., baptismal record for Adalbertus Łącki, born 22 April 1843.

¹⁵ Roman Catholic Church, St. Anna’s parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Podkarpackie, Poland), “Zgony, 1826-1889,” Stary Kopie, 1839, death record for Josephus Łącki, died 2 October 1839; and

Ibid., 1842, #20, death record for Catharina Łącka, died 9 March 1842; and

Ibid., 1843, #28, death record for Adalbertus Łącki, died 1 June 1843; and

Ibid., 1848, #11, death record for Magdalena Łącka, died 17 January 1848; and

Maciej Orzechowski, “Kolaczyce Births,” baptismal record for Joannes Dąbrowski, born 9 December 1844, transcribed from the collection, “Roman Catholic Church records, St. Anna’s Parish (Kołaczyce, Jasło, Małopolskie, Poland), “Urodzenia, 1826-1889,” Stary Kopie,” report to Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts on 9 January 2015, Excel spreadsheet held by Julie Szczepankiewicz, Hopkinton, Massachusetts; and

Ibid., baptismal record for Stanislaus Dąbrowski, born 1 May 1847; and

Ibid., baptismal record for Andreas Dąbrowski, born 21 October 1849.

For further reading:

Zbigniew Stettner’s article for Polish Origins, “Cadastral Records for Galicia Online.”

Matthew Bielawa’s article, “The Central State Historical Archive in Lviv, Ukraine and Polish Genealogical Research.”

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kataster_nieruchomo%C5%9Bci (Provides a little information on cadastres in both the Austrian and Prussian partitions of Poland.)

References and more Information about the Gesher Galicia Map Room (in particular, the links mentioned in the references are very informative): https://maps.geshergalicia.org/references/index.html#cad 

© Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz, 2018.