Historical information, finds, and locations concerning Galicia’s different nationalities, famous figures, movements, and institutions, as well as some of my personal experiences and discoveries as I continue to research my ancestors who lived in this region and the context of their lives.
By Iwona Dakiniewicz The journey to America was long, costly, and tedious. The majority of emigrants came from remote villages. Peasants began their journey with teams of horses or on foot, to get to the nearest railroad station. This article gives you a possibility of locating the railroad station from which […]
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A look at early twentieth-century life in Bila (Polish: Biała), a village bordering Ternopil in eastern Galicia. The description is from the autobiography of Katherine Rychly Pylitiuk, who was born in Bila in 1904, grew up there, and immigrated to the United States in 1922. This post is taken from […]
By Iwona Dakiniewicz It’s a stroke of luck for those researching Galician ancestors, the next potential source of genealogical information — and, to the delight of those interested, it can be browsed online. The Schematyzm Galicyjski [Galician Schematism] — a staff yearbook with personnel details of authorities, offices, societies, and institutions — was […]
Presented below are photographs of eastern Galicia and its people from a Polish-language illustrated guidebook for the Austrian State Railways written by Adolf Inlender and published in Vienna in 1892. Adolf Władysław Inlender (Inlaender) (1854-1920) was a civic and political activist, journalist, and pharmacist in Galicia. Illustrated Guidebook for the Imperial-Royal […]
The Eastern Fair The Eastern Fair (Targi Wschodnie in Polish) was a major trade fair in interwar Poland. It was established in 1921 in Lviv, after the end of the Polish-Soviet War, which redrew the Polish-Soviet border and incorporated Galicia into the Second Polish Republic. The aim of the trade […]
From Kray Regional Tourist Portal At the end of the eighteenth century, as a result of the Partitions of Poland, Galicia fell under Austrian rule. One of the results of this geopolitical shift was the program of settling the lands with German colonists. In this way the Austrian authorities hoped […]
By Chris Wilkinson “To know me, you must think of me in terms of what Austria was like in 1906, when I was born. Austria in those days was a huge monarchy of 56 million people – the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The monarchy seemed indestructible.”– Billy Wilder One of Hollywood’s greatest movie […]
A look at early twentieth-century life in Bila (Polish: Biała), a village bordering Ternopil in eastern Galicia. The description is from the autobiography of Katherine Rychly Pylitiuk, who was born in Bila in 1904, grew up there, and immigrated to the United States in 1922. This post is taken from […]
We owe the oldest photographs of Lviv to Józef Eder (1831-1903), the owner of one of the first photography studios in Lviv. His photographs, which have been digitized and today are widely available on the Internet, date to the middle of the nineteenth century. Starting in 1861, together with Bernhard […]
By Iwona Dakiniewicz Galicia—a region that came into being as a result of the First Partition of Poland in 1772—came under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. This new land, with an area of 78,496 sq. km., became the largest land in the Habsburg Kingdom, but at the same time presented […]
Lviv’s historical urban structures survived WWII largely unscathed, and so much of Lviv’s prewar cityscape is intact. Nonetheless, if we look through old photographs of the city, we come across unfamiliar places. This is not surprising as Lviv, like any city, underwent physical transformations throughout the centuries. In addition to […]
