Warszawa & Praga Homeowners’ Lists
20,503 RecordsHomeowners Lists · Warszawa · Poland
Background
The Warszawa Research Group, in cooperation with JewishGen Inc., presents the Warszawa Homeowners’ List database. This database contains over 20,000 entries from five homeowners’ lists for Warszawa (Warsaw), the capital and largest city in Poland; and its suburbs of Kamionek, Praga, Nowo Praga, Szmilowizna (Szmulowizna). Today, these suburbs are part of the city proper.
The Significance of the Homeowner’s Lists
Warszawa vital records (births, marriages and deaths) include the residence of each person identified (i.e. witnesses, parents, deceased, bride, groom) by “plot number”. In most cases, they do not provide the actual street number or name. This database will enable a Warszawa researcher to identify the street name, house number and owner associated with the individuals in each vital record.
The Homeowner’s Lists will also provide the cyrkul (district) for the plot number. Since vital records were registered by district, the knowledge of the district number will enable the researcher to identify the correct set of Jewish vital records (as microfilmed by the LDS Family History Library).
The dividing lines between districts varied over time. This is most evident on the Warszawa Homeowner’s list database. While each inner-city district typically maintained their own vital record registration, there were periods of time when several districts combined their vital registration together.
Database Sources
This database has been compiled from five sources:
The Contents of the Database
1869 and 1870 are in a combined database (5,659 entries). The 1852 and 1864 lists were each created independently, and contain 3,348 and 3,420 entries respectively. The 1897 Homeowners list is one of the sections of a book titled Księga Adresowa Miasta Warszawy na 1897 rok [“Warszawa Address Register for the year 1897”], and contributes 8,076 entries.
Fields Recorded
The 1869 list contains the following information:
The 1870 list records the first initial of the given name for Warszawa and the full given name for Praga, with surname, title, plot number, street name, house number, city and district. The 1852 and 1864 lists are similar in content, recording given name (or the family unit, i.e. “sons”, “brothers”, “husband and wife”), surname, title, plot number, street name, district, city and comments. In the 1864 list the Polish word “sukcesor” has been translated in the database as “inheritors”.
The 1897 list adds a page number with a link to the digitized page in PDF format, the police list number (house number), the cross street name and the town.
Research Notes
How the 1869 and 1870 lists were combined
The 1869 information was compiled from two lists in the book. The first was the alphabetical listing of the homeowners, providing the surname, given name and house number. The second was a numerical listing of the house number, containing the plot number, street name, house number, owner’s name and comments. In some cases the spelling of the surname varied between the two lists for the same person, and the database contains both spelling variations, separated by a slash mark “/”.
In creating the database, the 1869 and 1870 lists were compared. If the surname and the first initial of the given names matched in the two lists, then it was assumed that it was the same owner. All spelling variations of the surname were noted in the surname field and separated by a slash mark. The letters “I” and “J” were considered a match in comparing the first initial of the given name.
An early list from 1815
An early known list of Warszawa Jewish Homeowners from 1815 was found at the AGAD (Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych), the Central Archives of Historical Records, in Warsaw. In some cases there are no surnames of the homeowner — just the given name and patronymic. The list also contains the cyrkuli (district), plot number, street name, the previous owner’s surname, and notes on notarial documents.
An interesting entry in this 1815 list is the fourth entry, which contains the only female homeowner at the time: Judita (Yehudis) Jakobowiczowa. A picture of her, together with her husband Shmuel Zbytkower, appears in the Yiddish-language yizkor book Pinkas Varshe, published in Buenos Aires in 1955. The Warszawa neighborhood of “Szmulowizna” (which is listed in the 1897 Directory) was named after its founder, Szmul Jakobowicz Zbytkower (also known as Józef Samuel Sonnenberg), who lived from 1727–1801.
Acknowledgements
This database was compiled through the dedicated efforts of volunteers of the Warszawa Research Group. Many thanks to Rose Feldman, Max Heffler, Kate Hibel, Hadassah Lipsius and Lynn Stern, and to our hosts at JewishGen and their database team.
Searching This Database
This database can be searched via the All Poland Database or the JewishGen Unified Search.
Databases like this one are made possible entirely through volunteer effort and generous donors. Your contribution helps fund transcription, research, and preservation of Polish Jewish records.
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