Golimowski USA : A Genealogical History of a Polish Family in America

User's Guide to Golimowski USA

Golimowski USA is divided into four parts:

• A home page that introduces the site and contains a brief history of Posen, the eastern Prussian province from which the Golimowskis are believed to have originated.
• An index of known persons directly related to the Golimowski families that immigrated to the United States. This index is accessible to the public without a password. To protect the privacy of living relatives, only deceased persons are listed in the index.
• The genealogies of Golimowski families that settled in Buffalo NY, Chicago IL, Peoria IL, Schenectady NY, and Milwaukee, WI. (Access to the genealogies is restricted by respectively assigned passwords.)
• Links to other websites that provide information relevant to tracing the roots of Polish families in the United States.

These features are accessible via the static menu shown at the left side of almost every page within this site. All features can be accessed from any page of text at any time. However, the menu is not available on pages that exclusively display charts, original documents, or photographs.

To access the home (main) page of Golimowski USA, click "Home" at the top of the menu.

To access the index of known persons directly related to the immigrant Golimowski families, click "Name index" in the menu.

To access the genealogies and biographies of Golimowski families living in different parts of the United States, click the desired city listed beneath the "Families in" entry of the menu, then enter the appropriate user name and password for that city.

To access websites relevant to Polish genealogy, click the desired destination beneath the "Links" entry of the menu.

Navigating the Family Genealogies

After entering the site dedicated to a Golimowski family in a particular city, you have access to that family's tree, generational lists, and individual biographies.

If you wish to read the biography of any individual in that family, scroll down the roster of names (which is arranged by generations) and locate the desired individual. If that individual's name is linked to a biography, then click on the name and the biography will appear. If the name is not linked, then either the biography is under construction or no information exists.

To view the graphical family tree, click "View Family Tree" located to the right of the page title. A diagram of that family's tree will appear. The diagram will be much larger than your web browser's window. Use your browser's horizontal and vertical slide bars to pan around the diagram. The diagram is arranged so that the earliest known generation is at the top and the latest known generation is a the bottom. Each box within the diagram contains a family member, their years of birth and death, and all known spouses. Males are denoted by boxes with squared corners; females are denoted by boxes with rounded corners. Arrows connect the boxes of parents and their children. To access the available biographies of family members, click on that member's box. The biography will appear in a separate (or "pop-up") window, so that the family tree and the biography may be viewed simultaneously.

Individual Biographies

Each person's biography page contains a table of vital statistics, a photograph (if available), a biography with footnotes and links, and a list of references.

The table of vital statistics lists the person's dates and places of birth, death, and burial, their cause of death, their parents, and their spouses (or mates) and children. Related individuals for whom biographies are available are linked to those biographies. Items for which information is not known are left blank or omitted.

The photograph, if available, is the image of the person in the possession of the author that was recorded closest to that person's "prime" (preferably between 20 and 50 years of age). Clicking on the photograph will load an album of photographs showing that person at various stages of his or her life. Some album pages contain many photographs and so may take a while to load, especially over slower internet connections.

The biography contains as much verified information as is currently known by the author. All documented information is linked to references via footnotes. Supplemental information or images of original documents are accessible via links to the subjects described within the text.

The references list all the sources of the information contained within the biography. Links to images of original documents are also provided, where available.

Note that many images of original documents, especially census images, are very large files that may take a while to download. Some browsers such as Netscape or Mozilla cannot accommodate these large files. (Internet Explorer seems to handle them satisfactorily.) In such cases, the user is advised to download and save the images to their hard drive and then view them with an image viewer compatible with your computer's operating system and memory capacity.