Newly Extracted Books of Permanent Residents for Nowy Korczyn (Kielce)

JRI-Poland is pleased to announce the completion of the full extraction of vital data from the surviving Nowy Korczyn Books of Permanent Residents (BoPR). The Polish State Archives (PSA) has cataloged six surviving books out of the original fourteen—some of which are fragmentary, and most of which were mislabeled in terms of their original volume numbers.

Nonetheless, nearly all of the surviving household page spreads contain Jewish entries, yielding over 6,100 listings across 255 distinct subject surnames. Approximately 70% of these entries are in Russian.

Books of Permanent Residents offer a remarkable “snapshot” of a community: they record individuals associated with a town—by household—who were alive at the time the data were collected, regardless of where they were physically residing. Permanent residency was inherited from the father (or single mother), and a wife typically assumed her husband’s residency upon marriage.

The Nowy Korczyn BoPRs are organized by domu (house number), though the numbering is not strictly sequential and does not correlate with street addresses. Initial collation began in 1890 and concluded in May 1902, with updates—recording births, deaths, and household reassignments due to marriage—added through 1930.

Each entry provides vital genealogical details including the individual’s name, gender, date and town of birth, parents’ names, occupation, and religion. Nowy Korczyn itself appears as the town of birth in 75% of the entries; the remaining 25% reference over 200 other villages and towns.

While only half of the original BoPR volumes survived, these records are a critical complement to the town’s civil registration books, which suffer from significant gaps in coverage. Notably, dates of birth in the BoPRs precisely match those in civil registrations—when such registrations exist. The extracted records reveal that approximately 17% of births were never registered in the civil books.

Among the earliest residents listed is Moszek Felman, a widower born in 1803—prior to the beginning of parish civil registration—who died in 1890. His death was not recorded in the civil books, and his marriage does not appear in the surviving Nowy Korczyn metric records. Without the BoPR extract, little would be known about his existence.

Such findings underscore the tremendous value of extracting and indexing Books of Permanent Residents, particularly for towns with incomplete or missing vital record books.

Researchers interested in exploring this valuable new dataset are encouraged to visit the Nowy Korczyn town page at https://www.jri-poland.org/town/nowy-korczyn/.

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Judy Golan

JRI-Poland Nowy Korczyn Town Leader

JRI-Poland Kielce-Radom-Sandomierz Area Coordinator