Info about Prussia??

Question:

Info about Prussia??

I have just started to research my family tree, and found that several generations ago, some had immigrated from Prussia. While I'm not a total dummy, just a partial one, can someone please give some brief information about Prussia? Very much appreciated!!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Before 1871, there were no countries called Germany or Poland. There were German states and intermittently, Poland resurrected itself in some form or another. But in most of the 1800s, Poland was split between Prussia, Russia and Austria-Hungary.

If you look at a map of Europe, Prussia extended from roughly just a smidge west of Berlin all the way east to the Warsaw area. Most of northern and western Poland as we know it now, and much of the former East Germany were the former Prussia. When Germany unified in 1871, Prussia was the largest of its states. After WWII, it was the most hacked up of the German states.

Depending on where your family originated, they either spoke German or Polish. If they spoke Polish, you'll find most of their census records will call them "German Pole".

From an emigration standpoint, they were much freer to come and go than were their Galician (Austrian-Pole) and East Prussian (Russian Pole) brethren. Prussians started emigrating as early as the 1850s. It was almost 30 years before Austria allowed their Poles to leave and more than 40 years before Russia let go of some of their slave labor in Poland. Prussian emigration hit its peak around 1870.

About 70% of Prussians were Roman Catholic. 28% were Lutheran and roughly 2% were Evangelical (Calvanists). The Church records exist on over 90% of the towns. Contrary to the hyperbole, most of the records weren't destroyed by either World War. Some were...most weren't. Little Felician nuns would give life and limb before letting anything happen to the sacramental registers.

So even if you can't find civil registers or military records, the church records are a very good substitute...and actually go back to 1500.

If you need more help, contact the Polish-American Museum in Chicago or Polish Genealogy Society of America. Both have websites and work out of the same building. The records and gazetteers in their collection are quite valuable in doing research in that area.