I'm of mixed Polish and Latvian descent and am having problems tracing my ancest

Question:

I'm of mixed Polish and Latvian descent and am having problems tracing my ancestors?

I know that one side are from Riga and have surname Paramansky. some relatives called Borok- may be from Belarus
Other side called Hauser, from a small town near Lodz in Poland

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Since you have the towns, I would have to wonder where the difficulty is in your search.

There are a handful of sources that we can research from the US. The LDS has copies of many parish sacramental registers and those are the most consistent and reliable records that we have of the region.

There are some passport/visa records available...more for your Lodz ancestors than your Riga ancestors. Those traveling from Riga would probably have left from Bremenhaven and those records were destroyed. But your Prussian ancestors probably left from Hamburg and we can search those records. Don't just stop at finding them on passenger lists. From there you want to look for their exit visas that let them get on the ship and which told us more about them.

Your ancestors from Riga and Belarus probably didn't come over very early in the process. They were under a very tight system and were late to leave Europe. The good news there is that you may get quite a bit of information from their Declaration of Intent and Petition for Naturalization. You should be able to pull those from the National Archives and Records Administration Regional Center. You can look for the appropriate one (it's the one for the state where they lived when naturalized) at this link: http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/...

There are a few other resources that are very helpful. The Polish-American Museum on Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago also has a great research library. I volunteered there for several years and am very happy with their collection of rare records. http://www.pgsa.org/
Also check out these resources from PGSA:
http://www.polishroots.org/posen_indexin...

Here's a list of resources that you can access at the Newberry Library in Chicago, which is one of the best genealogy centers in the country. You can check with your local librarian to see if they can get any of these resources through Interlibrary loan in your state. Many times the State Library has copies that they'll circulate to local libraries for just a few dollars. http://www.newberry.org/genealogy/polish...

You might also find these resources helpful. They're from the State Library of Michigan and are a great collection of resources:
http://www.michigan.gov/hal/0,1607,7-160...

If you are still hitting a roadblock, feel free to drop me a note. It's a hard region to research from the US, especially if you don't read and write Polish. But it's getting better every year or so...