Read old Polish records from a photo
Records from the Kingdom of Poland were kept in Polish from 1808 to 1867 and again from 1918; from 1868 to 1917 they were kept in Russian. Photograph the page: FamilyLore gives the Polish text line by line, a translation, and a mark on each word it was unsure of.
Polish is in beta. On November 4, 2026 we measured FamilyLore on 17 civil records from 1809 to 1866, transcribed by a person. It read about 92 in 100 letters right, but got about 2 in 5 names wrong. It marked 9 in 10 of the wrong names and dates with “check this”, so check every marked word against the photo.
Your first three pages need no account and no card.
A Polish letter from our shelf, as FamilyLore read it
A dotted underline marks a word FamilyLore was unsure of; [?] is its own note on a doubtful reading.
Fryderyk Chopin to Józef Elsner · 26 Jan 1831
- Wieden dn. 26 Stycz[?]. 1831.
- Łaskawy Panie Elsner.
- Wstyd mi, że dobroć Pańska, ktorey na odjezdnem tyle ieszcze odebrałem
- dowodów, i tym razem uprzedziła powinność moią. Do mnie należało
- pisać do Pana zaraz po przybyciu moim do Wiednia, — abem[?] się ociągał
- już to dla tego, żem był przekonany iż Rodzice nieomieszkaią udzielać Panu
- nieciekawych wiadomości o mnie, już też żem czekał aby coś stanowczego
- względem siebie donieść. Od dnia iednak, w ktorym się dowiedziałem
- o wypadkach 29. Listop: aż do tey chwili, niedoczekałem się niczego, prócz
- niewymowney[?] obawy i tęsknoty; — i Malfati naprożno się stara mnie prze-
How well it reads, measured
| Script | Pages | Characters read correctly | Names, dates and numbers right | Misread words it marked | Last run |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Russian and Ukrainian7 pages · 3 Nov 2026 | 7 | 86%Characters read correctly | 69%Names, dates and numbers right | 80%Misread words it marked | 3 Nov 2026 |
Measured on letters whose holders published a transcription made by hand, read the same way your page is. The figures rest on a few pages so far and move as pages are added. How well FamilyLore reads
Questions
- Can’t ChatGPT do this?
- A general chatbot can read some Polish records, sometimes well, but it usually hands you clean text with no sign of which words it guessed, and its makers publish no figures for this script; FamilyLore marks the words it is unsure of and publishes how often it reads correctly, in the table above.
- Which years are written in Polish?
- In the Kingdom of Poland, 1808 to 1867 and again from 1918. From 1868 to 1917 the registers there were kept in Russian: pick Russian or Ukrainian for those. Records from the Prussian and Austrian parts of old Poland follow other rules and are often in German or Latin.
- What if it reads a word wrong?
- Tap a word to see the other readings FamilyLore weighed, and correct it if you know better. The translation is redone from your correction. Most misread words carry a mark, but not every one, so a name or a date that matters is worth checking against the photo.
- Who sees my pages?
- Only you. A page becomes public only if you share it, and then only to people who have the link. Deleting your account deletes the photos you uploaded.
What FamilyLore doesn’t read well yet
- Registers laid out in columns, one entry to a row. They are not measured yet, so we can’t say how well they read.
- Entries in Latin. There’s no Latin choice on the upload yet, and we haven’t measured how well FamilyLore reads Latin.
- Few Polish pages are measured so far. Always check names and dates against the original image.
From photo to text in three steps
Take a photo of the page
Lay the sheet flat, in daylight and without flash. A phone photo of the whole page is enough.
Upload it
“Polish” is already chosen. If you know roughly when it was written, pick the era.
Read it
You get the page as it was written, in modern spelling, and in English. Correct a word you know better yourself.
Rather read it yourself?