Indexing Chicago Catholic Church Records: Tip for Reading Polish Surnames

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm determined to contribute some time to indexing Chicago's Catholic parish records because I think it will create a much-needed resource for pre-Fire research and this morning I'm working on a page from a Polish church.
I'm familiar with the records and I've even bumped into a lot of Polish surnames in 5+ years of working with Chicago vital record searches but I'm still struggling to read some of the names.
This morning I was puzzling over the surname in this entry:

The "kowiak" was clear but was the surname really Autkowiak? It just didn't feel right.
I went to the Polish Genealogical Society of America (PGSA) website and pulled up the Dziennik Chicagoski Death Notice Index Search 1890-1929. I typed "kowiak" in the surname box, chose "wild card search" and hit enter. In this case, the answer to my question was on the first page of results.

Antkowiak. Of course! I know that "n" and "u" are often misread but it's so easy to forget when I'm reading names that are unfamiliar.
I suspect this database will prove to be a huge help as I work at accurately transcribing other names.
If you have other insights that will help make this project easier for other indexers, please post them as comments.

Researching Polish Ancestors? New Translation Guide Available

I've volunteered at the Wilmette Family History Center for a number of years and one of the perks in serving there is the chance to meet many talented and downright-pleasant-to-get-to-know researchers. Judith Frazin is one of them. She's the author of A Translation Guide to 19th-Century Polish-Language Civil-Registration Documents
(including Birth, Marriage and Death Records) and the newest edition of the book recently won her an achievement award from the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies.

If you are researching Polish ancestors, as many people who have Chicago roots are, take some time to explore this book!

Sample pages including table of contents

Check WorldCat to see if there's a copy available at a library near you. (The Wilmette FHC has one, if you're in the area.) If not, you can order it through the Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois website.

Polish Newspaper (1908-1917) Dziennik Zwiazkowy Online

This evening, I was looking for online newspapers that might help me with a bit of research I'm doing on a composer by the name of A. S. Bowman (I'll blog about him soon) and I stumbled on a resource that might be of interest to those of you who have Polish ancestors in Chicago.


It looks as though the first ten years (1908-1917) of Dziennik Zwiazkowy, “Chicago’s largest and oldest Polish newspaper,” are available online for free.

The newspaper is part of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection. Other titles include Barrington Review, Southern Illinois Journal, and several newspapers from Quincy.

For online newspapers from other states, check out Penn Libraries research guide titled Historical Newspapers Online. It's the web page that led me to the Illinois newspaper page.