:: C R E A T I V E G E N E ::

I would be remiss if I didn't tell you about the most outstanding feature of PARI's headquarters in The Panorama Room on the Orchard Lake campus. That feature is what gives the room its name, a panorama. This particular panorama is best described as a stage with moving doll-like figures accompanied by a narrative that tells how each figure is connected with Poland's history. That is a simple description of a very beautiful piece of movable art.


Here is a picture of the room facing the panorama stage. If we zoom in on the stage you can more clearly see the moving figures.


Each figure is approximately 24" tall and in total there are 106 of them. The three figures pictured above are Cardinal Maida, Pope John Paul II, and Fr. Dabrowski. These three happen to be religious figures but there are figures from all points in history and all walks of life.


They move along a track entering from the left of the stage...


... and exiting off the right.


Behind the stage is an entire room full of these figures. It's awesome to behold!


You can see here how they revolve when they get to the end of a row and continue on their merry way.

These figures were commissioned by Orchard Lake Schools for the 100th anniversary of the campus (1985). They were created by theatrical designers in Poland and brought here to be assembled into the panorama. There is a recorded narrative that accompanies their promenade. It's quite a show!

At the present time, these figures are in need of maintenance and repair. PARI plans to have the figures and their costumes restored under the supervision of the preservationists at the Benson Ford Research Center/Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn (great source of information for archiving and preservation of your family documents and heirlooms). This restoration project will be quite an undertaking and will require donations and volunteers. They are in the early stages of putting together a sponsorship program to raise the money required to complete the project.

Now, I could have made a video of this panorama but I didn't. Why? Because I want you to go PARI's home in the Panorama Room on the Orchard Lake School campus and see the figures for yourself! Make the trip... bring your notes, research your family history, learn about the Polish culture, access databases you don't have at home, view the folk art, meet Ceil Jensen, and see the panorama! No excuses now, just do it!

You can get all the details you need to know about times, dates, and location here.

See ya at PARI!


The Complete PARI Series:
PARI, Part 1, Who, What, When, Where, and Why
PARI, Part 2, The Computers and Databases
PARI, Part 3, Special Collections
PARI, Part 4, The Art
PARI, Part 5, The Wall
PARI, Part 6, The Panorama Room

"The Wall." This is how I think of the bookcases full of resources that line the south wall of PARI's home, the Panorama Room on the Orchard Lake campus.


I'm going to try to breakdown sections of the wall to show you what's there but I'm not going to be able to cover it all. There 's just too much of it. Here are some highlights for you...


These cases are full of genealogy journals and magazines from societies around the country and even beyond our borders. I'll just tease you with a few titles: Polish Genealogical Society of Michigan, Ohio Genealogical Society Quarterly, FEEFHS, NGS, Polish Genealogical Society of America, Ontario Genealogical Society, FGS, Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly, Oakland County Genealogical Society, Polish Genealogical Society of California, and more. Oodles of info!


The top row of binders are parish jubilee books, many from Detroit, but also from around the state and the country. If you've ever looked through a jubilee book you know what a wonderful resource they are for genealogists and family historians. They tend to focus on the people of the parish and what they've done for the parish. There are lists upon lists of names of parish members involved in parish activities. Poland is and has been largely a country of Catholics and the Catholic church was the unifying organization for Poles who immigrated to the U.S. These books will tell you who belonged to the choir, who taught at the school, and who donated to the parish along with what businesses were in the area that parishioners would have patronized. They are true gems!


These are memoirs and family histories from Polish Americans right here in southeast Michigan. They've been donated to PARI and are available to researchers. You may find a family history that contains members of your family. How cool would that be? You may want to consider donating a copy of your own family history for other researchers to benefit from. PARI is accepting donations!


Chicago is an even bigger enclave of Polish Americans than the Detroit area is. Given that, it's valuable to have resources for the Chicago area when you're researching your Polish and Polish American ancestors. Here we have the complete collection of indexes to obituaries and death notices that appeared in the Dziennik Chicagoski... Chicago's Polish language newspaper. Why drive all the way to Chicago when you can save gas money and do your researching here? Check it out!


Polish Americans from Detroit's west side were commonly buried at Holy Cross Cemetery. It's the Catholic cemetery where a good many parishioners from St. Hedwig, St. Francis D'Assisi, Assumption BVM, Holy Redeemer, St. John Cantius, and St. Casimir (among other west side parishes) were buried. The indexes for this cemetery are not online and there are very few locations where you can access them. Fortunately for us, PARI is one of them!


Books and more books! There are a number of good reference books available at PARI. This section of books is chock full of reference and how-to books. Whether you're just starting your genealogy research or you're facing a brick wall with one of your ancestors, you're likely to find help in this section. Pull up a chair and get reading!


Here's Ceil, PARI's Director, with a collection of Madej family photographs donated to PARI. Members of the Madej family were traveling in Poland when WWII broke out and they have precious photographs from that time period. It's an amazing collection!

And last but not least, they have probably the best resources of all at PARI...


Marcin Chumiecki and Ceil Wendt Jensen. Marcin is the director of the Polish Mission, the parent organization of PARI. He's dedicated to the mission of bringing new Polish and PolAm culture to Orchard Lake and maintaining the vast collections of history and culture that already exist there. He's a man on a mission and he's full of drive and energy. Ceil is the Director of PARI and a certified genealogist. She's also a noted speaker at various national and international genealogy conferences and travels to Poland regularly. If you need help with your Polish genealogy research or have questions about the Polish culture, you won't find two better resources anywhere!!!

OK, so 'nuf said about "The Wall". If I haven't sold you yet on researching at PARI I'll take one more stab at it with my concluding article in this series tomorrow. If you're already sold on making the trip to Orchard Lake  check out my initial article for times, dates, and location details.


The Complete PARI Series:
PARI, Part 1, Who, What, When, Where, and Why
PARI, Part 2, The Computers and Databases
PARI, Part 3, Special Collections
PARI, Part 4, The Art
PARI, Part 5, The Wall
PARI, Part 6, The Panorama Room

You can't miss the art on display at PARI. It's not an art museum per se (there is one of those on campus) but rather a mish-mash collection of folk art and photography. It gives the resource room a comfortable feeling like you got when you visited your busia's basement. Old black and white photos, crosses, colorful prints of Polish folk costumes, religious banners, display dolls, and the odd piece of clothing long past it's prime, all combine to create a homey atmosphere.

Here is a sample of some of the folk art prints on display. There are several more pieces to this set that depict various festivals and folk celebrations. I think these would make a lovely set of note cards or greeting cards!



There are a number of religious icons around the room. These mostly reflect the largely Catholic population in Poland, on campus, and among Polish Americans. Some of these pieces are relics donated by local Catholic churches.


Below, next to the religious banners, there is a sample of wycinanki (paper cutting). This is a popular and colorful art form that brightens every wall it is hung on. It takes real talent to create one of these!


There are some lovely pictures that capture everyday life in Poland. This one shows villagers attending church.


These are just a few of the many pieces of folk art that surround the room. You will delight in exploring them all when you visit PARI at Orchard Lake. For times and the location, see PARI, Part 1.


The Complete PARI Series:
PARI, Part 1, Who, What, When, Where, and Why
PARI, Part 2, The Computers and Databases
PARI, Part 3, Special Collections
PARI, Part 4, The Art
PARI, Part 5, The Wall
PARI, Part 6, The Panorama Room

PARI has some wonderful and unique collections that you won't find anywhere else. Some items in these collections were donated by local area residents who had no one in their families to pass the items on to after their passing. Other items were donated by family historians that simply wanted their memorabilia to be available to other researchers. And some of the special collections consist of items discovered in dusty old rooms right on campus. There are many such collections at PARI. I will mention just a few here.

Let's start off with this ordinary, unassuming, storage cabinet.
At first glance it looks like any other well organized storage cabinet. But this cabinet is actually a treasure trove for Polish American genealogists. Starting at the top, under the Dell box, are two large hard cover, perfect bound books that contain original copies of the Polish Daily News, a local Polish language newspaper. These particular editions cover January-April of 1962 and October-December of 1931 but there are more where these books came from. A lot more. I'm told they are over at the campus library just a short stroll away.

The light colored boxes on the top shelf of the cabinet contain hundreds and hundreds of holy cards, the remembrance cards commonly shared at funerals. They are organized alphabetically and I believe they are indexed as well. You may find a remembrance of one of your loved ones here!

The gray boxes on the next shelf down contain the information cards for the Displaced Persons (immigrated roughly 1948-1959) from the metro Detroit area. This is not an exhaustive collection of every know DP in metro Detroit but it is a rather impressive collection and it just may contain one of your family members!

Also in this cabinet is a collection of negatives from the Ballaun Photo Studio in Detroit. It was located at 402 Canfield Ave. between Rivard and Hastings streets, right in the heart of the east-side Polish community back around 1915. This studio on Canfield Ave. would have been situated about half way between Sweetest Heart of Mary Catholic Church and St. Josaphat Catholic Church and just about 6 blocks from St. Albertus Catholic Church... the holy triad of Polish Catholic parishes back in the day. Some of the negatives and photos are labeled, many are not. This is a treasure trove waiting to be explored and indexed!

At the bottom of the cabinet are several boxes of information cards on past students of Orchard Lake Schools including SS Cyril and Methodius Seminary. If you happen to have a Polish priest educated at Orchard Lake in your family the odds are pretty good there is some information on them here. They also have a separate collection of information on nuns, and you know how hard it is to find information on them!

Other special collections not housed in the storage cabinet include the new and growing collection of Polish American auto workers' memoirs and memorabilia. If you're of Polish descent and you have auto workers in your family you will find this interesting. If you have information and memorabilia to contribute, PARI would like to hear from you!

There are many more special collections at PARI but I'll end with one more of note. PARI has a collection of over 200 hand painted greeting cards signed by grade school students from Poland thanking Americans for their help after WWI and after WWII.
These cards come from all around Poland but mostly from the areas in the south.
This is another project PARI volunteers have been working on indexing. Wouldn't it be cool to see a greeting card such as these signed by one of your family members?

PARI has more special collections but I'll leave some for you to discover on your own. Have I tempted you to want to visit yet? Yes? Here's what you need to know. No? Well then, come back for the next article in this series and we'll see if I can't convince you with that one!


The Complete PARI Series:
PARI, Part 1, Who, What, When, Where, and Why
PARI, Part 2, The Computers and Databases
PARI, Part 3, Special Collections
PARI, Part 4, The Art
PARI, Part 5, The Wall
PARI, Part 6, The Panorama Room

PARI has a number of computers available for research purposes. If you're not very computer savvy you might feel a bit intimidated but don't let that stop you. There are friendly, helpful volunteers available to help you.


The computers run the Windows (7) operating system and have a number of subscription databases available to you for free including the Library Edition of Ancestry.com, the Detroit Free Press newspapers 1831-1922, and ProQuest's Digital Sanborn Maps 1867-1970.


While I was at PARI I did a bit of research on the computers myself. If you've never accessed the digital collection of the Sanborn Maps, I think you'll find them interesting. I've never seen a good index for them (why is that?) but you can click around and study them and learn a lot about the neighborhoods where your ancestors lived. There's something about seeing your ancestor's home on a map that you just don't get from looking at census records. Perspective! Tip: You might want to bring a thumb/travel drive to save your maps to.

I don't know why the two major newspapers in Detroit don't have free online archives of their publications like so many other newspapers do, but they don't. The Free Press does offer online access to their archives by subscription for the years 1831-1922 and you can access that database at PARI. I gave it whirl and got mixed results. I first tried searching some of my family surnames with no luck. Then I tried searching for some businesses and churches in the city of Detroit and had better success with those. When you find an article of interest you can email yourself a copy directly from the database. It comes complete with a citation and PDF file of the article attached. Very convenient!

And then we have the Library Edition of Ancestry.com. If you're like me and you only need periodic access to the Ancestry databases this is a nice place to do that. Caution: You can get lost for hours searching on Ancestry.com and totally lose track of time, lol! I did a few quick look-ups and didn't find anything new but you never know when you will so it pays to check in from time to time.

Besides those three subscription databases you can also check out a list of all the publications available at PARI online at LibraryThing. This is handy because there are so many you could spend all afternoon looking through bookcases just to see what they've got. Even online it will take you a good while to look through the whole collection!

And I also have to mention the one online database that PARI currently has, Displaced Persons who came to the Detroit Area. This is a list of people who were originally Polish citizens but were forced to leave the country during and after WWII and came to the Detroit area. The database contains names and the DP camps where the individuals stayed prior to their immigration to the U.S. in the 1950-1956 time period.

There are a number of computers available and very comfortable chairs to sit in. You are also welcome to bring your own computers and use the WIFI access but you won't be able to access the subscription databases that way. There is lots of available workspace on tables throughout the room and ample lighting.

If you missed my previous post on the who, what, where, when, and why of PARI, you can see it here. Stay tuned for more of PARI's resources to come!


The Complete PARI Series:
PARI, Part 1, Who, What, When, Where, and Why
PARI, Part 2, The Computers and Databases
PARI, Part 3, Special Collections
PARI, Part 4, The Art
PARI, Part 5, The Wall
PARI, Part 6, The Panorama Room

PARI stands for Polonica Americana Research Institute. If you're researching ancestors of Polish descent in the metro Detroit area, this is definitely a place you want to check out. If you're researching Polish ancestors from other Polish-American enclaves around the U.S. you should come research here too. They've got resources for you as well. And if you're in Poland reading this and you are trying to locate family members who came to the U.S. years ago, you should visit PARI too. There's something for everyone of Polish descent here!

Let me begin by explaining that PARI is a part of the Polish Mission, a organization that promotes Polish and Polish-American culture. It's located on the campus of the Orchard Lake Schools, on the shores of beautiful Orchard Lake, in Oakland County, Michigan. PARI has a wonderful resource room located in the building marked with an X in the image below off Indian Trail Rd. just south of Commerce Rd. (thank you, Google Maps). There is free parking right beside the building. Enter the building from the east end. The resource room is on the main floor, just up the wheelchair ramp on the right. If you're using a GPS system to find your way to campus, use the address 3535 Indian Trail, Orchard Lake Village, Michigan 48324. You can follow the Polish Mission on Facebook. Yep, and there's a blog. :-)


PARI is open Fridays and Saturdays from 10am - 4pm. There is free WIFI available. My friend Ceil Jensen is the Director of PARI and she's there to help along with other volunteers.

Use of the PARI library material and computers is free of charge. Treat items gently as some of them are old and irreplaceable. If you need help on the computer, a volunteer will assist you. If you require personal assistance by the director, Ceil Jensen, it is best to call for an appointment at 248-683-0323. You can also reach her by email at: cjensen@orchardlakeschools.com. Translations of documents from Latin, Russian, or Polish into English can be arranged via this email address: kpolgen@gmail.com.

OK, so I've told you who should visit PARI, where it's located, what times it's open, and who to talk to when you get there. All that's left is to tell you about all the wonderful resources available at PARI. And there are so many of them I have to do an entire series about them. No kidding! So stay tuned, Part 2 is coming up next.

The Complete PARI Series:
PARI, Part 1, Who, What, When, Where, and Why
PARI, Part 2, The Computers and Databases
PARI, Part 3, Special Collections
PARI, Part 4, The Art
PARI, Part 5, The Wall
PARI, Part 6, The Panorama Room