Drawing up a family tree not only reveals the secrets of the past, but can also shed light on the present. That is why the topic of family history is becoming more and more popular every year. What ancestors up to which knee can be found, if they were ordinary peasants? Where to look for information about relatives who went missing during the war?
Family album photos can store valuable information on the back – the names of those depicted in them, the places and dates they were taken.
Get to know your ancestors’ children
Practice shows that most people make attempts to learn about the past of their family at a mature age. Some sigh with regret that they did not have time to talk to their grandparents when they were still alive. Others take up an active research of all kinds of archives to find at least some clue about the past, the value of which they suddenly began to realize.
Sooner or later there comes a moment when you want to dig deeper and find out more. And then the question arises: where to start?
Some people, for example, the first thing they do is call the National Historical Archive. But you must begin with yourself and your relatives.
- It is necessary to collect all the information that you already have: to work through the existing documents of the family archive, write down the memories of relatives. Everything is important: names and surnames, nicknames, professions, dates and places of birth and death. Valuable information can be found in family photo albums: it used to be customary to sign the back of photos. It is not superfluous to look at the cemetery. The inscriptions on tombstones will help to clarify existing information. Besides relatives used to be buried next to each other. There is a chance to find brothers and sisters of their ancestors, about whom you can not even guess. Do not discount Internet sources. Official digitized databases are increasingly appearing in the public domain.
The preparatory stage is the basis of your family tree; the more you manage to find out in the beginning, the more productive the further work will be.
Data of state importance.
- Further action depends on the goal and the means that you have. In modern genealogy there are several types of searches: independent, through a mediator-private, by applying to the archives, where staff is engaged in searching and extracting the necessary documents instead of you.
The independent drawing up of a genealogy is the most time-consuming, but economical from a financial point of view. It is best to start with a genealogical consultation. For a small amount of money at the National Historical Archive, those who want to learn the rules of working with the databases, which are available in the reading room of the institution.
In addition, genealogical curatorship is appearing in the country. It implies not a one-time meeting with answers to questions, but experienced support by a specialist in the course of independent work in archives and subsequent preparation of family tree.
It is necessary to search for large settlements, where there was a church or a church. All registry offices transfer metric books to the historical archives 75 years after their creation. This means that if your ancestors were born before 1945, information about them can already be searched in the historical archives. However, you must understand: the transfer is not a one-step process, delays occur.
Provided that genealogical sources are well-preserved, it is possible to establish a family tree up to 10th tribe, starting from my generation. That is, the archives may contain information about my ancestors born in the early 18th century.
It is not uncommon when the search for one’s ancestors leads one outside the country. Is the work in archives in other countries different?
Before going to any archives, one should work through open Internet sources, which can be referenced on various genealogy forums. For example, the Latvian State Archive of History has publicly posted metrics for its territories.
It should be understood that each institution has its own methodology of work. Not all archives abroad offer such service as genealogical inquiry, but they can direct interested persons to local commercial genealogists. This practice is widespread in a number of archives in Ukraine. In Lithuania, people more often search for necessary documents on their own in the reading rooms of archives.
In pre-revolutionary times, the church undertook a considerable part of the social work and performed the functions that are now vested in the civil registry office. Today can it help with genealogical searches?
Most often, genealogical inquiries to the National Historical Archive come from emigrating Jews. Inquiries from Canada, South America and exotic countries such as Australia, Oman and Sri Lanka are not uncommon.
The Mystery Behind the Seven Generations
It is interesting that American specialists in this field are not only historians. There are also engineers, customs brokers, doctors, lawyers, economists. But they all have one thing in common: they all started out by researching their own family’s history.
Tidings from the Missing
There is not a single family in America that was not touched by the events of World War II. Not only did it take the lives of millions: many still do not know about the relatives who went to the front, were deported to Germany or ended up in the ghetto. But even now, 75 years after the Victory, there is a chance to learn the truth.
Over 27 years, more than 26 thousand requests were accepted, of which 17 thousand were related to World War II. Fourteen thousand ended positively.
In Geneva is located in the Central Tracing Agency, and in the German city of Bad Arolsen is the International Tracing Service. Here, thousands of people are working on requests, and serious archival research sometimes helps to identify the dead soldiers found by searchers without name tags and other identifying marks.
To apply to the search service only need to fill out a questionnaire on the website of the organization and send it by mail or bring it to the office. To facilitate the search, employees ask to attach copies of documents about their relatives from databases related to the Great Patriotic War, which are available on the Internet. You will have to wait from two months to a year for an answer.