About research

I recreate family trees, find ancestors and extended family, and reconstruct their lives.

 

The first step in family heritage research is to gather information from the family. It is worth collecting and writing down family stories, tales and suppositions. Family stories about the place of stay, profession or wartime fate are important. All preserved documents are also important – in particular records – birth, marriage and death certificates, but also documents regarding ownership – or information about them, photographs and correspondence. This allows you to pick up unobvious clues, and not to duplicate the search.

 

After collecting and describing this data, I conduct an archival query. Depending on the needs, I check documents regarding birth certificates, cadastre, ID cards, passports, documents regarding education, especially higher education or business activity, and cemeteries. I am also looking for witnesses to history. I keep you informed about the results of the search.

 

At a later stage, I also review the press: advertisements, obituaries, articles about ancestors.

 

After analyzing the collection, I prepare a final report, which I try to supplement with copies of documents and photos. Much depends on the specific case. When I am looking for a birth certificate of a given person as indicated by the ordering person, but I do not find this document in the archive, I write down information about people with this or a similar surname from the neighboring years, usually +/- 2 years.

 

Success in genealogical research depends on how much information the family has, how much of it is confirmed in the documentation and how many documents have survived to this day. Luck is also important – I often found information by accident, even a few months after the research was completed. Due to typos in the indexes, incorrectly cataloged documents or changes in personal data, there are difficulties, the overcoming of which gives a lot of satisfaction.