It’s been six months since we have introduced our Genealogy Services. Time for a quick look back and recap.
So far we have received over 200 inquiries, of which 67 developed into research projects. In many cases we are still waiting for some supplementary information or for the opening of specific institutions. Dozens of projects have been already completed, and you can imagine how many ancestors and relatives we have found!
There were many obstacles, especially those related to the pandemic, limited access to documents, and the inability to travel further, for example to Ukraine. Currently, the situation is gradually normalizing.
But let’s leave the problems, today we want to focus on some of our interesting cases and successes.
As usual, the largest number of requests concerns peasants and farmers emigrating in the 19th century from partitioned Poland, but we also worked on a noble family from today’s Ukraine, we obtained 20th-century documents from central Belarus, we’ve been also researching some early documents from the 17-18th centuries.
We are carrying out a project of building a memorial in the cemetery for our client’s ancestor. Our genealogists did a few Genealogy Virtual Tours, finding relatives and lost documents.
Below you can see one of more interesting examples: thanks to using a huge database of non-metrical sources, it was possible to recreate the historical context and find information about the everyday life of specific ancestors. Of course, this effect will not always be possible and it is rather an extended research project. You can read this exemplary report here.
As you can see, used sources shed more light than just dry facts from metrical records on the life of the family. The only more meaningful experience may be taking a Genealogy Tour to family places.
If your research has stalled, sources are missing and different research methods have failed, you can’t travel to Poland, we can recommend one simple and extremely effective solution: Genealogy Virtual Tour.
Recently we have had two examples of success:
Finding the lost vital records from the Greek Catholic parish in Leżachów in the local civil registry office, which allowed us to reconstruct the line of ancestors and find relatives.
At the police station in one of the small towns of Małopolska, our genealogist met a police officer, who had a huge collection of materials on the history of his family. Thanks to his materials we confirmed that our client is related to his family.
None of these stories would have happened if we wouldn’t simply visit the village and talk to the local people. Sometimes this is the fastest way to get results, sometimes it may happen to be the only way.
What else have these past six months brought us? We have read hundreds of your stories, each one is extraordinary. We have encountered individual dramas, fates, and decisions which affected future generations.
Of course, there are some cases when we can’t help, but any victory, even the smallest one, gives us enormous satisfaction.
We are constantly learning ourselves and we want to share with you our knowledge and experiences.We have created a small series of short videos and notes: Genealogy Protips.
Thank you that you are still with us. Although we are not meeting you in person, in this strange 2020, we stay in contact with you and you give us constant inspiration and motivation.
Greetings from Poland,
Agnieszka and the whole PolishOrigins Team