How to find information about. How I searched in the archives of my ancestors

Quite often, families have various questions about both their relatives (distant and immediate) and about their ancestors. This usually happens when grandparents begin to indulge in memories of their childhood, how and where they grew up, and what kind of relatives they knew. Using these stories, you can try to make a family tree of your family, because thanks to this activity it is quite possible to learn quite a lot about your relatives. How to find your ancestor? Let's try to figure it out together.

What are the searches for?

Every year everything more people interested in their roots. The science of one’s own ancestors attracts great amount people who are not indifferent to their ancestry. Some of them try to find their ancestors for the usual material purpose - either to get rich, or to go to newfound relatives abroad, or because of the usual prestige, because their grandparents were once famous or belonged to a high caste. Others begin their search with a simple human goal - they really want to know their family.

How to find your ancestors?

In any case, this search is worthy of respect. But not everyone who decides to start this work knows how to find their ancestors in the archives. Where to contact? What do you need to know? How much is it? And this is not a complete list of questions that arise in the minds of people who want to get to know their ancestors.

How to find your ancestor? Here of the two possible ways you can choose the most appropriate one for each situation. The first option is less expensive - an independent search. If you choose the second option - involving professionals, you must take into account in advance that this service is paid and not very cheap. But the result of the work will be more accurate than in the first case, and faster.

Oh, these glorious soldiers!

In almost every family there is a person (or even more than one) who gave his strength in the name of the Great Victory of 1945. Unfortunately, not all descendants of glorious soldiers and officers know a lot of information about their grandparents. How to find your ancestor who fought? And here they will come to the rescue various services, thanks to which you can find out some details of their biography, their life, their feat. One of them is the project of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, which systematizes registration data and documents about soldiers who died in the Second World War and subsequent conflicts - obd-memorial.ru. There is also a regional youth organization, the search association “Trizna,” which searches for missing soldiers. With their help, the problem of how to find your ancestor becomes not so difficult.

And it’s very good to have it. After all, the phrase “no one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten,” known to everyone since childhood, turns out to be very correct and has received a new breath. Everyone who fought in difficult years is on the side Soviet Union deserves to be not only known, but also remembered. So that descendants will keep this good memory in their hearts for many years.

Instructions for use. The beginning of time

To start compiling, you can ask your older relatives about what they can remember from their family history. Moreover, it is recommended to find out not only first names, patronymics, last names and dates of birth - generally accepted information. When compiling a tree, you can also indicate other information that can be found - interesting episodic moments from the biography of relatives, their place of residence, study, work, awards of honorary badges, orders and medals, perhaps even some hobbies. Thanks to this additional information an ordinary tree can easily turn into a small encyclopedia of the history of one particular family.

Where did your last name come from?

No less interesting will be information about what To get at least minimal data, you can use a dictionary of surnames - either taken from the library or purchased from a bookstore. If the name is quite common, even in such a small directory brief information there is plenty of information about the origin, time and place of its appearance. In addition, it is also possible to detect the class affiliation of a surname.

In the same way, you can find data on social status owner of the surname. As an example, we can take surnames that end in “-sky” or “-tsky” and are based on a Greek or Latin word, the name of a theologian or scientist, a holiday or sacrament that is directly related to the church. The genealogy of the surname in this case will show that, most likely, one of the ancestors of the person interested was a student at the theological seminary, within whose walls he received new surname. This applies, for example, to the variant that arose from the name of the Feast of the Transfiguration - Preobrazhensky. On the other hand, if the surname is shortened by several letters, but its remaining part is consonant with the generic name of a famous noble family, it is possible that its bearer is a descendant of some aristocrat. Like Elizaveta Temkina, who was the illegitimate daughter and, according to rumors, the empress herself. So searching for people by last name can provide a lot of not only useful, but also fascinating information.

Deciding on the types of pedigrees

There are two main types of genealogy - ascending and descending. The first begins to be built from, so to speak, the applicant, from the one who begins to compile his pedigree. Then everything moves on to information about relatives - parents, grandparents, and so on.

The second version of the pedigree is headed by the oldest founder that could be found. And only after that all his descendants are mentioned, including the applicant. Here it is possible to look at the entire family, at what distant relatives did.

Types of pedigrees can be viewed a little differently:

1. Male ascendant - it includes only males. She looks like regular line. Thanks to this pedigree, you can even determine your connection with some historical figure or even a famous person of past years.

2. Male descending - you need to choose the head of the clan and extend a chain from him to the youngest man in this clan.

3. Ascending mixed - both men and women are indicated. Relatives are indicated in geometric progression - first 2, then 4, 8, 16, 32 and so on.

4. Descending mixed - relatives of both sexes are also indicated. Such a pedigree contains several surnames and clans.

Compiling a family tree like this is not difficult. It is important to have time and patience.

Searching by last name

How can you search for people by last name if there is information that they have moved to live abroad?

To begin with, you should clarify whether the applicant really has relatives abroad, what are their last names, when exactly did they go abroad, what is their Family status, whether they have children and where exactly they moved. If their country of residence is unknown, you can start your search with the most popular ones - Israel, USA and Canada.

The archive of surnames will always provide invaluable help, because it is there, even without expecting it, that you can find useful information for yourself. To search in other countries, it would be good to know foreign language. Also try to find relatives using worldwide search engines or social networks.

Search using archives

To at least try to find your relatives, you should go to the archives. There are a great many surnames, behind each of which there are human destinies, so there is hope that this method will be effective.

First you need to find out what the search period is and go to the registry office archive. And already there - submit a request to search for the information the customer needs or come in person. Do not forget that not only registry offices have archives, but also, for example, medical and educational institutions.

To obtain the information you are looking for, you should carefully study the sources - metrics, inventories of those living in the house, chronicles, population censuses that took place in different years.

Another direction of search is the All-Russian Book of Memory, the All-Russian Book of Memory, because it stores the data of the inhabitants of the entire collapsed Union. This book contains a very large database of citizens who participated in hostilities during the Great Patriotic War. Patriotic War. The surnames of all people were grouped according to the place of conscription. It is possible from here to obtain information about merits - life and combat, you can even find out where the person they are looking for is buried. Important and very necessary information for many people is found in as many as 750 volumes.

We do everything ourselves

To understand how to find your ancestor and recreate your family tree as accurately as possible, you should go through several steps. Collect all the information, talk to your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Scan photos that have been saved. It would be a good idea to prepare a description of each. It can be helpful to look at a few genealogy sites. Or you can turn to professionals.

You need to figure out how to correctly create a tree: genetic diseases and characteristics, hobbies, habits, relationships between relatives - all this is important.

You need to decide what type of tree will be chosen - descending or ascending. It would also be a good idea to choose a program for drawing up a family tree. It's very simple, because there are a lot of them. Then put photographs, connections between relatives and the necessary designations into this program. Add new information as you search.

Now you can print the prepared tree onto a large sheet or, for example, make a book. A copy can be brought to relatives, who will also supplement the materials with information. This way the family tree will expand.

How to identify an enemy by IP or find out the address of a girl you like? We talk about services, search operators and interesting tricks.

Here's what you can do:

1. Find a person’s latest posts on all social networks at once

5. Find out what people around you are posting on Twitter

Using the “near:” operator, you can find out what residents of a particular city are currently writing about:

Or at a point with a specific latitude and longitude:

Geographic coordinates can be determined from this map or looked at in the exif data of photographs.

6. Find out who is in the photo

We cut out the part of the photo where the person’s head is and upload it to the Google image search page. We are surprised by the result.

7. Find out what a person posted on Twitter on a specific day

Sometimes it's interesting to find out what a famous person wrote on Twitter before specific date. For example, what did Tim Cook post on his account before October 17, 2015?

For such complex tasks Twitter has operators for advanced search. They need to be recruited home page social network in the form in the upper right corner:

If you combine the above “until” with the “since” operator, you can make a selection of tweets over a certain period of time. For example, you can find out what Tim Cook wrote during Christmas week:

8. Find out if a person is wanted

If your new acquaintance is suspicious, then you should look for him in the database of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of your region.

9. Find out if he has any debts

14. Find out in which region he bought the SIM card

Subscribers can determine the region and operator on the website gsm-inform.ru.

15. Find out, find out a person’s apartment number by home phone number

The latest life hack makes a lasting impression on women:

A) See you off new girl to the entrance. You casually ask for her home phone number;

B) In between times, go to mobile app“Sberbank” and go to the section for paying for MGTS services;

B) Enter the phone number and find out the apartment number;

D) Before saying goodbye, you tell about your second cousin who participated in the “Battle of Psychics” and offer to guess her apartment number;

D) Call the required number;

Database

www.podvignaroda.ru

www.obd-memorial.ru

www.pamyat-naroda.ru

www.rkka.ru/ihandbook.htm

www.moypolk.ru

www.dokst.ru

www.polk.ru

www.pomnite-nas.ru

www.permgani.ru

Otechestvort.rf, rf-poisk.ru

rf-poisk.ru/page/34

soldat.ru

memento.sebastopol.ua

memory-book.com.ua

soldat.ru – a set of reference books for independent search information about the fate of military personnel (including a directory of field postal stations of the Red Army in 1941-1945, a directory of the code names of military units (institutions) in 1939-1943, a directory of the location of Red Army hospitals in 1941-1945);

www.rkka.ru - a directory of military abbreviations (as well as regulations, manuals, directives, orders and personal documents of wartime).

Libraries

oldgazette.ru – old newspapers (including those from the war period);

www.rkka.ru – description of military operations of the Second World War, post-war analysis of the events of the Second World War, military memoirs.

Military cards

www.rkka.ru – military topographic maps with the combat situation (by war periods and operations).

Search Engine Sites

www.rf-poisk.ru is the official website of the Russian Search Movement.

Partners of the Stars of Victory project

www.mil.ru – Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

www.histrf.ru – Russian Military Historical Society.

www.rgo.ru – Russian Geographical Society.

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Database

www.podvignaroda.ru – a publicly accessible electronic bank of documents on recipients and awards during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945;

www.obd-memorial.ru - a generalized data bank about defenders of the Fatherland, those killed and missing during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war period;

www.pamyat-naroda.ru – public bank data on the fate of participants in the Great Patriotic War. Search for places of primary burials and documents about awards, service, victories and hardships on the battlefields;

www.rkka.ru/ihandbook.htm – awarded the Order of the Red Banner in the period from 1921 to 1931;

www.moypolk.ru - information about participants in the Great Patriotic War, including home front workers - living, dead, dead and missing. Collected and replenished by participants in the all-Russian action “Immortal Regiment”;

www.dokst.ru – information about those killed in captivity in Germany;

www.polk.ru – information about Soviet and Russian soldiers missing in action in the wars of the 20th century (including the pages “The Great Patriotic War” and “Undelivered Awards”);

www.pomnite-nas.ru – photographs and descriptions of military graves;

www.permgani.ru – database on the website of the Perm State Archive modern history. Includes basic biographical information about former Red Army soldiers (natives Perm region or those called up for military service from the territory of the Kama region), who during the Great Patriotic War were surrounded and (or) captured by the enemy, and after returning to their homeland they underwent a special state check (filtration);

Otechestvort.rf, rf-poisk.ru – electronic version books "Names from Soldiers' Medallions", volumes 1-6. Contains alphabetical information about those killed during the war, whose remains were discovered during search work, managed to be identified;

rf-poisk.ru/page/34 / – books of memory (by regions of Russia, with direct links and annotations);

soldat.ru – books of memory (for individual regions, types of troops, individual units and formations, about those who died in captivity, those who died in Afghanistan, Chechnya);

memento.sebastopol.ua – Crimean virtual necropolis;

memory-book.com.ua – eBook memory of Ukraine;

soldat.ru - a set of reference books for independently searching for information about the fate of military personnel (including a directory of field postal stations of the Red Army in 1941-1945, a directory of the code names of military units (institutions) in 1939-1943, a directory of the location of Red Army hospitals in 1941-1945 years);

rgvarchive.ru – Russian State Military Archive (RGVA). The archive stores documents about the military operations of the Red Army units in 1937-1939. near Lake Khasan, on the Khalkhin Gol River, in the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940. Here are also documents of the border and internal troops of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MVD of the USSR since 1918; documents of the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and institutions of its system (GUPVI Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR) for the period 1939-1960; personal documents of Soviet military leaders; documents of foreign origin (trophy). On the archive's website you can also find guides and reference books that make working with it easier.

rgaspi.org – Russian State Archive of Socio-Political Information (RGASPI). The period of the Great Patriotic War in RGASPI is represented by documents of an emergency body of state power - the State Defense Committee (GKO, 1941-1945) and the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief;

Most do not remember the names of third-generation ancestors - great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers, not to mention distant ones and more complex connections. Although such knowledge would help to get to know yourself better, expand the world and the circle of your loved ones.

Our article will help correct the omission. In it we will tell you how and where you can find out your ancestry for free by last name and other data, find distant relatives online and create your own family tree.

Why do you need to know about your ancestors?

This information will strengthen your connection with your family and give you something to think about. Genealogy is important for the following reasons:

Health. It’s not for nothing that doctors ask about the presence of certain diseases. Having before your eyes the example of grandparents, great-grandparents and great-grandparents, it is easy to track the main diseases that appear with age and prevent their development. And also assume difficulties that your children may have.

Fate. Every person is a product of upbringing. The main models that determine our lives are those that we adopted from our parents. Therefore, the stories of moms and dads about your and their childhood, values and relationships within the family will shed light on the reasons for the formation of many of your beliefs and will help you find a direction for changing yourself and your life for the better.

Community. The process of searching for information about your roots brings you closer together. People who are aware of a commonality with someone are not alone. They always have brothers, sisters, nephews who are like them and able to understand.

Understanding yourself and those around you. If most of your paternal or maternal relatives have a technical mindset, have worked and are working as engineers, programmers, technologists, you can also discover similar abilities in yourself, start looking for priority areas for self-development, and prefer the business to which you have always been drawn to an unloved profession.

Building self-esteem. This aspect is especially important for young children. They sense community much more keenly and feel more confident when they have something to be proud of, when they can admire their relatives and cite them as an example. Stories about worthy deeds of family members are very useful for shaping a child’s personality.

Stories about ancestors, their strengths and features of everyday life help to better understand the world. The actions of these people are assessed differently, through the prism of unity. Everything good and bad that concerns loved ones evokes more vivid emotions: pride, admiration or surprise, confusion, disappointment. The experience of someone who is related to you by blood has a much stronger influence on your attitude.

Knowing your blood ties is useful from a practical point of view. Maintaining relationships with people from other cities and different professions can be a good reason and help for travel, a source of new impressions and acquaintances.

Therefore, even if you are not looking for famous ancestors and prefer to be proud of your own achievements, information about your family in its entirety will be useful to you.

What does a surname mean in terms of pedigree?

This information will help you determine class, profession, distinctive feature or the place of residence of your ancestors. People named themselves according to certain characteristics. For example:

By the names of birds or animals: Sorokin, Orlov, Zaitsev, Kozlov, Lebedev.
By occupation: Melnikov, Ponomarev, Rybakov, Plotnikov.
By father's name: Vasiliev, Fedorov, Egorov, Ivanov, Nikitin.
By territorial characteristics: Sibiryak, Donskoy, Kareltsev, Ufimtsev.
Highlighting one or another feature of appearance: Belousov, Shcherbakov, Nosov, Ryzhkov.
By nationality: Polyakov, Tatarinov, Grekov.
Some surnames appeared in the process of Russification: Sarkisovs, Kalnins.
By the name of Orthodox holidays: Trinity, Assumption, Preobrazhensky.

The latter were often referred to as clergymen and were usually associated with a parish headed by a priest. There were also “seminar” gender designations. They were awarded to those who graduated educational institution, were invented based on the names of birds, animals, plants, names of saints and philosophers, transliterations of words from Latin. Such formations often ended in “sky/-tsky”.

For peasants engaged in waste farming, surnames could change when changing activities. An excellent example is the story of the Ryabushinsky merchant family. The founder was Yakovlev - named after his father. But in the course of his activities, he received the right to be called first Rebushinsky, and then Ryabushinsky. At the same time, his brothers on his father’s side were called Stekolshchikovs.

The boyar and princely dynasties were named on a territorial basis, indicating the lands that belonged to them: Tver, Tyumen, Meshchersky, Yeletsky. Jews also often used place of residence as a basis for designation.

How to find out your family's ancestry by last name

The surname gives a lot of clues, but it is impossible to find out about your roots, guided only by this information. It’s easier to start searching when the information is not limited to just this data. The more knowledge you have, the easier it is to organize the further process.

First, study the family archive (photos, documents, awards) and talk with your mother, father, grandparents. For further research, the following data is most important to you:

Full name of the person. For women, a maiden name is important.
Date and place of birth. If we are talking about a deceased person, we need information about the place and date of death.
Parents' full name.
If a person was born before the revolution - class.
Religious affiliation.
Moving for permanent residence to other cities by year.
Education. Where was it obtained?
Place of work. For military personnel - place of service.
Prizes and awards received as a result of professional, scientific or educational activities.
Full name and date of birth of the spouse and children.

For clarity, attach several photographs or images at different ages to the personality card.

Another important aspect- systematization of information. The number of people on your lists will increase exponentially with each generation. Even if you study only your direct ancestors, by the seventh generation there will be 126 people or more.
Keeping written records at this point will be difficult. It is more convenient to use electronic databases: Access or Excel. Or download and install special programs, whose functionality allows you to assemble materials on the history of the family as simply and clearly as possible. Examples of such software: Genbox Family History, Genopro, Ages, “Tree of Life”.

How to find your family's pedigree by last name: a review of useful online services

Most sites that offer to tell you about your ancestors based on last name are scams. But there are specialized resources that will be useful in the search process.

Many programs for creating a family tree, if you have access to the Internet, check the information of other users of this software and send a signal if there are matches. Such programs include Family Tree Builder, which is an offline version of MyHeritage.

MyHeritage. Israeli site with 60 million users. It allows different ways structure information, distinguish faces in photographs and understand codes mobile devices. The version for use in the Russian-speaking space has some shortcomings due to poor-quality Russification: the “patronymic” field is missing, files are not always loaded correctly, and there are sections of texts in English.

FamilySpace. This resource, intended for drawing up a family tree, competes in functionality social networks. Here you will find city directories, address books, lists of students and honorary residents of various settlements, census results and other useful information.

Also on the Internet you can find many companies offering paid help in exploring your roots. They conduct research in archives and on Internet resources based on the collected information about your ancestors. The received materials are compiled into a family tree or book.

How to find out your family's pedigree on the Internet for free

www.obd-memorial.ru - contains data about captured, missing or dead soldiers from the Second World War. For most of those listed, the year and place of birth are indicated. Here you can find information about where he lived by the last name of your grandfather or great-grandfather. It also often contains the names of those who received notification of the death of a serviceman. Thanks to this, you will clarify the fate of your ancestor and find out the name of his father, mother or wife.

www.vgd.ru - individual pages this site is no different beautiful design and convenient structure, but here you will find a lot of interesting information on genealogy, practical advice on working with archives and building connections with new relatives. The resource has a well-developed knowledge base, allows you to search for people by region and last name, and contains data from federal, departmental and regional archives in Russia and neighboring countries.

Those looking for victims of repression will find the resources “Last Address” and “Everyone’s Personal File” useful. And also lists.memo.ru and stalin.memo.ru.

www.shpl.ru - state public historical library. Contains many reference books, useful topics who are interested in the pre-revolutionary era. Here you will find memorial books for each province, which record people who occupied more or less important posts, starting from the land surveyor. Thanks to the directories “All Petersburg” and “All Moscow” this resource will help people whose relatives lived in any of these two capitals.

Google Books will search for your ancestor by last name in scans of reference books and other publications digitized and posted in various Russian archives.

Find information about Holocaust victims in the Yad Vashem database and on the website www.jewishgen.org.

How to find out your family's pedigree and find it in the archive for free

Before you start searching, you should study various manual to conduct such research, as this is a long process that requires patience and the right approach.

Remember: you will be dealing with a government agency that exists to information services authorities and ordinary citizens. The primary responsibility of such institutions is to ensure the safety of documentation. Replies to requests from individuals are not priority direction activities. Therefore, a reaction to your letter may take several months or six months.

To simplify the process, you need to clearly understand what exactly you are looking for and what documents usually contain such information: birth records, household registers, house books, audit reports, confessional statements.

Working with real papers is also technically complex. Paper deteriorates greatly over the years, so you will have to be especially careful when using documents.

You may have problems understanding what is written. Typewritten texts appeared only at the beginning of the 20th century; before that, papers were filled out by clerks. When diving deep into history, you will have to deal with handwritten materials.

If you do not conduct all the research yourself, it is difficult to find out information about your ancestry for free in the archive, since its employees do not charge payment only for social and legal inquiries. These include certificates and documents relating to:

Salary.
Military service.
Participation in eliminating the consequences of emergency situations.
Peacekeeping activities.
Work experience.
Received education.
Elections to elective positions.
Healing and rehabilitation.
Receiving honorary titles and state awards.
Persons who suffered as a result of the actions of German troops during the Second World War, or victims of repression.

Subject to the subject matter, a fee may be charged if required:

Urgent execution of the request (1-5 days after application).
Copying or reissuing a certificate to replace one lost or damaged due to the applicant’s fault.
Production of several duplicate documents.

Searching for thematic, bibliographic, genealogical information is a paid service. Therefore, before contacting the archive, find its website and make sure it is available necessary documents and check out the price list.

Archive staff will help you find information if your request contains the following information:

Full name of the citizen or name of the institution requesting the data.

Return address.

A clearly formulated topic: what exactly do you want to know, what data do you already have.

Region and search period. Search specific person according to all materials it is meaningless, but the request to find information if limited by area and time frame is doable.

If your request does not contain this information, they will not be able to answer it. Also, do not rush and demand information about the entire family at once. Progress your research gradually, person by person.

If your letter long time there is no response, you should call the archive and check if your request has arrived. And then call the employees several more times and find out how the search for information is going. In some cases, this reduces the time it takes to wait for a response.

Studying a family tree is a fascinating process, reminiscent of a detective investigation. Having gone through all its stages, you will learn a lot about yourself, your ancestors and the history of the country.

02/04/2015

The Smolny Archive Committee has launched a new fashionable service related to the search for ancestors. You can now compile your family tree without leaving your home: delve into the archives via the Internet. Paid service: 55 rubles per day. The City 812 correspondent tried to find the ancestor.

ABOUT weave Maryivanna

I decided to find my great-grandfather - Fyodor Batov. It is known about him that he was an architect-builder and bequeathed three houses on 2nd Rozhdestvenskaya Street to his three daughters (one of them is my grandmother).

Before, I didn’t search for ancestors; I didn’t work in archives. And out of naivety, apparently, I expected to see “Archives of St. Petersburg” on the main page of the website magic button“find your ancestors.” But there was no button. Almost the entire page of the portal is occupied by the exhibition “Crimea through the eyes of St. Petersburg residents.” It’s not clear where to look for a relative.

I poked at all the menu items: “archives”, “queries”, “find information of interest”, etc. Unsuccessfully. I randomly enter my ancestor’s first and last name into the search bar on the portal. Unexpected result! Fyodor Batov showed up in two documents. They are called: “TSGIA. Fund 320. Inventory 1. Case 1001", "TSGIA. Fund 320. Inventory 1. Case 1002.” This cryptography told me nothing. I keep pressing the buttons. Inside the documents found was another long list of papers. All of them, judging by their names, are associated with the Petrovsky School of the St. Petersburg Merchant Society. The titles are interesting: “About unreliable teachers”, “On the question of what percentage of Jews / relatively total number students/can study at school”, etc. But not a single document is opened. Fyodor Batov is not present. This search branch turned out to be a dead end.

After about an hour of excavation, in the “archives” point, sub-point “TSGIA” (Central State Historical Archive of St. Petersburg), in the “services” section, the necessary trace was discovered. Announcement: “Since February 25, 2015, the Archives of St. Petersburg portal has been operating new service- providing access to digitized images of parish books from the funds of the Central State Historical Archive of St. Petersburg.”

The cost of access to archives is provided on a daily basis. One day - 55 rubles, 7 days - 200 rubles, 14 days - 300 rubles. You can only pay using cards.

There is also a reminder on how to search correctly. For those who have never worked in archives before, even it will be difficult to understand.

Step 1 of the memo: you can check the presence of registries of the church of interest in the archive by looking through the records of deeds. Step 2: You can make sure that this registry book is digitized by the presence of an icon in the list of cases in the column to the right of the “extreme dates.” If there are no images, it means that this registry book has not yet been digitized. Contact her later. Step 3: register. Step 4: pay for the service.

Archivists scanned 12,100 documents (slightly more than one percent of all files) containing parish registers. Information about birth-baptism, death-funeral service, and marriage was entered into these books (as a rule, they were kept by churches). Each temple had its own book.

I don’t know what year my great-grandfather was born, and family traditions do not preserve the name of the church in which he was baptized. Nevertheless, I created the “Archives of St. Petersburg” website Personal Area(full name, address, phone number, Email) and paid for access.

I open the first link at random, “Op.111 Metric books.” Inside there are another 813 links. The first: “St. Isaac’s Cathedral, St. Nicholas Cathedral...” for 1735. There are 426 photos inside, they load slowly. These are pages of a handwritten metric book. It is absolutely impossible to read what is written there. Calligraphy has changed too much in almost three centuries. Plus, the handwriting is not always legible, there are blots, and the pages are torn in places. A specialist might be able to sort it out, but to an ordinary person without preparation it is very difficult.

In my opinion, even a specialist would take years to study all the registry books of all the churches of St. Petersburg. So far, archivists have not yet scanned all the documents, but also those that are already in in electronic format, - according to the most rough estimates - there will be at least five million photographs. Try to see Fyodor Batov there!

If the desire to delve into the archives on your own via the Internet persists, it is worth studying the User Agreement of the portal. According to this document, the user, even who has paid for access, has no rights. The site administration, without giving any reason, can block access to documents, remove any documents from the site, and also change the agreement itself, and is not responsible for any harm that such actions may cause to the user. But the user will owe the site a thousand rubles if he breaks the rules.

As City 812 was informed by the Archive Committee of St. Petersburg, the new paid service 394 people used it in a month.

Minister Medinsky is also looking for

If you are serious about digging up your ancestry, you can turn to private researchers or archive staff for help. Archivists have a strict rate. Price list is on the website.

One genealogical request - 3401 rubles. Search information by electronic databases archive - 832 rubles/hour. Certificate of availability (absence) of information upon request - 1134 rubles. But archivists cannot fulfill all requests.

Citizens often have a very poor understanding of the possibilities of archival search. When contacting the archive, you should indicate the main milestones in a person’s biography related to his life and activities in St. Petersburg: the year and place of his birth, place of study, work, residential address, etc. There are a lot of requests with the following content: “Please help me find my ancestor (full name), who was born in Petrograd (or in the province) in 18....” However, in Petrograd alone by 1917 there were about 402 Orthodox churches, not counting other faiths. Therefore, without indicating the name and location of the church or the parents’ residential address at the time of the child’s birth, such a request cannot be fulfilled. To search for information about a marriage, you must indicate the surnames, first names and patronymics of the bride and groom, and always the church where the wedding ceremony took place. To search for women's birth records, you must enter their maiden name. Accordingly, the request is of this nature: “My great-grandmother Ivanova Maria Ivanovna, born in 1875. lived in Leningrad on the Right Bank of the Neva. “I want to know her metric data,” the archive simply cannot fulfill, explains the archive staff.

As the Archive Committee reported, both the committee and the archive often receive requests to find the unknown Maryivanovna, especially in last years. It is fashionable to compile pedigrees.

The cost of services of commercial organizations engaged in searching for information about ancestors starts from tens of thousands of rubles. As an employee of the Genealogical Center told City 812, the price depends on the complexity.

If, for example, you need to find a diploma from your great-grandfather’s place of study, and you know the educational institution and the period when he studied, then this problem can be solved quite quickly. In a week, maybe two. And it will cost, relatively speaking, 20 thousand rubles. And if only the last name is known, we will not find the ancestor. And no one will find it. To search, you need initial information: at least place of birth, date, address, says Ildar.

According to him, it is more correct to start the search not from the depths of centuries, but, on the contrary, from those relatives who lived recently.

First person needed. As soon as the first relative is found in the archive, you can cling to it and spin it further, explains the specialist.

Some pedigree companies publish price lists on their websites. For example, researching one family line at the International Institute of Genealogical Research costs 280 thousand rubles, plus travel expenses of 60-120 thousand. The execution period is two years. Urgent research (per year) - 600 thousand. Copyright - from two million rubles. “The main difference between the author’s research and the standard one is that the researcher works with non-standard funds (judicial, economic, personal, etc.); relies more on his intuition, which allows him to continue research where conventional search technology stops; capable of larger volume attract the help of colleagues from the genealogical community, since he is well-known in this circle,” the company explains.

For those who find it expensive, there is a very cheap service - a one-time consultation on genealogical issues. Costs 1500 rubles per hour. The company claims that its clients include many famous people: Minister Vladimir Medinsky, lawyer Heinrich Padva and others .