To find out who your ancestors were and to compose a family tree - all this involves research, which promises many interesting discoveries. There are many sources, turning to which, you can find out who your ancestors were. The main thing is to concern with interest not only the results, but also the process itself.
Instruction manual
1
It’s worth starting with documents and papers at home. Each family usually has a box, briefcase or box where all the old papers and photographs are. The following papers may be useful for you: birth, marriage, divorce, death certificates. It will also be useful to find passports, work books, certificates, various certificates, diplomas and any personal documents. Sort everything by paternal and maternal lines. Keep a separate envelope or catalog in the computer for each person.
2
If you find anyone's notebooks, look through them. Passport data, first names and surnames, some other types of information may be useful to you. It is also helpful to ask all older relatives what they remember. You need to record everything that they tell, all names, all kindred lines. Somewhere, someone may be mistaken, sometimes it will be so that no one remembers any relatives except one person. Typically, women better remember family relationships. Record is full name, place of birth, date of birth. The place is often more important, as people constantly confuse dates.
3
Then you should go to the city and rural archives. You can usually find their address on the Internet or in any library. It is important to understand that documents in one locality may appear in the archive of a neighboring region, this happens. To obtain access to the archive, a statement is written in the name of the director. You will be given a pass to the reading room, where you can already request the necessary documents. But get started with inventory.
4
Documents in the archive are structured as follows. All of them are divided into funds. The fund contains documents for one person, family or organization. Each fund consists of cases, a full list of which is given in the inventory. Typically, archives provide free access to inventory, but with funds, things are not so simple. Of particular importance can be foundations of churches, state chambers, volost boards, and so on. The census forms, which were compiled each time a population census was conducted, can help.
5
After receiving the documents for the right dates in the right area, look at them for the names of their ancestors. Check how the information from the family archives correlates with what became clear from the official documents.
6
An important source of information is the metric books of churches. Sometimes they are not stored in the regional archives, in order to access them, you need to go to remote places and talk with church ministers.
7
In each place where you will conduct searches, ask what other documents can recommend to you. The fact is that office work in ancient times did not differ much in orderliness. In different regions, documents could be called in different ways, they were maintained by different institutions, and are stored in different archives in different archives. On the spot, you can learn much more about where it is better to contact directly in your case.
Useful advice
Get stationery folders and files. Even if you save all the results on a computer, over time you will get various documents and certificates, which will also need to be kept somewhere and sorted somehow. If possible, take photocopies or photograph all documents from archives that are relevant to you.
