Jewish Genealogy sources: Court history documentation at Zhitomir, Volyn gubernia
The hardest thing is to write something on vacations… But, the show must go on! Today’s topic is very simple and clear: How to provide information to the researcher in a clear form. Is it simple? Guess, not))
Let’s describe the situation: probably you want to find your ancestors. And probably you even collected all the possible information (by your own knowledge or/and by asking all the possible relatives). And you even understood that you need to hire somebody to find this information for you (for example, us)) And what next? On this stage you have a small problem (even not important, on the first glance): How to provide all the information you have in a right way to the Genealogy researcher?
And below I provide some tips, which could be helpful (I guess so) for all the people who want us to hire, based on our own experience:
1. Provide as much as possible clear and exact information. Sometimes we receive very long and hard-to-read e-mails with the detailed information about the history of the village or settlement ancestors lived or even about their habits. That is great for the book about your family history. But does not work with Genealogy. We need dates, names, places. Not the stories)
2. Try to find really Jewish personal names. Sometimes we receive requests to search which we try to explain that the personal name of our client’s grandfather could not be Mike, John or Bill. We understand that the new immigrants had totally changed their lives and names as well by coming to the United States. But sometimes you need to find their real names for the search (Hopefully, I’ll write about how to do it little bit later))
3. Sort information by Families. If you have more than one Family to find, it is much better to compile the information one-by-one. I mean, each Family separately. It would be much easily to determine the possibility of the research if it is clear separated
4. Provide the proofs. Sometimes, if you tell us some information about your relatives or ancestors, it is much better if you tell us the source of this information. It is important. Because the history (especially Family history) is very strange sometimes. By our experience, around 80% of the information provided for us is not clear truth, but just a Family tales. But if you have any proof of your words, it is great to provide it for us immediately (including pictures of the grave stones, naturalization documents, Ellis Island filling forms, copies of the pictures from the Family archive etc.)
5. Forget the points 1-4 and feel free to send us any information in any format)) We are ready to work anyways))
About the author
Professional Jewish Genealogy researcher at Ukraine. Works together with his wife Nadia Lipes. More than 5 years of experience. Executive director, SEO and founder of www.jewua.info
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Hi, I wanted to find out if there is an access to research the censuses and databases via your website. Or I need to provide you with all the information I know about my ancestors that lived in the Pale of Settlement.
Spasibo, Aleksandra.