Friday morning was one of the craziest experiences I’ve had with obtaining information from archived records.
I finally found a researcher to visit in Kyiv the main registry office, a government office that holds birth, marriage and death records before they are turned over to archives. It took a lot of effort to even get a researcher to that office.
With the help of a Facebook genealogy group member, I was able to create a limited power of attorney so my researcher could represent me at the registry office. Then, I created a family tree, showing my relationship to my great-grandfather’s brother who stayed behind in the warn-torn Ukrainian capital during WWII.
My collection of family documents also were submitted to prove my ancestry. I thought I had enough records to prove my ancestry, even though I couldn’t find my 2nd great uncle Simeon’s 1885 birth record. I provided his marriage record, instead.
My researcher started calling me at 7:15 a.m. on Facebook while I was getting two kids ready for school. The registry office needed Simeon’s birth record that I thought didn’t exist.
Without that record, there wasn’t going to be any budging. The hope was that the staff would just take a quick look at my large collection of documents and provide details from Simeon’s death record.
I looked at my family tree and it has his complete birthdate. The information couldn’t have come from my great-grandfather because his letter only mentioned a death date of 1951.
I was in complete panic. My oldest son needed to get on the school bus. I carried my open laptop to the bus stop. My smart phone wasn’t working with Facebook instant messaging.
Then I looked at the transcribed records on my Trunov family that my researcher in Kursk, Russia, provided me. There was Simeon’s birth record transcribed word for word.
I immediately copied and pasted the transcriptions of the birth records for my great-grandfather and Simeon and the exact record number from Kursk Regional Archives to my researcher. Still, that wasn’t enough and my researcher needed a scan of Simeon’s birth record.
Time was running short. My youngest son needed to get to school and I needed to get to work. I waited so long to get the researcher to the registry office and one measly record wasn’t going to mess up my plans.
I took another look at my records and still couldn’t find it. Then I realized that my Kursk researcher e-mailed me records individually 8 years ago.
At last, I found the e-mail message with the birth record in a rar file format. Thankfully, last month I gave into buying WinZip.
I told the researcher that I found the record and not to leave the registry office. He already left and had to go back. It was a struggle to get that file opened with WinZip but I finally got it opened.
I double-checked that it was the correct record. Then I sent it over Facebook instant messaging but the researcher was afraid it would be too grainy.
The files were sent by e-mail to the researcher and I was off to my son’s school. The researcher got a death date of December 19, 1954. The database of the registry office didn’t have this man’s birthdate nor birthplace. Is it really my Simeon?
The journey continues with my researcher getting my records translated from English and Russian to Ukrainian to request the death record from a neighborhood registry office. Our hope is that office will have the actual record and confirm if we really found my Simeon.
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