Ukrainian Genealogy Research: STEP 3: Work with sources

Getting some information is not as difficult. Plus, if we’ll look around, we will find ourselves in the digital world. That means that online databases and other websites will be easily accessible sources for us. We will mention some of these sources that can help us discover essential information about our Ukrainian genealogy.

First, if you have missing documents about your immediate family that moved, for example, to US from Ukraine – check the local US registration authorities. You can request birth, marriage, and death records that will have crucial information about your ancestors! Also, you can go there to find information on family relocation, papers related to the acquisition, sale, and inheritance of property, etc.

All of these papers can add missing details to you. Pay attention to what may be connected with the Ukrainian past of your ancestors. On some documents, you will find the place of birth. On others – you can find an alternative date or spelling of the name.

You probably won’t find a ton of useful resources in Ukrainian or Russian. And, the language might be an additional obstacle for your Ukrainian genealogy research. That is why we would name English online resources available to you by the mouse click.

All immigrants arriving in the United States had to pass through official points of entry, where they registered themselves, their families, and reported their plans. The process was similar in Canada.

Ellis Island – a famous island at the entrance to New York Bay, where you can see the Statue of Liberty. Ellis Island is a symbol of the American immigrant experience. You can find many documents online on the Liberty Statue Foundation website for free, although some documents are available only after paid registration.

Ancestry.com is yet another great resource. The website has a free account available, but it doesn’t gave all the features. The documents in their databases might shed a light on your research. Through a full-text search, you can try to find your ancestry documents like immigration, military, birth, and all other sorts of records.

Geni.com (now a part of MyHeritage.com) is another site with paid registration. It is interesting, however, that the search by name is available for free, and if you can find one of the ancestors that have already been added to someone’s family tree, you can gradually search for his loved ones, moving from one personal card to another.

The largest and probably the most famous online resource with free registration is FamilySearch.org. Here you can search in three main places:

Records (indexed names or collections) Catalog (search by locality name or other information) Search Find (search among trees of other FS users)