Eastern European expert Lisa Alzo dispels a few common myths surrounding Eastern European family history research and discusses her new projects which include a new book and her website, Immersion Genealogy.
Connect with Lisa Alzo at Immersion Genealogy or on Twitter.
Hear from other knowledgeable experts by visiting our ‘Family History Expert Series’ playlist on YouTube.
Any databases in the future for Lithuania?
@Diana, we will pass on your interest in more collections for Lithuania.
It would be great to include Lithuania as I have jewish ancestry.
Thank you for this! It will be very helpful for my research.
One Archive in the Czech Republic that is missing from that list (or I missed it finding it in the blog) is the wonderful Archive of ZAMRSK. It has church books dating back to the 16th Century from much of the South-Eastern Region of what is today the Czech Republic (including Bohemia). Since this region used to be German and later on belong to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the great majority of the church books are written in German. You can now access all these church books on the Internet by going to http://www.vychodeskearchivy.cz, follow the instructions in English and you can download entire church books onto your computer and look at them page by page in the peace and quiet of your home. They put these books on the internet after I made two trips to these archives, spending one week each time, looking through the church books in the Archives. But I do not regret having made those trips. There is nothing more beautiful than to be able to caress your grandmother’s signature on a baptismal record, knowing that your hand is touching the same piece of paper that she touched. But, it is certainly more convenient to be able to do this from home now.
Sorry, there seems to have been a website name change since the last time I used it, so if you are interested in checking out recors in the Archives in Zamrsk, just “google” archiv zamrsk and you will get to the webseite of the archives. Press on “English page” and you will get to the online parish registers.
I wish there was more on-line access to Slovenian records. I don’t live in Salt Lake City, so on-line is my best bet.
Any ideas on when they might be accessible?
My ancestry search stalled a while ago. Hoping the Lithuanian database is available soon! Thank you!
I know that Silesia is not part of Poland. I am working on finding families who lived south of Breslau (German name). Any suggestions for me? Thanks.
Thanks, Lisa Alzo for providing Eastern European Ancestry resources. But, once again I’m very disappointed on the resource for Yugoslavia. The resource has little information available.
My family genealogy is mostly about the former Yugoslavia (Jugoslavia) area. I sure hope ancestry will start to get information on these republics (Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and etc.)! Most of the records are located in the old churches but, due to the wars many records were destroyed. I have been able to obtained a few records from the local archives thanks to a relative located in Croatia that was able to get them for me. Google Translate is a great resource – I use it often.
I got 6% Eastern European on AncestryDNA, and my great grandmother got 13%. We do not know my g-grandmother’s father, so I might have an Eastern European connection waiting to be discovered.