With the war, genealogy has become popular among Ukrainians as a way to reclaim their historical heritage. Mariana travels to her home region to find lost family roots.
I’ve been lucky on my dad’s side. Two different people researched the family tree in the middle of the last century. I’ve added more and was actually able to meet a 4th cousin last summer. We share great-great-greatgrandparents.
To anyone who’s created a family tree, I recommend putting the information on Wikitree.org. It’s a free site, run a bit like Wikipedia. The goal is to create a single family tree for everyone. Still a long way from that, but there are a lot of dedicated volunteers. The site has an honor code and is a stickler for references, but that’s to keep one person’s family legends from mucking up other’s hard won research. Check it out.
I have traced my ancestry back to around 1500, and it’s a humbling experience to find out about them, often living against the backdrop of historical events. So, I can easily relate to this story.
One of the oldest documents I found is an ancestor sending a note to the local waterboard, claiming expenses for the maintenance of a local windmill and levee. Can’t get any more Dutch than this, I guess.
In the Netherlands, there are three distinct periods I’d say: the easiest are modern municipal records, the church records are older and go further back, then there are legal records and anything related to water management. My ancestors were lucky enough to own some property in the 1500s. Small pieces of farm land, for example. So then you have a last will and testament, buying and selling things, legal disputes.
On my mother's side, much of my family traces back to what is now the Czech Republic, so it was ironic to see bad news from there after such a lovely essay on genealogy!
Long before the internet I helped my maternal grandmother search. Her family has been here in the states for generations. Many years later, my dad told me he wished he could search his in Poland but his mother's village had completely disappeared and the people scattered with only what they could carry. His mom died and never talked about it. It must have been in the early 1900s. Ukraine can't suffer the same fate. Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦
We try to change things here. I am sorry for your loss, but I can not imagine how hard it must be to access all the research materials without the internet! How did you do that?
We started when I was in junior high school. I practically lived at our local libraries so I researched sources who my grandmother could write to for information. Replies she got lead to more sources of information and more letters. We found a family crest and researched that and she wrote more letters all over the world. It took forever but it was interesting work, I learned about researching and it made my grandmother very happy.
My father‘s brother invested considerable time in family genealogy. That’s how I learned that my grandfather left the western Ukrainian region while it was still under Austro-Hungarian control. The town he left near Tarnopol was later annihilated by the Nazis. It exists today, as far as I know, only on the memorial walls of the US Holocaust Museum and Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.
My mother actually did the work, and shared it. She only went back to the early 1800s. The ancestors came from Prussia from an area about 150 miles northeast of Berlin. The fled to avoid conscription into the Prussian Army. In 1878, they arrived on the deck of a freighter, not being able to afford berths. Some travelers, not any of them, died from the exposure. I heard about the recipe for potato peel soup. They arrived in Baltimore. Half went to northern Minnesota, and my half settled in northern Indiana. My grandfather was born a few years after they arrived.
That’s such a powerful family story. Do you think people today would be capable of showing the same kind of courage and endurance that our ancestors did when they emigrated?
I think there a hundreds of thousands of stories out there of people escaping Central America countries, Afghanistan and Syria (remember all of the boat people trying to get to Europe?)
272702 I used Ancestry.ca. A lot of other bits came up of other ethnicity. 16 in fact. Explained a lot. I have been doing a lot of reading now on the history of the area (Romania and the other Balkans).
I used it to find documents related to the empires that occupied the lands of Ukraine where my ancestors lived. It is indeed helpful, but I need to learn old versions of Ukrainian and Russian, as well as Polish, Latin, or other languages to understand 90% of the text. However, you are absolutely on the right track about learning history, it gives a lot of context. I found some contradictions in my grandmother’s memories (which is absolutely fine!) and extra understanding of what my family went through just by studying a history of one village.
Genealogy is fascinating - especially if you can trace your ancestors to antiquity. My own ancestry is a continuing source of amazement and I hesitate to share it. My ancestors include Vikings, the rulers of Ireland, Wales, Scotland & the kingdoms of England; the Patriarch Abraham & the biblical monarchs of Israel; Mark Anthony (yes, the Roman husband of Cleopatra!) & his first wife; the Prophet Mohammed (through one of his descendants & a Spanish queen); and Saint Yaroslav the Wise & Saint Ingegerd Olofsdotter, founders of Kyiv; a few Popes, nearly 200 saints & assorted Doges of Venice! So far my tree has 64k members, with around 24k being direct. Ironically I have very few close relations left these days, and my closest relations are a niece and some second & third cousins in Germany.
Eight years, many hours, most days. Mind you, I'm retired, and this keeps me occupied! For the past four years I've concentrated on tracking down ancestors, but I also traced loads of relatives in the earlier years.
Mariana, I hope you continue researching, and that you learn more.
My great-uncle traced the paternal side of my family back to 1700, so I have extensive documentation of that half of the family (with charts and family trees). The other half, the maternal, I’ve researched a little myself. My parents are gone now, but my mom told me what she remembered of her relatives.
One thing I did when I was in my twenties was interview my grandmother on tape, which we translated and transcribed. I’m so glad I did that! What a gift! Mariana, I encourage you to do something like that!
I want to do so, for sure! I already interviewed my grandfather and grandma, however, it’s also essential to transcribe my grandfather’s tapes for me. He has been recording his memories about our family lines for days so definitely there is something he missed in a 2-hour conversation
I've been working on my family tree through Ancestry, but I started when I was about 20 in New Mexico, US when I inherited a box full of my paternal grandmother's historical archives. There was no Web then, and research was letters, phone calls, and visits to city records. Turns out she was my GREAT grandmother, and my adored auntie was REALLY my dad's mum. Off to the races I went! I am 14% Irish, 32% Scot, 37% English & northern European (Germany, Prussia, etc.), 6% Scandinavian (Viking! You should see my grown sons... they look like they just walked off a Viking longboat!), 2% Welsh, and 9% Germanic European. So far, I've been able to go back 18 generations to Hywel ap Rhys Moethe, my 18th great grandmother who was born in 1386 in Wales, which is where I have lived since 2018. There are 1000s I haven't found yet. Through DNA tests that my 2 brothers took, we were able to identify & confirm my dad's father's identity & my dad's half brother & family, which is where the surprising amount of Irish & German ancestors popped up. My mum's DNA shows all my Scottish ancestry. Some of my Scottish ancestors fought in the Jacobite rising of 1745, and escaped to the US afterwards. We have an older maternal cousin who has also done a lot of the research, and she has been able to check my research, and help me with details. My paternal great-grandmother documented all the family who fought in the Revolutionary War. Sir Issac Newton is my 1st cousin 12x removed. The most recent immigrant to the US was my paternal 2nd great-grandmother, who arrived in 1842 from Ireland. There are 5293 people in my tree... so far. I also have been doing my ex-husbands Family Tree. It turns out he's more Welsh than I am, with quite a few ancestors buried in a church yard only 30 miles away! It's all so fascinating, but it takes a LOT of work, as people throw all sorts of weird names & dates up, and you have to do a lot of very careful research to determine who is who, who belongs and who doesn't. I have lost track of the number of people who had a "Secret Marriage" 15 years before they were born... or after they died. Children born when the parents were 2, or dead. But we know so much more about our families now. Church baptismal records are fantastic. I've got the same tree on Wikitree (but nowhere near as complete) and another site that uses Mormon historical records, as my mum was raised in Utah, and my ex was Mormon. Their records are astonishingly precise. My main reason for doing this is for my adult children, so they know where they came from and why. As they are estranged from me (their choice), this is the only way they will know.
That’s absolutely fascinating! The amount of time and effort you’ve put into tracing your family history is incredible — especially doing it before the internet era. I find it so touching that you’re doing this not just for yourself, but for your children, even though you’re not in touch. It’s such a beautiful way to preserve connection across generations.
Do you think discovering our ancestry can actually change the way we see ourselves and our identity today?
Without a doubt. I was always pretty proud of my Scottish ancestry. My dad always believed he was more Scot than anything else, and the comments he would make on St Patrick's Day were usually troublesome. He would wear orange, which had symbolic religious and political connections to Irish Protestantism and Unionism, although I didn't know it at the time. It wasn't until after he died that I discovered how Irish we were, and only one generation removed from being able to legally apply for an Irish passport due to our grandparents. But the other realisation I had when I was deciding to move to the UK was that my DNA proved I belonged in the UK more than anywhere else. Now, at the time, my mum would've argued strenuously about that, but she also realised I was happy here, and that my new partner WOULD take care of me... something my ex had utterly abandoned. So when I fill in forms & surveys that ask for my unofficial national identity, I claim my Irishness. The other thing was that my mum's sisters & auntie had always been very interested in and supportive of the Navajo Nation of the indigenous Americans who live in the American southwest. I often wondered if I had any Navajo or other 'Indian' ancestors, although I do realise that if I did, it was most likely not donated freely. I do not. Neither do I have any African DNA, or south Pacific, or Asian, although my mum has an odd strand that pops up from around Turkey or that area. No idea where that comes from, but it explains the Asian-like eyes that my sister has. I'd love to know where they came from.
What a fascinating project, made more difficult obviously by the history of Ukraine as it has evolved over time to where it is today - fighting once again to exist as an independent nation 💙💛
I haven't done any ancestry tracing myself, but am fortunate that on my mother's father's side there has been work done by others that I directly benefit from, as in under an Act of Parliament in Aotearoa-New Zealand one of our Maori iwi/tribes was given a negotiated settlement/partial reparations to compensate for the stealing of land & resources by the Crown/British settlers since the 1800's - to be entitled to benefit from grants for education etc you need to be able to prove a direct line back to a specific point in time specified in the Act. In fact, this inspired someone to do similar on my father's side but not too far back really, just enough to discover a few distant cousins. But it did throw up some "interesting" connections that were "secret" from the family until then! I've never considered doing DNA testing as I already have enough information to be satisfied with what I know... 🤷 In Maori culture your ancestry is your identity & connection to the places that they lived & hunted & fished & fought etc had been handed down orally until the mid-late 1800's when missionaries arrived & devised a written form of the language & started recording physical records of whakapapa (family trees) and other ancient knowledge that was contained in stories & traditions & waiata (song).
To introduce yourself you mihi - My mountain is... My river is.... My sea is.... My waka (canoe that brought my ancestors to Aotearoa) is... My Iwi (tribe) is... I live in.... My name is.... and from your mihi everyone present with Maori ancestry knows exactly where you fit 🤗 It is common for strangers to come up to you and tell you they know your 2nd cousin 3 x removed or they ARE in fact your 2nd cousin 3 x removed 😱
I’ve been lucky on my dad’s side. Two different people researched the family tree in the middle of the last century. I’ve added more and was actually able to meet a 4th cousin last summer. We share great-great-greatgrandparents.
To anyone who’s created a family tree, I recommend putting the information on Wikitree.org. It’s a free site, run a bit like Wikipedia. The goal is to create a single family tree for everyone. Still a long way from that, but there are a lot of dedicated volunteers. The site has an honor code and is a stickler for references, but that’s to keep one person’s family legends from mucking up other’s hard won research. Check it out.
Oh, that’s cool! I will check it out, as I am testing now various platforms to seek the most convenient one for my family tree, thank you!
I have traced my ancestry back to around 1500, and it’s a humbling experience to find out about them, often living against the backdrop of historical events. So, I can easily relate to this story.
One of the oldest documents I found is an ancestor sending a note to the local waterboard, claiming expenses for the maintenance of a local windmill and levee. Can’t get any more Dutch than this, I guess.
I am fascinated a lot, and now I have a sense of how difficult it must be! How did you manage to find any documents from 16-17th centuries?
Unfortunately, the latest documents that mention any info about ordinary citizens are dated to the 1700s max in Ukraine
In the Netherlands, there are three distinct periods I’d say: the easiest are modern municipal records, the church records are older and go further back, then there are legal records and anything related to water management. My ancestors were lucky enough to own some property in the 1500s. Small pieces of farm land, for example. So then you have a last will and testament, buying and selling things, legal disputes.
thank you. stay strong and hopeful
On my mother's side, much of my family traces back to what is now the Czech Republic, so it was ironic to see bad news from there after such a lovely essay on genealogy!
Long before the internet I helped my maternal grandmother search. Her family has been here in the states for generations. Many years later, my dad told me he wished he could search his in Poland but his mother's village had completely disappeared and the people scattered with only what they could carry. His mom died and never talked about it. It must have been in the early 1900s. Ukraine can't suffer the same fate. Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦
We try to change things here. I am sorry for your loss, but I can not imagine how hard it must be to access all the research materials without the internet! How did you do that?
We started when I was in junior high school. I practically lived at our local libraries so I researched sources who my grandmother could write to for information. Replies she got lead to more sources of information and more letters. We found a family crest and researched that and she wrote more letters all over the world. It took forever but it was interesting work, I learned about researching and it made my grandmother very happy.
My father‘s brother invested considerable time in family genealogy. That’s how I learned that my grandfather left the western Ukrainian region while it was still under Austro-Hungarian control. The town he left near Tarnopol was later annihilated by the Nazis. It exists today, as far as I know, only on the memorial walls of the US Holocaust Museum and Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.
I deeply relate, as my grandfather also did the majority of the work. Have you ever wanted to do any extra research about your family lines?
I’d like to visit that area of Ukraine in the future.
My mother actually did the work, and shared it. She only went back to the early 1800s. The ancestors came from Prussia from an area about 150 miles northeast of Berlin. The fled to avoid conscription into the Prussian Army. In 1878, they arrived on the deck of a freighter, not being able to afford berths. Some travelers, not any of them, died from the exposure. I heard about the recipe for potato peel soup. They arrived in Baltimore. Half went to northern Minnesota, and my half settled in northern Indiana. My grandfather was born a few years after they arrived.
That’s such a powerful family story. Do you think people today would be capable of showing the same kind of courage and endurance that our ancestors did when they emigrated?
I think there a hundreds of thousands of stories out there of people escaping Central America countries, Afghanistan and Syria (remember all of the boat people trying to get to Europe?)
272702 I used Ancestry.ca. A lot of other bits came up of other ethnicity. 16 in fact. Explained a lot. I have been doing a lot of reading now on the history of the area (Romania and the other Balkans).
I used it to find documents related to the empires that occupied the lands of Ukraine where my ancestors lived. It is indeed helpful, but I need to learn old versions of Ukrainian and Russian, as well as Polish, Latin, or other languages to understand 90% of the text. However, you are absolutely on the right track about learning history, it gives a lot of context. I found some contradictions in my grandmother’s memories (which is absolutely fine!) and extra understanding of what my family went through just by studying a history of one village.
Genealogy is fascinating - especially if you can trace your ancestors to antiquity. My own ancestry is a continuing source of amazement and I hesitate to share it. My ancestors include Vikings, the rulers of Ireland, Wales, Scotland & the kingdoms of England; the Patriarch Abraham & the biblical monarchs of Israel; Mark Anthony (yes, the Roman husband of Cleopatra!) & his first wife; the Prophet Mohammed (through one of his descendants & a Spanish queen); and Saint Yaroslav the Wise & Saint Ingegerd Olofsdotter, founders of Kyiv; a few Popes, nearly 200 saints & assorted Doges of Venice! So far my tree has 64k members, with around 24k being direct. Ironically I have very few close relations left these days, and my closest relations are a niece and some second & third cousins in Germany.
Wooow, that’s truly amazing!
Of course most people have amazing family trees, but it takes a lot of work researching them.
I can imagine, I already spent a week, just trying to find at least something. It probably takes years to trace such a lond history!
Eight years, many hours, most days. Mind you, I'm retired, and this keeps me occupied! For the past four years I've concentrated on tracking down ancestors, but I also traced loads of relatives in the earlier years.
Mariana, I hope you continue researching, and that you learn more.
My great-uncle traced the paternal side of my family back to 1700, so I have extensive documentation of that half of the family (with charts and family trees). The other half, the maternal, I’ve researched a little myself. My parents are gone now, but my mom told me what she remembered of her relatives.
One thing I did when I was in my twenties was interview my grandmother on tape, which we translated and transcribed. I’m so glad I did that! What a gift! Mariana, I encourage you to do something like that!
I want to do so, for sure! I already interviewed my grandfather and grandma, however, it’s also essential to transcribe my grandfather’s tapes for me. He has been recording his memories about our family lines for days so definitely there is something he missed in a 2-hour conversation
I've been working on my family tree through Ancestry, but I started when I was about 20 in New Mexico, US when I inherited a box full of my paternal grandmother's historical archives. There was no Web then, and research was letters, phone calls, and visits to city records. Turns out she was my GREAT grandmother, and my adored auntie was REALLY my dad's mum. Off to the races I went! I am 14% Irish, 32% Scot, 37% English & northern European (Germany, Prussia, etc.), 6% Scandinavian (Viking! You should see my grown sons... they look like they just walked off a Viking longboat!), 2% Welsh, and 9% Germanic European. So far, I've been able to go back 18 generations to Hywel ap Rhys Moethe, my 18th great grandmother who was born in 1386 in Wales, which is where I have lived since 2018. There are 1000s I haven't found yet. Through DNA tests that my 2 brothers took, we were able to identify & confirm my dad's father's identity & my dad's half brother & family, which is where the surprising amount of Irish & German ancestors popped up. My mum's DNA shows all my Scottish ancestry. Some of my Scottish ancestors fought in the Jacobite rising of 1745, and escaped to the US afterwards. We have an older maternal cousin who has also done a lot of the research, and she has been able to check my research, and help me with details. My paternal great-grandmother documented all the family who fought in the Revolutionary War. Sir Issac Newton is my 1st cousin 12x removed. The most recent immigrant to the US was my paternal 2nd great-grandmother, who arrived in 1842 from Ireland. There are 5293 people in my tree... so far. I also have been doing my ex-husbands Family Tree. It turns out he's more Welsh than I am, with quite a few ancestors buried in a church yard only 30 miles away! It's all so fascinating, but it takes a LOT of work, as people throw all sorts of weird names & dates up, and you have to do a lot of very careful research to determine who is who, who belongs and who doesn't. I have lost track of the number of people who had a "Secret Marriage" 15 years before they were born... or after they died. Children born when the parents were 2, or dead. But we know so much more about our families now. Church baptismal records are fantastic. I've got the same tree on Wikitree (but nowhere near as complete) and another site that uses Mormon historical records, as my mum was raised in Utah, and my ex was Mormon. Their records are astonishingly precise. My main reason for doing this is for my adult children, so they know where they came from and why. As they are estranged from me (their choice), this is the only way they will know.
That’s absolutely fascinating! The amount of time and effort you’ve put into tracing your family history is incredible — especially doing it before the internet era. I find it so touching that you’re doing this not just for yourself, but for your children, even though you’re not in touch. It’s such a beautiful way to preserve connection across generations.
Do you think discovering our ancestry can actually change the way we see ourselves and our identity today?
Without a doubt. I was always pretty proud of my Scottish ancestry. My dad always believed he was more Scot than anything else, and the comments he would make on St Patrick's Day were usually troublesome. He would wear orange, which had symbolic religious and political connections to Irish Protestantism and Unionism, although I didn't know it at the time. It wasn't until after he died that I discovered how Irish we were, and only one generation removed from being able to legally apply for an Irish passport due to our grandparents. But the other realisation I had when I was deciding to move to the UK was that my DNA proved I belonged in the UK more than anywhere else. Now, at the time, my mum would've argued strenuously about that, but she also realised I was happy here, and that my new partner WOULD take care of me... something my ex had utterly abandoned. So when I fill in forms & surveys that ask for my unofficial national identity, I claim my Irishness. The other thing was that my mum's sisters & auntie had always been very interested in and supportive of the Navajo Nation of the indigenous Americans who live in the American southwest. I often wondered if I had any Navajo or other 'Indian' ancestors, although I do realise that if I did, it was most likely not donated freely. I do not. Neither do I have any African DNA, or south Pacific, or Asian, although my mum has an odd strand that pops up from around Turkey or that area. No idea where that comes from, but it explains the Asian-like eyes that my sister has. I'd love to know where they came from.
What a fascinating project, made more difficult obviously by the history of Ukraine as it has evolved over time to where it is today - fighting once again to exist as an independent nation 💙💛
I haven't done any ancestry tracing myself, but am fortunate that on my mother's father's side there has been work done by others that I directly benefit from, as in under an Act of Parliament in Aotearoa-New Zealand one of our Maori iwi/tribes was given a negotiated settlement/partial reparations to compensate for the stealing of land & resources by the Crown/British settlers since the 1800's - to be entitled to benefit from grants for education etc you need to be able to prove a direct line back to a specific point in time specified in the Act. In fact, this inspired someone to do similar on my father's side but not too far back really, just enough to discover a few distant cousins. But it did throw up some "interesting" connections that were "secret" from the family until then! I've never considered doing DNA testing as I already have enough information to be satisfied with what I know... 🤷 In Maori culture your ancestry is your identity & connection to the places that they lived & hunted & fished & fought etc had been handed down orally until the mid-late 1800's when missionaries arrived & devised a written form of the language & started recording physical records of whakapapa (family trees) and other ancient knowledge that was contained in stories & traditions & waiata (song).
To introduce yourself you mihi - My mountain is... My river is.... My sea is.... My waka (canoe that brought my ancestors to Aotearoa) is... My Iwi (tribe) is... I live in.... My name is.... and from your mihi everyone present with Maori ancestry knows exactly where you fit 🤗 It is common for strangers to come up to you and tell you they know your 2nd cousin 3 x removed or they ARE in fact your 2nd cousin 3 x removed 😱