Now many people have become interested in their roots, the origin of the family. But the knowledge of the majority is limited to brief information about great-grandfathers or great-grandmothers. Nevertheless, it is possible to find out the history of your family, even if documents and photographs have not been preserved. The surname can also tell a lot about the history of the ancestors. So how do you know your family tree by last name?
It is necessary
- - a computer;
- - access to the Internet;
- - passport;
- - library card;
- - a dictionary of surnames.
Instructions
Step 1
Ask your relatives about family history. Collect even small information, but pay special attention to where the family lived, whether it moved, what did the grandparents do professionally.
Step 2
Find your last name in one of the last name dictionaries. It won't help you know your specific pedigree, but it will tell you which direction to go. For example, such dictionaries may contain information in which geographic area the surname appeared, whether it is of foreign or Russian origin, in which social stratum it is distributed. This will narrow your search.
Step 3
Explore the aspect of family history associated with participation in hostilities. In particular, start your study with the "Book of Memory" - a comparatively complete collection of the names of those killed and missing in action during the Great Patriotic War. It can be found digitally in museums, large libraries and on the Internet.
Step 4
Go to the website of the Memorial Society. There, on the search page, enter the last name, first name and patronymic of your relative, who presumably participated in the Great Patriotic War. As a response, the system will return a list of the names of the dead and missing soldiers. In this list, you can specify the year of birth and death of your relative, as well as the place of birth, which will help you refine your search for relatives.
Step 5
If you know the names of your great-grandfathers who, by age, could have taken part in the First World War, look in the library for file sets of military magazines of that period, for example, "Russian Invalid". They also published lists of the dead and missing.
Step 6
Once you've figured out where your ancestors lived geographically, start an archive search for the area or city in question. The difficulty is that you will not be admitted to the archive personally if you are not affiliated with a research institute or are not studying at the Faculty of History. But you can order in the archive a certificate or an extract from the documents you are interested in. A number of archives provide paid assistance to those who are looking for pedigree, for example, advice on which documents are best to refer to.
