Looking for foreign relatives or ancestors

ITN asked subscribers who had attempted to trace a branch of their ancestry or find lost or unknown relatives outside of the US to let us know the types of resources they used. We wanted to know which websites proved helpful; whether or not they looked for records of baptisms, marriages or land ownership in a church, courthouse or library; where and approximately when they conducted their in-person search; whether or not they visited a graveyard and any advice they had on doing that, and what sort of expenses were involved in all this. We also wondered, upon their discovering any relatives, how they contacted them and how they were received.

We printed a few responses in the last two issues. We have a few more yet to print.

Many years ago, my husband, Tom, and I began planning a holiday in the part of Hungary from which my mother came. In 1999, in a publication we subscribe to, we ran across a letter from a couple who had spent time in that region. We made contact via e-mail and then called them, asking what we might find. We took our trip in 2001.

From Budapest, we headed to northeastern Hungary looking for a town named Egerlövö. We reached Mezökövesd, the town from which Momma traveled by train to Budapest. We stayed at Hotel Vigadó, recommended by the couple we had talked to, and this seemed to trigger a series of fortuitous events.

Having settled into our rooms, we asked for some assistance in locating places and, possibly, people. The young woman at the registration desk was fluent in English, so she became our interpreter with the people in the hotel. We learned that Egerlövö was only 10 kilometers away and were given directions and a simple map.

As we approached the village, we came upon a cemetery where workers were preparing for a funeral later that day. Although they did not speak English, we were able to explain to them who we were looking for by giving last names and time frames.

One fellow walked us around pointing out tombstones and markers, many of them bearing my family names, Resí and Juhasz. It gave us a good feeling that we were getting closer to family ties in the village. After the man conversed with the other workers, he walked to our car and got in. We deduced that he wanted us to meet someone.

Our helper directed us to the home of Mariska Resí, the postmistress in Egerlövö. He thought that she, being a Resí, would be able to help us find any family still in the area. She spoke no more English than he did, and my Hungarian was quite limited, but she made a phone call to a friend, and shortly a man rode up on a bicycle and introduced himself as István Szendroi. We spent the next few hours in Mariska’s kitchen in a 3-way conversation about my family’s past and present.

Next we were taken to the community center at the church. This church, which has been part of an active religious community since the 12th century, is where Momma’s parents were married, where she and her sister Anna were baptized and where Anna was registered as a godparent to other village children.

We were introduced to villagers who were passing the afternoon together in the center. During our conversation, I showed them a picture of a teenaged Julia, another of my aunts, and their eyes lit up in recognition.

A younger woman, apparently a caretaker, showed us a large, very old set of ledgers. In one of the books was the original baptismal records for both Aunt Anna and Momma. This was the first piece of hard evidence proving the past as it had been related to me.

István then insisted we go to the parsonage to meet Pastor Attila Gordos, who showed us the official record of my grandparents’ marriage. We were able to get copies of these documents, and the pastor gave us his e-mail address for future correspondence.

István told us of another family connection he’d looked up. My grandfather’s brother John had chosen to return to Egerlövö rather than stay in the US. We walked to the house John had built. He, of course, had passed away years before and some other family was in the house. Next door, however, lived his granddaughter, Lujia, my second cousin.

Lujia was down the street visiting with a friend, and as we arrived she came running up the path shouting, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” in Hungarian with her friend at her side.

In the parlor of her home, she told us about her family and my great-uncle John and about his coming back to Egerlövö because of loneliness. She also related that Aunt Anna was her godmother as well as her brother John’s. This was John Resí, second cousin to me and cousin to Momma and my Uncle Stevie.

Lujia brought out a family Bible that her grandmother had gotten in America. In it, the family had recorded the births of both my grandfather and all his brothers, including John. Lujia wanted to know everything about our children. This get-together at Lujia’s was a very emotional session on both sides — lots of tears of joy.

Lujia and her friend gave us gifts to bring home, nothing fancy but from the heart. For Uncle Stevie, Momma’s brother, Lujia gave a bouquet of plastic flowers to be placed on Anna’s grave.

Eleven years later, in 2012, Tom and I returned to Hungary and met with the only remaining living relative. During that trip, we came across information about my father’s side of the family, inspiring us in the next phase of our search.

Shirleyann Galambos Gleason
Bossier City, LA

I made three trips to Wales while researching my ancestor John Jones, and I wrote a book, “Medieval Welsh Ancestors of Certain Americans” (2004). I had no idea when I began that I would trace my family’s lineage back 1,700 years!

The first trip was in 1985 to get a feel for the country, once I found out that the place where Jones was from, Esgair Evan, was a farm near Machynlleth in Montgomeryshire (now Powys). The second time, in 1988, I attended classes on Welsh research near Aberystwyth sponsored by the Powys Family History Society (Parish Chest, Ltd., Credvill, Quakers Rd., Perranwell Station, Truro, TR3 7PJ, U.K.; phone +44 [0] 1872 864807).

In 2003 I did some intensive research at the National Library of Wales, enjoying working in a reading room where printed materials not easily available in the US were on open shelves within a few feet of my table.

Sources I found helpful were the Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological & Natural History Society, a long run of journals containing many helpful articles; George T.O. Bridgeman’s book “History of the Princes of South Wales” and his article “The Princes of Upper Powys” in the journal Collections Historical & Archaeological Relating to Montgomeryshire; George T. Clark’s book “Limbus Patrum Morganiae” (genealogies in English of south Wales families); articles in the journals Archaeologia Cambrensis and Cymmrodorion, and J.Y.W. Lloyd’s “History of Powys Fadog.”

I had a list of articles to find when I went to Aberystwyth so was able to work efficiently. Once I had figured out one or two sources, they led to others, and I also checked out bibliographies in university library catalogs. The website www.worldcat.org was useful in finding titles not easily located in US libraries.

All of the books and journals were in English, and most of them were in the reading room in the National Library of Wales. I did not attempt to use original sources, most of which were written in Latin or Welsh.

I read everything I could in preparation for my trips. During my trip to visit the grave of John Jones, who died in Llanbrynmair in 1685, I was received kindly by several people when I knocked on the doors of ancient houses where my ancestors once lived.

Carl Boyer III
Santa Clarita, CA

I’ve been doing and teaching genealogy since 1978, mostly in the US and Canada, though I have been to Scotland twice, Ireland once and Germany several times for research.

The first step to locating foreign relatives is doing your homework. Trace your genealogy here, step by step, through every generation until you know enough about your immigrant ancestor to identify him/her overseas.

The Latter-day Saints’ FamilySearch Centers in Salt Lake City, Utah, and many other locations have access to millions of foreign records of people of many religions, but without exact information it is very difficult to identify the correct person.

For example, my grandfather, John Ritchie, and his wife, Catherine, came from Scotland to Canada in about 1906. I looked at the FamilySearch microfiche for “John Y. Ritchie — marriages in Scotland” and found over 5,000 records! I’m sure many of them were duplicates, and lots were listed without the middle initial, but there was no way to tell which one might have been about him.

Check with your oldest living relatives for Bibles, letters and their family stories. One of my aunts had some letters from her mother’s cousin in Scotland who married a Polish refugee in WWII. With her unusual surname, I was able to locate her in a Scottish village. I visited her in 1992 and continued to correspond.

My Canadian uncle was in WWI and invalided to an Edinburgh hospital, where he ran into a cousin, also injured. Knowing the cousin’s name, I went online to www.ancestry.com, typed “military records” into the search box and located his record and family home. I wrote to everybody with that last name in the rural area my people emigrated from and found a brother and niece of the cousin.

I was able to visit and have high tea with them, but they knew nothing about the rest of the family. Very often, it is the family who leaves the old country who retains most of the culture and customs.

If you can identify where your ancestor might have arrived in the US, you can check the local courts there for first and second papers. (Part of the naturalization process, first papers were filed by someone after living two years in the US, second papers after five years.) These declare an immigrant’s intention to become a citizen and might list not only the names and birth dates of all relatives but the street addresses they were living at in the old country.

These can be filed in any court, so the search is not always easy. If you live near a branch of the US National Archives, use the Internet to check their holdings to see if local courts have deposited any immigration documents there. (Each location’s website lists what kind of material is being stored, such as microfilm records of court documents for a certain period, but the actual records are not online.)

Death records for elderly people can be very inaccurate for birth information, but adding census, land, tax, school and church data can reduce the errors.

Once you have a birth date and a country for the ancestor, you can start checking for foreign records. Read genealogy “how to” books for your area of interest. Available in many libraries, a good start is “The Source — A Guidebook of American Genealogy,” second edition (1996, Ancestry Publishing).

Recognize that the national boundaries of most foreign countries have changed over time. Also, do not assume that, for the time period you’re looking into, the name of the place you’re researching is the name that it is indexed under now.

For example, the Holy Roman Empire was the name of the area from Russia to France that was controlled by a theocratic monarchy from 962 to 1806. The FamilySearch Center in Salt Lake City has more than 20 volumes of place names within the Holy Roman Empire/Germany, etc. They are not on the Internet.

If you are searching the FamilySearch Center online catalog, read first about how their “Place” records are filed. I believe many are by whatever name was popular around the mid 1800s. If you do not find what you want, try a larger or smaller location (state/shire/department, county/district, township/parish or city/village), and if it is near a country border, try spelling it in the next country’s language or sound it out and try every spelling variation.

One thing about doing research in Europe that is very different than in the US is the need to make appointments ahead of time. In Europe, if you just show up, even at a library or church, the records custodians may be offended and not give out information. It is best to write a letter, in the local language, ahead of time, asking for an appointment on a certain date or two for one specific item.

At one Catholic church in Germany in 1999, I called for an appointment and was told that only men were allowed to search the archives because women “might damage the records.” I tried to argue that I had worked in archives and could bring my own archival gloves. His reply was, “The gloves are not the same as you buy in department stores. Women are not allowed. Good-bye.”

Hiring a researcher to do the preliminary work can be expensive, but a good one might save you a lot of time and money. I’ve had mixed results, mostly unsatisfactory, with researchers I’ve hired in Canada and the US.

Before the Internet, I learned about researchers from either ads in genealogy magazines or organizations in the target area. I found that, as a general rule, people who placed “for hire” advertisements gave the poorest results. Volunteer researchers for genealogical/historical societies gave the best.

Today I look up the location on the Internet, find a library or society and ask if they have a list of researchers they can send me. A good researcher in one area may be able to refer you to somebody in another location.

You also can do an Internet search for “genealogy chat rooms” for your area of interest (ex., Westphalia, Lanarkshire, Warszawa, etc.) to see if there are recommendations or complaints about particular researchers. Your local genealogical society might have an interest group for your ancestor’s country. They can be a big help (and even have travel tips).

Many localities have genealogical websites. It helps to know when and how the records were kept in the area you’re researching.

In GREAT BRITAIN, records of births and marriages originally were kept in local parishes. Now offices of The National Archives have digitized census records and some old parish records.

The website http://scotsfamily.com/parish.htm lists records for Scotland, as does that of The National Archives of Scotland.

One of the best free websites is that of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, but very few parish records remain, and you need to know both county and parish to locate them.

Most official Irish records were destroyed in the (1922) rebellion. There are several for-pay websites with records, including www.origins.net and www.ancestryireland.co.uk. Griffith’s Valuation (a private survey completed in 1868) has a number of Irish records.

You can search for records by church affiliation. Keep in mind that in some places and during some time periods, Jews were required to register births with the nearest official church, so do not be surprised to find them in Catholic or Protestant churches.

As for research tools, always carry pencils, a sharpener, paper clips, carbon paper (so you can keep a record of the order slips you submit, since most European research sites do not have open stacks of books), coins and paper money, a good map of the area, and the telephone number, street address and open hours of the library plus a copy of the reply to your appointment request.

Have your hotel call to verify the appointment the day before. You cannot expect the front-desk personnel at your hotel to do any kind of document translation, but calling to confirm an appointment, reservation or tour is one of their functions. And if there is a problem with the appointment, they can translate for you.

With the copy of your appointment letter in hand, the agency cannot easily deny you the appointment. Having the hotel call also makes you more respectable and courteous in the agency’s eyes.

Be respectful when doing research in cemeteries. Some are private, and many frown upon visitors doing rubbings of grave markers or using shaving cream, chalk or other things to bring out faded or worn inscriptions, as it might cause damage.

Instead, try recording grave markers with a camera. On a sunny afternoon, sharp shadows will add contrast and bring out faint images.

Keep separate logs of photos and research places, starting with location, date and time. List everything you check, even if you had no results.

Note every photocopy you request, since what they give you probably will not tell you what file or book it came from. I guarantee that the one time you do not record the source citation, you will really need it.

One last caution — at home or abroad, not everybody is as interested in your ancestors as you are, especially some of your relatives. Libraries and archives hate when people write rambling volumes about “Great-grandma Maria, who might have been born in Italy,” without ever mentioning her last name, birth date or anything else but demanding, “Tell me everything about her.”

Some bureaucrats hate genealogists on general principles, but most will help if you are organized, succinct and limit your query to one or two specific questions with full names, approximate dates and places.

When you calculate the cost per hour of your trip as opposed to hiring a researcher, traveling is a lot more expensive, but it’s also a lot more fun. And whether you are walking across your ancestors’ land in Scotland or Nebraska, it is still a thrill.

Kit Stewart
Sequim, WA