Ancestral Roots

By Walter Kish

On December 15, 1820, in a little village called Sokoliwka some twenty five kilometres west of Brody, a boy was born to a local family by the name of Kish.  He was duly christened Dmytro at the local Greek Catholic church and the particulars recorded in the official parish records.  His parents were recorded as being Ivan Kish and Yevdokia (maiden name Oxiakova), both of whose birth dates and other vital information are unknown.  Dmytro Kish was my great-grandfather, and he is the oldest of my ancestors for whom I have been able to find documentary records in the Ukrainian archives. 

I have devoted a fair amount of time towards tracing my ancestral roots over the past several decades and have managed to compile a fairly detailed family tree that, in parts, spans some six generations of Kishs and Geruns (my mother’s maiden name).  To organize and keep track of it all, I use an excellent computer program called Personal Ancestral File which I downloaded for free from the web site of the Mormon Church (www.familysearch.org), probably the leading experts and practitioners of genealogical research in the world.  Currently, my family tree data base contains close to six hundred names.

When I first became interested, my sources for relevant information were limited to the memories and recollections of my parents and other older family members.  Although this provided some basic information, it lacked precise details, particularly on dates, and rarely went back further than one or two generations.

The advent of the Internet and the breakup of the Soviet Union proved to be key to unlocking previously inaccessible stores of archival data and enabling me to greatly expand my family tree.

The Mormon Church, based in Utah, USA, has been a particular boon to doing genealogical research on my Ukrainian ancestry.  The Mormon faith, with its perhaps curious belief in retroactive salvation for ancestors, places great importance on an individual’s responsibility to learn as much as he or she can about one’s predecessors.  They have devoted much time, effort and resources towards digging up, cataloguing and making available as much archival information as possible to facilitate genealogical research.  Included in this effort was the initiative taken, when Ukraine became independent, to microfilm as many of the Ukrainian church archives on births, deaths and marriages as possible.  These microfilms can be accessed through most of the Mormon churches which are located in all major cities in the U.S. and Canada.   

Through the Mormon Church catalogues, I was able to track down the microfilms containing the official parish records for the villages my parents came from, and I subsequently spent many an afternoon in the excellent research facilities at the Mormon Cathedral in Toronto extracting two centuries worth of my family history.

Because I have visited and even lived in Ukraine in recent times, I have also been able to take my research a step further by visiting the actual State Archives in Ukraine.  Each oblast (province) in Ukraine has official archives containing a wealth of information – not only church records on births, deaths, and marriages, but also cadastral data showing land holdings and agricultural production, village maps, school registration data, taxation records and all kinds of other official data collected by the various state organizations and administrative structures.  These are readily accessible to those wishing to do personal research at minimal fees.   For the serious researcher, the Toronto Ukrainian Genealogy Group organizes annual tours that visit oblast archives in western Ukraine.

Many regional districts (rayony) also have regional level archives that sometimes contain information not found in the oblast archives.  Additional material can also be found at bishopric or diocesan centres in Ukraine, local village churches and at village council offices.

There are a number of clubs and genealogical societies that have good libraries and collections of genealogical reference material that can be of great help to someone just starting to delve into their roots.  The Toronto Ukrainian Genealogy Group is particularly good at this and has an excellent web site with a plethora of information on what resources are available and how to go about researching you family tree (www.torugg.org).  The Lemko web site also has a lot of good resource material on Ukrainian genealogy (www.lemko.org/roots.html).

Dig into your past and find your own “ancestors in the attic”!