By Walter Kish

Even as a child I knew that I had many relatives “over there”, that almost mythical place where my father and mother had been born and raised, and ultimately were forced by circumstance to leave. My mother had eight brothers and sisters, and my father nine. Of their families they were the only ones that made it to the West. For most of my life, I was dimly aware that I had aunts, uncles and cousins in Ukraine, but I had little contact or interest in them apart from seeing the odd picture of unsmiling, poorly dressed peasants that came every now and then in those letters my parents received from “the old country”.

It was only in 1989, in the waning days of the Soviet Union when I first visited Ukraine with my mother, that I finally became acquainted with the magnitude and reality of the large family of which I was part. To keep track of who was who, I started documenting names and genealogies in a rudimentary family tree so that I could make sense of it all. This ultimately led to a broader interest in trying to find out more about my ancestry and family roots. Through conversations and letters that tapped the memories of the oldest members of my family, I was able to extend the family tree back several generations to the latter part of the 1800’s. However, this only left me yearning for more, and I began searching for more formal sources of documentation to trace my roots even further.

Considering all the wars, revolutions and chaos that Western Ukraine has been subject to in the past century, I was originally not very hopeful of finding much in terms of archival records, yet I was pleasantly surprised. Up until the time of the Soviet occupation of Ukraine, birth, death and marriage details had been scrupulously kept by the churches, both Catholic and Orthodox. Most of those pertaining to Western Ukraine, at least, have managed to survive, and are accessible through the State Historical Archives in Lviv, which houses most of the parish records of the Greek Catholic church going back as far as 1607. These archives also contain land and property records maintained by the efficient bureaucrats of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Through these sources, I was able to trace my father’s line back to the late 1700’s, and even locate an old map of the time showing the precise lot of land owned by my distant ancestor. I was able to arrange this research through relatives in Lviv at a reasonable minimal cost.

In pursuing my genealogical researches, I came across a surprising and valuable source, namely the Church of Latter Day Saints, better known as the Mormons. Being able to trace their family origins and ancestry is a fundamental aspect of their religion, and they have become masters at gathering and making available genealogical data. Shortly after the Soviet Union broke up, teams of researchers were sent into Russia and Ukraine and arranged to microfilm all available church records they could get access to. These were brought back to their headquarters in Utah, and have been organized and catalogued over the past decade. This includes much of the material in the State Archives in Lviv mentioned earlier. Through any of the Church branches that are found in most major Canadian and American cities, you can arrange at minimal cost to have the relevant microfilm shipped to that branch, and through that branch’s facilities, you can read through the microfilmed parish records and search for records of your family ancestors. In this manner I was able to dig up considerable detail about my mother’s family covering most of the nineteenth century, in the comfort of a well-equipped research room in a Mormon church here in Toronto.

Those interested in pursuing such research can contact the Mormon church branch in their city for further information, or obtain relevant information and catalogue details from their web site on the Internet (www.familysearch.org). Currently, about a third of the Lviv parish records have been catalogued and made available, and the above web site provides details as to which village records are accessible.

Another web site with a lot of useful information on the Mormon genealogical data base as well as conducting Ukrainian genealogical searches is www.infoukes.com/geneology. For the more serious researcher, the East European Geneological Society (PO Box 2536 Winnipeg, MB R3C 4A7) has extensive archives and resources and publishes an interesting quarterly journal.

Searching for one’s roots is a rewarding personal experience that transcends the personal enjoyment derived from most hobbies. It enables one to firmly establish one’s own place in the continuity of life and history.