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CROATIAN GENEALOGY COLUMN EXTRA

Quality time with an expert (4)

Help saving vital records
from the worms!

Lidija Sambunjak
professional genealogist

21 Feb 2010 One thing every genealogist is concerned about is the condition of the books he or she uses in the research. Today, many of the archival documentation has been preserved by microfilming or digitalizing, but in areas of Croatia and Slovenia, this is not the case for all of the documentation, especially for vital books that hadn't been taken by the government, but stayed in parishes.

Some parishes didn't (or still don't) want to send their birth, marriage & death records to local archives due to some reasonable, but also sometimes unreasonable reasons and lots of times one would find books in a terrible condition - in moisty cabinets, books eaten by worms lying on a soily ground or books where there are more missing pages than those preserved.

Parish burned to the ground

But last week I visited a parish in Slovenia where I was pretty amazed by the care given to the books by the priest. The parish burned to the ground in 1944 and all that was preserved were copies of originals in a far away archive in Trieste, Italy.

After copies of these copies arrived back to the parish they were used by many and weren't treated with much respect, so they were soon worn out. Then a new priest was assigned to this parish, who obviously knew how important these records are for people that live or have lived there. So, he did something which is rarely seen in parishes accros the world.

Books preserved in a digital form

He traveled to the archive where the copies are stored and he took a shot of all of the preserved books, converted them in the computer format and made them available to everyone who would visit his parish!

If only more priests were like him! So when you go to the next parish again and see records that are not properly stored or preserved, try to convince the priest to do more for preservation of the records. Perhaps you may end up being the reason why records of thousands of people would have been saved.

Recent columns by Lidija Sambunjak

New! By their noses shall they be recognized People who want their family trees to be researched come from all around the world and it's no wonder every one of them is different. But as special as family Sadar was, none were before them.(11 Oct 2010)

A joy of finding destroyed records Wars produce negative consequences on today's genealogical research, because, during wars, vital records are in a threat of destruction. (28 Feb 2010)

A postcard that revealed a family secret Old pictures and old letters can sometimes be a very good source for researching our family history. But they can also be a source of surprising revelations. (8 Dec 2010)

Pictures engraved in the stone For a family picture to be preserved for a century or longer takes a small miracle. How many of us have a picture of an ancestor born in the 19th century? Not many, I presume. (4 Sep 2010)

A unique wedding present One of my best friends got married this month. I wondered what could I possibly give her as a wedding present which would be of any real worth to her? (2 Aug 2010)

Why do grandma and grandpa have the same surname? There are parishes where you can find people with the exact same surname that are not directly related. But sometimes they are. (21 May 2010)

Death records are not easy to read, but it's not about handwriting I think we need to be grateful for our ancestors whose challenges we can hardly imagine. (15 Apr 2010)

Building family history on a firm evidence A true genealogist should base his or her research on written records, and not on questionable tales. (27 Mar 2010)

What a joy it is to connect lost relatives! It is very rewarding and often quite emotional for a researcher to witness how profound impact he or she can have on the people (6 Mar 2010)

Help saving vital records from the worms! One thing every genealogist is concerned about is the condition of the books he or she uses in the research. (21 Feb 2010)

Where did the children hide? As I was trying to find siblings of a grandfather of a family, I looked back and forth in records of many years, but with no success. (06 Feb 2010)

Be careful not to miss a widower The case was clear: the man had been married more than once, but the question was - how many times? (22 Jan 2010)

Bingo! Elderly superladies! As I exhausted all the ideas on how to continue with a paricular case, a simple phonecall saved my day. (15 Jan 2010)

Quality time with an expert Probably the best way how to learn to do our own genealogy is to watch other, more experienced genealogists doing the job, and then emulate them. (29 Dec 2009)


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