Do you already have experience as an independent genealogist, what does the result of such a work consist in?
I have been working as independent genealogist for over ten years indeed and I have accumulated a long experience. I have been working for ten years as an independent genealogist and till the final result the work seems provocative enough. What is interesting in this job is the fact that you never know what to expect will happen next, I mean at the final result, because it consists in researching your family’s roots which you know very little. First of all it means a lot of attention and after that the selection of the data received from the costumer.
After that follows the organization of the known data and of the one that you would discover later. After that begins the field work which consists in a succession of visits to different institutions of the government, where the papers from register of births and not only are kept. Finally you have to be charged with all the information about your costumer’s family together with copies of the registers of birth, marriage, death, but also of some connected (changing of name, decision of divorce, papers about obtaining or losing citizenship, changing of religion, papers of adoption, papers about national or international adoptions).
And this is only a side of my work which is known as the action of drawing the genealogical tree. But the work of genealogist presupposes a variety of actions, respectively, final results. People are concerned about the origin of their family names, about the temporary or definitive migration of their family, the spatial origin of their family, looking for some family members that are still alive (in the country or abroad) or dead, searching for connexions between a family and another or many others etc. All these actions must be tried on with proves by the genealogist so that the interested people won’t have doubts regarding his work. The final result is represented by a folder where all these information are written( with the corresponding translations) accompanied by photocopies of all the researched documents which are related to the researched family (birth, marriage, death certificates etc).
Who are those interested in this ?
For now, unfortunately, the most interested are those whose families lived or are still living in Romania. The communist period left a shadow also over the documents that testify the membership to his family of somebody that lived abroad. After the revolution much more people, especially jews, were interested in the genealogical tree of their families, which lived or still live in Romania. But the jews are not the only one interested in genealogy, now they are more and more concerned about knowing their roots. On the one hand there is the sentimental impulse that makes people concerned about their roots and on the other hand, there is a juridical and even economical concern.
And here we recall the claims (raise a claim), the sequences, the debates of some heritage, changing the name or the citizenship. Some interesting cases are those of the children adopted from Romania or abroad and which reaching a certain age wish to know their natural families. Then the searching of some disappeared members of families. The most frequent cases are those during the two world wars, when many people disappeared mysteriously. So it presupposes not only an investigation work but also a research one. In fact the two complete each other in the case of a genealogist work.
Coming at the one interested in this I mention that the services palette is variate and I would add the organizing of some trips which means knowing the places where your family lived, researching the funerary monuments for completing the genealogical tree, but also to discover the graves of the one concerned about it, translations of old papers written in different languages (Latin, German, Hungarian, Cyrillic, Greek, Russian), finding the buildings where that family lived, even doing some actions that would lead to taking them back if there is the legally support), identifying some properties or their owners, information about the activity of the family members, about their preparation. So as you may notice there is a large variety of actions which concern more and more people and lately it attracts more and more Romanian citizens.
Which is the research potential of genealogy in Romania (Historical Romania)?
There is a large potential because this didn’t exist during the communist period. If we exclude a few concerns from the period between the wars we can say that these researches are just at their beginning in Romania. Because in the period between the wars there were a few concerns and especially due to the complete silence from the communist period, after 1989 the potential of this work becomes huge.
Even so there isn’t a special place for the Romanian genealogy. Furthermore, in the Romanian nomenclature of jobs there is not the one of geologist. In what concerns the documentary fund I can say that there is a huge potential and that it needs many years of experience to know how to select them depending on what you are searching for. Chronologically, Romania organized the archive services from the year 1850 (data which varies from one region to another), so, we have over 157 years of recording the documents of registers of births, marriages, which started to be researched, very late, only after 1990.
It was talked often about the restriction of access to the archive information, is it also the case of the genealogy sources?
Indeed there is still a way, obvious enough, of restricting, as much as possible, the access to genealogical information and not only. But if you are a researcher employed at a research or educational institution, especially of higher education, you have access to a large palette of documents, of course under the pretext of a research theme. But there are enough funds that cannot be accessed by these researchers or other funds that are classified as lost. Although there are enough documents that can afford whatever genealogical action and not only (many of these were numbered above).
These restrictions are related to legislation or of not willing of the employees of the National Archive?
I didn’t have problems regarding the access to documents from the network of the National Archives from Romania since I have been an independent genealogist. Of course, sometimes the employees can be more zealous or some of the documentary funds cannot be researched but after some recommendation.
Is this among the attributions of the National Archive Branches to answer to the requests formulated in this regard?
From what I know, the situation of the National Archives is not very good and they cannot afford to handle also the genealogical researches. Of course, depending on the employees and on the disposable time they can handle this kind of actions, but the one that are in charge of this are not genealogists. Furthermore if you don’t know the exact data then they will take the searching action in their own funds. And this is practically in which the work of a genealogist consists – having very few data to build the genealogical tree of a family. Then through experience you learn that the papers of birth registers consist in a lot of knacks which can mislead you or can take you to completely wrong ways.
Compared to an employee of archives a genealogist should know the languages in which the documents were written, should know the legislation of the registers of birth from each stage of organizing the archives, should have knowledge of Historiography, Etymology, Geography, Demography, Toponimy - Toponomastics and Linguistics. The historical and geography backgrounds are very important, without them you have the chance to lose yourself in time and space.
Anyways you cannot ask a filial of the national archives to draw the genealogical tree of the family , but only to ask for a extract, for example, after the register of birth of a family member (if you prove that you are relative of first grade with this ) about whom you know all the data ( the date and place of birth, the name of parents, religion etc).
Do you remember about a certain stories?
In this work you meet and at the same time you discover a lot of stories. It’s hard for me to select one of them. But for your pleasure I will talk about three of them from which you can learn more about the importance and the expectations of the genealogical services.
1. A few years ago I was contacted by a German painter whose son was the student of a Jew teacher from Kent University, USA. Because he considered that the Nazi regime did a lot of harm to jews he needed to search the teacher’s mother (the only member of the family alive). First of all he found out about his teacher’s story from his son then he tried through internet to search a few things about the place where he remembered his mother was born. (Repedea village - Maramures Mountains). This is how he reached me asking about the village Oroszkő (this is old Hungarian name - here intervenes the knowledge of toponomastics in the sense of identifying the cities and villages after their old names).
The family of the teacher survived the holocaust and managed to emigrate to Germany (the part controlled by Americans) after the war ended . The young couple managed to get there and the mother gave birth immediately in a campaign hospital. Before the birth the teacher’s father died, most probably killed by typhus. Remained alone the mother wanted after the birth to go for two weeks to search for the family’s members in Palestine. After she came back the baby was moved to another location, after that he was adopted by a family from USA. Today he is a history teacher and I helped him find his natural mother who still lives in Israel.
2. A few years ago I was contacted by an English journalist who wanted to find out more information about the village Ruscova from Maramures, where was born Michael Howard’s (Michael Howard is a British politician and leader of the opposition in UK - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Howard) father from UK. Of course he had become, in that day, the leader of a strong political party in UK. Later I started to correspond directly with Michael Howard because I had worked for the genealogical tree of his family.
3. My first costumer was (now he is a very good friend of mine) Gary Davis from Canada. A respectable Economics teacher. He asked me to research the register of birth from Poienile de sub Munte, Maramures. After two years of research I realized that in fact it was all about Poienile Izei, also from Maramures. Indeed there is where his family was. This shows again the importance of the information received but also my investigations as genealogist to reach the right place.
Name: Head of RomGen Genealogy Bureau
Company name: www.romgen.com (Uplift Genealogy Services)
E-mail: romgenealogy@gmail.com
Phone: +40730540512
