Service 01
Village Report
You give us the family name and the village as it was spelled on the ship manifest. We identify the real village, the parish, and the archive that holds its records.
2 weeksfrom $390
Genealogy · filmed village visits · private guided journeys
Find the village your family came from.
Then stand in it.
A hundred years ago your family left a village in Ukraine whose name nobody at home can spell anymore. We find that village — the church records, the house, the graves, sometimes the living relatives. And when you are ready, we take you there ourselves.
You have a name, a country, and a village nobody can spell. And three good reasons to hesitate.
“Is it safe?”
We work only in western regions, far from the front line. Every journey follows a written safety protocol, with war-risk insurance and a plan for every hour of your day. Read the protocol — it is public.
“Will you find anything?”
We tell you what can be found before you pay. If a case is hopeless — archives burned, records lost — we say so in our first reply and take no money. Roughly one case in ten ends there.
“Who are you, exactly?”
Not an agency with a call centre. A small team in Ukraine, led by one person whose name and face are on this site. When you write, the founder answers. About the founder →
The century between
They walked out through these doors. The village is still there.
In 1905, a landing station in New York harbour processed five thousand people a day. Among them, in sheepskin coats in July, were families from Galicia and Zakarpattia with a village name written on a scrap of paper — spelled the way a tired clerk heard it.
These postcards were printed in the 1920s, when the villages they left were photographed for the first time. The hills have not moved. The churches, mostly, still stand. The road your great-grandmother walked to the train is still a road. It is all still there — waiting for someone to come back and look at it.
Four ways in — start as small as you like
You don’t have to book a journey. You can start with a single question.
Service 02
Archival Research
Birth, marriage and death records from the parish books. A family tree going back four to six generations. Often — living relatives, still in the village.
6–10 weeksfrom $900
Service 03
Virtual Homecoming
We travel to your village for you, and film everything: the house, the church, the cemetery, the people who remember your family name. You receive a documentary about your own family.
4–8 weeksfrom $1,200
Service 04
Homecoming Journey
You come. We handle absolutely everything else — from the moment you land in Poland to the moment you stand in the village your family left a century ago.
7–10 daysfrom $9,000 · per couple
All services in detail
Starting prices, published openly. The exact figure for your family comes in writing after a free assessment — never a surprise at the end.
How you pay
You never send the whole amount up front.
- Research
- Half on commissioning, half when the work is delivered.
- Journeys
- 25% to hold your dates, 50% a month before you travel — and the last 25% only once you are home.
- If we find less than promised
- An agreed part of the fee comes back to you. That is written into the contract, not left to our goodwill.
It is worth asking that same question everywhere else you enquire.
If you cannot travel
We go to your village for you — and bring it back on film.
The house, or what is left of it. The church where your great-grandfather was baptised. The cemetery, tidied, with flowers laid in your name. The oldest people in the village, asked — on camera — whether they remember your family. And a small envelope of earth from the yard.
Not being able to travel does not mean you cannot return.
Who answers your email
I live in Ukraine. I drive to these villages.
Every month I visit villages that people left a hundred years ago for Canada, the United States, Brazil and Argentina. The oldest residents — the ones who still remember the names of the families that left — are approaching ninety. In ten years there will be no one left to ask.
That is why I do this now, and not someday. I will tell you the truth about what can be found before you pay me anything — and if your case is hopeless, I will say so and take no money.
Is it safe to travel to Ukraine right now?
We operate only in the western regions — hundreds of kilometres from any fighting, in cities and villages where daily life carries on. That said, this is a country at war, and we treat it that way: written safety protocol, war-risk insurance, a briefed driver, and a daily check-in message to your family at home. The full protocol is public on our Safety page.
My village’s name is misspelled on every document. Can you still find it?
Almost always, yes. Ship manifests were written down by ear — “Zloczow, Austria” could be any of several places. Matching the distorted spelling against historical gazetteers, parish registers and emigration-era maps is precisely the first thing we do. That is what the Village Report is.
I don’t speak English or Ukrainian well. Can I still write to you?
Yes — write in Polish, Portuguese, Spanish or Russian, whichever is easiest for you, and we answer in the same language. In Ukraine itself, every conversation — with archives, village councils, the oldest woman on your street — happens through us and is translated for you on the spot or in the film.
What if you find nothing at all?
If we judge a case hopeless, we say so in our first reply — before any payment. If paid research yields substantially less than promised, part of the fee is returned. The exact terms are in writing before we start.
Start with a request. It costs nothing.
You write us the family name and whatever you know. We write back honestly: what can be found, what cannot, and what it would cost in your case. No payment, no obligation.