How it works
From a misspelled name to standing at the church door.
Every family’s case is different, but the road is the same five steps. You can stop after any of them — each one has value on its own.
Step 1
A free written assessment — no payment, no obligation
You write us what you have: a family name, a country, perhaps a village name spelled three different ways on three documents. Within two business days you get a written answer telling you, honestly, what can realistically be found and what it would cost. About one case in ten cannot be helped — old wars burned archives, and no one serious will promise otherwise. If yours is such a case, we say so here, and this is where it ends. No charge.
Step 2
We find the village
The name on the manifest was written down by ear a century ago. We match it against historical gazetteers, Austrian-era maps and parish structures until we know exactly which village it was, what it is called today, which archive holds its church books, and which of them survive for your years. You receive that answer in writing, before anything larger is worth paying for.
Step 3
We find the people
In the parish registers: births, marriages, deaths — your family tree, four to six generations deep, with copies of the original handwritten records. In the village itself: we knock on doors. It is not rare that someone with your family name still lives on the same street, and does not know you exist.
Step 4
We go — with you, or for you
If you can travel, we plan the journey with you around your village — the border, the driver, the days, the interpreting. If you cannot, we go for you and bring the village back: the house, the church, every stone with your family's name, the street walked on camera, and the voices of those who remember.
Step 5
It doesn’t end when you fly home
You keep the photographs, the records, and the addresses of people who now know you. If you wish, we keep tending the family grave — flowers on remembrance days, a photograph to your inbox after every visit.
Five different searches
Which of these is your family's story?
Where the records are depends on what happened to the family, not on where the village is today. Each of these pages says which archives your case runs through, and which part of it costs nothing.
Which archive holds your village
Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Warsaw: it depends on the year, the rite and the eparchy — not on today's region.
A Lemko family
The village is in Poland and so are the old registers. The family that stayed was moved to Ukraine in 1944–46 — into the regions where we work.
A Polish family from the Kresy
Lwów, Tarnopol, Stanisławów, Wołyń: what is in Warsaw, what stayed here, and what is left of the village.
A Jewish family from Galicia, Volhynia or Podolia
Two empires and two record systems. Which books are in Warsaw, which survive in Ukraine, and what to do where the community's registers are gone.
Taken as forced labour, 1941–45
Nobody emigrated — somebody was taken to Germany. Three archives in three countries wrote it down.
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.