Eastern European: Locating Places

Optional Print Course Material: Eastern European: Locating Places

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

Successful genealogical research in Eastern Europe is all about location, location, location. Our ancestors lived in specific places, and the records about them were usually created on a local level, in the town or parish where they resided. Even records of larger jurisdictions, such as at the national level (e.g., census records), were generally written by officials in the specific place where a family lived. Further, it is through a family’s location that we, in part, identify them.

Therefore, locating places in Eastern Europe is critical to the research process. This begins with learning the correct place where an ancestor came from; his ancestral home. From there it is essential to identify the parish where the family attended church. As research progresses, there is often the discovery that persons married into families from other areas. Those locations must also be identified, so that appropriate records can be searched. The primary tools for such research are gazetteers. Learning how to locate, interpret, and use gazetteers will be the primary focus of this course. However, important aspects of Eastern European border changes and political and administrative divisions are also necessary to understand, as is the ability to read, and correctly comprehend place names which may not be familiar to an English-speaking researcher. We will briefly address these issues in this course as well.

The purpose of this course is to learn how to successfully determine ancestral locations in Eastern Europe in order to learn where to find the key records you need to correctly identify your ancestor. For an in-depth study of countries or ethnic groups, students should take the appropriate elective courses.

Course Length: 7 weeks