Experts That Help

Professional genealogists and archivists can open doors to family history work like nobody else can, especially for a person looking to find records abroad. While many countries are moving the records online and opening them up to the public, others have locked records and require an in person visit to local archives or churches.

When my husband first told me that he had a Josits in his family line I was excited. Having lived in Slovenia, I knew that name was south slavic, from somewhere in the Balkans. However, I had no idea where to start my research. I asked my friends in the Balkans if they had any ideas what region the name may come from, though from what little research I'd done I thought I already knew.

One of the responses astounded me. Lidija Sambunjak, my friend of then 11 years, had become a professional genealogist. She told me that A. Josits was probably from Serbia, but he was most definitely Croatian and therefore a Catholic. "What? How did she know all of that?" I wondered.

The Jensens and the Sambunjaks

"Because of his name," she replied.

I'm from the old Shakespeare school of a rose by any other name, so the nuance of name divination is always lost on me. Regardless, I was thrilled to have a starting place. What's more, Lidija told me exactly what documents I should start looking for to find where A Josits was born. She looked up a list of microfilmed Catholic church books that were available in the US from his region of Serbia so I could do the research from home or at a Family History Center near me.

Our work had begun, but after only five years, we'd reached the end of the line. There were no more microfilm and no civil records online. Serbia's policy is that research must be done in person. Whereas Poznan, Poland has records digitized and searchable all around the world, we would have to spend thousands of dollars to get to Serbia and hope more records were there.

Again, this is where experts are invaluable. In preparation for our trip, Lidija told us to get copies of three different books that were now in the public domain. They were indexes from a nearby town where one of our ancestors had been born. Additionally, Lidija told as that one copy of the marriage book was available in the Library of Congress, and another in Cleveland, OH. I have to be honest, I'm not sure how she knows so much, but that's why we use her. For the past five years we've been working on our genealogy from the comfort of our home because we were able to get records from an entire town while at the Library of Congress.

Back to Serbia. To do research in the archive, according to our understanding, you need an account with the archive in case you would like to make an photocopies of books. That takes time to set up, and when we are in Serbia our most valuable commodity is time. For this reason we need a researcher with an account so we can do the research without the bureaucratic delay. That's where Vesna came in, the researcher we had met on our first trip to Sombor. Even though she wasn't there, we were able to work off of her account since she'd emailed the archivist ahead of our arrival, giving her consent.

The last expert I'll mention is the archivist, Anastazia. She knows a lot about the area, the records, anything you'd hope an archivist would know. As important, is her ability to read the writing in the records. That's not such an easy feat. I have no doubt some of those priests got into a little too much wine, not only as evidenced by the stain in the book, but by the scribbling that is completely indiscernible to anybody other than Anastazia or another experienced archivist!

In our experience, genealogists and archivists have saved us time, money and a huge headache. We personally would not consider doing this work without one at least consulting.

By Araxie Jensen