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How books without an index are read
No name in the tree is filled in by guesswork: every fact is checked against the frame, and an illegible field stays empty. Below are the measured limits of the method and cases where a search by name alone would have gone wrong.
5 steps from questionnaire to tree
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Questionnaire
The surname, approximate years and where the family was from: a district, a nearby town, or the name of the place itself, the way it was said at home. Archive inventories are organized by parish, so every village or nearby town name narrows the search. If only the oblast (province) is known, write what the family remembers: that is where the search starts.
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Search through the catalogs
First we establish the parish. The Church of St John the Theologian in Іванківці Хребтіївські (Ivankivtsi Khrebtiivski) also recorded four more villages: Шурка, Пилипи, Хребтіїв and Джуржівка. Then the archive, fond, opys and sprava (collection / inventory / file), and the years, including what is not in the free catalogs.
In DAKhmO (State Archive of Khmelnytskyi Oblast) ф. 18 оп. 1, the files of five different villages named Іванківці sit side by side; the church’s dedication, not the name, tells them apart. The catalog titles file 295 of that inventory «Церква, с. Горчична…», and «С.Іванківці 1869–1870, 1874–1900» appears only at the end of the title, without saying which one.
A search for Барсуки in the same catalog gives 0: the village’s books are filed under the name Борсуківці (Borsukivtsi), DAKhmO ф. 18 оп. 2 спр. 1–3.
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Reading the book straight through
Frame by frame. Every occurrence of the surname is recorded with its frame number, skipped pages are marked. The TsDIAL catalog calls ф. 201 оп. 4а спр. 4066 a book of births, and from frame 5365 it holds the 1860 marriages of Небилів (Nebyliv).
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Checking against another record
A name from one record is confirmed by another: a child’s birth is checked against the parents’ marriage, paternity against a death record. Until the link is confirmed, the person stands apart, as someone who merely shares the surname.
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The tree
A fact enters the tree with a crop, the full frame and the archive reference.
5 tasks besides reading the book
Reading straight through finds a record if it is in the book and written the way we are searching for it. Below are cases from our own family tree where that was not enough.
Spelling variants
In the largest free name index, the name Kondrat is entered as «Кодрат». Because of one letter, five searches missed our ancestor’s second marriage.
In one parish, our surname was written with the ending «-икъ», in others «-юкъ». A search for «-юкъ» in the books of the first parish finds nothing.
Of our 42 proven “no” results, 4 turned out to be wrong, and each rested on a single spelling. We searched for «сповідні», and the catalog has «сповідальні»; we searched for «костел», and the catalog has «костьол».
The female line
A woman in a parish register could be recorded by her first name and patronymic alone. In 1867 that is how «Екатерина Василієва» was recorded, the mother of one of our ancestors. Her maiden name is still unknown.
The maiden names of two women in our tree came only from marriage records. One wife is named «Ольга Ларіонова» in the 1899 and 1900 records, and «Анна Иларіонова» in 1910. Whether this is the same woman or a second marriage is not yet proven.
In a book of births, the mother’s maiden name sits on the right-hand page of the spread. One of our passes through 91 entries read only the left-hand pages, so its “no” does not cover maiden names. A child missing from the father’s parish is looked for in the mother’s parish too: a woman could have gone to give birth at her own parents’ home.
Similar families
On 14 November 1899 a boy really was born in Ставчани (Stavchany), on exactly the date we were searching for. It was Pavel Kolohnets, an unrelated child.
Two Polish forms of our surname in the index to DAKhmO ф. 230 оп. 1 спр. 16 belong to different families from different uyezds. Our family is only one of them.
Sources besides parish registers
| Source | What it gives | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Confessional list | household composition with everyone’s age | DAKhmO ф. 315 оп. 1 спр. 11910, Іванківці, 1875 |
| Revision lists | population censuses by village; the fond has 90 inventories, 53,330 files | DAKhmO ф. 226 |
| Nobility genealogical books | noble families with the uyezd of each | DAKhmO ф. 230 |
| Military records | casualty reports from the Second World War | TsAMO (Central Archive of the Russian Ministry of Defence) ф. 58 оп. 18002 |
Official requests to archives
In the summer of 2026 we sent requests to the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) and MVS (Ministry of Internal Affairs) archives in Kyiv, and to institutions in Khmelnytskyi Oblast. Written answers came back in 1, 17, 23 and 29 days; one archive has not answered yet.
| Who answered | Days from the request | What they answered |
|---|---|---|
| The regional MVS department in Khmelnytskyi Oblast | 1 | July 30, 2026: the file does not exist |
| DAKhmO | 17 | first sent the wrong files, then suggested searching the name-index platform; August 20, 2026, an invoice for digital copies |
| The regional SBU office in Khmelnytskyi Oblast | 23 | August 21, 2026: the file does not exist, advised to contact DAKhmO |
| HDA SBU (Sectoral State Archive of the SBU), Kyiv | 29 | August 27, 2026: named the file and the archive it was transferred to |
| HDA MVS (Sectoral State Archive of the MVS), Kyiv | more than 57 | as of September 25, 2026, no answer |
The law gives an archive 30 days to answer. DAKhmO twice wrote that the books of fond 18 are on the largest free name-index platform, although opys 1 is not there.
The SBU refers us to DAKhmO, DAKhmO to the police. Our letter to the police address from the UINP (Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance) directory came back undelivered.
We write and pay for archive requests: up to two in Family, up to four in Heritage, more only by agreement with you before it is sent. DAKhmO’s invoice for a search and a letter of no findings came to UAH 298.63 with VAT. If your tree needs a request, the deadline is extended by the time the archive takes to answer.
How a machine reads nineteenth-century cursive
Badly. This was measured on a revision list, a nineteenth-century census: tables with repeating rows. A parish register (also called a metrical book) reads worse, so the numbers below show the ceiling of machine reading.
| What we checked | Result |
|---|---|
| Confident errors | none |
| Entry structure and age | 7 of 7 |
| Names, of 3 checked | 1 of 3 |
| Years, of 2 checked | 0 of 2 |
Where the machine could not read a name or a year, it showed that. These are exactly the places a person checks.
A blind control test on one spread of a revision list: DAZhO (State Archive of Zhytomyr Oblast) ф. 118 оп. 14 спр. 142, Радзивилів (Radzyvyliv), 20 May 1858.
- Machine reading without a check against the scan does not go into the tree.
3 sources of scans and the limit of each
The coverage table is built from inventories anyone can open themselves. Next to each is the date it was checked.
| Source | What it gives | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| A name index run by a Polish genealogical society |
595 Ukrainian parishes, years indexed separately for births, marriages and deaths | August 13, 2026 |
| AGAD, zespół 298 Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych, Warsaw |
scans of Greek Catholic parish registers of the Lviv archeparchy and the Peremyshl and Stanislaviv dioceses, 1728–1951: 460 units, 289 parishes, 504 populated places with their attached villages. 448 of the units link directly to the scan gallery | August 16, 2026 |
| TsDIAL, ф. 201, оп. 4а catalog: ARCHIUM |
scans of the parish registers of Greek Catholic parishes of Galicia (Halychyna) and Volhynia, 1686–2017: 11 395 files in the inventory, of which 6 926 are parish registers with scans that open with no registration, payment or watermark | August 19, 2026 |
For 2 101 of 2 328 places we established the Ukrainian name from a reference work: «Kamionka Strumiłowa» is now called Кам’янка-Бузька (Kamianka-Buzka). We do not publish the rest: without a Ukrainian name, no one would find the page.
Of the 6 926 files with parish registers and scans, we merged 4 921 files down to 1 497 populated places. 1 231 of them are in no other inventory.
Other sources
| Source | What it is for |
|---|---|
| The largest free platform with name indexes | name indexes for part of the oblasts and microfilmed scans that open from abroad without a visit to a dedicated reading room |
| A Podillia parish catalog | the parish composition of Podillia (historical Podolia) down to village level |
| A Jewish genealogical reference | Jewish communities and a geographical reference |
| A catalog of Ukrainian archival files | a directory of files by fond and opys |
12 oblasts: access from abroad works for all of them
On August 25, 2026, we opened one microfilm for each of 12 oblasts from Portugal. All of them opened, with no visit to a Family History Center and no line about restricted access.
| Oblast | Film | What is on it | Frames |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vinnytsia | 007813481 | civil status records | 964 |
| Volyn | 007809268 | parish registers | 918 |
| Zhytomyr | 004348030 | duplicate parish registers | 976 |
| Ivano-Frankivsk | 007613228 | parish registers | 961 |
| Kyiv | 004810562 | documents | 1,121 |
| Lviv | 004933671 | parish registers | 911 |
| Odesa | 007809041 | civil registration | 755 |
| Poltava | 007824335 | population census | 2,110 |
| Rivne | 007810178 | duplicate parish registers | 752 |
| Ternopil | 007613285 | parish registers | 890 |
| Khmelnytskyi | 007809297 | parish registers | 954 |
| Chernihiv | 007782614 | church records 1717–1935 | 991 |
What this table does not promise. An open film does not mean the whole oblast is open: the platform negotiates with each archive separately. Your locality is checked by the €19 search.
The AGAD gallery only works over http, so your browser will mark it “not secure.” It is a page of images, and you enter nothing on it.
We read only scans an archive has opened for viewing: state archives, open catalogs, Wikimedia mirrors. So you can open every frame in the tree yourself, using the same reference. A source we have not reached is marked struck through in the report.
Tetenick or Jelenick: an illegible field stays empty
Filling in a name from the context of the era is not allowed. Every fact in the tree carries one of three marks: fact, family testimony or version. An illegible field stays empty.
The 1860 marriage extract for Небилів (Nebyliv) has «nata Tetenick». On a quick read it looks like «Jelenick», a name that is ours by neither line. Accepted as one of ours, such a record would have given the tree someone else’s ancestors.
- the loop of the letter runs down
- Jelenick
- the crossbar is straight
- Tetenick
75 years and other limits of the method
No researcher guarantees this
- The number of generations. It depends on what has survived.
- A found ancestor. If the record is not in the books we read, the result is a proven “no,” with frame numbers.
- Books that are not accessible. Books that are not online, and that the archive will not copy, cannot be read. We check the archive’s own note: DAKhmO writes about ф. 226 that «фонд постраждав від пожежі, доступ обмежено» (the fond was damaged by fire, access is restricted), yet opys 79 and 80, about 110 files, are online.
- Records less than 75 years old. They sit with the civil registry offices and are closed by law.
What the method cannot do yet
- There is no accuracy percentage for parish registers: it needs a reference transcription, and no matching pair has been found for Ukrainian registers.
- Eighteenth-century handwriting has not been checked.
- The program does not read Church Slavonic books. They are worked through line by line.
Before writing “no,” we count the size of the book: DAKhmO ф. 18 оп. 2 спр. 21 (Вільховець (Vilkhovets), 1886–1890) has 253 frames, about 50 a year. A pass through 13 frames did not even cover a year, so we withdrew that “no.” What a proven “no” contains. Another full review: the 1891 story, checked against passenger lists and parish registers.
What the search gives you
Within five days of your questionnaire if you asked us to start right away, otherwise within five days after the EU 14-day withdrawal period, you get a written report: where your church's books are kept, which years survive, what of them is online, and whether it makes sense to pay for more. If the catalog shows no register of the parish for 1850–1917, we refund the €19.
If your town or village is not on the list, email its name and the surname to pytannia@rodovidarchive.com, and we will reply whether the search makes sense.
If the work goes further, the €19 counts in full: Family costs €471 instead of €490.