We are a genealogical company Family Heritage Oy registered in Finland (Business ID is 3248042-4, legal name is Kostinsky Oy), which is mainly engaged in the search for Jewish family roots in Europe. We work with archives of different countries to get the most complete information about the history of your family. If you know that your ancestors lived on the territory of the former Russian Empire, the former USSR, or other European countries, then welcome to an exciting genealogical journey in which you will learn about the history of your family for generations.
Jewish genealogical search is distinguished by its specificity since Jewish documents were compiled separately from Christian ones and differed from them. In addition, Jews moved from place to place more often than the non-Jewish population, and sometimes it is necessary to use additional sources to find out where the family moved from.
How do we work?
We work out all existing genealogical sources, including:
- Metric books on births, marriages, divorces, and deaths (before 1917) and record records of the registry office (after 1917)
- Revision tales and censuses (the completeness of the information specified in them and their availability for different years may vary depending on the region). Some censuses include lists of all residents of a particular region indicating their kinship, class, occupation, age, and registration, other censuses include lists of persons liable for military service or eligible to participate in elections (electoral lists)
- Personal files; usually student, judicial, or party cases (after 1917)
- Information about participation in hostilities or about being in the combat zone; WWI, WWII, Civil War, Russian-Japanese War of 1904
- Information on emigration, voluntary or forced displacement
- Mentions in local newspapers of the relevant years (for example, the address and reference book “All Petersburg” was published from 1894 to 1914 and included information about the permanent residents of the city, their occupation, and address)
- House books (existed both before and after the revolution, included information about the tenants of houses/apartments and their family members)
As a result of such research, based on historical realities that influenced the people we are looking for information about, we will qualitatively reconstruct the history of your family and provide you with an exciting complete report with copies of all the documents found, photos of your ancestors (if they are found; you can count on the availability of photos in personal files) and explanations of our specialists about situations in the lives of your ancestors with references to laws and historical events. At your request, we will additionally produce a pedigree book with a story about the life of your ancestors, documents, and photographs that you can save for future generations.
At each stage of the search, you will be accompanied by our specialist, who after visiting the archive will send you intermediate results with lists of documents viewed and information found there.
What archives do we work in?
We specialize in genealogical search in Eastern Europe and work in the archives of Israel, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and other European countries.