If you are interested in how to make a request to the archive about relatives, then this article will help in this. All requests from the population can be divided into three main types:
1. Social and legal nature (in the form of various certificates - by seniority, etc.).
2. Thematic nature (carrying information of a biographical plan about a particular person).
3. Genealogical.
The first two species we will not consider now. Let us dwell on the third - how to make a request to the archive about relatives.
You will be helped for money
There are specialized family research bureaus where anyone who wants to save time and get rid of the hassle can order genealogy information for a fee. Employees of such institutions can, for a fee (quite symbolic), formulate a competent text of the application and provide the exact address of the archive in which you have to contact.
Further, we will talk about the features that must be taken into account when communicating with employees of storage departments, reading rooms and other " public places". It is they who will process and satisfy requests for relatives coming from interested citizens.
Nobody owes you
Before you make a request to the archive about relatives, try to imagine what kind of specialists you have to deal with. This psychological factor can play a significant role in the success of the entire enterprise. According to statistics, the staff of institutions such as state archives is among the intelligent educated people. The activity consisting in processing archive requests is not among their immediate responsibilities. They do not receive any income from such work (despite the fact that this service is paid, all the money goes to the treasury).
Specific performers have nothing in excess of their salary, in connection with all of the above, they may well reject the application without explaining the reasons for the refusal, or by answering formally in the form of an unsubscribe. At times, federal agencies publish on their own Internet resources announcements of the following nature: "Due to the strong employment of specialists, processing of requests of a genealogical nature is not carried out."
And here they should
As for the registry office, the situation is somewhat different. Responses to inquiries about relatives are the direct responsibility of the employees of these institutions. Incoming applications can be completely different. Someone is looking for documents regarding the conclusion or dissolution of a marriage between parents or other family members. Another makes a request to the archive about relatives for citizenship. The third is busy looking for a death certificate or the birth of a distant ancestor. The fourth, living abroad, can send a request to the archive about relatives in Russia. Changes in legislation occur quite often, so all the nuances of the procedure are specified directly at the time of a specific appeal.
Such an institution will probably require proof of your relationship with the person you are trying to obtain information about. Most likely, when exploring a story of your own kind, you will come across a situation that allows you to request data exclusively about deceased ancestors. Such a request without additional permission is available only to children of the said person. That is, the archive workers proceed from the assumption that people themselves or with the help of authorized representatives will deal with the restoration of the certificate and other documents.
Who can access a request in the archives of a relative’s personal file?
What does this mean in practice? If your parents are alive, then do not try to submit a request for relatives through the generation (that is, grandparents). No one is obligated to give such information to grandchildren. If your mother or father for any reason is not able to engage in the information search procedure, their task is to notarize a power of attorney for the right to engage in such activities. In this case, any person can be a performer - not necessarily a relative.
And, nevertheless, you can specify the specific algorithm of search actions only at the time of the occurrence of an individual situation. It depends not only on the degree of relationship of the applicant with the object of search, but also on the legal situation at the moment. These strict rules were not invented in vain. If you think about it, everything is quite logical and fair. It is unlikely that any of you would be happy to discover the following fact: some strangers freely access their biographies and other important nuances of your relatives' lives or delve into family history, looking for any incriminating evidence (often with an unseemly purpose).
Get to the point
So, we have understood the basic concept of the event. Now let's move on to specific actions. How to make a request in order to achieve its fulfillment quickly and without obstacles? First of all, it should be established which of the city archives or registry offices should carry their statement on the search. Where to go - to the central archive or its local branch? An object is selected for such purposes, depending on the task that you set for yourself. This may be the receipt of certain information or the restoration of any documents.
The time factor is also important - how long has an interesting event occurred (death, birth, marriage). According to legislative norms, a document created less than a hundred years ago is required to be kept in the territorial registry office. In practice, often relatively "young" records relating to acts of civil status also end up in regional archival repositories.
After the revolution ...
Thus, if you are interested in a document of a family nature related to the Soviet period (for example, you make a request to the archive about relatives - participants of the Second World War), the application should be sent, first of all, to the registry office at the place of the event. If the paper managed to get into the federal archive fund, you will receive information about this with a response letter.
Currently, public services are deliberately developing a common electronic database, which centrally receives all the necessary information about citizens. When the system is well enough debugged, it will be possible to send a request to the regional archive, and the matter of finding the right people or documents will be greatly simplified.
... and before her
If your request concerns facts related to the pre-revolutionary period, then you will have to look for them in the metric notebooks of the church. This is where the information you need was entered before the civil registry books appeared . These notebooks until 1917 served as quite official documents.
The procedure in this case should be the exact opposite. Start the request with the regional archive of the region where the person you were interested in lived or important events occurred for you. If the necessary records are not stored in their funds, you will most likely be redirected to the registry office.
Things to remember
Sometimes there may be cases of confusion when the boundaries of the districts changed according to the administrative-territorial division. A particular locality (city, village, village), together with its church parish, could belong to different provinces in different years. Accordingly, the ownership of church metric books will have to be clarified in two separate regional archives.
It is possible that, not finding the data in one of them, the warehouse workers will not warn the citizen about such a probability. The response to the request will be a classic unsubscribing with the wording "not found." If you have even slight doubts about the thoroughness of the approach to processing your request, try to duplicate it by sending a statement to neighboring regional archives, where church and any other documents containing records of ancestral rites could theoretically be transferred. In some cases, it is advisable to contact the central archive.
What and how to write
Let's now move on to the process of directly filling out an application. A sample archive request does not contain anything complicated. Text accompaniment must be spelled correctly. Such appeals to registry offices and storage facilities are quite similar in form, therefore we will not consider both options here. So, the contents of the request to the archive about relatives conditionally consists of three text blocks: the address of the organization where the appeal is directed, a brief summary of the essence of the situation and information about the applicant. Each part is required. Skipping any of them, you definitely will not achieve the desired goal.
Before writing a request to the archive about the ancestors, do not be too lazy to go to the institution’s website or call and find out if such a service is provided as such. If work is underway on citizen searches, ask about the method by which your application should be sent. Somewhere they accept emails like this, somewhere they prefer to deal with traditional paper correspondence. There you can find out how much the request to the archive about relatives costs.
If you have to work exclusively on physical media, that is, in the form of written requests and answers to them, do not forget to put a spare envelope. Budget organizations often do not have their own additional means for distribution. Agree, it’s very disappointing if an important request for you is ignored for such a banal reason. It is logical to assume that the smaller the size of the archive, the more modest the budget is allocated to any additional tasks.
Mandatory data
What nuances should be kept in mind regarding the content of the document? The application is sent to the director of the archive. In the upper left corner, the address and name of the institution are registered, in the same place for compliance with visual unity, the data of the sender is also indicated. You can find out specific surnames and names on the website of the institution in the same way.
After applying to the post of director of the state archive (indicate which one and where it is located) with the surname, name, patronymic, you fill in the form your own full name and address of actual residence at which you plan to wait for correspondence. Contact information should include either a telephone or an email address (or better, both). Of course, if you ignore these requirements, the appeal will be considered anonymous, and you won’t have to wait for its execution.
About Talent Sister
How to make a request to the archive about relatives as productive as possible? Are there any rules for writing a statement that increase the chances of success? The myth is widespread that a detailed statement of the essence increases the likelihood of an equally detailed answer. Unfortunately, this approach can be considered relevant only in cooperation with private paid workers in the field of genealogy. If we are talking about a state institution, everything is exactly the opposite. Tasks should be formulated as concisely and clearly as possible. This increases the chances of influencing archive employees and getting them to review your appeal as quickly as possible.
Writing with the details of the biography of the ancestors, interesting only to you, is not worth writing. Only the necessary number of accurate facts should be indicated - dates and places of birth, settlements, names and surnames of your ancestors, the degree of your relationship. It will also be useful to indicate the type of record you are interested in. If the data is indicated at the level of "approximately", the search time (as well as the cost of executing the request) will increase, and sometimes information will not be found at all. Complete your request with the obligatory phrase that the actions you are taking are carried out with the aim of restoring the pedigree, which is necessary for certain good reasons, and the work of the archive workers will certainly be paid. It would be ideal if you fit the essence of the matter in three or four lines.
Archive request - sample
For example, we give a sample of a request to the archive with a similar query: "Please find records of the death (about birth) of my great-grandmother (last name, first name, middle name) for **** year in a village (city, village) N. In the absence of metrics I will I am grateful for the information about the nearest genealogical sources that have been preserved for the indicated period. In case of a successful search, it is advisable to fill out an archive certificate in the form of an extract, photocopy or photo page.
A similar text is sent in the case of a ceremony of marriage. Requests of a large-scale nature with vague wording such as “explore my genus in terms of genealogy” or “interested in the family tree of my family name” are highly discouraged. They can scare off performers. Solving such a global task is an extremely laborious undertaking, which is not officially included among the duties of the archive employees. After all, family genealogies are not his core business.
In conclusion, we note
In informal communication, it was noted that appeals in a cultural and polite manner introduce additional motivation for the high-quality execution of requests. There is nothing surprising. Sometimes there are warnings on archive sites about the inadmissibility of gross requirements and inadequate language. It is surprising that one of the applicants may not understand such things!
The appeal, like any official document, ends with a date and signature. If you have to send by email, the document must be scanned. A duplicate request is not worth it. The fate of the second appeal is to fall into the tail of the line and only add to the trouble for the same employees. In the case of a possible delay with the answer, you can send an official request to clarify the stage of execution of the request of such and such from the date of such and such.
What periods should be guided? The archive can process your application both in a few days and in a few months. There are times when an answer had to wait almost a year. On average, with the good work of the institution and the responsible attitude of its employees to their own responsibilities, one can hope to get results within a couple of weeks.