Long ago, knowing own genealogy was almost a sacred duty of every person. Than it became the privilege of the society’s elite. More and more average people were losing the interest to own ancestors limiting to scarce information no further than about great grandfathers.

The extreme show of the development of such tendency became the facts where a person knows the pedigree of own dear Staffordshire terrier better than his/her own. However, the genealogy in general sense is not only a very interesting discipline but also a greatly useful for a person facet of learning more about the world.

The genealogy involves the study of origin and history of kins, surnames and separate persons and the relative connections and the composition of pedigrees.

The word ‘genealogy’ is of Greek origin and means the notion ‘pedigree’ and originates from words ‘gene’ – ‘kin’ and ‘logos’ – ‘science’.

The genealogy is divided into two parts. The first one is called official and determined as built on trustworthy documents and other sources, the proof of kinship existing between persons having general progenitor or ancestor, independent of public standing of these persons.

The second part is more concerned with the inner spiritual life of separate persons and families, as a history of one or another kin in all manifestations of both public and family life of its representatives.

The genealogical information represents, as a rule, the information legally executed and fixed in proper statutory documents, establishing kinship, pedigree connections and history of family. For the establishment of pedigree connections, required is the data of the representatives of minimum two family generations (frequently, the genealogical information is used in enacting the right of inheritance, when executing heir benefits and compensations and in may other cases).

At present, the scientific processing and description is under way of those complexes of documents which contain a large amount of genealogical information (e.g., church funds of different spiritual consistories). In addition, this is the origin studies of documents containing genealogical information: auditor reports, confession lists, nobleman pedigree books, etc.

The urging up-to-date direction is the creation of computer databases of all types of genealogical sources and their use when performing requests.

Each person realizing own place in the chain I – Family – Kin – People, addresses the history of own ancestors. The study of own origin and the history of own kin conduces to the understanding of a value of each person and raising his/her responsibility for the destiny of own kin, family and own nation as a whole.

The public need in genealogical information is obvious; therefore, do not ‘drag out’ with the composition of your pedigree – while representatives of elder generations of your family are still alive, you may obtain the unique information of your more or less distant ancestors. Hurry to fix this information for your descendents, as even without such, the huge number of names is lost irretrievably.

It is enough to say that just in XVII century, any of us had over a thousand of great great great great great great great great grandmothers and grandfathers! If you knew what nationality, religion, personal qualities and merits and material welfare have had these people you could be greatly amazed! And what about taking X century or earlier?

Hurry! And hand on the baton to you children! Because the life target of everyone is to learn the form of own kin, its objective, growth law, critical points, the ratio of single branches and, against all this background, - get to know own place in the kin and own objective; not individual one set before yourself but the one as of a member of the kin as a body of higher integral.

Tel./fax: 278-32-31
E-mail: genealogyua@ukr.net