I know that it’s been quite a while since I updated the status of my family research. I’ve been spending a lot of time on MyHeritage.com working on the current family information and trying to clean up/verify the data the best that I can. I’ve also spending time on my family data files that I maintain on my laptop with Legacy Family Tree software.
So I’ve had to re-evaluate my efforts and decide where and how I want to spend my time and effort in conduction my family research. I’m at the point right now where my effort need to be focused on the actual records that are found in Eastern Europe. There is very little that can be found on line. Additionally, in discussing my family research with numerous researchers from Eastern Europe I have found that:
The Iwaniw surname was a fairly common name in Galicia region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Therefore, just having the Iwaniw surname does NOT necessarily mean we are related. To determine that I would need documented lineage information.
The other point is that official records from that region and time are extremely limited due to being destroyed during WWII or lost. I was lucky enough to find that my grandfathers death record survived as did his marriage record to my grandmother. I still have a lot to review to determine the best path to follow further.
I have decide to consolidate and focus my efforts to a couple of specific web sites. Currently, my family research/data is located/stored at:
Tribal Pages – I will no longer be updating the information on this site. The data will remain but if you come across it exercise caution in utilizing the information found there. It probably isn’t up-to-date or current.
Ancestry.com – even though I have found additional and new information on relatives and connections on here, I will no longer to updating the information found here. The information found here is more up-to-date than on Tribal Pages, it’s not going to be as accurate as the data on MyHeritage.com.
Facebook Groups – I will probably be shutting down The Iwaniw Connection group and Iwaniw & Tyzbir Genealogy group. Neither group is generating any activity and no one is actually participating in any discussions or exchanging any information.
Any Rootsweb web pages that I use to manage.
I am divided on what I will do with The Iwaniw Project. This is an offline project where I am collecting publicly available information about people with the surname of Iwaniw.
If anyone wishing to contact me about my family research or wish to collaborate pertaining to family research can contact me through the form on this site.
As I was browsing a few of the genealogical groups on Facebook I came across a posting showing a picture of a church. The church looked familiar like I’ve seen the picture previously. I did. My father had a photograph of this church and he had commissioned a painting to be made from it.
At the time I didn’t know that name of the church just that my father said that it was the church from the village that he grew up in, Lutowiska. According to the information I now have is that the name of the church is Church of Archangel Michael in Lutowiska. The information on this church is in Polish (you’ll have to enable Google translator to read the details).
Church of Archangel Michael in Lutowiska
Unfortunately, according to the information about this church it no longer exists. In 1979, the church was handed over to the local Latin parish, which in May 1980 demolished the church, and used wood for further use in the construction of the church in Dwernik.
Now I’ve got a few more gaps in my father life filled in and more research material to investigate. From the documents that I had previously received I know that my father was a Greek Catholic. I didn’t know which parish records I had to chase down. Having stumbled onto this bit of information has helped in filling that gap. What I need to find out now is where are the records from this church and do they even still exist? If anyone has any information on this church or its records I’d appreciate hearing from you. You can contact me through this site or via Facebook Messenger.
The following is a re-post of a blog article of mine from October 19, 2019. I am re-posting this blog post because I will be posting an update with new infrmation.
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I’m at the point of my research where I am now attempting to search records in Eastern Europe. I have already found records pertaining to my father’s time spent in Germany during WWII. I know that he was forcibly taken from his home to Germany in 1942. I know that he married my mother in 1945 in Sulingen Germany. I have the passenger list showing him and his family arriving into the Port of New York in 1950.
Now I’m trying to locate church records for my grandfather, Michael. Thanks to a couple of people on Galicia Family History Group I was directed to another site called State Archives in Przemysl where I was told records from my father’s church in Lutowiska were stored and scanned. At this point I am just searching for anyone with the surname of Iwaniw. The difficulty is that the handwriting is a very elaborate cursive and some of the writing is very faint. Lastly, none of these records are indexed.
This is one of those family research tasks that are very labor intensive and tedious. I usually only spend about an hour doing this and/or tend to take a lot of breaks. Another problem is that I have no way of knowing if the records are complete.
