First of all, you need to know or determin the ethnic and religious affiliation of your ancestors.

ŽITIŠTE has had historical presence of Serbs, Romanians, Cincari, Jewish families, Hungarians, Roma and Donauschwaben. For each of these ethnic groups research strategies and resources will be different - the only common thing is that the vital records will be available in municipal office and historical archives.

If your ancestors were ethnic Serbs you will find much help in our research section :

http://www.rodoslovlje.com/en/documentation/austria-hungary

If your ancestors are of different origin, we will direct you where to find best and relevant resources.

The only online vital records collection is that of the Roman Catholic Kalocsa diocese e-archive, which I am researching at the moment for our members, but it covered the area of Bačka, not Banat where Žitište is locad.

No information from any past census is available to public in Serbia, and research of the vital records is legislated by privacy law which states that only direct descendants or people with official authorization of the descendants can ask for the records and research them.

Generally speaking, if you do not speak your ancestral mother tongue, you need to locate the descendants of the same family - they will translate and explain your heritage and customs best, and share with you the wealth of information that is available in local languages.

Thanks,

One of the reasons that I have not gone down this path is that I know very little about that part of my family that came from Žitište.  We always though "Peter" was Hungarian and one piece of documentation calls his birth place Bégaszentgyörgy, but other document calls it by the German name "Sankt Georgen an der Bega".  I only have the two documents and niether is very authoritative.  We thought Peters wife was German, but the town is now in Romania, although I do realize that many places in this area one side of town was like a "little Germany" and another side was like "little Romania" or "little Poland" or "little ..."  And because of this everyone spoke multiple languages.  Peter spoke Hungarian, German and progably a Slavic language as well.  

My family does not know of anyone living in the area or even in Eastern Europe, but it is possible.  As far as religion I would assume they are Catholic, but this is only based on the fact that later generations were Catholic. 

I'm hoping that I can get some dirrection, if not here then elsewere.

Thanks