I should add my grandfather was a Stojadinov, from Farkazdin.Have been to Farkazdin and had contact with Stojadinov cousins, now trying to find Pavlov family.

Could you list what you did thus far in detail ?

Found 2 Pavlov's in records at Opovo church. Looks like Georgie is g grandad. Researcher needed more time & money so I stopped the research for now. I will be back in Serbia may 2012 .

Wiskyjack   (Stojadinov)

*cringes*

I dunno who you hired to do your research but  to locate only two individual members of  any family in church vital records...that is...well,  it is substandard result if they were looking into right parish.

Most of the records for parishes in Vojvodina go back to the first half of the XIX century intact, there are  additional copied  civil vital records, as well as other sources - school records, land owners registers and military records available. Austro-Hungarian censuses ...

If you are a member of SGS I will look up exactly what is available and where, so that you can do your own research when you come back in May and have more results.

I think we wrote an article on the forums or somewhere on the website about hiring researchers. Our general experience is that its not worth the money. And if you do hire one, get one that lives in Serbia.

Indeed.

A lot of people have asked me about hiring a researcher - my general advice is to :

1.) First establish contact with the descendants of the same family. From my experience, every family has a devoted researcher of their own, who has already dug up everything there is in the archives locally.

2.) Every village has a historian and usually they have had a book published, or articles in local newspaper etc. These people are the best researchers you can possibly hire to research your family from that village or area

3.) People who work in state archives in Serbia have relevant university degrees and state qualifications. In every archive, you have the option of paying for their services do to a specialized research on your behalf.

4.) If you are looking to spend as little money as possible, be patient and wait for information someone else has. Most people my generation from Serbia at least known the names of their direct ancestors and their places of origin and can without much effort trace and document their own great-great-grandparents (born cca 1850). That also explains why the interest in genealogy over here in the Western sense of it is still only starting - there was&is no real market for it.

5.) The original church vital records that were taken by the state in 1948. have just been returned to all religious communities in Serbia. It is still not known if and how they will make these record available to the public. When they do, the church and its priests will be the best *interpreters* available, skilled in the languages that the records were written in - Old Church Slavonic, Latin, Hungarian...

6.) If I ever needed to hire a researcher I would hire a university student who is studying history - they know how to navigate archival lists of holdings, how to document their research properly and how to look for resources.

Perhaps as a side note, my general recommendation for hiring researchers for your ancestors who belong to an ethnic minority (in any country) is to skip the profesional experts of the majority ethnicity -  there may be a specific and quite different religion, sometimes even a minority language that is different involved, and they do not, from what I have encountered so far, have the skills needed.

Pavlov from Opovo only found 2 in church records paternal grandmother Pavlov, any pavlovs from banat out there?

 

PAVLOV from BANAT in the records of the Serbian Trade Association "The Merchant" database of sponsored cadetes:

ID             year surname name        father        place        mentor

 The year is when they started their apprenticeship . They would have been cca ten years old at the time (  count  +/- five years  because some cadets went away as small children, and some after they finished primary school).

So I have three Pavlov families so far from Banat  identified, two with household numbers.

-same database, list of shop owners and craftsmen who took apprentices through this association:

ID            year        name, occupation,location

official list of WWII casualties, Vojvodina (revised and researched 2002-2008 with victims that were not listed in previous censuses) , most are from Banat. The original database also has their exact  village of residence listed, but it would take me too much time to extract it all here. If you want me to I can detail the Opovo municipality ones for your research .

Just a browse through the school registers  available in the state archive for the village Opovo should yield more accurate and exact information like names, names of parents, birth years, household numbers.

That should be definitely included in your research, besides the vital records.

Hello Sergei, yes I remember the article about six years ago. I decided to hire one anyway had some money to gamble & waste.Was very happy with research, a little expensive but I was happy with basic exploration.  If people would just look in phone book of village family came from, they would have a good start for correspondence. Sorry about the english but cannot seem to learn Serbian & I try.

Great advice, now if these old grey cells of mine could just learn Serbian  (humour)  

Yugaya & Sergj,  I have just found my old posts from 2008 (Giga)  For Stojadinov family  page 15 If I remember correctly.

Its blank, I dont see anything.

Your right they have disapeared. will look for them./

Thnx, just post the link of the topic if when you find it.

I saw it the other day.

Jack, if you could send me the data you have on Pavlov ancestry separately to my email I will translate and forward your query directly  to the local newspaper and web portals /fb pages. That has so far been the best way of getting in touch with the local community and relatives I tried.