You will need to contact the Montenegro State Archive to find out what documents are available. Any public figure or official will be part of the governmental archival holdings and researching them can be very demanding - going through official reports, minutes from the meetings, internal and external correspondence...

You may need to obtain special research permission if you are a foreign citizen.

Here is the website of the archive :

http://www.dacg.me/index.php

There is no *English* option, so I would strongly advise that you contact them in local language .

Thank you. It appears I have some translating to do!! Again thank you for the information.

 We do translate the correspondence and contact the archives on the behalf of the SGS members , so you might be interested in that. We talked about that recently but the thread ended up in the members only section. 

The assistance we  provide to our members varies from case to case, but in most cases it will include what is known as *preliminary research* :

 

- establishing which records exist that have data on the people you are researching

-locating the archive where the vital records are stored and checking their availablity

-locating other records of importance such as scool, military and land registers

-explaining the procedure for obtaining copies of documents/vital or other records

-explaining the procedure  and documents involved in making requests for records that are regulated by privacy laws

- translating forms and letters

-assistance in posting queries on local forums and sending it out to possible descendants

-translating correspondence with the descendants of the same family to/from English

- forwarding information publicly available in local databases

- providing information on the historical documents, books and academic studies that have data on your ancestors, and  translating important parts into English.

- helping you with finding local guide and accomodation if you are planning to visit and do your own research here

 

For research of church vital records of the Serbian Orthodox Church

 

-contacting the Serbian Orthodox Church

-establishing the exact parish  and village of origin

-translating the correspondence with the priests and church authorities

- enabling you to research records available through LDS on your own by translating the printed columns, providing you with handwriting examples from original records of the names and surnames you are looking for in Old Church Slavonic cyrillic script.

 

 

The price of similar assistance offered by agencies and *expert* professional genealogists in the region  is way higher than our annual membership fee.  Here are  a couple of quotes:

 

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Preliminary Research

Includes basic research of availability of data about your ancestry. The result of the research is the list of resources where data can be found or should be searched for.

The cost: one time fee of € 135 or $ 195
€ 0,69 or or $ 0,99 per kilometer
(if travel is necessary to complete the task)

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The following are results of preliminary search one should expect to receive:

· An answer as to whether data is available in the National Archives , or in one of the regional offices of the National Archives. The answer will not come in a simple "yes" or "no" form, but will indicate exactly which time periods are available for Birth, Death and Wedding records for a specific village or town.

· An answer as to what books or data are available in the local sources, such as a local parish and local office of records.

· A list of persons presently residing in the place of origin or surrounding area , with the same last name as the surname researched. This is a useful list in trying to establish if there are any close or distant relatives.
 

Costs

Preliminary research in the amount of $100 is payable in advance.

 

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The only limiting factor in how much we are able or willing to help any of our members is the fact that all of us here in SGS are only volunteers constricted by our own work and life schedules.

I am a member of the SGS. But have luck sometimes posting on regular forum here.

Sheila,

Due to privacy policy I do not have the software option to see other people's subscription details so I can only know that if they post in the members forum. Please contact the admin and have them  send me a message  to help you if you are a member of SGS.

Jugoslava,

This will soon change, we are adding the functionality. Its on the todo list

Sheila is indeed a member. But we always advice members to post on the members forum to prevent confusion as its the only place members can post and not non-members.

Sergej, I am sorry if I created any confusion. I had fairly good luck the first time I posted on the regular forum.......thought I would try it again. Searching has been very frustrating. Cousins don't seem to be much help...not very talkative. So went back to doing it my way.

Sheila,

No need to be sorry, site functionalities are improving every week and this is just one of those things that needs to be added. If you look at what we compiled over the last decade things look pretty neat

Sheila,

I did not have time to review everything that was posted in the members forum , but now that I did - please send me any and all of the original documents you have.

I noticed you posted about families from Sadilovac, Drežnik. I can definitely help you with that .

My email is [email protected]

Re the Montenegro state archive - I have a lot of translating to do and transcribing of vital records for a couple of members, it will probably take me the rest of the week to finish. If you want to send the archive a letter or an email, I will translate it for you next week.