How to make a request to the archive about relatives? Request to archive - sample

If you are interested in how to make a request to the archive about relatives, then this article will help. All requests from the public can be divided into three main types:

1. Socially-legal character (in the form of various certificates - on the seniority and so forth).

2. Thematic character (carrying the information of the biographical plan about any particular person).

3. Genealogical.

We will not consider the first two types now. Let's stop on the third - how to make a request to the archive about relatives.

You will be helped for money

There are specialized family research bureaus where anyone who wants to save time and get rid of hassle can order genealogical information on a paid basis. Workers of such institutions can, for a fee (rather symbolic), formulate a competent text of the application and provide the exact address of the archive in which you are to address.

Then we will talk about the features that need to be taken into account when dealing with employees of storage departments, reading rooms and other "places of presence". They will have to process and satisfy requests for relatives coming from interested citizens.

No one should

Before you make a request to the archive about relatives, try to imagine what kind of specialists you have to deal with. This psychological factor can play a significant role in the success of the whole enterprise. According to statistics, the personnel of institutions such as state archives are among the intelligent educated people. The activity, consisting in the processing of archival requests, is not among their immediate duties. They receive no income from such work (despite the fact that this service is paid, all the money goes to the treasury).

Specific performers do not have anything beyond their salary, in connection with all of the above, the application may well be rejected without explaining the reasons for the refusal, or by responding formally in the form of a response. Sometimes federal agencies publish on their own online resources the following ads: "Due to the strong employment of specialists, processing of genealogical inquiries is not carried out."

And here - should

As for the registrar's offices, the situation here is somewhat different. Answers to inquiries about relatives are the direct responsibility of the workers of these institutions. Incoming applications can be completely different. Someone is looking for documents relating to the conclusion or dissolution of marriage between parents or other family members. Another makes a request to the archive about relatives for citizenship. The third one is busy searching for a certificate of death or the birth of a distant ancestor. The fourth, living abroad, can send a request to the archive about relatives in Russia. Changes in the legislation occur quite often, so all the nuances of the procedure are clarified directly at the time of the specific appeal.

Such an institution will certainly require proof of your relationship with the person whose information you are trying to obtain. Most likely, by investigating the history of a kind, you will come across a situation that allows you to request data exclusively about deceased ancestors. Such a request without additional authorization is available only to the children of the said person. That is, the staff of the archive proceed from the assumption that the restoration of evidence and other documents will be dealt with by the people themselves or with the help of authorized representatives.

Who is available in the archives of a relative's personal files?

What does this mean in practice? If your parents are alive, do not try to file a request for relatives in a generation (that is, grandparents). Grants to this information no one is required to issue. If your mother or father for any reason is not able to do the information retrieval procedure, their task is to notarize a power of attorney for the right to engage in such activities. At the same time, the executor can be any person - not necessarily a relative.

And, nevertheless, you can clarify the concrete algorithm of search actions only at the moment of occurrence of an individual situation. It depends not only on the degree of kinship of the applicant with the object of search, but also on the legal situation at the current time. These strict rules are not invented in vain. If you think about it, everything is quite logical and fair. It is unlikely that any of you would be delighted to discover the following fact: some foreign people are completely free to access biographies and other important nuances of the life of your relatives, or dig into the history of the family, searching for any compromising material (often with an unseemly goal).

Closer to the point

So, we have understood the basic concept of the event. Now let's move to concrete actions. How to make a request to achieve its execution quickly and without obstacles? First of all, it is necessary to establish which of the city archives or bodies of the registry office should carry its statement on the topic of search. Where can I go - to the central archive or his local unit? An object is selected for these purposes, depending on the task that you set for yourself. It can be the receipt of certain information or the restoration of any documents.

An important factor is the time - how long the interesting event (death, birth, marriage) took place. According to legislative norms, a document created less than a hundred years ago must be kept in the territorial registry office. In practice, often relatively "young" records relating to acts of civil status also fall into regional archival stores.

After the revolution ...

Thus, if you are interested in a document of a family nature relating to the Soviet period (for example, you make a request to the archive about the relatives who are members of the Second World War), the application should be sent, first of all, to the Civil Registry Office at the place of the sought-for event. If the paper has managed to get into the fund of the federal archive, you will receive information on this with a response letter.

Currently, state services are purposefully developing a common electronic database, where all the necessary information about citizens is received centrally. When the system is sufficiently well-established, it will be possible to send a request to the regional archive, and it will be much easier to find the right people or documents.

... and up to it

If your request concerns facts relating to the pre-revolutionary period, then they are to be searched in the metric notebooks of the church. It was there that the information you requested before the civil registration records appeared. Data notebooks until 1917 served as quite official documents.

The procedure in this case should be exactly the opposite. Begin your request from the regional archive of the region where the person you are interested in or events that were important for you. If the necessary records in their funds are not kept, you will most likely be redirected to the registry office.

What to remember

Sometimes there are cases of confusion, when the boundaries of the areas have changed according to the administrative-territorial division. This or that locality (city, village, village), together with its church parish, could relate to different provinces in different years. Accordingly, the belonging of church metric books will have to be specified in two separate regional archives.

It is possible that, without finding the data in one of them, the storage staff will not warn the citizen about such a probability. The answer to the query will be a classical unsubscription with the wording "not found." If you have any slight doubts about the thoroughness of the approach to processing your request, try duplicating it by submitting the application to the neighboring regional archives, where theoretically the church records and any other documents containing the records of the ancestral ceremonies could be transmitted. In some cases it is advisable to apply to the central archive.

What and how to write

Let's now move on to the very procedure for the direct processing of the application. The sample request to the archive does not contain anything complicated. The text should be written correctly. Such appeals to the bodies of the registry office and the storage institution are quite similar in form, so we will not consider both options here. So, the content of the request to the archive about the relatives is conditionally composed of three text blocks: the address of the organization, where the appeal is directed, a brief summary of the essence of the situation and information about the applicant. Each part is mandatory. By skipping any of them, you definitely will not achieve the desired goal.

Before writing a request to the archive of ancestors, do not be lazy to go to the agency's website or call and find out if such a service is available as such. If the work on citizens' searches is conducted, ask the way in which you should send your application. Somewhere they accept such letters by e-mail, somewhere they prefer to deal with traditional paper correspondence. In the same place, you can find out how much it costs to request an archive about relatives.

If the work is exclusively on physical media, that is, in the form of written requests and answers to them, do not forget to enclose a spare envelope. Budget organizations often do not have their own additional means for mailing. Agree, very disappointing if an important request for you will be ignored for such a banal reason. It is logical to assume that the smaller the size of the archive, the more modest the budget is allocated to any additional tasks.

Required data

What nuances should one keep in mind regarding the content of the document? The application is sent to the director of the archive. The address and name of the institution are registered in the upper left corner, and the sender's data are also indicated there for observing the visual unity. You can find specific names and surnames on the institution's website.

After applying to the post of the director of the state archive (indicate which and where is located) with the name, first name, patronymic, you write your own name and address of actual residence on which you plan to wait for correspondence. In the number of contact data, it is necessary to make either a telephone or an e-mail address (or better, both). Of course, if you ignore these requirements, the appeal will be considered anonymous, and you will not have to wait for it.

About the talent's sister

How to make a request to the archive about the relatives as productive as possible? Are there any rules for writing a statement that increases the chances of success? The myth is fairly widespread, according to which a detailed exposition of the essence raises the probability of a similarly detailed answer. Unfortunately, this approach can be considered relevant only in cooperation with private paid genealogical workers. If it is a question of a state institution, everything is exactly the opposite. Tasks should be formulated as concisely and concisely as possible. This increases the chances of influencing archival employees and making them consider your appeal as quickly as possible.

Composition with details of the biography of ancestors, interesting only to you, it is not worth writing. You should indicate only the necessary number of exact facts - dates and birth places, populated points, names and surnames of ancestors, the degree of your relationship. Also, it is not superfluous to indicate the type of record that interests you. If the data is specified at the level of "approximately", the search time (as well as the cost of execution of the request) will increase, and at times the information will not be found at all. Complete your request with a mandatory phrase stating that the actions you are taking are being carried out with the goal of restoring the pedigree, which is necessary for certain valid reasons, and the work of the archivists will be paid for. Ideally, if you put the essence of the matter in three or four lines.

Request to archive - sample

For example, we give a sample of an appeal to the archive with a similar request: "Please find records of the death (birth) of my great-grandmother (last name, first name, patronymic) for a year in the village (city, village) N. In the absence of metrics, I will I am grateful for the information on the surviving nearest genealogical sources related to this period.If the search is successful, it is desirable to make out an archival certificate in the form of an extract, a photocopy or a photo of the page.The services are ready to pay in full. "

Similar text is sent in the case of marriage ceremony. Large-scale requests with vague formulations like "investigate my race from the point of view of genealogy" or "I'm interested in the pedigree of my family name" are highly discouraged. They can scare away performers. Solving such a global task is an extremely time-consuming task, which is not officially included among the duties of the archive staff. After all, family genealogy is not its core activity.

In conclusion, we note

In informal communication, it is noticed that appeals in a cultured and polite manner add an additional motivation to the quality performance of requests. There is nothing surprising. Sometimes on the sites of archives there are warnings about the inadmissibility of rude demands and inadequate formulations. It's amazing that one of the applicants may not understand such things!

Appeal, like any official document, ends with a date and a signature. If the mail is to be sent by e-mail, the document must be scanned. Duplicate the request is not worth it. The fate of the repeated treatment is to fall into the tail of the queue and only add to the hassle of all the same employees. In case of possible delay with the answer, you can send an official request to specify the stage of execution of the request of such and such from the date of such and such.

For how long should we orient ourselves? Your application can process the archive in a few days, or in a few months. There are cases when the answer had to wait almost a year. On average, with the good work of the institution and the responsible attitude of its employees to one's own duties, one can hope for results within a couple of weeks.