Starting Your Research in Romania

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Contacting Family and Friends
Like everywhere, the first place you go for family history information is your family. Start with your parents. Get all the information they can remember. Dates, places, and especially stories. See if you can get them to write an autobiography. Or they can give the information, and you can write it. Then, do the same with your grandparents. Contact your aunts, uncles and other relatives and friends for the information they might have. A good place to store the information is in the My Family booklet. From there, you can transfer the information to your Research Journal. That will tell you what other research you need to do.

Using the Civil Registry
The best source to start with in Romania is the Civil Registry, or as it is called in the United States, Vital Records. These are the birth, marriage and death certificates issued by the government when these events occur. The Civil Registry in Romania goes back a long way—the earliest records were created in Timisoara in 1717.

For Civil Record Less Than 100 yeas old
If the event occured less than 100 years ago, the certificate will be in the city offices where the event occured. All cities have a Civil Registry office. You can write to them and ask for a copy. A sample request is on the page entitled Forms and Correspondence.

Many cities have websites, and you can email your request to them. For those that don't, you can fax or use the regular mail. A list of Civil Registry offices are in the national pages of Romania. Just put the words "Starea Civila" and the name of the city or town in the search box.

For Civil Records Over 100 years old
After about 100 years, the cities turn their civil records over to the National Archive. The records are kept in the Regional Archive in the county where the city is located. You can email the archive requesting the information. There is a cost associated with the research at the National Archive offices. Or you can go to the archive and search for yourself. Access to the archive is free.

The birth certificate will contain the names and ages of the parents. It may also contain the parents marriage date, the grandparents' names, and the current residence of the family. With the parents names and ages, you can then request their birth certificates. And so on.