Romania Beginning Research

Introduction
This article will briefly introduce you to the essential sources and strategies needed to discover your ancestors from Romania.

Beginning research on families from Romania is no different than from any other European country. You must start with what you know and proceed back, generation by generation. The first generations are usually quite simple to research since information is available from your own family, relatives, and local public records. Learn the basics about genealogical research in general and the same principles will apply to research in Romania.

Determine the place of origin
Before you can begin genealogical research in Romania, you must find out who your immigrant ancestor was and his exact place of origin. Since most emigration from Romania took place in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, you will probably find that you will need access to birth, death, and marriage records from Romania within a few generations. To do this, you must determine which town or village in Romania your emigrant ancestors came from, because records in Romania were kept on a local level. You may be able to find out this information from family sources or from old family documents. It may be necessary to look for this information in death records, obituaries, passenger lists, naturalization records, or similar sources where your Romanian ancestor settled.

Modern Romania consists of territories with varied historical backgrounds. The westerncentral area includes Transylvania and part of the Banat, formerly part of the old kingdom of Hungary. The eastern and southern areas include the historic Romanian principalities of Moldavia and Walachia. The eastern coastal area of Dobrudja belonged to Bulgaria under Turkish rule until 1878.