I want to travel to Austria to find my Grandfathers family.?

Question

Looking for Alec Yackawchuk. Would be about 90 years old by now...

Answer 1

i wish you a nice trip and good luck finding him.

Answer 2

Do you have any information - e.g. a document which says in which town he was born, or something else. If you don´t have ANY information, it would be difficult finding him/or his family.

If you have questions, or you need an advice how to get somewhere in Austria, or to locate a town, please contact me! I´m from Austria!

Answer 3

If you have an idea where you grandfather lived (esp. was born or married, or his parents were born, confirmed or married), the best place to go it that town.  There go to the Gemeinde (the town administration) and the church.  If he participated in any church rites the Church would have records).  His last name sounds Czech, which gives it a higher likelihood that he was from a city (people from many countries in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and earlier incarnations moved to the cities in Austria more than to the country.  If they wanted to be in country they usually stayed where they were.  In that case, you need to fin the town’s archives.  An old church with its own records could help you, or the town hall (Rathaus).  The records in Austria are pretty good – when Marshall Tito came to visit the Austrians were able to find his service records from when he was a low-level soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army.  

It become more difficult if you don’t know where you grandfather was from.  In that case, you may want to check immigration records in the US to see if there is a record.  His last name seems somewhat distinctive (although there a re a lot of people with Czech last names in Austria), so you may be able to look it up on sites like ancestry.com to see a list of towns where people with last name lived, and then go to each one to look through the records.  The good news about that part is Austria is not a very large country (about the size of Tennessee) so even if the towns are spread apart you can still get to all of them without real difficulty.

Answer 4

I'm living in Austria now and wanted to look into my family roots. I've been told the best way to get information is to go directly to the town where your Grandfather, or whoever, was born and then try to look at the public records. There are also a ton of on-line databases you can start with. Viel Glueck!