Trying to make a family tree?

Question

So, I am trying to make a family tree. My mother's side is from Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. My father's side is from Austria, Poland, Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. I am Jewish, and so is my whole family. I know who all of my great-grandparents are. I know who 9 of my great-great grandparents are. I also know who 4 of my great-great-great grandparents are. Where can I find more information?

Answer 1

The largest Jewish genealogy site online is JewishGen.  It is located at :  http://www.jewishgen.org and is a gold mine of all kinds of information.  There is even a Family Tree of the Jewish People and online records for many locations in Poland (JRI-Poland).   To search its "Family Finder", you would need to register, but it is free.  There are many discussion groups where questions can be asked and shtetlink sites for many small Jewish towns in eastern Europe.  

If your father's relatives were from southeastern Poland (Galicia), there is a group online known as "Gesher Galicia".

If you will be looking for records w/in the U.S., you can use more generic sites, but to explore your eastern European Jewish roots JewishGen and the folks there are your best bet.  Jewish records in general would have been kept in separate record books - at least in Poland.  The folks there can not only guide you to more specific information, but many are able to translate some of the languages of the countries you mentioned above.  This comes in handy when you retrieve documents.

You are extremely lucky to have been able to go back so far in your family tree.

Answer 2

I agree with Seraph, you are ahead of a lot of people starting your family history.

Good Luck!

Answer 3

Start by writing down everything you know about these people.  You can do it on paper or enter it into a genealogy program.  Try   Legacy Family Tree (www.legacyfamilytree.com) if you don't have a program.  They have a FREE version that is quite nice.

Try Cyndi's List (www.cyndislist.com) and select the links to your various family homelands, nationalities, etc. over 264,000 links all listed by category.

Or try Linkpendium (www.linkpendium.com) which has over 6 MILLION genealogy links.