A free community board where descendants of Ukrainian settlers post what they know — a surname, a tombstone inscription, a village name — and ask for help finding where their ancestors were born.
Many families researching their Ukrainian roots start with a single clue: a name carved on a headstone, a village mentioned by a grandparent, or a line in an old church record. This board exists so that researchers with a similar surname, village, or region can find each other and compare notes.
If you are researching your Ukrainian-Canadian ancestry and would like advice on where to start, see our guide on how to start Ukrainian genealogy research, our directory of genealogy societies and archives across Canada, and our guide to reading Cyrillic headstones in Canadian cemeteries.
Tell us what you know — a surname, a birth village, a date, a photo of a headstone or document — and we will post it here so other researchers and readers can help. There is no cost to submit a request.
Submit a Research Request →Joseph Lukaitis is trying to confirm where his grandparents were born, using the information carved on their headstone in Canada. The stone gives the following details, including a line in Ukrainian recording the ancestral village:
The headstone inscription reads (translated): “Born in Kucheriv Malyi, Bukovyna, arrived in Canada in 1911.” Kucheriv Malyi (Малий Кучурів) is a village in the historical Bukovyna region, in what is today Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine. If your family also came from Kucheriv Malyi, or you recognize the surnames Dupeszka or Rutka, please get in touch.
Update: Joseph has since located his grandfather's original Romanian-issued birth and baptism certificate (Certificat de naștere și de botez), stamped by the Orthodox Archdiocese of Bucovina (Arhidieceza ort. a Bucovinei). The certificate confirms his grandfather's baptismal name as Teodor and his date of birth as February 8, 1892 — consistent with the headstone dates above, and a strong independent confirmation of the family's Bukovynian origin. The parish register page number and full parental details on the certificate are handwritten in period Romanian script and not yet fully transcribed; researchers familiar with reading Bucovina-era Romanian civil/parish registers from this period who can help confirm the exact parish or village named on the document are especially welcome to reach out.
To help with this request or to submit your own, contact uggpei@lomatski.ca.
Not sure where to start with a similar request? Our article on reading old Cyrillic church records and our guide to locating a village on historical Ukrainian maps are good next steps once you have a village name in hand.