About Us

Welcome!

We are Anastasia and David Black.

Let start with Anastasia.

I was born and raised in Russia, in wonderful family. 9 years my family had been lived with parents of my father and I had an opportunity to hear a lot of family stories from them. One of the stories was about my grandma's mother, who's last name as my grandma thought is Kimont. Because it sounds very French, my family thought our roots came from France. Having a great desire to find out if it is indeed so or not, I decided to start my genealogy research, in 2004. Happily my church encourages to learn about the past of its members' families and thought me how to start it.

While I was single I spoke with all my relatives to get as much information as they remembered. I used notebook, genealogy charts and voice recorders to organize all data. During that process I felt that I become closer to my relatives and build friendship with my ancestors. In 2012 I met my future husband, David, in New York, USA. Together we continued genealogy research and discovered many miracles. David and I met in person those relatives my family never had met before. We heard from them even more stories about my family. You can read more about it in this blog.

Here is Dave: [passes the keyboard to Dave] Hello. My name is Dave. I am married to the smartest, prettiest girl in the world. I've been passionate about genealogy since the age of five. That is when my dad finally let me come with him to visit the local genealogy center - actually the Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints <https://www.familysearch.org/locations/saltlakecity-library>. Wikipedia cites the Association of American Genealogists in saying that, "It is the largest genealogical library in the world and is open to the general public at no charge."

I have had so much fun in the journey Anastasia and I have had to discover her pedigree. I have learned a lot from her and learned a lot with her as we have learned to use many resources for Russian and Eastern European genealogy. Many of these have been online resources. As our knowledge progressed and the search became more difficult, Anastasia worked to learn how to work with archives in many areas of Russia as well as the Poland, Belarus, and the Baltic States - especially Lithuania. I'm excited to help Anastasia as she helps each of you to discover your pedigree, whether it leads you to the former Russian Empire - as Anastasia's did - to the British Isles, Scandinavia, and mainland Europe - as mine did - or to other places around the world - as yours might.