My name is Gary Perlman. I am a retired software developer, born and raised in Montreal. My greatgrandparents
immigrated to Montreal between 1900 and 1913 from Romania, Russia (now Belarus), and
Bukovina (now Ukraine). They were all Jewish and are all buried here in Montreal, with some of their
parents. I have enjoyed researching my roots and would like to help you do the same with your family
tree. I've developed some special expertise with both Montreal and Jewish genealogy.
I plan to create a family tree for you on Geni.com, a free service that will allow me to store a lot of
complicated information. Your family will be able to see what we find, and if we are lucky, we will
connect with other people researching the same names. We'll add a few names and dates, and almost
instantly, we may be connected to an existing tree with dozens or hundreds of relatives. Often, we find
current generations, but
I hope to make use of your memories to help find information about past generations.
What we find will be available to current and future generations.
In the background, I plan to use several sources of information to research your family:
- The most important is called
Ancestry.com,
for which I have a subscription to search
for births, marriages, deaths, immigration, voter lists, etc. worldwide.
- JewishGen.org is a site dedicated to Jewish genealogy all over the world. They have excellent
records on Jewish burials, and have databases on researching countries and towns. Gravestones
can be an excellent source of information, helping to confirm or dismiss possible relationships.
- Obituaries can map out whole families in one paragraph.
- The Canadian Jewish Review has local news for the Montreal Jewish community from about
1920 to 1960.
- The Census of Canada from 1911 and 1921 can provide names, ages, dates of immigration, etc.
- Lovell's Montreal Directories 1842-1999 can track family and company moves.
- Naturalization records contain information about life before coming to Canada.
These are often the best source of information for immigrants,
but they can take a month to obtain, so although they are listed here last,
we'll be working first on what we need to request them.
Although all this information will be going into an online family tree,
I'll provide you with printed
copies of what we find, along with some printed family stories we will assemble.
When we're done -there's not such thing as being done with a family tree - I'll prepare a report about
next steps, such as how to research records in Europe. These next steps require that the researcher have
good access to e-mail, and can take years. I'll be looking for someone in your family to take on that
role. For that, and for sharing your family tree, I'll need some family e-mail addresses.
Gary Perlman, 514-482-4905 (home), gary@perlman.ca (email)
Volunteer Amateur Genealogist
Maimonides Geriatric Centre