Uman genealogy records

Uman genealogy records are the surviving documents used to trace families from Uman, a town of Kiev Gubernia in the Russian Empire. The two main sources are metrical books, the church and synagogue registers of births, marriages and deaths kept from the early 1800s, and revision lists (revizskie skazki), the household census lists compiled for taxation. Most are held in archives in Kyiv and Cherkasy and have not been published online.

Names and jurisdiction

Uman is first mentioned in 1616, received Magdeburg rights in 1760 and belonged to the Polish Potocki family from 1726 to 1832. It passed from Poland to Russia in 1793. In 1795 it became the centre of Uman Uezd in Voznesensk Gubernia, and from 1797 Uman Uezd belonged to Kiev Gubernia, the structure under which most records from before 1917 are filed. After 1920 it was part of the Ukrainian SSR, and since 1991 it has been part of independent Ukraine.

Documents name the town Uman, Умань (Russian and Ukrainian), Humań (Polish) or אומאן (Yiddish). Searching under every spelling matters, because indexes and catalogues use all of them.

Location and geography

Uman lies in central Ukraine, in what is now Cherkasy Oblast. The town had several Orthodox parishes, among them the Dormition cathedral and the churches of St Nicholas, St Michael and the Holy Trinity in the suburb, as well as a Roman Catholic church and a Jewish community with its own rabbinate. Its suburbs included Lysa Hora, Nova Uman and Sofiiska Slobidka. Which book holds a family’s records therefore depends first on its faith and, for Christians, on its parish, and that is the first thing to establish in a search.

Records analysis

Metrical books and revision lists are among the best sources for tracing a family. Metrical books record births, marriages and deaths year by year, and revision lists show who lived in each household, with ages, so they let you follow a family back to the years before parish registers begin. The tables below show what survives for Uman, church by church and year by year.

But these are not the only sources, and often not the whole story. Archives also hold secondary records, such as police and court files, property and tax records, guild and estate lists, school and military papers and petitions, and these can reveal much more about a family than a name and a date. This is where deep archival research makes the difference. We work with the main sources and with the secondary ones, because together they tell a fuller and more interesting story of the family.

Not finding something online does not mean it does not exist. Most archival records from the Russian Empire have never been digitised or indexed, so a search on popular genealogy websites can come back empty even when the documents survive in the archive. If you have already searched on your own and found nothing, that is a reason to talk to a professional, not to stop.

Drevo Research carries out comprehensive archive research across borders and archives. Tell us what you know and we will tell you what we can find.

Uman genealogy records by church and year

The tables show which years survive for each church and record series. Years without records are left out, so gaps are easy to see. The original books are held in Ukrainian state archives, which are administered by the State Archival Service of Ukraine.

Vital records

Metrical books recording births and baptisms, marriages and deaths, kept separately by each religious community until 1920.

Jewish

Jewish metrical books of the Uman rabbinate have been found for 1844–1848, with births also for scattered years from 1866 to 1919. There is no marriage book for 1847.

Orthodox

Orthodox books of the main churches of Uman survive from 1780.

Roman Catholic

The parish of the Assumption also served villages around Uman.

Revision lists and censuses

Revision lists (revizskie skazki) are the household lists compiled for each tax census. They name every member of a household with age and relationship, which makes them the key source for following a family back before the metrical books begin. Below are the revision lists, censuses and family lists found for Uman. The town lay in Uman Uezd, so the uezd-wide lists, which cover the town as well as the countryside, are included with the lists of the town itself.

Christian and general

Jewish

History and genealogy

Under the Potocki counts Uman grew into one of the main towns of the region, and in 1796 Count Stanisław Szczesny Potocki founded the park of Sofiyivka there. Its Jewish community became one of the best known in the empire, and the grave of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, who spent his last months in Uman, has drawn Hasidic pilgrims every Rosh Hashana since 1811. By 1897 the town had about 31,000 residents.

German forces occupied Uman from August 1941, and about 17,000 of its Jews were murdered. For families who left or were lost, the surviving archive records are often the only trace that remains.

Also found in records and indexes as: Humań (Polish), Uman’, Umanskii, Umanski, Умань.