Searching for Mihail Nicolaeș born in Roman (Județul Neamț)

[Mikhail Nikolaesh]

Hello everyone!

I am researching my family history and looking for any information or records regarding my great-grandfather. Because I believe our ancestors are alive as long as we remember them. But unfortunately, old people die and information is lost.

Since my grandfather surname was transliterated into Soviet Cyrillic as Nikolaesh, there are several highly probable original Romanian spelling variations for his name in the late 19th-century records of Moldavia:

• Nicolaeș
• Neculaeș / Niculaeș
• Nicolae / Neculae / Niculae
• Nicolai / Niculai / Neculai
• Nicolaescu

Here are his verified life facts:
- Name: Mihail (with any of the surname variations above).
- Date of Birth: Estimated between 1890 and 1900.
- Place of Birth: City of Roman (or a nearby village), Județul Neamț, Romania.
- Profession/Rank: Career Officer / Gendarme in the Romanian Gendarmerie. In the late 1920s and 1930s, he  served as a Sector Chief in Chișcăreni and Sîngerei, Bălți County.
- Death & Burial: He died of pneumonia around 1934-1936 in Bessarabia. There is absolutely no record or       memory of his grave in Moldova (Chișcăreni or Sîngerei). Since he was a Royal Gendarme Officer from a well-to-do family in Roman, probably his body was repatriated and buried in his hometown of Roman

I am looking for his birth/baptismal record in Neamț County, or any mentions in military/gendarmerie archives. Any advice on which specific parish registers (registre parohiale) of Roman/Neamț to check, or any help with database search would be highly appreciated!

Thank you in advance!

[Andrei Cucuruz]

Hi there,

The Romanian National Archives have digitized civil records for the city of Roman through the eANR project, and we made these records searchable on Genealogica.ro as well. For Roman, the available records cover roughly 1893-1917.

I did a quick search, but unfortunately I could not find an entry that clearly matches the combination of details and surname variants you provided.

You can search the records by name here, including by using the approximate/fuzzy search options to catch spelling variations, or browse through the entries available for Roman. A few nearby localities also have some years digitized through eANR; you can check the coverage map here.

Do you have any documents concerning Mihail himself, or could you tell us what source gives Roman (or the Roman area) as his place of birth? That might help narrow the search.

[Mikhail Nikolaesh]

Hi there,

The Romanian National Archives have digitized civil records for the city of Roman through the eANR project, and we made these records searchable on Genealogica.ro as well. For Roman, the available records cover roughly 1893-1917.

I did a quick search, but unfortunately I could not find an entry that clearly matches the combination of details and surname variants you provided.

You can search the records by name here, including by using the approximate/fuzzy search options to catch spelling variations, or browse through the entries available for Roman. A few nearby localities also have some years digitized through eANR; you can check the coverage map here.

Do you have any documents concerning Mihail himself, or could you tell us what source gives Roman (or the Roman area) as his place of birth? That might help narrow the search.

Thanks for the reply. All this information about the great-grandfather is collected from relatives. Now I am trying to find a record of my grandfather's birth in 1928, although there is no information in the Registry Office of Moldova, although I have confirmed documents about the place and date of birth. Because of this, I cannot find the original spelling of the surname in Romanian, namely, as it was with my great-grandfather.

Therefore, we have to go roundabout ways, using family stories to find clues. I think that, for example, the list of gendarmerie personnel in 1920-1934 would have helped me, because according to my father and my great-uncle, my great-grandfather was the head of the Sector Chief in Chișcăreni .

[Mikhail Nikolaesh]

This is what the Gemini AI tells me: Option A (The most frequent in the Neamț): Neculăeș and Option B (Slightly later): Niculăeș. 
But I don't know how much of it is correct.