Sometimes I get crazy ideas. Well, not totally crazy ideas, just ideas for projects that easily could become full time jobs for a year or two or three.

As I’ve recently blogged about the Slovak side of my family, I’ve been thinking about Udol (called Ujak when my grandmother lived there) and Hajtovka, which is about a mile away. Although they are considered two small villages, the families all knew each other because the Greek Catholic church, St. Dimitry, in Udol was the only church in the area. It was to St. Dimitry that families took babies to be baptized, young couples to be married and those who died to be buried.

Throughout history, there have only been maybe 500-1000 residents at any given time and the mortality rate was very, very high. Between 1880 and 1920, hundreds left and migrated mostly to Passaic, New Jersey.

St. Dimitry Church records have been digitized and are available on familysearch.org. I have been thinking about whether or not I want to step into a project of this size because when I start something, I like to finish it.

My idea is to use a genealogy software program to begin entering data. Because there were few families in the area, the amount of intermarriage between families throughout the 1800’s was quite large. Everyone was related somehow to almost everybody else. In theory, a giant family tree could be generated showing the relationships of all these people to each other.

Have any of you attempted this type of project? It would be similar to a one-name study except it would be a one church parish study with multiple surnames. Does this sound doable? Or is it just a little too crazy? I am not looking to just create a database in something like Excel. Please leave comments and suggestions, particularly if you have used a genealogy software program to coordinate the information.