Genealogy Research: Find Your Ancestors

I haven't found a record of Anna yet. I only worked out where the records should be and prepared search links.

Where her birth record should be

Then: Puchezh was in Yuryevets uezd (district), Kostroma province, in the 1890s. In the Orthodox Church, a birth was recorded as a baptism in the parish register (метрическая книга) of her family's church.

• Now: Puchezh is in Ivanovo Oblast, not Kostroma Oblast. That means records may be in either of two archives:
  1.

State Archive of Kostroma Oblast (ГАКО): the Kostroma Consistory fond holds the consistory's duplicate copies of parish registers for the whole province, including Yuryevets uezd. This is the main place to look for 1895. (From memory I think the fond is ф. 130. Check that in the archive's guide.)
2.

State Archive of Ivanovo Oblast (ГАИО): may hold the parish's own copies, because the district moved to Ivanovo after 1918.

What to do, in order

Ask your family about "Kolodina". Was it her maiden name or her married name? Was she born in the town itself or in a nearby village? Do you know her father's name (her patronymic)? A baptism register is arranged by parish and date, not by surname, so the parish matters most.
2. Search the FamilySearch indexes, which is free and needs an account. Try every spelling:

• Анна Колодина, born 1890–1900, Puchezh
• Колодин, the male form, to find her father or brothers
• Anna Kolodina, Latin spelling
• Other spellings clerks used: Калодина, Коладина, Колодена.

Look for scanned registers that have no index. In the FamilySearch Catalog, search the place "Russia, Kostroma" and look for "Church records" for Yuryevets uezd or Puchezh. Then try Yandex Archive, which has full-text search of scanned parish registers for some regions. Search "Колодин Пучеж". Without an index you'll need to read the baptisms for 1894–1896 page by page.
4.

Find which churches Puchezh had in 1895 on sobory.ru and in the 1890s–1900s directories of Kostroma diocese. Also ask on the Kostroma/Yuryevets section of forum.vgd.ru. Local researchers there often know which fond and inventory hold Puchezh's registers.
5.

Write to the archives if steps 2–4 turn up nothing. Ask ГАКО for a search of the 1894–1896 parish registers for Puchezh. If you can, give the parish, her father's name and her religion. Ask ГАИО the same question. The archives charge for searches. I can draft the letter in Russian for you to check and send.

How to read what you find

• Dates in the register are in the Julian (old-style) calendar. For 1895, add 12 days to get the modern date.
• "Born around 1895" probably comes from an age stated later in life. Ages like that are often a few years off, so search 1892–1898.
• An entry for "Анна" whose father is a Колодин is only a lead until you match two more facts, such as the parents' names, her later marriage or the village.

I didn't search any database for her yet, and the fond number (ф. 130) is from memory, not checked. The biggest risk: if Kolodina was her married name, a birth-record search under that surname will never find her.