Participating in my first Geneabloggers daily blogging theme – Surname Saturday! The surname up this week is Baburs. The most recent ancestor I have with this name is Karolīne Matilde Baburs, born in Riga and baptized in the Church of
Tips, Tricks and Websites
[This post is written for the 24th edition of the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy, hosted by Al’s Polish-American Genealogy Research.] The topic for this Carnival is Tips, Tricks and Websites. I’ve already outlined the websites useful for
Families Unknown
When doing your research, have you ever come across a family – not your own – that appears to have a story to tell, and you want to find out what that story is? This has happened to me while
1895 Census – Live!
I’m currently traveling, so I hadn’t checked in at LVVA’s “Raduraksti” for a week or so. Today I visited the site, and discovered that the records for the Latvian parishes of the 1895 All-Russia Census are live and available for
Research Priorities
I will be in Latvia in five weeks (currently in London, slowly making my way through northern Europe towards Latvia), and while there, I will be visiting the Latvian State Historical Archives (LVVA; the archives that sponsors “Raduraksti”, which I
Depth of Records
So you have found the parish in Latvia where your ancestors would have attended church. Now comes the question – what kind of information, and how much, will you be able to glean from it? I’ve found that the amount
Limbaži
My maternal grandfather was from Limbaži, in northern Latvia. All I know about his family comes from my mother and my grandfather’s sister. I have not yet been able to find any official record of the family. However, since I
Bringing Out the Great-Grandfathers (part 1)
It is time for me to do a bit of an introduction to my own family – the mysterious entity that inspired my interest in genealogy and the pursuit of it as an eventual professional career. My family history, as
The Big Three
BÄ“rziņš, Kalniņš, Ozoliņš – these are what I call the “big three”. They are the most common Latvian surnames. With these names more than any others it is imperative that you know where your ancestor was from. But what do
Changes in Orthography
What happens when you apply the orthography of one language to a fairly unrelated language? A right mess, that’s what. As mentioned before, up until the 1890s most church books in Latvia were written in German. German is, as its