Birth Record of Karolīne Matilde Baburs - December 31, 1867 (O.S.)

Caroline Mathilde, daughter of worker Martin Babbur and his wife Edde born Jansohn. Baptized by Pastor Getter(?) in the church [Church of Jesus, an evangelican Lutheran church south of the Old City of Rīga]. Godparents maiden Caroline Wendt, worker Martin Lasmann and Jann(?) Krasting.

Usually I post records on the day of the event based on [...]

Death Record of Jēkabs Šīrs – October 4, 1923

Click for full image. Image courtesy of a cousin from my Lūkins family line.

Fishing manager JĒKABS ŠĪRS, 61 1/2 years old, born in Aloja, divorced.

Died on October 4, 1923, at 10 o’clock in the evening in Rīnuži.

Buried October 14, 1923 at the Baltās Baznīcas (White Church) cemetery.

Daugavgrīva church book, 1923 deaths, #53.

Jēkabs Šīrs was my [...]

Birth Record of Anna Liepa - September 22, 1895

This post is the first in a series that I’ll be making about events in my ancestors’ lives, on the days that the events took place.

My reasons for this series are twofold – first of all, it helps me organize my own family documents and files, which is something that has been severely lacking, especially [...]

Getting Out of Riga

Rīga is the capital city of Latvia and the largest city in the Baltics. Since Latvian records are largely unindexed, this means that locating an ancestor in Rīga is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

If your ancestors were ethnic Latvians, however, you might find yourself lucky – most ethnic Latvians in the capital [...]

Paying Attention to Details

It is too easy, especially when reading records that require interpretation of handwriting in an unfamiliar language, to pick out the main details – date of birth and parents – but ignore the details that are “not strictly necessary” – godparents, occupations, and so on. It is also easy to just scan for the surnames [...]

Working With Revision Lists

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that the Kurland revision lists are up on Raduraksti. Good news – the Livland (Vidzeme) revision lists are up too!

Now here is your guide to making sense of these documents!

I’m going to start with just the revision lists themselves – many of them come with all sorts of [...]

Kurland Revision Lists!

I was looking around on Raduraksti, and I saw that they have posted what appears to be the full collection of the revision lists for rural Kurland (modern-day Kurzeme and Zemgale). They can be accessed by going “Saturs” -> “Dvēseļu revīzijas” -> “Lauku teritorijas”.

Revision lists are a great resource that take the place of censuses [...]

Records after 1905

In my last post, a reader requested that I talk about records after 1905. So here we go!

There are lots of different types of records available for the post-1905 period – however, as of right now, none of them are available online. The main online genealogical resource for Latvian records – religious records on Raduraksti [...]

What Do You Want To Read?

Sorry for the lack of posting the past couple of weeks – I was making my way home from Latvia, and then, just four days after getting home, moved across the province. I’m mostly settled in now, and starting to process everything I learned and found while I was researching in the archives in Latvia.

There’s [...]

School Records

Ever wonder how your parents, grandparents or great-grandparents did in school? You may just be able to find out. Numerous Latvian school records are held at the Latvian State Historical Archives, mostly for the inter-war period (1918-1940).

Of course, to be able to use these records, you need to know where they went to school, and [...]