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 [...]]]>

Usually I post records on the day of the event based on the Gregorian calendar, but for this event, I’m making an exception, due to its special circumstance.

The year an event takes place often matters. So what happens when the year suddenly changes? My great-great-grandmother Karolīne Matilde Baburs was born on December 31, 1867 according to the Julian Calendar. When the change to the Gregorian calendar happened, her birthday would have changed to January 12, 1868.

This calendar switch happened in 1919 in Latvia, according to the Latvian-language sources that I’ve found. This means that Karolīne would have just turned 51. I wonder what she thought about celebrating her birthday not only on a different day, but a completely different year. Was she sad that her birthday was no longer on a “special” day? Or relieved? Was she happy to be born at the “beginning” of the year, rather than the “end” of the year?

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 [...]]]>

Jēkabs Šīrs was my great-great-grandfather. He was born in Aloja in northern Latvia to parents Jānis and Kristīne on May 30, 1862 (O.S.). When he came to live in the Rīga area is unclear, but his daughter Lilija was born at Kalnciems in 1899. Sometime prior to this, he married Kristīne Kukure, who is also allegedly from northern Latvia, but I have yet to find her birth record anywhere. They divorced in June of 1923.

At the time of Jēkabs’ death, he was living at Rīnuži, which was a place in what is now the Vecmilgrāvis part of Rīga. Whether Rīnuži was a hamlet with a number of families or a property owned by the Šīrs and Lūkins families, I’m not exactly certain yet, but today in that area is a Rīnuži street, which intersects with Baltāsbaznīcas street (White Church Street), where the Šīrs and Lūkins families lived. The “White Church” in question is the Daugavgrīva Lutheran Church, in whose cemetery Jēkabs was interred.

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 [...]]]> 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 in this past year when I’ve been so wrapped up in other activities that I’ve barely had time to touch my own family research. Secondly, it provides concrete examples to you, my readers, of the different kinds of documents that you may be able to consult in your own Latvian research.

This may be the birth record of my great-grandmother Anna Liepa. I’ll get back to the “may be” in a bit, first a bit on her.

Anna Liepa was born in Rīga on September 22, 1895, according to the Gregorian calendar. At the time of her birth in the Russian Empire, her birthday was September 10. Her tombstone cites her date of birth as September 23, but every document of hers that I have (internal passport, marriage record, numerous house book entries, etc.) all state September 22 (and in the early years of independent Latvia, both the Gregorian and Julian dates are cited together). She was a bookkeeper, and married Pēteris Eduards Celmiņš in Rīga on September 17, 1919.

Now back to the “may be” – Anna was born in Rīga, which was and is the biggest city in Latvia. This means there are lots of records to check, and both her first and last names are fairly common. I haven’t consulted all of the Rīga records yet, but this one certainly is the best candidate.

My reasoning, in favour of this being her birth record:

• Her precise birth date is mentioned here – September 10, 1895, according to the Julian calendar.
• Numerous other documents, such as her internal passport and her marriage record, mention that her father’s name is Fricis, which this record agrees with.
• This record is an extract from the Sv. Pāvila (St Paul’s) Lutheran Church. This church is the closest one to where Anna and her husband and children were known to live. While this doesn’t prove that she was born in that same area of town, her husband was from the country, and thus it was likely for him to join her family rather than the other way around. This happens numerous times throughout my family history, so could have happened here as well.

Points against this being her birth record:

• No other documents mention a middle name of “Natalie” or “Natālija” (a more Latvianized form of the name). Neither her passport nor her marriage record nor any house book records mention a middle name.
• There are numerous “Fricis Liepas” in Rīga around this time. The 1903 Rīga address book mentions two, the 1912 address book mentions three. Any of them could have had daughters named Anna around the same time.

So the search continues. Is this the right record? I won’t know until I check the rest of the churches. I could also obtain her death record and hope that it has her mother’s first name and maiden name on it. Until then, Anna remains one of my problem ancestors.

If your ancestors were ethnic Latvians, however, you might find yourself lucky – most ethnic Latvians in the capital [...]]]> 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 arrived towards the end of the nineteenth century. In 1897, Rīga was 45% Latvian, in 1867, only 23%. Therefore, if your ancestors are ethnic Latvians, there is a good chance that you might only need to deal with Rīga records for a generation or two.

Thus the title of this post – how can you most efficiently look through that haystack of records to locate your ancestors and link them to a parish outside of Rīga, and thus a place that can be searched much more easily?

1. Passports. The Latvian State Historical Archives has a collection of internal passports for Rīga residents in the inter-war period. The good news is that they are indexed on a computer for ease of searching. Bad news is that they are not online, and only available by searching the database onsite. These passports note both place of residence and place of birth. Also important is “place of registration”, which can often be the place of birth – even if they haven’t lived there in years. One of my great-grandfathers was still registered as a citizen of Vijciems parish, even though at the time of issuance of the passport he had been living in Rīga for at least a decade.

2. 1940 Telephone Directory. Available online at GenealogyIndexer (has all of Latvia, scroll down to find Rīga). Now, not everyone had a telephone, but it is a start. This can be used to locate an address, and then you can look for parish records for that area. Of course, people move, and sometimes frequently, but a starting point is better than nothing.

3. 1897 All-Russia Census. Available on Raduraksti. The records for Rīga are fairly complete, and organized by street name. The census mentions place of birth and religion, both important tools to locate the proper religious BMD documents.

4. Religious records. Available on Raduraksti. There are many religious records available for Rīga, so if you’ve narrowed down where your ancestors lived, start searching in nearby parishes, and then expand your search from there. Rīga records sometimes contain rudimentary indexes (still handwritten), available at the beginning or end of the book. Check both to see if one is available. If someone is a recent migrant to Rīga, any information pertaining to them with regards to “home parish” will frequently reference their non-Rīga parish (see above with regards to place of registration). This is most common with marriage and death records, so if you know when an ancestor died in Rīga, find their death record first to see if they were born in Rīga as well.

5. School records. If your ancestor went to school in Rīga, there may be extant records for the school that could provide information on where the student was from. Sometimes school archive files (available at the Latvian State Historical Archives) will contain birth certificates of students, previous school transcripts, and so on.

6. Revision lists. These are available on Raduraksti. If you find your ancestors were in Rīga prior to the early 1860s, you will need to head to the revision lists. Now, the ones for Rīga are more complicated than for rural parishes – they are arranged by social class and, in some cases, religion (the religious groups most likely to have separate lists are Jews and Old Believers). Alphabetical indexes appear to exist for some of the lists, but not all of them. Raduraksti has many different lists relating to Rīga, so you may have to sort through them for awhile to find who you’re looking for. It appears that for the most part, the latest date on these documents is 1863.

Another thing to remember is that your ancestor might not have been from Rīga at all – just like emigrants from other countries, people might name the largest city to their home as their place of birth, when they were actually from the countryside. So unless you have a document (preferably of Latvian origin, since they would be most likely to be correct on Latvian places of residence and birth) that specifically links your ancestors to Rīga, do not assume that is where they are from, just because it is a large population centre. This holds especially true for ethnic Latvians – while the share of ethnic Latvians in Rīga did increase in the late 1800s and eventually become a majority in the interwar period, ethnic Latvians were still a predominantly rural population. If your ancestors were not ethnic Latvians, however, their chances of being Rīga-born for centuries are much higher.

Have you searched for your ancestors in Rīga? Do you have any other tips to share for Rīga searches? Add them below!

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 [...]]]> 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 supplementary documentation as well, but with the exception of the incoming/outgoing registers, these can be highly individualized to each estate or parish.

It is important to note that revision lists are based on estate, not parish. There can be numerous estates within a parish. If you know what parish your ancestors lived in, but are not sure of the estate, consult their birth record in the religious records – the first line of the record should list the estate name and farm name. If you don’t have a birth record yet, consult this map to find the estates in your ancestral parish and start going through them to find your family.

The latest revision list is for 1858. The format of the records are as follows…

Left-side page:

1. 9th revision list family number (that is, the previous list)
2. 10th revision list family number (current list)
3. Names of males in the household (often including father’s name as well – be careful you don’t mix up this and the surname), the name of the farm is also indicated in this column, also numbered (but usually with a Roman numeral so as to not confuse this with the family number)
4. Age at previous revision list, or, if not dwelling at this address, previous place of residence (and sometimes year of arrival to this address)
5. Changed circumstances since the last revision list – such as moving to a new address since the last list was written, death, etc.
6. Current age

Right-side page:

1. 9th revision list family number
2. 10th revision list family number
3. Names of females in the household, often prefixed by relationship to male in the household (wife-Frau or daughter-Tochter), or if single woman, as an unmarried woman (Magd) or a widow (Wittwe).
4. Changed circumstances (this can sometimes be used sparingly for women)
5. Current age

It is important to note that in the revision lists, an individual (especially a male) could appear twice if they had moved during the time between lists. They will appear in their current home, with a notation that they moved from location X, and they will appear in location X with the notation that they have moved to the new address. People moved about frequently, especially within an estate.

The formats for the 1834 and 1850 revision lists are identical to the 1858 one, with the exception of family numbers – the family numbers (should) stay consistent between the different lists, and only changed with the 10th revision, so there is only one family number column per page.

For 1826, the format changes a tiny bit – the farm name and number now has its own column, and it is the first column on each page – also note that farms are now numbered with regular numbers, while family numbers have become Roman numerals – the family name is also now listed in the same box as family number. Any other data in the name column can pertain to things such as status (Knecht – farmhand/servant, Wirts – landowner/manager – remember the purchasing of farms from barons and other large landowners only started in earnest in the latter half of the nineteenth century, so “Wirts” may not yet indicate ownership but rather the head of the farm household), or might include items that should be in the next box over (previous place of residence, etc.).

Prior to the 1826 revision list, things can get difficult, for 1826 is the first revision list with surnames for peasants. The 1816 list does not have surnames, so one must rely on relationship markers (wife, daughter, etc.) to determine family relationships. Men and women are no longer listed on separate pages, but rather one after another on the same page. Beware of assuming that just because your ancestors lived on a farm in 1826, and there is a family with the same given names on the farm in 1816, that they are the same family. I almost fell into that trap on one estate until I noticed the notation that they had moved from another estate in the early 1820s. There was not a large variation in given names, so there could be many families with the same names, with the same ages (I’m still angry at one of my ancestors for naming his daughter the same name as his brother’s daughter when these two girls were born a month apart on the same farm).

There are earlier lists for 1811 and 1795, which have even less information than the 1816 list – usually just ages (current and previous list age, with separate columns for men’s ages and women’s ages), and the 1811 list does not usually include women.

Hopefully this guide will help you work your way through the main portion of the revision lists. More to come soon on incoming and outgoing registers – peasants were much more mobile than we may think, and these registers are key to tracing their movements.

Have you found your family in the revision lists? Share your story below!

Revision lists are a great resource that take the place of censuses [...]]]> 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 for the early and mid-19th century in Latvian research. They show family groups, ages, farm names and often previous residences. I will be providing a guide on how to use this resource soon.

Here’s hoping the lists for southern Livland (modern-day Vidzeme) make an appearance soon as well!

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 [...]]]> 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 – ends at 1905. But later records are accessible through a variety of avenues, depending on the specific years you’re looking for. Unless mentioned otherwise, all documents are located in the Latvian State Historical Archives (LVVA).

Vital Records

Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths did not begin until the 1920s. Records prior to this time are religious in nature, so it will be necessary to know the religion of your ancestor.

While Raduraksti only goes to 1905 for now, most available records from 1906 to 1909 have been transferred to the LVVA. A list is available on their website here (PDF, the list is organized first by religion, then by parish). However, some records from this time period may still reside with the Ministry of Justice’s Registry Office Archives. This is because of how some records were organized – the registry entries were made into books, so if it happens that earlier years (say 1908 and 1909) are in the same volume as later years (such as 1910 and 1911), the entire book will remain at the Registry Office Archives.

For vital records between 1910 and 1921 (and earlier years as relevant based on the criteria above), it is necessary to contact the Ministry of Justice’s Registry Office Archives (page in Latvian only). This can be done by phone, email or in person. I went in person. You will need to provide as much information as you can, including the religion of the person you are inquiring about. It will then take at least two weeks for them to issue a transcript to you. However, just like with all records, there are no guarantees that the information you are looking for will be found, even if you know for certain what happened where – for example, they could not find my maternal grandmother’s birth record, even though I know for certain when and where she was born and baptized, as these were events witnessed by her older sister, my great-aunt, who confirms the information provided in later official documents. While this record does not seem to exist, numerous others that I asked for do, and I was able to solve the longstanding mystery of where my maternal grandfather was born – in some documents, he says he was born in Lāde parish, in others that he was born in Rīga. His birth record confirms that he was born in Lāde parish.

For vital records after 1921, it is necessary to contact the regional registry office for the area that a person lived. Note that this may not be the local registry office of today – many smaller towns now have their own registry offices, but older records will still be found in the regional office. If you need help figuring out which regional registry office you may need to contact, let me know and I can try to help you.

Census Records

Latvia carried out a national census in 1935 (fonds 1308 abstract 12), and again in 1941 (fonds 1308 abstract 15), a few months after the beginning of the Nazi occupation. The records are arranged by parish or town, and are usually alphabetical based on street or farm name – though beware of only going by street/farm name, since sometimes they will be out of order. As well, sometimes a farm may have been part of a smaller hamlet falling under the purview of a parish and thus grouped by hamlet name first, then farm name. And, of course, just like with censuses in other parts of the world, people may have been somewhere else either for the night of the census or for a longer period of time. The 1935 census is on loose sheets of paper, the 1941 census is bound in book form. The 1941 census has additional fields that the 1935 census does not that are of particular interest to genealogists – namely, full birthdates (the 1935 census only asks for birth year) and places of birth. Of course, this information may not always be accurate, but it does provide a starting point to work from.

School Records

I talked about school records in this post. As a summary: school records can provide more than just your ancestors’ grades – they can also potentially lead to previous school attendance information, birth certificates, and more.

Passports and Immigration/Emigration

In the interwar period, everyone in Latvia needed to have an internal passport. These passports provided the basic details on a person, such as birthdate/place, father’s name, address, occupation, etc. When moving to a new home, it was necessary to register this with the local authorities and have a stamp placed on the passport providing this new information. Stamps were also made to confirm that someone had voted in an election or paid various types of local taxes. For women, it also listed the birth of children. Thus these passports can be a source of all sorts of useful information for the genealogist. However, the collection is not comprehensive – the most extensive collection is available for Rīga (fonds 2996), but some exist for other Latvian cities as well (fonds 2258).

Was your ancestor an international traveler in the interwar period? Numerous external passports and passport applications are also available (fonds 3234, abstracts 24, 32, 33). I found the passport application that was made on my grandfather’s behalf so that he could spend a semester in Sweden to do his practical work (what we’d probably call a co-op or internship these days) while studying at an agricultural secondary school. I knew he had studied agriculture and that he had spent time in Sweden as part of his studies, but I didn’t know where in Latvia he had gone to school, since his family moved all over the country – with the information this passport application provided, I was able to get his full set of secondary school marks, as well as a copy of his diploma.

Did your ancestor immigrate to Latvia during the interwar period? Document collections on immigrants, both legal and illegal, as well as citizenship applications, might be able to provide more information. In the time period directly after the First World War, there were many non-permanent residents in Latvia that needed to be sorted out and either repatriated or settled – refugees, prisoners of war, and so on. Many people fleeing from the Soviet Union chose to settle in Latvia. Documents on legal immigrants and citizenship acquisition can be found in fonds 3234 abstracts 2 and 5, documents on refugees, POWs and illegal migrants in fonds 3234 abstract 1a and 13, and documents on loss of citizenship and expulsion from Latvian territory in fonds 3234 abstracts 21 and 23. Since all of my ancestors were already in Latvia at this time, I only took a look at the abstracts, but since they are mostly organized by surname, it should be easy to find if your ancestors are in them or not.

For emigration from Latvia during World War 2, and subsequent time ancestors would have spent in Displaced Persons Camps, see my post on the International Tracing Service.

House Books

As well as addresses being recorded in internal passports, the movements of people were also recorded in “house books” kept for each address. These books recorded the names of the people, birthdates, supporting document numbers (usually those of internal passports), when they moved to this address, previous address, when they left this address, and the address they moved to. It is thus theoretically possible to follow a family’s moves around the country using only house books. However, like the internal passport collections, the house book collection is far from comprehensive. The books exist mostly for the interwar period, though some individual books may extend beyond those dates (both backwards and forwards). For Rīga, consult fonds 2942, for the rest of Latvia, fonds 2110.

… and more!

What kind of job did your ancestor do? There might be documents relating to trade unions they could have been members of, social clubs or even employment files. If you know where specifically they worked, you could find information on the company that could mention your ancestor. I was able to find two employment files for one of my great-grandfathers – one for his time with the police force (fonds 5604), another for his time as a justice of the peace (Rīga district court, fonds 1536).

Did your ancestor change their name? Throughout the interwar period, but especially in the late 1930s, there was a push for Latvians who had names that were not of Latvian origin to change them to something Latvian-sounding. Records for surname changes can be found in fonds 3234, abstracts 1 and 31, though they appear to be arranged by pre-change surname, so if you don’t know what the earlier surname was, it could be a challenge. I will be addressing the topic of name changes and regulations involved in this in a post later this week.

These are only the most popular types of records. Many others exist as well – look at local court documents, to see if your ancestor was involved in any civil or criminal cases. Rural land records, which I will discuss later, may also cover this time period. Consider all aspects of your ancestors’ lives to try and figure out what may have generated a written record. There are many possibilities!

Did I miss an important type of record? What kind of records have you had success with? Share in comments!

There’s [...]]]> 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 just so much that I learned, so much that I could share, that I don’t know where to start!

What do you, my readers, want to read about? Is it surnames and the history of them that you’re interested in? 20th century census records? 19th century revision lists? Military records? Land records? I’ll talk about them all eventually, but if there’s something specific that you want to hear about, do let me know, and I’ll get to it as soon as I can!

Of course, to be able to use these records, you need to know where they went to school, and [...]]]> 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 roughly when – if you’re not completely certain what their school years would have been, you can search through a wider year range.

I learned when and where my grandmother Zenta Lukina attended high school from her father’s employment file – it mentioned that she had been admitted to the “M. Bekeru private gymnasium” (gymnasium being a type of secondary education in many Northern and Eastern European countries) in Rīga. From this information, I looked up the relevant fond at the archives, and looked at the abstract to see what kind of information could be found.

A variety of items were available for the school, such as books of students’ grades, and in some cases supporting documents for school admission.

Here I found my grandmother’s grades for her second year of secondary education – she had top grades in Religion & Ethics, Geography, Science and Drawing. She did not do very well in her first term of English, but then improved her grade over the course of the year. In addition to the Latvian language, she also studied English, German, Latin and Russian.

While searching through the files of supporting documents didn’t reveal any of hers, the files did give me a snapshot of the school and her classmates. It was a girls’ school, and the students came from a variety of backgrounds – along with ethnic Latvians, the school also had German, Russian and Jewish students. The Latvian students were from a variety of religious backgrounds – predominantly Lutheran, but also Orthodox, Baptist and Roman Catholic. I wonder if the school had a specific religious orientation that they taught in the Religion & Ethics course, or whether they taught about the variety of religions that the students belonged to.

These supporting documents took a variety of forms – copies of birth certificates (both civil and religious), transcripts from previous schools, diplomas certifying completion of primary school. Thus school records have the possibility to provide more than just information about schooling, but about family and possible other places of residence as well.

The availability of school records varies depending on the parish and the specific school. Sometimes only a few years are available – but these could be the years that you need! In terms of archival fonds, some schools are filed separately, while others are filed together with other schools based on the civil parish or wider administrative region.

Have you found information about your ancestors’ school years in your archival searches? Share your stories in comments!