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Part 2 – Genealogical Sources After reading Part 1 of this primer, and the historical context of Latvian emigration, now it is time to move to genealogical sources – the resources that you can use to trace your Latvian ancestry. What You Need to Know About Latvian Genealogy Most records are in Russian or German prior to the [...] Ready to move on to genealogical sources? See Part 2 of this primer here. Part 1 – Historical Context What You Need to Know about Latvia Latvia is a country in northeastern Europe, bordered by Estonia, Russia, Belarus and Lithuania. The official language is Latvian, an Indo-European language of the Baltic branch, related to Lithuanian. Latvia has a [...] Generally speaking, genealogy is a calm and focused pursuit. However, sometimes you need to be random – this is particularly true when trying to find something at the archives. There is a reason for this – the Central Fond Register really only names the fonds – and usually they are named after the creator of the [...] A wonderful resource for researching Latvian genealogy is the house book collection at the Latvian State Historical Archives. They are available in fond 2942 for Rīga and in fond 2110 for the rest of Latvia. During the Czarist era, as well as during the interwar period, every residential building in Latvia had to keep a record [...] So you want to use Raduraksti, but you’re intimidated, because you don’t know German or Russian. That’s okay! With a bit of work, you can find everything you need to know from these records, without needing to be fluent, or even proficient, in the languages. It is just a question of being able to extract [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] So after puzzling through the various alphabets and orthographies, you have been able to establish what your ancestors’ names would have looked like back in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. This is a great first step towards tracking them back through the years. Now you get to do the same for the places they lived! [...] I’ll admit, this post is long overdue. It should have been one of the first posts on this blog. But it is here now! For the purposes of this post, I am assuming several things. The main assumption is that you have utilized all of the records in the place where your Latvian ancestor migrated to [...] |
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