Now, after doing some poking around, there are some caveats to this. I would not agree that there is “almost 100% coverage”, as some news articles say. While their coverage of Rīga and other major cities appears to be amazing, once you leave the major population centres, it is [...]]]> Google StreetView is now live for Latvia!

Now, after doing some poking around, there are some caveats to this. I would not agree that there is “almost 100% coverage”, as some news articles say. While their coverage of Rīga and other major cities appears to be amazing, once you leave the major population centres, it is not nearly that comprehensive. Though that isn’t necessarily StreetView’s fault – there are plenty of streets in small towns and country roads that don’t even appear on Google’s regular maps of Latvia. I’m not sure why this is, but a simple comparison between Google Maps and BalticMaps will show you that Google Maps is missing a lot. For example, the town of Smiltene – Google Maps has an “urban area” outline to the region, but only shows about four or five streets. Meanwhile, clicking over to BalticMaps shows at least two dozen. I have been to Smiltene, and I can tell you that there are more than four or five streets.

Despite this, however, Google StreetView can be a useful tool, particularly for those who have ancestors from Rīga and other major cities, who would like to see their ancestral homes (or what currently exists where the ancestral home used to be). So have fun exploring!

While I have the opportunity, I will also mention some other Latvian mapping tools. The aforementioned BalticMaps is an excellent resource for modern-day maps of Latvia. This map provides a comprehensive overview of all of the towns and manorial estates across the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire. It does not list individual farmsteads, but if you’re looking for the name of an obscure or small estate that you can’t find in other lists, odds are you will find it here. Lastly, I recommend the 1920s-1930s series of 1:75000 maps published by Jāņa Sēta – you can order them on CD here. The detail is such that individual farmsteads are mentioned.

Do you have any Latvian mapping tips or suggestions? Add in comments!

The celebrity in question was Rashida Jones, an American actress, daughter of music mogul Quincy Jones and actress Peggy [...]]]> I never thought that this was something I’d end up doing on this blog – reviewing a Who Do You Think You Are? episode. But it has happened – last weekend’s episode took place partially in Latvia!

The celebrity in question was Rashida Jones, an American actress, daughter of music mogul Quincy Jones and actress Peggy Lipton. The episode was looking at Rashida’s maternal ancestry. They followed her maternal grandmother’s ancestry back to her Jewish roots in Ireland, but the family had arrived in Ireland in the mid-1800s from Latvia.

When in Latvia, the show traced Rashida’s ancestry to the town of Aizpute in western Latvia, and to a time before surnames, revealing that Benson – a name that the grandmother had taken on to disguise her Jewish ancestry, but what also turned out to be her mother’s maiden name – was the first and only surname that the family had in fact known. After these revelations, Rashida turned to finding out what happened to her family that had stayed in Latvia while her great-great-grandfather had left, and learned that all of them perished in the Holocaust. The episode closed with Rashida and her mother Peggy visiting the memorial at the site where their relatives were likely to have been killed at Rumbula in 1941.

For those of you who have watched genealogy programs before, and have also conducted your own research, you’ll of course know that these shows are greatly simplified – nothing is ever that easy! I wonder how many hours of work it took to find out that the Bensons were from Aizpute. The easiest way would have been if the Irish records had a death record for one of Rashida’s ancestors that mentioned the specific birthplace in Latvia, or if there were Irish immigration records that mentioned where in Latvia they were from. If none of the Irish records mentioned anything, it would have been a long process looking through all of the Latvian Jewish records to find the place of origin.

There were some technical mistakes on the show – they mention the “National Archives” and then the “State Archives”, seemingly referring to them as the same thing. They are and they aren’t. The National Archives, from my understanding, is the umbrella group encompassing all of the archives in Latvia, while the State Archives is just one of those archives. Which is where the mistake comes in – Rashida was not at the State Archives, she was at the State Historical Archives, which is around the corner from the State Archives – location shots show her entering the front door of the State Historical Archives, and in the reading room of the State Historical Archives. Most information of genealogical interest will be at the State Historical Archives, and that is where I do my research (and, in fact, I have sat in the very place that Rashida sat!). I worry that this sort of mistake might lead those in search of their Latvian roots to the wrong archival authority, but I’m sure that the State Archives is used to such inquiries and knows to direct them to the State Historical Archives instead.

I’m also wondering, and maybe some of you American readers can enlighten me, but I’m wondering why Americans often pronounce Latvia as “Lot-vee-ah”, instead of “Lat-vee-ah”. I hear “Lot-vee-ah” frequently from Americans, not just in this show. Is there a reason for this unusual pronunciation? Rashida and the narrator used “Lot-vee-ah”, even though the locals in the episode said “Lat-vee-ah”, which is closer to the Latvian pronunciation.

I’m glad that the show took the viewers outside of Rīga, because all too often people focus on Rīga because it is the capital city, and rarely move out of there when visiting the country. But there is so much more to see in the country than just the capital. In terms of genealogy, this is particularly important to show – while certainly some people will have ancestral ties to Rīga, when compared to the number of people who have ancestral ties to elsewhere in Latvia, this number is quite small. Do not assume that just because your ancestors are from Latvia, that they have to be from Rīga!

I’m also glad that in terms of the Second World War, the show only discussed the events of the Holocaust and as they related to this specific family, rather than trying to paint a bigger picture of the Second World War. The Second World War in Latvia is an extremely complex matter that could not be accurately discussed in such a short time slot, so it is a good thing that they decided to leave it aside and only looked at Rashida’s family. I will try to write some posts about the Second World War in Latvia in the future, but it is a difficult time period to fairly describe such that it makes sense for the Western reader, because unlike the “good guys” and “bad guys” fighting in Western Europe at the time, Eastern Europe had “bad guys” and “worse guys”, which label belonging to which power (the Nazis or the Soviets) depending on the particulars of each family’s ethnic, religious, political and class backgrounds. But I will try.

Did you watch the Rashida Jones episode of Who Do You Think You Are? What did you think? Curious about the documents they looked at? Leave your questions in comments below!

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

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 [...]]]> 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 population of just over 2 million people.

Latvia only gained independence as a nation-state relatively recently – first declared in 1918, then occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940, Nazi Germany in 1941, and by the Soviet Union again in 1944 until independence was re-declared in 1991. Latvia joined the European Union in 2004.

Latvia has always been a multiethnic country. The majority population is ethnic Latvian, historically predominantly Lutheran, but with Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Baptist minorities. The second-largest ethnic group in modern Latvia are Russians, who are predominantly Orthodox. Historically, Latvia also had significant Jewish and German (Lutheran) populations, though both of these were reduced significantly as a result of the Second World War – the Jews by the Holocaust, and the Germans returned to the Third Reich by the invitation of Adolf Hitler to help with creating a “greater Germany”.

Thousands of Latvian residents of all ethnicities were also deported to Siberia by the Soviet forces, and thousands also fled West in the last days of the Second World War to escape Soviet occupation. After several years in Displaced Persons camps, they emigrated to countries all over the West, most commonly Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

What You Need to Know about Latvian Emigration

Latvians emigrating to places outside of Latvia, particularly en masse, is a relatively recent phenomenon, compared to many other countries. The system of serfdom in place while Latvia was a part of the Russian Empire (and prior to that under a myriad of other rulers) restricted the movements of the peasantry significantly, with permission required to move even to the neighbouring manorial estate. Even after serfdom was abolished (in Kurzeme province in 1818, in Vidzeme province in 1819, and in Latgale province only in 1861 at the same time as the rest of the Russian Empire), the movement of people was meticulously controlled and recorded.

Keep in mind that these are just general movements – your ancestor may have been an independent spirit who did not fit the characteristics of any of these emigrant groups.

The first mass movement of Latvians to outside of the Latvian provinces began in the late 19th century, when there were a large number of landless peasants. The Latvian provinces had a relatively high population density, which, coupled with the fact that land prices were high for peasants wishing to buy out their land from the German manorial estate barons, meant that the landless peasants began to look elsewhere for the possibilities of owning their own land. They ended up being offered cheap land all over the Russian Empire, and thousands of families took these offers. The majority of these families settled in the guberniyas of Saint Petersburg, Mogilev, Ufa and Vitebsk (the part that was not modern-day Latgale). Many of these Latvian colonies were assimilated, others dissolved by Latvians returning to Latvia, while some do continue to maintain their Latvian heritage today.

The first movements to the West began a few decades later, at the very end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. These emigrants were of two varieties – the first, like their Eastern emigrant brethren, came in search of new opportunities and land, many settling in Boston, Philadelphia and northern Wisconsin, USA. The second were political migrants, who were typically active in social democratic or autonomist political circles. Particularly in the years following the 1905 Russian Revolution, many Latvian political activists found themselves abroad, since the revolution had been particularly strong in the Latvian provinces.

A unique instance of Latvian emigration took place in the early 1920s – the early days of the Latvian Republic. Thousands of Latvian Baptists followed their pastor Jānis Iņķis to the forests of southern Brazil, where they established the colony Vārpa. Some Latvians still live in Vārpa today, though most have dispersed to other parts of Brazil.

The largest mass emigration of Latvians occured as a result of the Second World War. As mentioned above, thousands fled to escape the Soviet occupation, and later travelled to new homes across the world.

The following links may be of use for you to read about the historical situation in Latvia:

“A Millenarian Migration: Vārpa” by Arnolds Kārklis. Story of the history of the Vārpa colony.

ROOTS=SAKNES by Bruno Martuzāns. A wonderful resource on Latvian history and genealogical documents in context.

Also the following books (mostly in Latvian):

Apine, Ilga. 1905-1907 gada revolūcija Latvijā un latviešu sociāldemokrāti. Rīga, 2005.

Kārklis, Maruta, Līga Streips and Laimonis Streips. The Latvians in America: 1640-1973. New York, 1974.

Krasnais, Vilberts. Latviešu kolonijas. Melbourne, 1980.

Melnalksnis, Augusts. Latviešu kolonijas. Valmiera, 1918.

According to Klāvs Siliņš’ Latviešu personvārdu vārdnica (Dictionary of Latvian Personal Names), Ziedīte comes from the Latvian verb “ziedēt”, which means “to blossom”, and was first seen in 1915 in Zemgale, the southern part of Latvia. It was most popular in 1975, where it represented 0.03% of [...]]]> Today’s name is Ziedīte. This is a female name.

According to Klāvs Siliņš’ Latviešu personvārdu vārdnica (Dictionary of Latvian Personal Names), Ziedīte comes from the Latvian verb “ziedēt”, which means “to blossom”, and was first seen in 1915 in Zemgale, the southern part of Latvia. It was most popular in 1975, where it represented 0.03% of names given in Vidzeme and Kurzeme. According to the PMLP name database, there are currently 175 Ziedītes in Latvia (173 if you don’t count where Ziedīte is paired with a middle name).

Today’s name is Zinta. This is a feminine name, though there is a male form, Zintis, but that name is celebrated on January [...]]]> Welcome back to Forename Friday! This will be a biweekly series looking at Latvian first names, chosen based on one of the names found in the Latvian calendar of names for that day.

Today’s name is Zinta. This is a feminine name, though there is a male form, Zintis, but that name is celebrated on January 5 rather than April 6, so I will only be talking about the female form of the name here.

According to Klāvs Siliņš’ Latviešu personvārdu vārdnica (Dictionary of Latvian Personal Names), the name Zinta means “the art of wizardry” and was first recorded in Rīga in 1922. Since that time, it was most popular in the time period between 1945 and 1970, when it represented 0.18% of the female names given. According to the PMLP name database, there are 749 people living in Latvia with the first name of Zinta (691 if you don’t count where Zinta is paired with a middle name).

Zinta is also the name of a student corporation (the Latvian equivalent of a sorority or fraternity) founded by Latvian women in exile in 1947. It “returned” to Latvia in 1992 and has operated ever since, both in Latvia and in diaspora communities abroad.

My great-aunt and grandmother in Grundtvigs Kirke in Copenhagen, c. 1948.