In Latvia, cemeteries (“kapi” or “kapsētas”) are a very important part of life. Great care is taken to keep the graves of family and loved ones looking tidy and pretty. While in many Western [...]]]> The title of this post may seem a bit odd to most readers – how is there a culture revolving around cemeteries?

In Latvia, cemeteries (“kapi” or “kapsētas”) are a very important part of life. Great care is taken to keep the graves of family and loved ones looking tidy and pretty. While in many Western countries you will probably never meet the family members of the people buried next to your loved ones, in Latvia it is not entirely unusual to be on a first-name basis with them.

Cemeteries also host “kapusvētki” – social celebrations at cemeteries. These usually involve a religious ceremony, singing, a socializing portion, and sometimes lighting of candles. I have not yet had the opportunity to attend one, but hopefully I will when I start living in Latvia for more of the year.

To reflect the importance of cemeteries in Latvian national consciousness, a new magazine was released this summer. Called “In Memoriam”, it talks about the phenomenon of “kapusvētki”, gives suggestions for flowers and shrubs to plant at gravesites, provides recommendations for styles of gravestones, comments on the continuing debate of whether or not to include photos on gravestones, and much more. If you want to see a preview, you can do so here. According to this news article (in Latvian), two issues of “In Memoriam” will be released this summer, and number of copies sold will decide if they will release it again next year.

When I visit cemeteries in Canada, I rarely encounter other people. But cemeteries in Latvia, especially in the summer, are full of people caring for graves. Outside the front gates of most larger cemeteries you can find numerous flower and candle vendors. Proper upkeep of family graves is considered a reflection on the family, and thus socially encouraged. For those who may not be able to make the trip out to the countryside regularly to care for family graves, or for those who live abroad, some people in local communities will often offer grave care services.

Have you read the latest issue of “In Memoriam”? Does your family have its own cemetery traditions? Share your stories in comments!

Now, these indexes are simple – family name and number, and the farm names and numbers they appear in on the specified estate. More information is on the Revision Lists page.

The revision lists I’ve indexed aren’t available online yet, but they might be [...]]]> So the new project that I’ve been working on – revision list indexes!

Now, these indexes are simple – family name and number, and the farm names and numbers they appear in on the specified estate. More information is on the Revision Lists page.

The revision lists I’ve indexed aren’t available online yet, but they might be soon. For now, you’ll need to consult the records onsite at the Latvian State Historical Archives. I’ve provided the fond/abstract/item information you will need, as well as the microform call number.

Today I’ve added the list for the Dikļi estate. Let me know if you’re related to family 56 – Graumann. They’re my ancestors too!

How many indexes there will be in all, I can’t say. Depends on how much free time I have while I’m at the archives this week – this is my last week. When I get home next week, I’ll start into posts about the whirlwind of the past month and all of the different kinds of records I’ve been working with. I’ll be making these posts in amongst moving – I’m moving four days after I get home!

What I can say though, is I’ve been learning so much and I’ll have lots to share with you all when I [...]]]> Sorry about things being quiet here lately – I’ve been busy at work in the archives during the week, and on weekends going out to different places in Latvia to visit where ancestors lived.

What I can say though, is I’ve been learning so much and I’ll have lots to share with you all when I have a moment, and then more when I get home.

If you’re wondering about Project Updates, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about them, but my travel netbook doesn’t have the ability to automatically include Latvian diacritics, and copy/pasting them into large documents is an incredibly time-consuming experience. Expect these to return mid-August, once I’ve returned home and moved to a new city.

I’ll also have a few special surprises in store when I have a moment – hopefully the first should be up by the end of the weekend!

On July 4, 1941, numerous synagogues across Latvia were burned to the ground, some of them with people inside. One of the most [...]]]> This post should have been up yesterday, but I was out of town for most of the day and returned with a splitting headache, so I hope you’ll accept the post today instead.

On July 4, 1941, numerous synagogues across Latvia were burned to the ground, some of them with people inside. One of the most prominent of these was the Great Choral Synagogue on Gogol street in Rīga. It was burned with 300 Jews inside. It is at the remains of this synagogue that this memorial can be found.

Memorial stone at ruins of the Great Choral Synagogue, Gogol street, Rīga, Latvia. Photo taken by the author, July 2, 2010.

It is because of the destruction on this day that July 4 is designated as the Day of Remembrance in Latvia for Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

I took more photos of the area, of what is left of the synagogue, and of the monument to the Latvian Righteous Among the Nations nearby, let me know in comments if you would like me to post more.

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!

All four of my grandparents came to Canada for the same reason: to flee from the Communist terror that had overtaken their homeland [...]]]> [This post was written for the 30th edition of the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy on the topic of "Arrival in New Lands", hosted by Al of Al's Polish-American Genealogy Research.]

All four of my grandparents came to Canada for the same reason: to flee from the Communist terror that had overtaken their homeland and the rest of Eastern Europe. I have already talked at some length about their experiences in leaving and life as Displaced Persons, so for this post I will look at their arrival and first years in their new home. This is a time period that I initially neglected in my research, but now I am starting to try and learn more about it.

After World War 2 ended, there were millions of Displaced Persons across Western Europe who either could not or would not return to their homes. As a result, refugee organizations had to work to resettle all of these people into new homes across the world. This is a process that took several years, and most DPs departed for new lands between 1948 and 1951.

In numerous cases, DPs were admitted to countries through a variety of worker placement schemes – agreements that they would take up a pre-arranged position of employment that they needed to remain in for at least a year to fulfill the obligations of their contract. These schemes were not perfect, and in some cases exploitation did occur. However, for most it provided a good opportunity in their new country, to already have a steady job waiting for them, which sometimes also came with a place to live for the duration of the contract.

My grandparents participated in such placements upon their arrival in Canada. My maternal grandmother took up a nursing position at the Weston Sanatorium in Weston, Ontario, now a part of the city of Toronto. My grandfather Aleksandrs Francis obtained a contract to work on a farm near Niagara-on-the-Lake while he learned English. They were married in Toronto in 1950, presumably after he completed his contract. They lived in Toronto for several years, and then in 1954 moved to Saint Catharines, Ontario, where they built a home. Aleksandrs died in 1983, and my grandmother moved from this home in 1993, when she and her sister moved north to my family’s town.

My paternal grandfather, Juris Celmiņš, had trained as a civil engineer back in Latvia. He and his wife Zenta (nee Lukins) moved around to numerous places before they settled in Toronto. Juris’ first job was working in a mine in Sudbury, Ontario, but after a few days his supervisors thought “Why do we have this engineer who speaks English working down in the mine?” and gave him a new position. Juris had learned English while working in his DP camp, which had been in the British zone of Germany. After this job, he also worked in Sarnia, and then by 1954 was living in Toronto, where he and Zenta and their three children lived until Zenta’s death in 1959. Juris remarried to Edīte Bulle, a fellow Latvian who had been recently widowed, and they lived in their home in Toronto until their deaths in 2002 and 2003.

The homes they lived in were simple post-war homes. I’m not sure when my paternal grandparents began to own their homes, but I know my maternal grandparents’ first home in Toronto, from roughly 1952 to 1954, was jointly owned by them and another Latvian couple. I have the bill of sale of them selling this property to a young Jewish family (searching the address on Google provided me with several “society pages” articles from the Canadian Jewish Review where the name matched that on the bill of sale). Then they built their home in Saint Catharines, and defied apparent social conventions of the time with the design – instead of putting the living room at the front of the house, they put the kitchen in the front and had the living room with large windows overlooking their beautiful garden. My mother tells me that several neighbours were displeased about this design – I guess this setup made it harder for them to be nosy! The garden had many different plants and shrubs, both for decoration and for food. I have fond memories of eating black currants and red currants straight off the bushes when I was a child.

The worker placement schemes could take DPs to far corners of the country – late 1940s editions of the newspaper “Brīvais Latvietis” (Free Latvian) mentions Latvian clubs in places such as the Yukon. But through newspapers like this, they kept in touch, found lost friends and kept the community spirit alive. Early editions of this paper are available through the website Connecting Canadians. At some point during this time, though I’m unsure as to how it happened, my maternal grandmother came back into contact with her high school sweetheart, who had settled in the USA. They still keep up correspondence to this day.

After the contracts ended and DPs could move to anywhere they wanted, Latvians tended to congregate in larger cities – Toronto has the largest Latvian community in Canada, but there were also communities in Montreal, Saint Catharines, Ottawa and Hamilton. They set up Latvian Saturday schools for their children, organized singing and dancing clubs, created scout and guide troops, organized summer camps and established churches. A prevailing notion that inspired this flurry of activity right from the beginning was that Latvians in the Soviet Union would be systematically eliminated, so it was up to the exiles (“trimdinieki”) to maintain their identity, heritage and language.

Many of these same instutitions continue to exist today. My father and I both graduated from the same Latvian school in Toronto, which this year celebrates its 60th anniversary. The Latvian summer camp that I attended as a camper from 1993 to 1998, and as a counselor for five of the eight following years, has been operating for fifty-three years.

Now, since independence was regained, there has been a shift – children and grandchildren of exiles, who were born and grew up in the West, are increasingly moving to Latvia to live. Many of my childhood friends have done so, and it is my intention as well. How much of a trend this will be, and how much culture and identity is retained in the West by those who do not return, is yet to be seen.

But back to the topic of [...]]]> Sorry things have been a bit quiet here, I’ve been busy! But in a week’s time I will be concluding my day job so that I can be on my way to Latvia for the summer, and then when I return home to Canada I will be returning to school.

But back to the topic of the post – today is June 14, which is one of the numerous days of remembrance in the Latvian calendar. This day of remembrance is for the victims of Communist terror. It is on this day because it was on June 14, 1941 that the Soviets began mass deportations of tens of thousands of Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians to Siberia and the gulags. Another larger wave of deportations also took place in 1949.

None of my ancestors were deported to Siberia, but I have found numerous extended relatives in the 1949 deportation lists, particularly from the northern parishes of Vijciems and Lugaži. I also know that most of my maternal grandfather’s parents’ siblings disappeared during this time, but they are not mentioned in These Names Accuse (a book comprised of lists of many of those deported during this time).

I do, however, have an ancestor who was a victim of Communist terror. He was not deported, but rather arrested in 1940 not long after the first Soviet occupation began. This was my great-grandfather Arvīds Francis. He was arrested because he had been a counter-intelligence agent with the Latvian political police force. I am told that most of his time was spent dealing with threats from fascist groups such as Pērkonkrusts, but he was involved in observation of Communist groups as well. He spent the late 1920s and early 1930s as the regional leader in Kuldīga, and his work was, at times, dangerous.

He was arrested on August 3, 1940 and imprisoned in Daugavpils. He was repeatedly interrogated and on June 16, 1941 was sentenced to execution. The sentence was carried out on June 22, 1941. He, along with three other police force members who had worked in the Liepāja area, were buried outside the prison.

An interrogation file was kept, and is currently stored in the Latvian State Archives (not the Latvian State Historical Archives, where I do most of my other research). I attempted to access it when I was in Latvia in December, but was told that I would need to bring proof that I was related to him, which I did not have with me at the time. My uncle was able to access it briefly (his mother is Arvids’ daughter, hence the paper trail of documentation was shorter than it would be for me), but didn’t have a lot of time. He was able to tell me though that it was quite a large file, and mostly in Russian. Now I do have all of my paperwork in order, so I hope to be able to access it this time around.

Five years ago, I was actually in the Baltics on June 14. I was in central Vilnius (Lithuania), where I visited the Soviet Occupation Museum, and outside the walls were covered with commemorative drawings by local children and guarded by members of the Lithuanian army. Nearby was the monument to commemorate Soviet victims of terror.

Other remembrance days in Latvia associated with the Second World War: March 25 (the day the 1949 deportations began), May 8 (the end of the Nazi regime in Europe and remembrance of victims of the Second World War), June 17 (the day the Soviet occupation began), July 4 (Jewish victims, the day a Rīga synagogue was burned down in 1941 with many people inside) and the first Sunday in December (another day for remembrance of victims of Communist terror). I must remember to mention each of them again as they come throughout the year.

Were any of your family members deported to Siberia in 1941? Arrested by the Soviets during the first occupation (1940-1941)? Share your family stories in comments.

What [...]]]> I will be traveling to Latvia this July! This will be an opportunity for me to do some more research and gain more familiarity with the different resources available. I will be going back to school in the fall, so I won’t be able to make another trip like this for at least two years.

What does this mean for you, my readers? I can offer various lookup services for different records, maybe even take pictures of ancestral homes. We can also discuss research services, but that will be on a case-by-case basis. Research services would start at $20/hour, specific record lookups would be a flat rate, depending on the type of record.

If you’re looking to plan your own research trip to Latvia at some point, but want to know ahead of time what specific records are available for your parish (for example, population registers, different types of estate documents, etc.), I can also offer a survey of sources. I will examine the specific fonds pertaining to your parish to compile a specific listing of the documents available, as well as more general fonds to find items of interest for your parish. This service is available for $25 for rural parishes or small towns. Larger towns and cities will be on a case-by-case basis.

Interested? Email me: and we can discuss details (you will need to type the address into your email program, I have it here as a gif to prevent spam). If there is something you’re interested in that I haven’t mentioned, let me know and we can see if we can work something out. Any details you provide to me about yourself, your family and your research will be kept completely confidential. If you want to know more about me, I have provided some more information on the “About” page, and you can always email me to ask any questions you may have. All prices are in Canadian dollars and taxes may apply.

More posts on history and migration to come soon! While in Latvia I also plan to go to the National Library, where there could also be a variety of useful sources for family history researchers. I’ll keep you posted on what I find there as well.

The total name count is now 800, I added 200 new names including TRĪSTILTIŅŠ and PODNIEKS.

Today I am also launching a new project, the Latvian Farm Project. The goal of this project is to match old farm names to their pre-WW2 parishes, as well as begin a study on [...]]]> The Latvian Surname Project has been updated!

The total name count is now 800, I added 200 new names including TRĪSTILTIŅŠ and PODNIEKS.

Today I am also launching a new project, the Latvian Farm Project. The goal of this project is to match old farm names to their pre-WW2 parishes, as well as begin a study on farm naming practices. Eventually, I hope to tie this in with the Surname Project and the Record Project to create parish profiles and also come up with statistics of how often people may have chosen farm names as surnames. So far farms are listed for the parish of Ainaži.

Be sure to tune in tomorrow for a very special announcement!