RÄ«ga 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 RÄ«ga is like looking for a needle in a haystack. If your ancestors
Importance of the ITS
I’ve mentioned the International Tracing Service (ITS) numerous times, as a key resource to finding out information about WW2-era Latvian emigrants who spent the post-war years in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Western Europe. Despite their important activities, I rarely
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” –
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
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” -> “DvÄ“seļu
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
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
Revision List Indexes
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
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
Project Update – May 1, 2010
The Latvian Record Project has been updated! I have added 1506 new entries to the indexes, covering LÄ“durga births 1895-1899, marriages 1895-1899 and deaths 1895-1900. Note however that unfortunately records for 1897 are not available, and are probably lost. Compared