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!

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 are, however, numerous ways in which to establish someone’s ethnic identity. They are not [...]]]> So you have established that your ancestors lived on Latvian territory. But what were their ethnic origins? Latvia has been a multi-ethnic territory for centuries, so the distinctions between ethnic groups might not always be so clear in the old records.

There are, however, numerous ways in which to establish someone’s ethnic identity. They are not foolproof, but simply a guideline that can help to unravel some of these mysteries.

Why is ethnicity important? Each ethnic group has its own unique traditions and culture. Knowing about these traditions and cultures helps us paint a clearer picture of our ancestors’ lives, the stories they told, the songs they sang and the languages they spoke.

Surname – The peasantry – mostly consisting of ethnic Latvians – only acquired surnames in the nineteenth century. They were encouraged to choose names that reflected this ethnic origin, though many did not comply and chose German, Polish or Russian names instead. But if they did select a Latvian name, the chances are extremely good that they were ethnic Latvians. Remember, Latvian was considered a peasant dialect in this time period, so anyone who was not Latvian would be unlikely to choose a Latvian name. German, Russian or Polish names, however, since they carried with them the appearance of prestige and a higher social class, were adopted by many different groups that were not ethnic Germans, Russians or Poles, including, but not limited to, Latvians, Estonians and Roma. Jewish surnames can also be of Slavic or Germanic origins, depending on a family’s particular history – sometimes they could come from Germanic origins via Yiddish centuries before surnames were prevalent among the Latvian peasantry, in other cases, they could have been assigned around the same time that Latvian peasants acquired surnames.

Census – Census records – from 1897, 1935 and 1941 – all have a column for ethnicity. However, as census records are derivative sources, they could have their inaccuracies, particularly depending on such things as who answered the census for the household, any biases on the part of the recordkeepers (for example, on the 1897 All-Russia Census, it was common for Belarusians and Ukrainians to be written down as “White Russians” and “Little Russians”, thus subgroups of the main Russian group, rather than as separate ethnicities within a wider Slavic group), and the political climate (the 1941 Census was conducted while Latvia was under Nazi occupation).

Congregation – So your ancestor from Latvian territory has a German, Russian or Polish name, but you believe that they are an ethnic Latvian? Look at religious records. Not the language of the records themselves, but the congregation your ancestor is found in. Many Lutheran parishes had separate German and Latvian congregations, and the records were often kept separate as well. If your ancestor was baptized in the German congregation, it is likely that at least one of their parents was an ethnic German. But here there is the caution regarding upward mobility – if a Latvian was seeking to improve his social status further – maybe he was already favoured by a local baron or had had the opportunity to study – he may have switched to the German congregation in an effort to maintain his higher status. In the nineteenth century, there was a movement against this Germanization by the Young Latvians.

Religion – Generally speaking, ethnic Latvians and ethnic Germans were Lutherans. Sometimes they were Catholics, particularly in Latgale. Some Latvians joined the Russian Orthodox church, or smaller denominations such as Baptist or Reformed churches. It is also important to read baptism entries of children fully – they will typically tell the religion of both parents. This additional information in baptism entries can also lead to surprising discoveries – I found an Anglican British man who settled in Sece parish in the 1870s who baptized his children into his local wife’s Lutheran church.

Class – Class is a big marker, particularly prior to the twentieth century. Ethnic Latvians were predominantly peasant farmers, with some working in trades. The nobility was primarily German, with some Russian and Polish nobles as well. I have yet to hear of any ethnic Latvian baron or large landowner, but it is not outside the realm of possibility. Depending on the time period, administrators would have been German, Russian or Polish. As time passed, Latvians began to move into other positions as well, but, for the most part, this would have only come after emancipation from serfdom.

Location – Where in Latvia did your ancestors live? Vidzeme and Kurzeme, the northern and western provinces of Latvia, had (and still have) the highest percentages of ethnic Latvians. Zemgale (the southern province) also had high numbers of ethnic Latvians – particularly in the west – but as you head east and into Latgale (the eastern province), percentages of Russians, Belarusians and Poles increase. Rural areas were predominantly Latvian, with the exception of the southeast, where there were larger numbers of Belarusians, Russians and Poles. Urban areas were very mixed. Latvians had pluralities in most cities at the end of the nineteenth century (except for in the southeast), but majority populations only in the north in cities such as Cēsis, Limbaži and Valmiera. In the southeast, cities were predominantly Jewish and Polish. In this same time period, there were two rural pockets that were predominantly German, one south of Ērgļi in central Latvia, the other in Kurzeme north of Saldus. The rural areas southeast of Ludza and west of Rēzekne in the east were predominantly Belarusian. Majority Russian rural parishes were found west of Rēzekne and east of Daugavpils.[1]

I hope that these tips can help you narrow down your family’s background and learn more about their traditions. Anomalies do occur, so nothing can be certain, but as a general guideline, these should help your research.

Any other tips? Share in comments!

[1]Population distributions taken from Latvijas Vēstures Atlants, ed. Jānis Turlajs, 1998, p. 28 – “National population at the end of the 19th century”.

The Latvian Ziemassvētki is an ancient celebration, a pre-Christian solstice celebration as in many European cultures. The Latvian name of the holiday never changed to reflect the new religion, however – “Ziemassvētki” means “Winter Holiday” or “Winter Celebration”.

Perhaps this is because Christianity came relatively late to the Baltics [...]]]> A very happy holiday to one and all!

The Latvian Ziemassvētki is an ancient celebration, a pre-Christian solstice celebration as in many European cultures. The Latvian name of the holiday never changed to reflect the new religion, however – “Ziemassvētki” means “Winter Holiday” or “Winter Celebration”.

Perhaps this is because Christianity came relatively late to the Baltics – the “Brothers of the Sword” arrived in the late twelfth century to Christianize the Baltic people in what was called the “Livonian Crusade”. While most people converted to the new religion, there is still a strong pagan element in Latvian culture today.

Allegedly, the first documented use of an evergreen tree as a Christmas tree was in Rīga in 1510. Some legends connect this event with Martin Luther, but there is no evidence that Luther was ever in Latvia.

I know I have been a bit quiet on this blog recently, but that is about to change! I have now returned to Canada, and with the conclusion of Christmas festivities (most Latvians celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve), I have time to blog again.

I will have several new and exciting projects coming to this blog – and my website as a whole – that will be unveiled in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!