Every year in genealogy brings its own challenges and discoveries, but 2025 was special. It made me reevaluate my work, taught me to adapt to new circumstances, and at the same time reminded me why I do this work at all – because it interests and engages me. I love that the result of my work is personally meaningful to someone. And what actually happened this year? If I had to say it in one word – I think I can safely say it was dramatic! The biggest events were concentrated

Just a week ago, during a lecture for family history researchers in Valmiermuiža, I said that I was impatiently waiting for the moment when artificial intelligence would finally be able to read handwritten texts. Until now, my experiments with different AI models for reading Latvian genealogical documents had been rather unsuccessful. But then Gemini 3 Pro arrived! The model was released exactly on November 18 , and it immediately caused a wave of excitement. Of course, new d

I would like to introduce another family history book that I had the pleasure of contributing to. Its structure, in my opinion, can serve as both inspiration and a practical example for researchers who wish to create their own family books. Peter Paul, who lives in Basel, is a descendant of Ludvigs Pauls , a Latvian baptized in the Zaļenieki parish, Latvia. In 1889, Ludvigs’s father purchased the very same “ Daukšas ” homestead where the renowned Latvian poet Aspazija was bor

To find someone, you first need to know where to look. The same goes for family history. Before you can begin your research, you have to know which parish  your ancestors lived in. Sometimes it’s enough to know which congregation  they belonged to — but that’s where things get tricky. A parish ( pagasts ) and a congregation ( draudze ) are not the same thing. Let me share a confusing little case I ran into involving both. A Confusing Certificate This one research started with

Anyone actively researching Latvian family history has probably noticed that interwar-period documents are no longer available online (on...

Did you think your family research was finished and complete? In truth, it never really is – almost every week new documents appear that...

In this post, I will once again turn to my experience with the family book. The book has finally been printed, and I can now show and...

You’ve probably also come across an old passport without a photograph—just a thumbprint instead. One of Aleksandrs Pelēcis’s stories...

One of my major projects over the past six months is finally nearing completion—a family book I have been compiling on behalf of a...

Railway employees, like other state workers, were entitled to state pensions. These pension files can reveal significant facts for family...

Perhaps you’ve encountered a situation where a soul revision list includes just two names— Juris Mārtiņš , for example. But which is...

You are no doubt familiar with the problem—you come across an interesting article in a historical newspaper, but it’s not only printed in...

In many congregations, only short-form marriage registers are available. These usually list only the names and surnames of the bride and...

In an older blog post , I already wrote about the transition from German to Russian in church books. In this post, I will explain how to...

On June 3, 1891, an order was issued in the Russian Empire that from now on Lutheran church books should also be kept in Russian. The...

In this week's post, I want to share a small piece of advice that I also gave to my course participants. For a family researcher, it is...

This week I encountered a case that reminded me once again - documents cannot be blindly trusted! They need to be verified, and we must...

Reading through my family history, I discovered a sad coincidence - in two generations, my ancestors married during wartime, and instead...

This week I thought about an interesting fact that led me to read the conscription rules of the Latvian Legion. Specifically, of two twin...

Regular readers of my blog may have noticed that I often mention writing a book. Yes, step by step, I am documenting the results of a...