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 very important to know the place where ancestors lived and were born. If you don't know this, it won't be clear which church parish to search for birth records in, and in which civil parish's census data to look for ancestors. How to understand which civil parish your ancestors' farms were in?
Searching on Maps
If you are looking for your ancestors in the 1935 and 1941 censuses, it's important to know which civil parish to search in. Latvia's administrative division has changed from time to time, especially regarding civil parish boundaries. Smaller parishes were merged over time, while others, quite the opposite, were divided - this happened in the 19th century, during the interwar period, and during the Soviet period.
If you know the location of your ancestors' homes, then the historical road maps (Latv. ceļu kartes) on the website vēsture.dodies.lv are a good helper. Turn on the 1934 and 1940 road maps, and the parish boundaries are clearly visible, marked with a yellow line.
Changes in Parish Names
Passports issued around 1920 sometimes mention civil parishes that later no longer existed. For example, recently I saw an entry in a passport where both Ķirbiži parish and Vitrupe parish were listed as the birthplace.
By searching on Google (Search in Latvian: Ķirbižu pagasts), you can quickly find out that Ķirbiži parish was renamed to Vitrupe parish in 1925. If you're looking for parish board documents in the archives, such changes need to be taken into account.
Sometimes, though, you cannot clearly read from the map on which side of the civil parish boundary certain homes were located. Then you need to check the censuses of both parishes.
Maps from the Russian Empire Period
Speaking about the time before World War I, the road maps (Ger. Wegekarte) of Valmiera, Cēsis, Riga, and Valka districts (Ger. Kreis) with parish (Ger. Kirchspiel) and manor (Ger. Gut) boundaries should be mentioned. These can be found on the National Library Map Digital Collection (kartes.lnb.lv ) in the Administrative Maps section.
These maps are from 1903-1905 and depict the boundaries at that time. Parish boundaries are marked with a red line, manor boundaries with a dashed line without color. Unfortunately, such maps are missing for Kurzeme. At least, I'm not aware of any.
Since I most often use the vēsture.dodies.lv website in my daily work, I tend to forget that valuable resources are also available in the Latvian National Library' maps. Besides the already mentioned road maps, there are also Soviet period collective farm and state farm boundary maps from different periods, city plans, railway maps, and many other interesting maps.
Happy traveling through maps to you as well!
P.S. Next week my blog and I are taking a small vacation, we'll meet again in two weeks with new discoveries!
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