Latvian Genealogy Blog

When Church Registers Switched Languages 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 recognize names and surnames in church books in Russian. In 1891, an order was issued in the Russian Empire that church registers should henceforth be kept in Russian . Until then, Lutherans in Latvia and Estonia had kept their books in German. Of course, German pastors now had to rack their brains not

When Russian Became the Church-Book Language 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 order came into effect on January 1, 1892. German pastors now had to urgently learn Russian. The guides published at that time on Russian language terms in church books are also useful for genealogy researchers. The Kurzeme Consistory's Circular The Evangelical Lutheran Consistory of Kurzeme came to

I previously wrote about the 1935 and 1941 censuses, but there is an older census as well. It took place in 1897 in the Russian Empire, and since Latvia was part of the empire at that time, it also took place in Latvia. Unfortunately, only part of this census has been preserved in the Latvian State Historical Archives. Primarily, pages for Latgale Region, the Riga and Valmiera districts, and the cities of Courland (Latv. Kurzeme) are available. I haven't heard if more documen

If your ancestors were from Latgale Region, they were probably Roman Catholic. Earlier Catholic church books were written in Polish, but...

In the 1840s, many Latvians in Vidzeme Region converted to Orthodox Christianity. They received new Orthodox names. How to identify your converted ancestor? What were the new orthodox names of the converted Lutherans? Limbaži Orthodox Church. Photo by Ints Lūsis When I first learned that my great-grandfather’s name was Aleksandrs, and his sisters were called Olga and Tatjana, I was truly surprised. Were they Russian? But the truth is that they were descendants of those many L