Sveiki/Greetings!

For those interested in researching family history in the Latvian Historical Archives there’s great news:  the Lutheran church records for the Courland (Kurzeme) and Zemgallian (Zemgale) provinces have been available on-line for the last few weeks at http://www.lvva-raduraksti.lv/ Records for the Livonian (Vidzeme) province are scheduled to be released in the coming year.  Also planned are making the Revision lists available on-line, as well as religious records from the Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches and the Jewish records, too.

I have taken a look at the English-language version of the site, and it seems as easy to follow as the directions in Latvian; there is also a Russian and German language interface.  The only thing that I noticed that wasn’t fully translated is the explanation of how to navigate through the church books and enlarge the jpg-type images of each church book’s page.

After registering and choosing a church book to view, at the top right hand corner of the screen you will see two numbers.  The first is the page number of the church book that you are currently viewing, and the second is the total page numbers in the church book.  Use the arrows prior to these numbers to navigate forward or backward through the church book. 

In order to enlarge the page two times, click the second rectangle to the right of the page numbers.  To enlarge the page three times, click the third rectangle to the right of the page numbers.

In addition, on the left side of the screen of any church book’s page, there are navigation aids similar to those on the internet for maps (or those used on FHC micro-fiche), which allow you to move up, down, left and right, and also enlarge or decrease the size of the image.

Enjoy and good luck! : )

Elizabete

This is miles ahead of having to go to the Valsts arhivs in Riga or sending them requests to look up an individual piece of information all at cost as was the case in the past. Not to mention the wait. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the records are in script and in Russian (remember Latvia was part of the Czarist Empire) with Latvian proper names in brackets (at least in some of the source documentation that I sampled) or German. I find them very difficult to read but that’s something time and practice could overcome. There are also gaps. It’s not clear if those records have been lost for good or if they’re still coming. Kurzeme and Zemgale are on the site while Vidzeme and Latgale are on their way. It would be interesting to get some metrics e.g. total number of records. Where I’m going is it would be great if the whole thing could be transcribed e.g. if there are 1,000,000 entries (and I’m just using that as an example), and if each would take 5 minutes to transcribe, then that’s 5,000,000 minutes or 83,333 hours or at 8 hours a day, 10,400 days or in turn 43.5 person years of effort. If we could get a team of 10 working on this then it could be done in 4.3 years. Preparation would be required to set up the database, it’s structure, indices, access scripts, web interfacem etc. While this might take the “fun” out of doing ancestry searches because it would be all too easy, this is something that I could get really excited about. And if we assume an average salary 300LVL per month, people costs would (using my numbers which could be incorrect but at least we have an initial guesstimate) be 154,800LVL or approximately $300,000 (USD or CAD). Add another $200,000 to cover design and infrastructure and we come up with $500,000 (+/- 50% or maybe I’m way off?). This is not out of the realm of possibility. A modest user fee could help offset at least ongoing operational costs. A great project for PBLA (which is struggling to figure out what role to play now that Latvia is in NATO and the EU). I think something like this would get instant support from the Latvian community abroad. Imagine, bringing up your ancestry with a few queries! Or am I dreaming?

Wow! Thanks a billion for this information.  With some patience I went through numerous records and.... I actually found my grandmother’s confirmation record from 1916! I used the LDS archive site : http://www.familysearch.org/ , to get my grandmother’s birthday and knowing her maiden name, I went on my search. Finally I have found my great grandfather’s first name, which I figured I would never find since my aging aunt cannot remember much from her childhood. Luckily I have some german under my belt since the particular book I was looking at had headers in German. I am still trying to decode the city name, since the script is a little too old fashioned for me.

Paldies x 1000000 for telling LOL-ers about the site.

Sadly, I cannot report any success so far with this site, though perhaps that is due to lack of knowledge or not yet spending enough time on it.

However, I am not trying to be negative, as this is clearly a major milestone in Latvian genealogy and long overdue, in my humble opinion.

i.g.s.
Melbourne, Australia

Finding my grandmother’s confirmation record, I found out that she wasn’t actually born in the city I thought she was Liepaja. She was actually born in Rucava. From there my search jumped to the baznicas gramatas from Rucava. I did also find her birth record, now all written in Russian.

Yes I do agree with you Ivars.... It’s not the easiest to navigate through. Basically you are just looking at page upon page of german or russian handwritten script. I am happy this site exists though. My poor friend who can read russian script probably just wants to hide from me now.

I know this might sound like a stupid question, but....

I assume that the confirmation would have happened about 18 years after the birth date, as is the case with current Latvian Lutheran practice?

also, as it now seems clear that some of my ancestors are covered by text in Russian script (for example, I tried 1894 births in Panemune, though I’m not quite sure which draudze it would have been), can anyone suggest a quick and easy way of at least deciphering the headings, which are relatively easy to read?

OOPS! scratch that last question....i made a mistake, cos my mother’s mother’s birth year was 1889, probably one of the Panemune draudzes, I think, which seem to be in German. Not sure why the Panemune Jaunsaules draudzu has no records in it, maybe it’s one of those which are still to appear later.

btw....(warning: intended to be humorous)....the more I look at some of these records, the more fervently I hope that the recorder of the register entry did not have too much of the communion wine during the 24 hours just before the entry was made!

(sigh)

I managed to navigate to several pages of confusing script.
I searched until my eyes were crossed for a familiar spelling to no avail.

As someone had mentioned, the language is also in Russian?
Is there anyone here who speaks Russian whom can translate the name ‘Klavins’ in Russian spelling please? Thank you!

Elizabete,

Happy New Year !

Thank you for posting this resource. 

How can I figure out the parish If in know the city of birth?  I believe my grandfather and great uncles were born in Dagavpils, my father and uncle in Rebate.

As I am writing this I get the feeling that these cities may not yet be included in this data.

Regards,

Charlie K.

Russian and German writing:
http://www.jewishgen.org/jri-pl/translit.htm

Thank you a.b. and all!

Sveiki!

Thank you!  I’m very glad for the comments posted here!

When I posted the announcement, I couldn’t decide whether or not to mention that I was aware that people had frequently been unhappy about the fees that they’ve paid in the past in order to get historical data about their families from the Archive.  Thankfully, whether or not access to the records should be free isn’t an issue anymore.  However, I think everyone now will have a greater appreciation of the mind-numbing and time-consuming work that’s been required of the archivists in order to retrieve records - some of which, as was noted, are virtually illegible.  And that’s only one part of the story, since as some of you have noticed, there are significant gaps in available records. 

Seven or eight years ago, I understood that our Historical Archive was hoping to barter with the Leipzig Archive, because the latter had religious records we lacked, and vice versa.  But, I don’t know what came of this plan.  Perhaps the web site already incorporates some of these records or maybe they’ll appear in the future.  And there is yet an additional source for data that in all likelihood will never be incorporated into the LV website- namely, the Mormons’ holdings.  Their FHC also has Latvian church records on microfiche, which at least in the case of churches in the Jelgava region overall are rarely duplicates, but contain entirely different information from our archive (notably, records from the 18th century that we no longer have, and confirmation records in the 19th century that could theoretically fill in the gaps of our missing christening records). 

The long and the short of it: even if our archives’ records were transcribed into a database, the researchers who put together family trees would still be necessary for those clients who can’t figure out how to piece together a mosaic with many missing parts, to say nothing of needing the archivists’ language skills.  Viestur, you mentioned that having the records transcribed into databases „/…./ might take the “fun” out of doing ancestry searches because it would be all too easy /…/” Oh, I’m quite sure that the ‘fun’ wouldn’t disappear!

As for PBLA spearheading creating a database – I think it’s a superb idea!  Bruno Martuzāns, a professor of mathematics at LU, once commented privately when speaking about his choice to use English on his LV genealogy site http://www.roots-saknes.lv/mainroots.htm : there are far more descendants of 19th & 20th century Latvians – no matter their ethnicity – living outside of Latvia’s borders than within them.  We’re seeing some of them, who aren’t part of western emigre circles, show up on this forum.  With this type of project, potentially PBLA’s base might expand to include people who had not initially been part of the organized diaspora.  I have no idea how many descendants of people from Latvia would be interested in a genealogical database.  But, genealogy services have been expanding extraordinarily with the advent of the internet, and it’s big business.  For that matter, perhaps PBLA might explore the possibility of some type of a joint venture with, for example, ancestry.com (a fierce competitor of the Mormons) that could be mutually beneficial.  Viestur, good luck, if you want to pursue this!  (Btw, a first step would be assembling a simple database that contained all surnames prior to 1850 - when people were less mobile, because they needed permission from estate owners to re-locate - and in which parish(es) they are found.  The Estonians had one on-line about 5 or more years ago, as does Jewishgen.org now etc.  It’s a necessary starting point, so that people without a place of birth and only a surname know which parishes will need to be searched.  This will be especially useful for those with less rare surnames, e.g., Ozoliņš, Bērziņš, Kļaviņš, utt.)

Charlie, Happy New Year to you, too!  It’s great to hear from you, and I hope your father is doing well.  I can check, if you like, but I would not be surprised if Daugavpils’ records might not appear in the near future.  The Latgallian province up until 1918 was part of the Vitebsk guberna, and many (most?) church records would now be found in an archive in Minsk, Belarus.  If you know the religion of your ancestors, then it won’t be too difficult to figure out which congregation’s records to search, no matter which country’s archive ‘owns’ the Daugavpils church books.

And, Charlie, can you double check the spelling of ‘Rebate?’ If you meant Rembate, then that’s in the Ogre region of the Livonian (Vidzeme) province, and those records should appear on-line within a year.

Visu labu,

Elizabete

PS Ivar, I long ago was convinced that a high proportion of church scribes were liberally sampling communion wine prior to recording births, deaths and marriages!  I’m equally sure that scribes of 18th century court cases must have been keeping a flask of something near at hand.  : )