What are soul revision transfer lists and how to read them? What mean the German column headings?
Soul revisions or enumeration of the estate inhabitants did not take place every year.
Transfer list kept record on people who relocated to or away from an estate in the time between the revisions.
These transfer lists can be found among soul revision lists on Raduraksti website.
Transfer lists have two parts -- the departed persons (Germ. Abgegangen) and the arrived persons (Germ. Hinzugekommen). In most cases, you can find information on the same family in transfer lists of both estates, in one case under the departed persons and in the other case under the arrived persons. In case of arrived persons, often only the right side, that of the past location, was filled out and in case of departed persons, only the left side was filled out.
Departed Persons
Below you see an example of a printed transfer list. It is from 1859 in Dunte (Germ. Ruthern) Estate. Earlier transfer lists were written by hand but the formula was the same - information on the future estate and parish is on the left side, and the past is on the right side.
If you find your ancestral family in the arrived person list of an estate then you can easily find them in their previous place of residence following the given farm (Germ. Gesinde) and family numbers (Germ. Familien Nr.).
Transfer lists state the ages of the relocated persons but one must be careful reading these. It is not the age at the time of relocation, but at the time of the previous revision. In the above example from 1859, the printed forms refer to 1850 revision but a handwritten note states that it is 10th revision (of 1858) they refer to. The farm and family numbers are also given as they are in 1858 revision.
Arrived Persons
Below is another example from 1846 in Jaunskujene (Germ. Neu Schujen) Estate. In this case, it is a list of arrived persons in a handwritten form. However, it has the same columns as in the printed list example with the future (Jaunskujene) location on the left and the previous location on the right side.
In the above example, the arrival year is not given in the title but it can be found at the very bottom, next to the signatures.
The last column to the right states which Civil Parish Court (Germ. Gemeinde Gericht) and when issued the admitting certificate. I have not come across these certificate in the archive and the most important information is already in the transfer list itself.
Sometimes information in the transfer lists is not accurate. I have seen cases when the children born after the revision are not listed. In the example above, listed are both, the son, Jahnis, born before the revision and the after-revision-born son, Peter. Peter's age is not given because he was not yet born at the time of the previous 1834 revision.
Sometimes, the church registers show that a family lived in the new location some months earlier than the admission certificate was issued.
1858 was the last soul revision but transfer lists of some estates are available up to the WWI. Civil Parish inhabitant lists cover the period after the last revision, but these are not available for all civil parishes on-line. Civil Parish inhabitant lists are located in collections of each relevant Civil Parish administration (Latv. pagasta pārvalde) at the Latvian State Historical archive (LVVA).
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