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

Was one of your ancestors a parish elder? What was a parish board, and what did the parish elder do? This blog post will explore these...

If you are interested in exploring not just family genealogy but also the broader history of your family and the local area, it is worth...

A while back, I wrote about what can be found in museum collections. This time, I want to highlight another valuable resource: libraries....

This time, we explore two brief memory pieces about Christmas celebrations in the late 19th century. Professor Edvards Kalniņš, born in...

Once a genealogist has gathered family information, they can turn to the broader historical context. What is the history of a specific...

For ancient Latvians, October was the time of veļi (spirits of the departed), when people honored and remembered the dead. I’ve written...

This week, while researching the land registry, I decided to look for additional information about the redemption of peasant farms. In...

Sometimes, in soul revisions  (censuses of the serf population), you may come across notes stating that a peasant had fled or that...

Some enthusiastic readers convinced me that I should continue the story of Jānis Sirms's adventures in America. What jobs did Latvian...

In the third and final part, Jānis Sirms has finally saved enough money and is able to set out on his journey to America. What prompted...

Part 2: Continued from Jānis Sirms's memoirs about his journey from Courland to America in 1888. Why didn’t he board the ship in Hamburg?...

How did Latvians travel to America in the 1880s? Why did they emigrate? What challenges did they face? How long was the journey? Read...

Previously, I wrote about the rules of divorce, but there were just as many regulations governing marriage. Who was allowed to marry, and...

Do you think that in the past everyone lived "happily ever after" and never got divorced? Recently, I saw a 1906 marriage record with a...

I have always been more interested in how my ancestors lived or what they were like than the number of them I can add to my family tree....

Did my ancestors have an estate? No, of course not. But life in the countryside in the 19th century was closely linked to the estate....