Latvian Genealogy Forum

Just a word of encouragement to those that are using the online site Raduraksti for the first time. I remember the first time I went through part of the Saldus parish I only came up with one document. It was pretty exciting but I almost gave up because of the countless hours that took. So I put on some good music and took another stab at it. I got better at recognizing the family name and more important the family farm name. That was the key to being able to scan quickly so you can cover more ground. Just in the last few days I have found a few more, although I'm nearing the end of finding more. Too bad , it starts to get addicting.

I agree with you, Robert. I was floored the first time I looked at Raduraksti. I have to add that having a good grip on Latvian genealogy and estates and parishes is pretty important too. If you know WHERE to look, its fairly easy to pick out a family name, even if it is in Cyrillic. My family is from modern Nikrace, and I was disappointed to not see it listed for the churchbooks. I didn't realize that the estate they were from was Brinkenhof and the church they would have attended was Embute!
I'm also near the end of (easily) found information... That's why sometimes I like to help others and peek into their family trees! The chase begins again!

Just looked on a 1933 map to see where you were looking. Found Nikrace, about 30k southeast of Saldus. Also could see Embute close to Nikrace. Interesting.

Ohhh yes. Quite familiar with the area now. I've been researching since 2006! But in the beginning, like most people, I had hoped for quick answers and had dove right in to Raduraksti without dotting my I's or crossing my t's!
Did you mention your family was from Saldus?

Wow - researching since 2006. Now I know I'm a rookie. Yes it's been quite the learning curve for me too. I only started in about a year ago. Found my dad's family tree work which he put together in the 70's from writing relatives in the States, Sweden and Latvia. No on line stuff then. Did not appreciate all the work he did then - only later. With that and a memoir written by a relative describing the family farm and early Latvian life sparked my interest and here I am. I've come a long ways since then.

My family came from the Sanderi farm, 6k from Saldus.

Well it’s been 6 months of searching through Raduraksti. Over that time I’ve found 40 documents and added thirty persons that I never knew about to my family tree. I also was able to put a lot of dates to the people I did have. Without Raduraksti and the help of Antra and her sites I would have never made such progress. What really interesting is this forced me to study the history of Latvia and of the area my ancestors came from. I now know so much more because of it. This process also brought back memories from my childhood where my parents would talk about the different Lat’s in Manitoba. Such as so and so was a cook at the Czars hunting lodge and so on. At the time I had no clue who the Czar was , but I thought it must be important – so it stuck in mind. Only if I had of asked questions!

Anyways as usual I need to dive back into Raduraksti to find more clues, but I think I’ll take a bit of a break first.

I may as well ask here as it is under raduraksti - I know there is supposed to be death dates in the church books but I appear to be hopeless at finding them. Are they missing or am I just not looking in the right places?

Hi Kittymobile

I'm not an expert but here's where I would look. I'll assume your looking at German script. The dates will be in the first two columns of the record. These two columns will have a heading of " Monat" - month. The first column will be the date and time of death and the second will be the date of burial. Here's a site which has some basic common German words on these records. http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ ... script.htm

There are probably better sites where they will list the months and days in German.

Hopes this gets you started.