Time for Week 25 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge! As noted in my first post of this challenge, I am starting with my most ancient known ancestors.

This week’s ancestor is Marija Radziņā, born November 11, 1856 and died between 1935 and 1941. She is my great-great-grandmother, being my paternal grandfather’s paternal grandmother.

Marija was born on Lielkāji farm on Lugaži estate, in northern Latvia near the divided town of Valka/Valga on the Latvian-Estonian border, though at the time of her birth, Valka/Valga was one united town located in the middle of the Livland guberniya of the Russian Empire. Her parents were Kārlis and Marija, both of whom I’ve already written about. The family had moved around quite a lot – while Marija was born on Lielkāji farm according to her birth record, by the time of the 1857 revision list the following year, they were living on ZÄ«le (or possibly SÄ«le) farm instead. This list also tells us that in 1850, the family was living on Tači farm. All of these farms (assuming ZÄ«le is the proper name) are within a few kilometres of each other close to or on the Gauja river south of Valka, scattered in a few small plots of farmland amongst the vast forest of the region.

On the south side of this forest was StampvÄ“veri farm of Vijciems estate – an important place to take note of, since this is where Marija’s husband-to-be, PÄ“teris Celmiņš (the great-grandson of the PÄ“teris Celmiņš I wrote about earlier), was from, and where Marija would spend the rest of her days after their marriage on September 24, 1877 in the Lugaži Lutheran Church.

Marrying into the prolific Celmiņš clan of Vijciems estate, Marija continued the prolific tradition – she had seven known children, of whom my great-grandfather PÄ“teris Eduards was the third youngest, born in 1888. He had older siblings Voldemārs Kāŗlis (1878), Janis JÅ«lijs (1882), Emma PaulÄ«ne (1884) and Anna KarlÄ«ne (1886), and younger siblings Alma Viktorija (1894) and Elza Antonija (1896).

Voldemārs Kārlis evidently inherited the family farm, since he was the only child of the family who continued to live there into the 1930s and 1940s. Marija lived with them, and probably died sometime between 1935 and 1941, since she is listed in the 1935 census but not in the one for 1941. She is also not mentioned in a document from 1949 which listed people being deported to Siberia by the Soviet powers – which included Voldemārs Kārlis, his wife MÄ«la and their children Auseklis and Aija. Voldemārs Kārlis died en route, while the rest of his family remained in Siberia until 1957. Since the Soviets were not in the habit of leaving family members behind, this is further confirmation that Marija died prior to the 1940s.

Okay, now I am caught up on my 52 Ancestors! Expect a new one on the weekend! And hopefully soon more on those female ancestors that I had to put aside until I could investigate them at the archives – should be headed to the archives by next week at the latest!