Lithuania

Where the records are

The Lithuanian State Historical Archives (LVIA) in Vilnius hold the church registers, tax censuses (revision lists) and consistory records of the old Vilna and Kovno provinces. The Vilna province also covered districts that are in Belarus today.

What is online

• epaveldas.lt. Scanned church registers ("metric books") and other records of LVIA, free to view without an account. Search by parish or by the archive reference.
• The archives' catalogue. Lists collections and files of the Lithuanian archives, many with images. It shows a short browser check before it opens.
• Vilna church registers on epaveldas. A volunteer list of which parishes of the Vilna diocese and which years are online, with a table of Polish and Cyrillic forms of first names.
• Geneteka. A volunteer name index of Catholic records, strong for Polish-language parishes.

How to order

LVIA takes genealogical requests by e-mail and post, for a fee, and the reading room is open to visitors.

Traps

• One parish may write in Polish, Latin, Russian and later Lithuanian, depending on the decade.
• A village's Lithuanian name may look nothing like the Polish or Russian name in the register.
• Tax censuses of the nobility and of townspeople are filed apart from those of peasants.