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Latvian Revision Lists Index and Listing

Latvian (Kurland / Courland) Revision Lists Index and Listing

By Kahlile Mehr, M.L.S., A.G.
Database text copyright © 1999-2017 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc;

"The Family History Library (FHL) has 132 microfilm reels of revision lists from the former Russian province of Courland, now part of Latvia. Some residence and tax lists are also included. The films were from the Herder Institute at Marburg Germany. The material was filmed at Latvia during 1940."

"The documents are almost all in German - a reflection of the strong Protestant German influence in Latvia prior to World War II. The records are a little tricky to use. The right and left hand pages were filmed separately and sometimes in reverse order. The material was spliced randomly. Consequently, segments from individual volumes appear in multiple places on a single film or on multiple films."

"This arrangement has necessitated the indexing of these records. The following is the result od more than six months of analysis. Part Oneconsists of an alphabetical index by town. Part Two consists of a contents listing of all 132 microfilm reels. (Webmaster's Note: see the hypertext links for both parts below). While the index in part one is one is sufficient to determine the correct film, item and page number of revision lists for specific towns, part two is essential for because of some additional problems in filming."

"First of all, the the lack of title boards labeling of the items makes it very difficult to determine which items are which. Secondly there are effectively no breaks in between items to indicate when one item ends and the other begins. These listings remedies this by offering a calendar presentation of all the contents of each film, which can be used to locate specific records by their proximity to other records."

"Both part one and part two include the localities, record types, Family History Library (FHL) film numbers, item numbers and page numbers. To indicate side of page, "r" means rtetro and "v" means verso. Some page ranges are are shown backwards (154-130r) indicating the pages are in reverse order. German terms are listed as they appear in the original records. Localities reflect German, rather than Latvian or Russian spellings."

Webmaster's Note: The text in quotations above is from the article on this subject authored by Kahlile Mehr and appears in Volume 6 of the FEEFHS Journal published in March 1999. Interested persons can obtain these films from their nearest LDS Family History Center (FHC).

Latvian (Courland) Revision Lists
Part One -- FHL Microfilm Index (alphabetical by Town)

Latvian (Courland) Revision Lists
Part Two -- FHL Microfilm Index (Contents by Film)

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