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Now I will speak about the most informative records that we have: the revision and family lists, which are well known to all genealogical researchers. It's a pity, but we have only a few of them. We have revision lists for a few towns of Kaunas district, such as Kedainiai, Josvainiai, Seredzius, Vilkija, and Vilijampole for 1834; and we have some revision lists for a very few places for 1858, I think some places in the Panevezys region. By the way I am not going to talk about specific records for specific places. They are in the Catalog.2 Most recently I discovered that we also have the revision lists for Kaunas for 1816. It is the earliest revision list we have. Just to remind you what the revision list looks like, I'll show you a transparency. That is the earliest revision list we have -- the revision list of Kaunas of 1816.
KAUNAS 1816 REVISION LIST
(Click on photo for higher resolution image)
This is in the same form as all of the revision lists. Revision lists give the most information of all genealogical resources, but to have a revision list, you had to have a revision. You had to have the list of the population of tax payers and those subject to military service revised and counted. The revision took place periodically. In Russia and in Lithuania the last revision took place in 1858. That was the tenth revision.
After 1858, there were no more revision lists, because there were no more revisions. Yes, the revision is a process, and the result of the process is a revision list. But having no more revision lists was not a problem, because later the so-called "Family Lists" were substituted for the revision lists. They provide exactly the same information as revision lists do and they are very similar in form. Perhaps the handwriting is not as minute and in 1908 they gave a whole page to a family, but the result is the same.
Since people often had to produce documents for various institutions to prove their identity, extracts from revision lists were reproduced at their request, until the end of the 19th Century and later. Perhaps you may have been given an extract from a revision list for a certain person which had been written in 1858, even though it had been copied for this kind of purpose in a later year. But the last actual revision was in 1858.
In 1874 the Jewish population of each town was listed in family lists. We have these family lists of 1874 for all the towns of Kaunas district, not Kaunas guberniya, except for some places. And in 1877, according to a Royal decree, the family lists became the official substitute for the revision lists and they were made in 1887, 1893, 1908, and perhaps in some other years as well. We have a few of them, just check the Catalog please.
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