Jewish Marriages in Riga, 1854–1921

An alphabetical register of marriages · Fond 5024 · Riga

This database comes from an alphabetical register of 9,241 marriages recorded in Fond 5024 in the Latvian State Historical Archives in Riga. The register was compiled in Russian, probably at the beginning of the 20th century, and the marriages date from 1854 to 1921.

The database contains only the names of the bride and groom — surname and given name — and the year of marriage. All further information must be obtained from the archives in Latvia. Note that some names of brides and grooms are missing, because the name does not appear in the original records.

The records up to 1905 are held by the Latvian State Historical Archives. You must write to:

The records from 1906–1921 are held at:

The Latvian State Historical Archives will provide copies with translations into English or German, whereas the Archives of the Registry Office do not provide copies but give a detailed report in Latvian. The usual cost of a record from the Latvian State Historical Archives is about $10 US, but they will let you know how much to send. The Archives of the Registry have to bill through the Consular Department of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs: after you contact them with a request they will let you know the cost and where to send the money.

The only information we have about applying to the Archives of the Registry Office comes from a researcher who reported that the archive apparently does not have facilities to accept foreign currency, so it bills through the Latvian Embassy. The embassy sends a notification that documents have been received and requests payment by money order, then mails the documents, which are certified abstracts entirely in Latvian and not translated. If documents are not found, a certificate to that effect is issued along with a statement of which records were searched in vain. There may be a charge even if no names are found. The Latvia Research Division would like to hear of the experiences of anyone dealing with the Archives of the Registry, so that we can update this information.

Write to the Latvian State Historical Archives giving as much detail as possible about your relatives: as many family names as possible, dates of birth, marriage or death, where they are said to have lived, and when they left Latvia.

The archives charge a preliminary search fee of $100 before embarking on research, plus additional fees for work undertaken. When sending a cheque, a $20 amount must be added for exchange; this does not apply if money is sent as a money order. They provide a highly professional service and will bill you on completion of the work. Although fees have increased over the past years, they do not usually exceed $250–$350. Their expertise in identifying and tracing the Jewish families of Latvia is outstanding. Experiences of other researchers are often posted in the Discussion groups and you may read these messages by going to the JewishGen website and the JewishGen Discussion Group message archives, and carrying out a search for “archive” and “Latvia” or “Latvian”.

Riga was founded in 1201 by the Teutonic Order. Jews have lived in Latvia for many centuries under German, Polish, Prussian, Swedish and Danish rule, and originated from Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and other countries. Jewish history in the tiny shtetlach dates back to the 15th century and possibly even to the 10th.

The first houses for Jews in Riga were built in 1638, though Jews were not allowed to settle in Riga on a permanent basis. A Chevra Kadisha was officially founded in 1765. In 1785 Catherine the Great allowed Jews — and in fact people of any religion — to settle near the Baltic coast in Sloka (Shlok), about 35 km west of Riga. Jews were granted permission to live in Riga in 1813, and in 1841 the Russian Senate proposed that some Jews could be registered in Riga, but not newcomers. Riga was never part of the Pale of Settlement.

In 1832 the community of “Jews of Shlok (Sloka) residing in Riga” applied for a Jewish school in Riga, and one of the first Jewish schools, the Kaplan school, was established in 1840 with German as the language of tuition. The first Riga synagogue was built in 1850. The area around Moscow Road, known as Moscow Vorstadt, was a main area of settlement for the poorer Jews; this area became the Riga Ghetto during the Second World War.

The 1897 All-Russia Census reported 21,963 Jews in Riga, and there were 33,600 by 1914. According to official statistics, Latvian Jews numbered 95,675 in 1925, or 5.2 per cent of the total population, and 41 per cent of Jews lived in Riga, where over a quarter of all commercial and industrial enterprises were owned by Jews. There is a difference of opinion about how many Jews perished in the Holocaust, varying from 63,000 to 73,000.

This database can be searched via the JewishGen Latvia Database or the JewishGen Unified Search.