Lithuanian records are online in pieces. One site shows images without an index, another indexes but only in Lithuanian, a third holds a few parishes and a fourth belongs to a society for one minority. This guide follows a search from the first click: finding your parish on a map, checking which sites hold it, then working through each one. Sites change, so treat the menu names below as a guide and expect small differences.
Step 1: find the parish before you search anything
Records are filed by parish, so identify the parish first. FamilySearch’s wiki recommends the Skaitmeninis bažnyčių žemėlapis, the digital map of churches. A key point from the gazetteers page: you must know the modern Lithuanian version of the town name to use it. See our guide to place names if you only have a Polish or Russian form.
- Open the digital map of churches and type the town into the search box. You do not need special characters, and options appear as you type, sorted into churches, parishes, deaneries and other.
- If the town appears as a parish, there is a Roman Catholic parish in the town. If it appears as other, view it on the map and use the parish markers and deanery boundaries to see which parishes are closest.
- Open the tab that searches by sources of church metrics. Red church icons mark places with known online sources, and gray icons mark places without.
- Click a red icon to see the list of online records and where they are found. FamilySearch warns that the list can run to two pages with the first nearly blank, and the useful part on the second page.
The map also covers Jewish congregations, and you can filter by religion.
Step 2: check FamilySearch’s catalog
- Go to the FamilySearch catalog and choose the records of Lithuania.
- Open Places within Lithuania and select your town, or the parish that served it.
- Open the Church records topic and look at the titles.
- Look at the icons beside each title. A magnifying glass means the record is indexed, and a camera means a digital copy is online.
FamilySearch notes that some records have viewing restrictions and can be seen only at a FamilySearch center. If you know the gubernia, it also has pages of links for Vilna and Kovno gubernia church records.
Step 3: ePaveldas
ePaveldas is Lithuania’s cultural heritage portal, and it holds church books as images. FamilySearch’s wiki, updated in September 2026, describes almost 4,000 Roman Catholic register books there, with images but no index, and incomplete. The Office of the Chief Archivist counted images of 2,312 record books from 91 Catholic churches covering 1599 to 1940 in its older description, which shows how the collection grows. FamilySearch publishes a how-to guide with instructions and a practice assignment. See ePaveldas.
Step 4: Metrikai
Metrikai indexes metrical records from across Lithuania, and its site is available only in Lithuanian, so use your browser’s translate function.
- Look at the list of parishes in the dark column on the left. Each is followed by RKB, for Roman Catholic metrical books, and a number, which is the count of indexed records.
- If your parish is listed, open it. If you do not know the parish, search a surname in the main search box.
- Type the surname into the keyword box, called Raktinis žodis, and add filters if you wish.
- Read the results in columns: the name, age and occupation at left, the event, the additional details such as parents and witnesses, and the citation.
The citation column is useful. FamilySearch explains that entries such as LVIA with a fond and file number point to the Lithuanian State Historical Archives, and FS or DGS numbers point to FamilySearch microfilm or digital image groups. See Metrikai.
Step 5: smaller sites
| Site | What FamilySearch says it holds |
|---|---|
| Genmetrika | An independent archive to which individuals contribute photos of documents. It lists more than a thousand digitized birth or baptism books, more than a thousand marriage books and more than eight hundred death or burial books. Date ranges and places are broad, so check often |
| Pasvalia | Roman Catholic church records for various years and places. Click Documents, then Book of Metrics, and thumbnails of books appear. There are also lists of parishioners |
| Bažnytiniai dokumentai Lietuvoje | A Wikimedia Commons category of church documents, organized by location, with several parishes of the former Vilna gubernia |
| Geneteka | A Polish index of over 30 million records that also covers areas now in Lithuania and Belarus, mostly Catholic |
| International Association of Germans from Lithuania | A free searchable index of thousands of Lutheran church records from southwestern Lithuania |
| Ancestry | A paid collection, Lithuania, Church Books, 1629 to 1940, with an index and images |
Which site first?
| If you… | Start with |
|---|---|
| Know only a modern Lithuanian town name | The church map, then FamilySearch |
| Want to search by surname | Metrikai, and Geneteka for Polish-index coverage |
| Have a parish and years and want images | FamilySearch, then ePaveldas |
| Think your family was Lutheran from the southwest | The Germans from Lithuania index |
| Hit a gap in a book | Genmetrika and Pasvalia, which may hold other copies |
If the search comes up empty
- Try the parish next door. A village often belonged to a neighboring parish.
- Try every spelling, including the Polish and Russian forms of the surname and given name.
- Check the other religions’ books, since your family may not have been Catholic.
- Write to the archive or the parish. See how to request records.
- Remember that some online lists are incomplete. A gray church on the map means no known online source, not that the books do not exist.
Example (invented, for illustration only): A reader has only the Polish name of a village. She finds its modern Lithuanian name in a gazetteer, types it into the church map, sees a red icon for the nearest parish and opens the list. The second page links to a FamilySearch microfilm and an ePaveldas book, and Metrikai shows 200 indexed records for the same parish.
Continue with the complete Lithuanian genealogy guide and church books explained, and browse Archives & Records. Sources: the FamilySearch wiki on Lithuanian church records, the FamilySearch wiki on Lithuanian gazetteers and the Office of the Chief Archivist’s genealogical search page.
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