Most record guides sort sources by type. For Lithuania it helps more to sort them by period, because each era had a different ruler, a different language and a different place where the paper ended up. Find the decade your ancestor lived in and read across.
What survives, by period
| Period | Who governed | What to look for | Where it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before 1795 | The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth | Church books from the late 1500s in some parishes, lists of noble families, estate inventories | The Lithuanian State Historical Archives in Vilnius, and Epaveldas for scanned books |
| 1795 to 1915 | The Russian Empire | Church books of several confessions, revision lists (family lists), pre-marital questioning books, lists of parishioners, and fragments of the 1897 census | The Vilnius archives, with revision lists and church books also on FamilySearch |
| 1918 to 1940 | Independent Lithuania | Passports, civil registration, and church books in some dioceses for 1924 to 1940 | The Vilnius archives, and the Lithuanian Central State Archives for documents showing citizenship |
| 1940 to 1990 | Soviet occupation | Civil registration, which the Soviet government introduced in 1940 | Local registry offices and the archives, subject to access rules |
The periods and holdings above come from the Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania and FamilySearch’s wiki on Lithuanian archives. Which books survive for a given parish varies, so check the parish and years before you plan a trip.
Which language to expect
| Years | Language of the church books |
|---|---|
| Until 1827 | Latin |
| 1828 to the middle of the 1800s | Polish |
| The middle of the 1800s to 1920 | Russian |
| During the First World War | German, in most parishes |
| After the war | Lithuanian in the Telšiai diocese, and Latin and Polish in the Vilnius diocese |
The Office of the Chief Archivist gives these patterns, and FamilySearch adds that Lithuanian-language entries appear mainly in twentieth-century records, with most earlier records in Russian. Individual parishes varied, so read the books themselves.
Where to look first
- ePaveldas. Lithuania’s largest genealogical database. The Office of the Chief Archivist counted images of 2,312 church books from 91 Roman Catholic parishes, covering 1599 to 1940, and FamilySearch’s wiki, updated in September 2026, describes almost 4,000 Catholic register books, as images only, with no index and incomplete. Check what it holds now.
- FamilySearch. It hosts digitized church records and revision lists, including 1795, 1811, 1816 and 1834 to 1841 revision lists for Vilnius governorate.
- The Lithuanian State Historical Archives. It is at Mindaugo gatvė 8 in Vilnius and holds the principal genealogical sources of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, according to the Office of the Chief Archivist.
- The Lithuanian Central State Archives. Its documents can confirm that someone held Lithuanian citizenship before 15 June 1940, which matters for citizenship applications.
Records people overlook
- Revision lists, which list households for tax and census purposes. The early ones are in handwritten Polish and the later ones in handwritten Russian.
- Pre-marital questioning books, which record the couples who planned to marry.
- Lists of parishioners and lists of noble families.
- Estate inventories, for families who lived on or worked an estate.
Families with Jewish roots
Jewish community books and census lists have their own databases and societies. LitvakSIG and JewishGen host extensive Lithuanian collections, among them a vital records database that, when we read its page, held more than 300,000 records for 74 towns. We point to those specialists instead of covering the subject in depth.
Next steps
- Work out the village and parish. See the first-weekend guide.
- Read the full walkthrough in our complete Lithuanian genealogy guide.
- Browse every guide in Archives & Records.
Sources: the Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania, the FamilySearch wiki on Lithuanian archives, the FamilySearch wiki on Lithuanian church records and the FamilySearch wiki on Lithuanian censuses.
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