Most Lithuanian family searches do not fail for lack of records. They fail because the search starts in the wrong place, under the wrong name, in the wrong language. This guide is organized as ten questions in the order they tend to come up. Answer them one at a time and the records start to make sense. Where a question has its own guide, we link to it. Figures and online collections change, so each answer notes where a number comes from and how current it is.
Before the first question: gather the essentials
The Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania advises collecting a few basic facts before you search: the person’s first and family name, the date and place of birth, the birth order among siblings, the church where the person was baptized, the date of marriage, the spouse’s name, the church of the marriage and the date and place of death. Older relatives can often supply most of this. The archive’s advice is to treat what relatives remember as a hypothesis that the church books will check. Our first-weekend guide turns this into a two-day plan.
1. Which Lithuania are you researching?
The territory of present-day Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire for much of the nineteenth century, where it formed three provinces, or gubernias: Kovno, Vilna and Suwalki, according to the FamilySearch wiki on Lithuanian gazetteers. Before that it belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and afterward it was independent from 1918 to 1940, under Soviet occupation until 1990 and independent again. The era of your ancestor’s life decides which state wrote the record, which language it used and where it ended up. Our records map sets this out by period.
2. What was the place called?
A single village can carry three or four names. The archive’s own examples show how: the family name Arlauskas appears in documents as Orlowski or Орловский, the first name Jurgis as Jerzy or Георгий and Юрий, the first name Laurynas as Wawrzyniec or Лаврентий, the town of Varėna as Orany or Ораны and Zarasai as Jeziorosy or Ново Александровск. Personal names and place names were both polonized or russified in some documents. Gazetteers that list Lithuanian, Polish, Russian and German forms are the way through. See our guide to place names, parishes and dioceses.
3. Which parish, and which diocese?
Church books were kept by parish, and a parish could serve many neighboring villages, so the village you know may not be the place where your ancestor was baptized. The Lithuanian State Historical Archives preserves almost all eighteenth to twentieth century church books of the Vilnius, Seinai and Telšiai Roman Catholic dioceses, and the 1924 to 1940 books of the Panevėžys, Kaunas, Kaišiadorys and Vilkaviškis churches, according to the Office of the Chief Archivist. The diocese is therefore a clue to where the books are.
4. Which religion?
Roman Catholics were the largest group by far. The first census of independent Lithuania, in 1923, recorded 85.7 percent Catholic, 7.75 percent Jewish, 3.8 percent Protestant and 2.7 percent Greek Orthodox, according to the FamilySearch wiki. There were also Evangelical Lutherans and Reformed, Russian Orthodox and Old Believers. Each denomination kept its own books, so you need your ancestor’s religion before you can use the parish. Jewish families have specialist societies and databases, including LitvakSIG and JewishGen, and we point readers to them.
5. What language will the record be in?
| Years | Language of the church books |
|---|---|
| Seventeenth century to 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 |
This pattern comes from the Office of the Chief Archivist, and FamilySearch adds that the Lithuanian language appears in church books mainly in the twentieth century. Our guide to Lithuanian church books shows how to read the entries.
6. Which records exist for those years?
- Church books of several confessions. Roman Catholic books began as early as 1613, Evangelical Lutheran as early as 1641, Russian Orthodox in 1722, Greek Catholic and Greek Orthodox in 1796, Jewish records were required from 1835 and Old Believer records began in 1874, according to FamilySearch. See church books explained.
- Revision lists and family lists, household lists made for tax and conscription. See revision lists and the 1897 census.
- The 1897 census, the only general census of the nineteenth century, of which only fragments survive.
- Twentieth-century records at the Lithuanian Central State Archives, including passports of citizens of the Republic of Lithuania, army documents and personal files of teachers and students.
- Nobility records at the State Historical Archives, such as lists of noble families and acts verifying nobility.
7. What can you see online?
More than most people expect, though no single site has everything. ePaveldas holds images of Catholic church books, Metrikai indexes records, FamilySearch hosts digitized books and revision lists, and smaller sites add more. The FamilySearch wiki, updated in September 2026, describes almost 4,000 Roman Catholic register books on ePaveldas as images without an index and incomplete. See our guide to searching ePaveldas and FamilySearch.
8. What must you request, and from whom?
Records that are not online are requested from the archive or parish that holds them. The main national archives are the Lithuanian State Historical Archives and the Lithuanian Central State Archives, both in Vilnius, with regional archives in Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai and Vilnius and branches in other towns, according to a December 2025 guide. Access to many twentieth-century sources is restricted by law. See how to request records from Lithuanian archives.
9. How do you connect the generations?
- Start from the baptism of the youngest person you can document and read the parents’ names, the mother’s maiden name and the godparents.
- Find the parents’ marriage, which may give their ages, residences and their own parents.
- Use revision lists and family lists to confirm the household, remembering that they can be unreliable because people evaded taxation or conscription.
- Repeat for the next generation, and note every spelling you meet.
10. How will you know you are done with a generation?
A link is done when two independent records agree, a baptism and a marriage for instance, and when every spelling variant is recorded and explained. When something does not fit, log it and move on. DNA can support a connection but not prove it. See the DNA hub. If your aim is Lithuanian citizenship, the documents you collect also matter there. See the citizenship overview.
A realistic first month
- Week one: gather the essentials and write down every spelling of every name and place.
- Week two: identify the parish and diocese, and the ancestor’s religion.
- Week three: search the online sources for the parish and the years.
- Week four: list what you could not find and decide whom to write to.
If your family was noble
The Lithuanian State Historical Archives holds acts verifying nobility, lists of noble families, estate inventory lists and the documents of the chancellery of the convention of noble representatives of the Vilnius governorate, as well as papers of the nobility leaders of the Vilnius and Kaunas counties and of the Augustavas county, according to the Office of the Chief Archivist. It also holds private and family collections. A family with a claim to nobility therefore has a second set of records, alongside the church books.
Beyond the state archives
Genealogical sources are also kept in libraries and museums. The Office of the Chief Archivist notes that the manuscript department of the Vilnius University Library holds the record books of some Roman Catholic churches and 230 personal collections, the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences holds record books of some churches and estate inventories, and the Martynas Mažvydas National Library holds record books of some churches of the Telšiai diocese. The Lithuanian Society of Genealogy and Heraldry also has virtual archives.
Soviet-era files
If an ancestor was deported, arrested or left Lithuania in the Soviet period, the Lithuanian Special Archives preserves deportation files for people deported in 1941 and from 1944 to 1954, migration files on people who left for permanent residence abroad and records of passport divisions. These are separate from the church books, and many are restricted by law.
Drawing the chart the archive’s way
The Office of the Chief Archivist gives simple rules for a family chart. Show names with birth and death dates, and a birthplace if needed. Put people of the same generation on the same level, elder children on the left and younger on the right, the male line on the left and the maternal line on the right, with the marriage date and place linking a couple, and always write a woman’s maiden name beside her name. Following the rules makes it easy to spot the eldest and youngest children even when dates are missing.
Browse every guide in Archives & Records. Sources: the Office of the Chief Archivist’s genealogical search page, the FamilySearch wiki on Lithuanian church records, the FamilySearch wiki on Lithuanian gazetteers, the FamilySearch wiki on Lithuanian censuses and a December 2025 guide to Lithuanian archives.
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