Russia, Lutheran Church Book Duplicates, 1833-1885

What is in This Collection?

The records consist of bound volumes with entries on two facing pages for births and baptisms and for burials and deaths. Marriages are on a single page. The images were scanned from microfilm copies of the originals, which are housed in the Russian State Historical Archive, St. Petersburg. This collection covers the early duplicates, 1833–1885. These records are written in Russian. The later material is located in the Central State Historical Archive, St. Petersburg. For a list of records by localities currently published in this collection, select the Browse.

The Lutheran Diocese of St. Petersburg was created in 1833. It covered mostly ethnic German congregations but included Swedes and others of the Lutheran religion. Each year a duplicate record was sent to St. Petersburg and kept in the Consistory Court. The local St. Petersburg parishes were more cosmopolitan so more ethnic groups can be found there. In some regions such as Kiev and Podolia, French and Russian nobility, in particular those with military connections, register with the Lutherans.

The books pertain to the German Lutheran population along the northwestern, western, and southern edges of the Russian Empire, primarily in the historical provinces of Sankt-Peterburg (Ingria), Volhynia, Bessarabia, and Novorossiysk. Alaska, which was part of Russia until 1867, is also included. The duplicate served as the civil vital record when there was no civil registration system conducted by the government. This is the most reliable record for birth, baptism, marriage, death, and burial dates.

Additional records and/or images may be added to this collection in the future.

Reading These Records

These records are in German or Russian. For help reading them see:

• Germany Handwriting
• German Genealogical Word List
• Russia Language and Languages
• Russian Genealogical Word List
• Russia Handwriting

FamilySearch Learning Center videos:

• German Paleography Seminar - 10 classes
• Reading Russian Documents: The Russian Alphabet

To Browse This Collection

Collection Content

The following information may be found in these records:

Coverage Table

The Russia, Lutheran Church Book Duplicates - FamilySearch Historical Records Coverage Table shows the places and time periods covered in the indexed records for this collection. Most of the records in the collection are from the time periods listed in the table; however, the collection may have a few records from before or after the time period.