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Business and Occupations

Guild Records

These records identify persons belonging to a guild. These often identify family members who frequently assumed the same trade. Records of merchants, craftsmen, tradesmen, skilled laborers, and persons bound by indenture to serve others for a prescribed period to learn an art, trade, or skill. Records can be used as a source to support relationship linkage found in metrical books. They are considered by genealogical researchers to be as important as metrical books. Records begin in the 1500s and continue into the second decade of the twentieth century.

Records provide the names of skilled and unskilled laborers of all types of occupations, craftsmen, apprentices, ages or dates of birth, places of origin and residence, family relationships, types of skills, etc. Many records list all the family members with marriage dates of couples and birth dates of their children. The records are deposited at the State Historical Archive in Riga and are grouped by guild. Up to 30% of the population during the time period may be identified in these records.