Contacting the Archives in Vilnius: Instructions, Experiences, Pitfalls

There will likely come a time that the only logical next step in your research is to contact the Archives in Vilnius. There are smaller Archives in other cities, but by and large, all surviving records have been moved from churches and municipalities to the main Archives in Vilnius. You've probably heard, and been deterred by, the three-year wait until the Archives gets to your request. This time delay is more for a multi-generational genealogical search (which I'm not even sure they do anymore) as opposed to requesting one baptism certificate, or one marriage certificate. That make take a matter of months, not years. If you have a relative in Lithuania who can order the documents for you, it may shave some time off of the process.

The other option is to hire a private researcher, a genealogist in Lithuania. Because of the time delays at the Archives and the costs, many people choose the private researcher route. If you don't have complete information--name, place, date (and who does!!???) to send to the Archives, you may not get anywhere. But that's a challenge a private researcher is paid to undertake.

In any event, the email address to contact the archives is: istrijos.archyvas@lvia.lt

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Bob P on November 1, 2009 at 9:33pm

I received the results from the Archive on 10/28/09 & transferred funds on 10/7/09. The Archive mailed it out on 10/16/09.The request was for 3 individuals & got only 1 birth certificate & could not find the others. Two request were for Vilnius & the other for Alytus. I got 3 notices that no data found but there was a fourth & it was the birth certificate. Since I didn't know the language I thought it was a mix up so I Googled a translation & saw what they did. Some one was thinking at the Archive because I had the most information, father & mothers name & year, on my grandfather, from Vilnius so they tried looking in the Alytus & they found him. The translation from Google was in question to some extent so I attempted to place it in the Lithuanian Yahoo group for translation & it would not upload due to storage.The problem is they maxed out with all the submissions so I sent an email to the moderator. Don't know when that will get fixed. I am a novice at this but slowly making progress by joining the groups & reading the inputs & comments. It is a great help for us beginners. My grandfather is Polish & immigrated in 1897. I probably will have a lot more questions after the expert translations.

Permalink Reply by Richie C. on January 16, 2010 at 1:50am

Since you'll be paying a fee for the wire transfer, try to bundle you requests, and spread the fee out over more document requests. I, however, was informed by my credit union that they do not do international transfers. My other bank said that they needed more detailed wire transfer instructions than those that the Archives provided to me...so I am waiting for a response from Lithuania....and I'm trying to 'bulk up' my request so that the charges are spread over more (potential) documents received.

Permalink Reply by Linda Johnson on January 17, 2010 at 5:37pm

I wrote to the archives last year and received a response. They said they had one certificate to send and the cost would be 10 EU plus the wire transfer. The wire transfer is $40.00. Since this is a lot of money for one record, I am wondering how you bundle your requests. The reply I received from the archives has a reference number that I must refer to if I decide to send the money. Can you bundle with more than one reference number?

Permalink Reply by Richie C. on January 19, 2010 at 10:13am

Linda,
I haven't done it yet, but I think you could put all the reference numbers together with one wire transfer. That's what I plan to do anyway, when I have my act together. If you send, say, 30 euros and there are 3 reference numbers, I'm sure they'll know what to do.

-Richie C.

Permalink Reply by Jim Zuis on March 7, 2010 at 12:03pm

A few thoughts on my experiences with the archives, for what they are worth...

I've sent payment to the archives both ways, via check and via wire transfer. I've had checks lost in the mail and had to re-send them after stopping payment. Wiring money is more pricey but secure. The first time I wired funds, it was through my my local credit union, although they had some trouble doing so. More recently I wired funds through the Lithuanian Credit Union here in Boston. Although their policy is to provide that service for members only, they were nice enough to to do this for me in this case. If I need to wire more in the future, I plan on either opening a basic savings account with a minimal amout or maybe get a credit card so I don't put a strain on their good graces. I paid $40 - $45 per transaction in my two wire transfer experiences.

In terms of correspondence, I have found that e-mail seems to work well.

- Jim Zuis

Permalink Reply by Joanie D on April 17, 2010 at 1:36pm

I have used the Archives in Vilnius twice - several years ago we did it by mail - we received instructions on how to pay for the research; we were told how much it would cost to begin the research and then after finding the documents we were looking for, they contacted us with a price for copies and/or translations. For each of the two phases, we went online to get the currency exchange for litos and sent a money order (dollars) for the payment. They had located 25 documents for our family - an excellent result.

We again requested research to be done on another branch of the family in 2006 and were put on a waiting list for 3 years (we were told in advance that it would take that long). I was notified in January of 2010 that I'd come up in the queue for the research to begin. We were given the cost to begin the research (1 research = 400 Lt or about $172). This time we wired the money directly to the bank in Lithuania with no problems at all. We used the information supplied to us by the Archives. I received a letter today (April 17) outlining all the registry books and years they searched (approximately 65 areas) and came up with 15 records (birth, death and marriage). They advised that the originals are in Russian, Polish and Latin and that 1 record with translation would cost 72 Lt - 1 record without translation would cost 20 Lt.

Instead of paying to have all the records translated, I am only having one each translated of the birth, marriage and death certificates since most are very similar. I'm hoping that one translation will help me figure out the others. If not, I'll go to my regional Polish Genealogy Society where they have translators available.

All in all, I've had very good success with the Archives in Vilnius and would use them again in a minute. I think they're are extremely thorough and accurate. I could pay a genealogist to do the same thing but it would probably cost me more AND I understand that the process to access the books is very slow and it can take several days to go through only a handful of books. The research that I did at our own Dept of Vital Records was as bad as that! We pay about $10 an hour to do the research and you can only get 3 books an hour or so - then it's lunch time! In a day, I could easily spend between $50-75 to look up information!

I would strongly suggest that you consider the Archives. At this point it is about the only way to get the research done without getting swindled by someone who claims to be able to get the information. I've tried that - never again!

You just need to have patience!

Jo

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Kirk on April 21, 2010 at 11:20am

Hi, I am hoping to request information from the Vilnius archives soon. I have heard of people requesting a single record, but am interested in having them do a search like you have described. Could you explain how you worded the requests? Did you just ask them to do a search for any person with a given surname? Also, did you have to have your request translated into Lithuanian or do they understand English?

Thanks,
Jeff

Permalink Reply by Joanie D on April 22, 2010 at 8:30am

I hope this will help. I gave them as much information as I could. Just searching a given surname won't be very helpful--I'm afraid--unless you want to spend lots of money. You at least have to give them some idea of where to look and a possible time frame. I knew exactly where my ancestor came from (including the church parish). That made it easy. In the most recent search, I again had a couple of names and dates and only one place name. But they searched through 65 different church registry books to locate more information.

So if you're looking for a grandmother, for example, and don't know an exact date of birth, look at your parent's date of birth and go back about 25 years for an approximate year. The registry books usually cover about a 20-year span so they may find something. If you know that your ancestor came from the Vilnius area, that could help too. As you probably know (and as I found out), Vilnius is not only a city, it's like a county so it can cover many cities.

Once they find that one ancestor, they may be able to trace back to more family by using the information provided in the document - for example, in a birth certificate, you'll get the parents' names. In a marriage certificate, you'll get parents' names and where they come from, you may also get birth dates of the bride and groom (if I remember correctly). So one find can lead to a lot of information.

I wrote in English (and all my responses have been in English) to LIETUVOS VALSTYBES ISTORIJOS ARCHYVAS, Gerosios Vilties g. 10, 03134 Vilnius, Lithuania. There's also an e-mail address: istorijos, archyvas@lvia.lt if you want to ask more questions. I found them to be very helpful.

Good luck with your search!

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Kirk on April 22, 2010 at 9:23am

This is a big help. I have names, dates of birth, and towns (or villages) of birth in some cases, so I will be able to provide them with this information. It seems that the key difference between the search you described and others I have read about is that you instructed them to trace back to other relatives if the references existed in the documents. I would like to do the same. Thanks again.

Permalink Reply by Nina Jankauskas on November 19, 2010 at 2:01pm

I am fluent in lithuanian, so if you ever receive anything that is in lithuanian please feel free to post here or contact me directly - ninajankauskas@yahoo.com.

Permalink Reply by carolyn travers on March 22, 2011 at 9:06am

Hi, Nina,

I wrote letters in English to Lithuanians who might be related to me and received one reply. The lady was in her 70's and wrote in English, but requested that I write again in Lithuanian as she speaks no English. She sent me an email address for her daughter, but it doesn't work, so I'd like to write to her again, hard copy. Can you assist me in writing in Lithuanian?

Thanks so much!

Permalink Reply by Ellynmarie on March 25, 2011 at 10:22am

Greetings!

I totally agree with Joanie D! I have had great success using and communicating with the Archives!

I have been researching our family since 2003 and, because of limited family and information, have had to contact the Archives for assistance many times. Although the turnaround time is very slow, the information simply cannot be obtained without them. I have branches leading back to the 1780's, from the Seneiji Trakai Region/Parish, and since our family immigrated in 1907-1918 our USA info is relatively new and very limited. But the documents I purchased gave me godparents, attendees at weddings, all concluding our families on the South Shore of MA were actually connected prior in LT.

My most recent search, registered in Feb 2007, was recently completed in March 2011. It was worth the wait!!

Registering your request is free and doesn't hinder your search. I'd strongly suggest getting in the queue. There's nothing to lose!