The family history sources of the 20th century arriving in the online environment of the National Archives of Estonia

The National Archives of Estonia is happy to announce that the family history sources of the 20th century – civil status records and family letters – will finally arrive in the online environment of the National Archives this autumn.

In October and November, birth, marriage, divorce and death certificates drawn up in Estonia in the period 1926–2006 will be added. Acts are arranged by county and can be found in the Archival Information System AIS among the archival records of the relevant county government.

By the end of this year, we will make family records kept in Estonia 1926–1949 available online to our users with a new database that allows searches by personal name, date of birth, and municipality that kept family records. It is a paper-based population register of the time, where you can find the data of persons who registered family events in that period.

The registers of family events started in the Republic of Estonia in 1926 and kept until 1944 are freely accessible. Access restrictions have been set for later civil status records to protect personal data. Thus, the 75-year limit from the creation of the record also applies to, for example, death certificates, which contain, in addition to the data of the deceased, the personal data of the family member who registered the death. To view a restricted document, an access request must be submitted in the archive’s self-service environment.

It is possible to monitor the addition of new digital collections on the Saaga webpage in the section of „New Archives“ or to search for digitized records in AIS by the time of addition.

Birgit Kibal