Samples

Following is a translation of Wulf Mendelev Rutenberg's entry in an 1895 register of Jews in Iur'iev (previously Dorpat, currently Tartu, Estonia), Livland Province, Russian Empire. Wulf, along with more than 200,000 others, settled outside of the Pale of Settlement (the area to which most Jews were relegated, consisting mostly of Congress Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and part of Latvia) in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Following is a translation of a copy of the Walther Ewald Arthur's 1862 birth and baptismal certifcate from Reval (Tallinn), Estland Province, Russian Empire. The certificate was submitted as part of the inheritance proceedings for his mother's estate. Walther and his family members belonged to the Baltic German nobility, who dominated the Baltic provinces for several hundred years. Many of them served in the tsarist bureaucracy and military.

Following is a narrative translation of two entries from opposite pages of an 1896 Russian Orthodox confessant list from the Iur'ev [Tartu] Uspenskii congregation. The first entry is likely that of a native Russian migrant to the Baltics. Though Russian migration was largely directed to the south and east, several dozens of thousands, mostly merchants and laborers, as well as a smaller number of administrative, military, and ecclesiastical personnel, settled in the Baltics. 

The second entry is likely that of an Estonian convert to Orthodoxy. A large number of Estonians converted to Orthodoxy in the nineteenth century, many of whom hoped to receive land as a result, as most Estonians were deprived of owning land. Evidence of this type of conversion is that husbands often converted while their wives did not.