Heritage AIWhat Are Russian Metric Books (Metricheskie Knigi) and How to Work With Them
Metric books are the main source for genealogy in pre-revolutionary Russia. What is written in them, why you look by parish, and what makes them hard to read.
Also in Russian: the original article
In this article· 4 sections
A metric book (metricheskaya kniga) is a church register in which the parish priest recorded three kinds of events among his parishioners: births (baptisms), marriages (weddings) and deaths (funeral services). It is the main source for genealogical research in Russia before 1917. Think of it as the pre-revolutionary counterpart of today’s ZAGS (the civil registry office), except that it was organized by church parish, not by territory.
What a metric book contains
Usually it is divided into three parts, one for each type of record.
- Births: the date of birth and baptism, the child’s name, the names and social estate of the parents, and the godparents (the “sponsors”). The godparents are sometimes an important clue to the family’s relatives and friends.
- Marriages: the names of the bride and groom, their ages and social estate, sometimes whether it was a first or second marriage, and the guarantors on each side.
- Deaths: the date of death, the age of the deceased, the cause (often stated very generally, such as “of old age” or “of fever”), and the burial place.
Why you search by parish
Metric books were kept by a specific parish and stored where it was located, not where a settlement lies administratively today. The same modern village could belong to a parish in a neighboring village. That is the first thing to find out before you start searching.
What makes them hard to read
The entries were handwritten, often in the cursive script of the 18th and 19th centuries, which takes some getting used to. Dates were given in the Old Style (the Julian calendar), so keep that in mind when converting to modern dates. Names could be spelled differently from today, for example “Ioann” (written Иоаннъ) instead of “Ivan”.
What to do with a record once you find it
Write the record into your tree straight away, with its source: the archive, the fond (collection), the delo (file) number and the list (folio). This is not a formality. Without a note of the source, it is easy to forget in six months where a date came from, and you can neither re-check it nor show another relative how it was found.
In Heritage AI you can keep each found record next to the person in the tree. You can begin with the free research plan.
Questions and answers
- What is a metric book?
- A church register kept by a parish priest. It recorded births (baptisms), marriages (weddings) and deaths (funeral services) of parishioners, and it is the main genealogical source in Russia before 1917.
- Why do I need to know the parish?
- Because the books were kept per parish and stored where the parish was, not by today’s administrative borders. A modern village may have belonged to a parish in a neighboring village.
- What should I note down from a metric book entry?
- The names and dates, and also exactly where it came from: archive, fond, file number and folio. Remember that dates are in the Old Style (Julian) calendar.
Next step
Start with a free research plan
Tell Heritage AI where your family came from and get a plan for where to look first. It shows the route; it does not promise to find a record. The product is currently available in Russian for families in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.