If you know the present name of the village, you can find out which manor and parish the village belonged to in the 19th century with the help of the National Archives' map server of historical administrative boundaries Land Board Geoportal. After that it will be easy to find the maps of the area of interest using the Register of Maps in the National Archives of Estonia. With the help of these maps you will be able to study the development of settlement and the local place names. The oldest and most precious maps that date from the Swedish era can be seen on the same site as digital images.

Ploughland revisions were carried out in Estonia from the 16th century onwards, providing evidence of farms’ economic development and their relationship to villages. The wacka-books and inventories compiled in the course of the ploughland revisions are held in several fonds. Some are available in the Saaga portal; the revisions in Estonia from 1725 and 1726 have been published in print. Since 2008, the Ploughland revision of Estonia in 1732 is also available as an electronically searchable source publication.

Soul revision lists, kept for tax accounting, can be used to study farm residents and the number of farms in a village. Soul revision lists are digitised and available in Saaga. Information about local residents can also be obtained in the registers of the Lutheran and Orthodox churches and in the lists of commune members, which are also available in the Saaga portal.

In the archives there are rental contracts of farms (in the fonds of parish judges and commissars of peasant matters), and information about purchasing a farm can be found in the farm’s real estate register file. Find more detailed information about soul revision lists, wacka-books and parish member lists.

For an initial overview of a manor’s location and administrative boundaries, consult the Historical Archives’ map server of historical administrative boundaries Land Board Geoportal. For more precise boundaries, maps of manors based on surveys from different periods are available in the Register of Maps in the National Archives of Estonia. The oldest and most precious maps dating from the Swedish era can be seen on the same site as digital images.

In the Portal of Estonian Manors it is possible to find which family a manor belonged to at a certain time, and for many manors, the Real Estate Register can also be used. It is continually being expanded. To find out what type of manor you are researching, consult the Register of the Manors in Estonian Area which also shows the parish and district the manor belonged to. If it is known to be a town manor, search using AIS in the respective magistrate fonds.

The database «Coats of Arms of the Nobility» provides digital photographs of these coats of arms.

During the inquiries conducted as part of ploughland revisions, men giving evidence under oath also provided information about the condition of manor buildings, the size and quality of fields and arable land, the year’s harvest, mills, taverns and other matters. Since 2008, the Ploughland Revision of Estonia in 1732 is also available as an electronically searchable source publication. The inquiry minutes have been published as well. A lot of 18th century ploughland revision materials are available for browsing as digital images in the Saaga portal.

The fonds of manors and manor owners contain information about manor owners, resident workers and servants, and peasants attached to the manors.

The earliest form of rural community administration was a parish court (commune court). The minute books of the commune courts from the Tsarist era are already available in the Saaga collection.

The communes that were founded by the Commune Act in 1866 were at first estate communes and their boundaries were the same as manor boundaries. Communes began to merge in the 1890s. Information about the merged communes and the manors within their boundaries is available in the Register of rural municipalities on the Estonian territory.

The majority of the records in the fonds of commune administrations (above all the lists of commune members) are also already accessible in the Saaga collection – from the Tsarist era, as well as from the period 1918–1940.

For an initial overview of other materials in these fonds and the references needed to order them in advance for use in the reading rooms, consult the Archival Information System AIS.

Among the maps in the Historical Archives there are many parish maps that are most easily found using the Register of Maps in the National Archives of Estonia.

The boundaries of administrative and church parishes do not always coincide. When researching parish history after the 1840s, consult the fonds of both Lutheran and Orthodox congregations. Church records are valuable sources: alongside parish registers, they include cashbooks, church chronicles, visitation minutes and many other materials. Parish registers are available as digital images in Saaga. Minutes of visitations in Lutheran congregations can be found in the fonds of consistories. Information about the visitation records held in the archives is available in the Archival Information System AIS.

The most important materials from the ploughland revisions of the late 16th century, the first half of the 17th century and, in part, the 18th century have been published in an accessible form for interested readers. You can order all these publications for use in a reading room, for example from the National Archives library in Tartu. Click a link to open the entry in the library’s online catalogue:

• Das Dorpater Land 1624/27. // Hefte zur Landeskunde Estlands. 1. Hrsg. Oleg Roslavlev. München 1965.
• Das Pernauer Land 1624. // Hefte zur Landeskunde Estlands. 2. Hrsg. Oleg Roslavlev. München 1967.
• Die Revision Livlands 1601. Estnisches Siedlungsgebiet. // Hefte zur Landeskunde Estlands. 3. Hrsg. Oleg Roslavlev. Wolfratshausen-Waldram 1967.
• Die Revision Livlands 1638. Estnisches Siedlungsgebiet. II. // Hefte zur Landeskunde Estlands. 4. Hrsg. Oleg Roslavlev. Wolfratshausen-Waldram 1969.
• Polnische Akten. 1. 1582–1591. // Hefte zur Landeskunde Estlands. 5. Hrsg. Oleg Roslavlev. München 1970.
• Polnische Akten. 4. 1583–1590. // Hefte zur Landeskunde Estlands. 6. Hrsg. Oleg Roslavlev. München 1973.
• Polnische Akten. 2. 1586–1616. // Hefte zur Landeskunde Estlands. 7. Hrsg. Oleg Roslavlev. München 1973.
• Eestimaa 1725.–1726. a. adramaarevisjon. Harjumaa. 1. kd. Allikpublikatsioon. Tallinn 1988.
• Eestimaa 1725.–1726. a. adramaarevisjon. Harjumaa. 2. kd. Allikpublikatsioon. Tallinn 1988.
• Eestimaa 1725.–1726. a. adramaarevisjon. Virumaa. Allikpublikatsioon. Tallinn 1989.
• Eestimaa 1725.–1726. a. adramaarevisjon. Järvamaa. Allikpublikatsioon. Tallinn 1989.
• Eestimaa 1725.–1726. a. adramaarevisjon. Läänemaa. Allikpublikatsioon. Tallinn 1990.
• Saaremaa Maasilinna foogtkonna maaraamatud 1569–1571. Allikpublikatsioon. Koost. Leo Tiik. Tallinn 1992.

Databases

• AIS — Archival Information System
• Saaga
• Register of Maps in the National Archives of Estonia
• Land Board Geoportal
  
• Register of estates on the Estonian territory
• Register of rural municipalities on the Estonian territory
• Land registers
• Database of land revisions

Links

• Estonian Manors
• KNAB — Place Names Database
• Analytic bibliography of Estonian journalism
• DEA — Digitised Estonian periodicals
• GRAFO — Digital Library of the Estonian Literary Museum
• LEPP — Folklore of southern Estonia
• Estonian Dialects