The Oginskiai (Oginski) Family

Collection description

Collection

Country:: Lithuania

Holding institution:: Lithuanian State Historical Archives

Holding institution (official language):: Lietuvos valstybės istorijos archyvas

Postal address:: Gerosios Vilties g. 10, 03134 Vilnius

Phone number:: (8 5) 213 74 82

Web address:: http://www.archyvai.lt/lt/lvia_naujienos.html

Email:: istorijos.archyvas@lvia.lt

Reference number:: f. 1177

Title:: The Oginskiai (Oginski) Family

Title (official language):: Oginskiai

Creator/accumulator:: Oginskiai Family

Date(s):: 1447/1915

Language:: French; German; Latin; Polish; Russian; Hebrew

Extent:: 6,887 files

Type of material:: Textual material

Physical condition:: good

Scope and content:: The Oginski (Oginskiai) family archive includes a wide range of official and private documents, as well as data and documents on economic activities such as trade, leasing and taxation. The Jewish-related materials of the collection refer to various economic and social topics.

The family’s holdings included several towns with large Jewish populations: Ashmyany (now part of the Hrodna oblast of Belarus); Rietavas and Plunge (now in the county of Telsiai, Lithuania); Salantai (now in the county of Klaipeda, Lithuania); Lyubavichi (now in the Smolensk oblast of Russia) and Staroselye (now in the Mogilev oblast of Belarus).

The materials from these places include such documents as contracts with Jewish lessors, merchants and tavern-keepers (including a contract from 1784 with a Jewish lessor from Lyubavichi on the leasing of a mill and a tavern and court materials from the 1870s which refer to a Jewish leaseholder in Salantai); lists of Jewish and Christian inhabitants; property and taxation lists, chiefly from the 18th century (the lists mention the towns listed above and other areas and localities such as a Jurydyka, a privately owned area in the city of Vitebsk); and materials which refer to financial issues – invoices, promissory notes and other documents (including papers which refer to sums owed by Jewish lessors and communities in the vicinity of Rietavas in the 1740s). Some documents refer to financial disputes, such as that between the owner of a mill and tavern and a Jewish lessor from around 1760 and an accusation from 1745 against Jewish lessors in the border towns of Jurbarkas and Gargzdai (now in the counties of Taurage and Klaipeda in Lithuania) who allegedly collected illegal customs taxes.

Some of the material is in Old East Slavic.

Archival history:: The Oginskiai (Oginski) family archive was transferred to Vilnius from the Central Historical Archives of Ukraine in Kiev in 1960. It was included in the Central State Historical Archive of the Lithuanian SSR, which became the State Historical Archive in the 1990s.

Administrative/biographical history:: The Oginskiai (Oginski) family were magnates in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian empire. The family possessed estates in several areas of modern Belarus and its members occupied high state offices in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and after the partition of Poland. The diplomat, politician and composer Mikhail Kleofas Oginski (Michał Kleofas Ogiński, 1765-1833) was an active participant in the Kościuszko uprising of 1792. After the suppression of the uprising he became a prominent émigré activist and in 1810 was appointed to the governing senate of Russia.

Access points: locations:: Lithuania; Poland

Access points: persons/families:: Oginski family

Subject terms:: Chabad; Financial matters; Hospitality industry; Hospitality industry--Inns; Personal records; Real estate; Trade and commerce

System of arrangement:: The archive is arranged on a geographical basis (by estates); the geographical sections are arranged on a chronological basis.

Access, restrictions:: The collection is open for reference at LVIA.

Finding aids:: Basic information is available online in Lithuanian. More detailed inventories, as well as an index, are available at the Lithuanian State Historical Archives. Records and descriptions of the Jewish-related materials of the collection are also available at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People.

Links to finding aids:: https://eais-pub.archyvai.lt/eais/faces/pages/forms/search/F3001.jspx

Yerusha Network member:: Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People

Author of the description:: Alex Valdman, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, 2014

fullscreen: The Oginskiai (Oginski) Family

Collection

Downloads

Full record

Image fragment

Formats and links

Formats