Telling the stories of an overlooked immigrant Latvian community

This project, a work in progress, documents the religious experience and cultural production of Latvian Baptist immigrants to North America before World War II. The primary goal is to research the periodicals and other publications generated by these immigrants.

The nexus of the Latvian Baptist communities in North America was Philadelphia, and in particular West Philadelphia.

As a first phase, this project is documenting individual members of the Philadelphia Latvian Baptist Youth Society who appeared on a commemorative photographic postcard created in 1916. The project also is cataloguing the Latvian Baptist press in the United States and Brazil.

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Using the form below, visitors to this site may search for items, persons, and other keywords associated with the community.

Contribute to the project

Do you have information about or artifacts related to the early Latvian Baptists in America? Contact Andris Straumanis and help build this documentary project.

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Featured item

A gathering in Bucks County, 1925

Latvian Baptists pose for a group photograph in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, during a gathering in 1925. The home was that of Juris and Jūlija Burse (George and Julia Burse), one of the first Latvian settlers in the Applebachsville area.