http://www.coussins.org/Family/home.htm
This page will take around one minute to download on a modem and 20 seconds on Broadband. The website will be much faster.
 

The above data base is confusing because it states that what we were looking for was in Riga. We have still not determined is there is New Zhagare also known as Novo Shaggaren in addition to New Zagare in Lithuania . ( Svetlana Coussins 2004 search of the Jewish Gen Site)

When I started to do this genealogy I was quite sure that we came from outside Riga. My dad said that we came from a village called Zagar and that was near Riga. Well it was, in the 19th century. However, since Latvian Independence in 1915 and subsequent events of the USSR takeover, what I thought was outside Riga was in fact outside Latvia. We came from a border town called New Zagar which is in Lithuania. Anyway, during my search I went to Riga with Svetlana at the end of 2005.

Now, proudly independent of Russia , Latvian is the first language while  the second language is Russian. As almost 40% of the inhabitants are Russian Latvians, born in Latvia, many will not be allowed to have a Latvian Passport. Recent laws stated that they would only be given that status if they had grandparents born in Latvia. They had, instead, an Alien Passport or a passport for a person without a country. Russia would  not help them as they had been born in Latvia, Catch 22. Up to these recent events everyone in Latvia had lived happily side by side and were making a go of developing what was their country. The government has decided now to make things difficult for these 'aliens'. They must first pass exams in the Latvian History which clearly is biased against the more recent history and denounces what they were all brought up to believe (or is this like a Latvian version of the Spanish Inquisition) they must pass the Latvian Language exams and a few other hurdles will be put into place for these native Latvians to jump over. .Perhaps the next stage will be to get them to sew on Red badges with a hammer and sickle on the badge to show that they were second class citizens. There are distinct echoes of a previous  history in many Russian speaking Latvians minds according the many that we spoke with.

However, as we are Russian speakers, we were comfortably busy investigating the Cousins name-without much luck. The upside was  seeing this beautiful, although expensive city (one Lat equalled a GBP Pound or $1.60  and the prices were at the same level in most cases as any other major European City Centre. The value was not like for like though as the services were still a little basic at this point. When they enter the EEC Euro exchange rate mechanism, and the Lat is valued against the Euro that exchange may drop the Lat to around  75p or $1.

Riga is a city of two parts. The old city with is medieval buildings  and the new town built in the Art Nouveau style of German Jugendstile, Young Style. Click on any picture for a larger image. I will add some more images later