Orphan Book – Kniha sirotčích – Czech Out Your Ancestors

I came across a really interesting type of record called “Kniha sirotčích” or “Orphan Book.” This kind of record may or may not exist for your locality. You will find it with other land records and town records – the “Town Books” – which are usually stored in one of the five Czech Republic city archives. These are located in Brno, Ostrava, Plzeň, Prague, and Ústí nad Labem.

According to the familysearch wiki page about Czech Town Records:

Town books were established in the late 13th century and their content was based primarily on relations between citizens. Town books included testaments, marriage agreements, and debentures, as well as trade, property, criminal, military, political, and orphan records. Smaller towns usually had only one town book.

Many new town books were created in 1849 after the organization of the new political administration and contained meeting minutes, financial and tax records, lists of the poor, residency certificates, and move-in and move-out records. Records varied widely from place to place. One may therefore encounter specialty books such as vineyard books, mining books, criminal record books and books of executions. Due to the vastness of the holdings, study of the Archival Inventory is recommended. These inventories can be accessed upon arrival in each archive.

Some of the more common books are:

Orphan books that list minor children, their birthdates, guardian (status, residence and the date of guardianship – usually shortly after father’s death), and remarks that describe how the children were raised, their inheritance (if any) and it may also include the death and marriage dates for the children. In case of an illegitimate child, a father may be listed. This may be extremely helpful to a researcher if the father’s name is not given in the birth record of the child.

Here is a direct link to the “Kniha sirotčích pasiv pro Novou Bělou” from 1828-1850.

Sadly, the family that I am researching had already moved from Nová Bělá to Kunčice nad Ostravice, or what was then known as Gross Kunzendorf, by the time the illegitimate birth occurred. So, my record of interest was not found in this book. But here is an example of one from this book:

Transcription to come.

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