Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in America! Here is a list of some of the genealogy-related things I’m especially thankful for this year. OCR technology that allows me to search newspapers instantly BYU’s online German script tutorial that has helped me remember that German script does have patterns that are generally predictable Online forums that allow me to…
Velkostatek: the Estate
The Czech word for “Estate” is Velkostatek. According to Wikipedia (as translated from Czech to English by Google translate):“The estate is the name for a farm with an area greater than 100 ha [ha = hectares. 100 hectares = ~247 acres] agricultural area. In the history of this term also denoted a feudal estate . In the Middle Ages, and especially in the early modern…
Wordless Wednesday: Johanna Vasicek Naiser
Photo from Elaine Naiser Hicks Back row, standing from left to right: Richard J.(a great uncle), Johann Naiser (my great-grandfather), Edward (my grandfather) and John, J. a great uncle Front row, seated from left to right: Elizabeth Naiser Vacek (born in Texas) and Johanna Vasicek Naiser. Probably taken about 1890 or so in Texas. Elizabeth…
Czech Out Your Ancestors Facebook Page goes live
Thanks to the urging of a friend and fellow genealogist Rebecca Christensen over at Kansas Ancestors, I finally drummed up enough motivation to finish a facebook page for my business. Woohoo! Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/czechoutyourancestors I think it will mainly be a place for me to share blog updates, interesting status updates about my…
Two Options: Find them, or have them find you
Whether your goal is to connect with living descendants of a common ancestor, or simply to continue to trace your heritage back further generations in time, you have two basic options. Find the people yourself, or have the people (or their relatives) find you. The first option, finding the people yourself, is the most traditional….
die hausbücher der nürnberger zwölfbrüderstiftungen
Ever wondered what your ancestors looked like? If they were a compass needle filer, they could have looked like: I found a really interesting, really old dictionary of occupations from 1400-1500’s Germany. It’s called “die hausbücher der nürnberger zwölfbrüderstiftungen”. The best part? These are portraits of real people. How cool would it be if your…
Czech Handwriting Transcription Test 1 ANSWERS
Here are the answers to yesterday’s transcription test. Note how there actually are some major differences in the “answers” copy. Names and words were Latin-ized. So I will give you the answer to the original. 1. Mičhal Leičht Michael Leicht 2. Waczlaw Majer Venceslaus Mayer 3.Ondřej Reidl Andreas Reidl 4. Jakob…
Czech Handwriting Transcription Test 1
I found something really awesome on actapublica.eu: two registers that had identical information, but their legibility varied drastically. Why would two parish registers have identical information? One of the registers was the original, and the other was a copy, sort of like the Czech Catholic equivalent to bishop’s transcripts in England. The copy was made…
What day of the week were your ancestors married?
I recently read a fascinating post over at one of my favorite blogs, Czech Genealogy for Beginners. You really should read the whole post, because it is quite interesting. Blanka Lednicka is the author if this blog. She wrote:If you take careful look on the wedding dates and you translate them into days, you’ll find…
Location of illegitimate birth records
Often times in the old Czech parish registers, illegitimate births were recorded right alongside legitimate births. But, sometimes they aren’t. For example, in the parish book “Merklín 03” on actapublica.eu, the births go from 1736-1770, and then at the end is a small section of pages of births of illegitimate children from 1769-1771. http://actapublica.eu/matriky/plzen/prohlizec/5646/?strana=162 So…