Hello blogosphere! I think the last time I posted was right in the middle of covid. It certainly was before I finished my MA in Applied Linguistics and Teaching English as a Second Language from Iowa State University. Hooray for that accomplishment, lots of back patting here. It was before I was hired by FamilySearch…
Jan Pokluda’s Village of Origin
This is my third great aunt, Františka Vašíčková. Františka Vašíčková was born 9 March 1859 at Vratimov. She married František Karel Naiser on 27 August 1878. Together they had the following children: i Anastasia Naiser ii Richard Raymond Naiser iii Charles John Naiser iv Frances Naiser v Elizabeth Naiser vi Hermina Naiser František Karel Naiser…
Mariana Genzer Čísak Ferik
Last weekend I started trying to find the Czech village of origin for Mariana Žídek. It turned out to be Brušperk. You can read about that research here. Along the way, I noticed that Mariana’s daughter, Mariana Genzer, had some weird discrepancies on her Find-A-Grave page. For example, the first confusing thing was that she…
Sloup se sochou P. Marie v Frenštátě pod Radhoštěm
I have these vague memories of standing on Frenštát town square, looking at this giant obelisk, and being told by someone (my fifth cousin Roman, perhaps?) that it was a memorial to the people who died during the plague in 1680. But I’m trying to substantiate that memory with real evidence, and kind of struggling…
Ye Olde Blog Goals 2021
Oh no. It’s been such a while since I dusted off my blog here. There’s like 12 wordpress updates, 8 plugins updates, and 6 unmoderated comments. Some of them look like they are probably even real! I almost got side-tracked into dealing with those things, but then… breathed in, breathed out, and forced myself to…
Partial Index to 1869 Census Notes of Emigrants from Frenštát
I noticed that the 1869 census for Frenštát often has notes about emigration. I started indexing it. I’m 25% through. Here’s what I’ve got so far, houses 1-190. And here is a link to the google doc. I hope to finish this project sometime. 1869 census village house number surname give name birth year pas…
Henry Heine, Part One
Sometimes it’s like there’s this little insect that bites me, or I take one tiny drink from some tempting elixir. Either way, something like that happened and I’ve been obsessing about Anna Svoboda for the past few days. Most of this email is built on the bones of an email to the very nice people…
When Czechs married Germans
The 19th century pattern was for Czechs who emigrated to the United States from the old country to do so in patterns of chain migration. They came together, lived together, worked together, migrated together, married together, and stayed together even through terrible marriages. They had many children together, they died together, and they are buried…
Village of Origin for Josef Kubeš: Part One
I certainly hope there will be a “Part Two” because a village of origin post in which I don’t solve the guy’s village of origin is a little bit, well, lame. But the journey is really fun, and that’s what I want to write about today. Right now I am looking at the villages of…
Czech Village of Origin in… the US Census?!
I recently thrust myself back into my own genealogy research. It’s good for me. When I feel connected with my loved ones of the past, I feel much happier. It’s not like I hadn’t been doing genealogy research before, but… well… for me, Czech genealogy is just one single very deep rabbit hole, like scope…