I want to publicly pat myself on the back for correctly transcribing and translating page one (of two) of a 1799 Czech land record written in German current script, in Czech. This record is like a cross between a deed and a will; it has lots of information about the land, and who was going…
Month: May 2013
Find-a-Grave and giving back
Hey! So, a lot to write about. Today I went to the 3S Genealogy Symposium hosted by the Friench Simpson Memorial Library in Hallettsville, TX. There were some excellent speakers, and I learned a lot. Enough for several blog posts. During the break, I went to the Hallettsville City Cemetery. I have some collateral lines…
Genealogy look-ups at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church of Fayetteville, TX
St. John the Baptist Catholic Church is one of the earliest Czech Catholic churches in Texas. It is a valuable repository of Czech genealogical records that I am excited to use. From to the Fayetteville County History site: Many Czech and German immigrants settled in this area in the mid-1800s. After many years without the services…
Search Strategy: Finding the Parish of a Village of Origin in the Czech lands using only online tools
So you have a name of a village in the Czech lands. You know that records must exist somewhere. You learn that they have likely been digitized and are available online, as part of a massive movement of many of the state and local archives in the CR to promote accessibility. The end goal is…
Discrepancy between standards for temple submission and the GPS
I am working on submitting my ancestors’ names to the temple, where temple ordinances will be done in proxy for them. Here is a link that explains more about temple ordinance work. The purpose of this blog post is to point out an interesting discrepancy that I see between the bare minimum requirements to submit a name…
Texas Immigration Agent Records: Private agent “F. Russek”, the North German Lloyd line, and a new repository of records!
My hunch was that I might find some advertisements for immigration agents in old newspapers. That hunch was verified in about two seconds. I’m in the midst of researching several immigration agents I found this way. One was a man in New York who brought at least 120 people from the German and Czech lands to…
Texas Immigration Agents Records: Do they exist, and if so where to start?
The 30 September 1887 newspaper “the Galveston Daily News” contains the only known passenger list for a group of incoming Texas immigrants, the majority of whom were German and Czech. (located here, page 8). The arrival manifests were destroyed in the 1900 hurricane in Galveston. The Bremerhaven-Bremen departure lists only exist for the years 1920-1939 (accessible…
The purpose of this blog
Edited 2017 I am a fifth generation Texas Czech. I am passionate about history, research, and languages. I love the mystery of deciphering old documents and analyzing the information they contain to form an understanding of the past. I am particularly interested in Czech records and research. My enthusiasm and energy for genealogy is driven…