Tonight I discovered that my 3rd great uncle adopted two children who were born in New York. This probably means the children were from an orphan train. My 3rd great uncle and his wife were Czech immigrants from Vítkovice who farmed in Fayette and Fort Bend counties. There are 10 years age difference between their…
Month: January 2014
Church Record Sunday: “Defecit a fide” Stamp
I found a really interesting parish record the other day for Czech town of Vítkovice. Here is a direct link. Here is an image of the whole record. And here is a close up of what I found so interesting: It is a stamp that says: “Defecit a fide,manet sine confessione.Regimen distr.deto [date?] ___________________” This…
More Clues from the Orphan Book
I always feel like saying, “Of course! Why didn’t I see that before!?” when somebody points out an error in my transcription. I was really happy to get some great feedback yesterday from two other genealogists (Lukáš Svoboda and Yvette Hoitink) about my very rough transcription of part of an Orphan Book record. Thank you so…
Clues from an Orphan Book Record
Yesterday I posted about Czech Orphan books. I posted an example of an entry from an orphan book and said I would post a transcription later. Instead of a word-for-word transcription, which is really time consuming, I decided instead to walk you through the actual process of deciphering the words and figuring out the document…
Orphan Book – Kniha sirotčích
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…
Wordless Wednesday: Emma Chovanec
1741 Map of Silesia
I found a beautiful map of Silesia in 1741 on the Ostrava City Archive’s website, which is http://earchiv.ostrava.cz. Here is a direct link to the description of the map. To view it, click, “zobrazit digitálnie kopie.” That will open up the map in a new tab in your browser. This is what you will see: The…
Upcoming series on Navigating Czech Archives Websites
After a recent blog post about upcoming changes to portafontium.cz, I got an email asking for clarification about what that means. I realized that it would be helpful to others to provide some tutorials about how to navigate the Czech archival sites, especially from a native English speaking perspective. After all, one of the main…
Beautiful Savior, or Schönster Herr Jesu
I noticed a few weeks ago that one of my favorite songs in the LDS Children’s Songbook is actually a Silesian folk song. According to the songbook, the words are supposedly from the 12th century by an anonymous composer, though this blog says, “it is better to associate the hymn with followers of John Hus,” which…
2014 APG Professional Management Conference
I was able to listen to 1 and 3/4 lectures of the 2014 APG Professional Management Conference this morning as I drove to Costco, shopped, checked out, drove to Walmart, shopped, drove home, and cooked lunch for my family. Judy G. Russell AKA “The Legal Genealogist” was an awesome presenter. I thought she did a great…