Translated by Kate Challis and Lukáš Svoboda
Original post found here
My choices were Matěj and Kateřina, Matěj and Alžběta, and another potential couple Matěj and Voršila. This time, I used my gut instinct; I had excluded the Matěj-Vořsila couple because their first child was born in 1724 and their last in 1741, and so they could hardly have had a son old enough to marry in 1726. Actually, this was the same reason I ruled out the Matěj-Alžběta couple, though with less confidence. Their first known (to me) child was born in 1715 and their last in 1723. By contrast, the Matěj-Kateřina couple had their first child in 1705, and their last born in 1717. Their children actually were among some of the first known children in the Benešov region. But mainly, what stood out in favor of this Matěj-Kateřina couple was that when Jiří was married, he was described as the son of Matěj Šnajberk, master shepherd of the Ondřejovice sheepfold, while four out of five children from this couple were found born in Ondřejovice. In 1723, Matěj’s other son Matěj from Ondřejovice was married.
Still, I was more interested in the marriage record for Anna Šnajberková, the widow of “my” Jiří. Her husband had died in July of 1754. In December of that year, his widow married Jan Šnajberk, son of Jiří Šnajberk of Pomněnice! Lo and behold, I was suddenly able to link Anna to both the Jiří Šnajberk families. That was not all: the marriage record referred to a papal dispensation and that the banns were announced as, “one for three.” Usually the banns had to be announced three times, on three consecutive Sundays, but if needed, a dispensation could be considered to have the same validity as three banns announcements. They were dispensed from impediments of marriage of the “2 et 3 gradu affinitatis”, aka the 2nd and 3rd degree of affinity.
http://ebadatelna.soapraha.cz/d/3855/370
At that time, I was well informed about the meaning of affinity and contemporaneous methods for calculating its various degrees. It didn’t have so much to do with Anna, but rather the relationship of her first husband (my Jiří) to her second husband (Jan). Because they both had the same Šnajberk surname, it seemed they were most probably connected through the male line. It might look like this:
But in Alt. 2, cousin marriages are required which would probably not be dispensed. For this reason, I leaned more towards Alt. 1. When I entered the known family names into the chart, it looked like this:
In these two options, the common ancestor is either an unknown Šnajberk (alt. A,), or else Jan Šnajberk the centenarian (alt. B) with another unknown person between him and Matěj. Deciding between the two possibilities was difficult, nay, impossible.
I only had one possible clue: the birth years calculated from the data in the death registers. While the line of Jan-Jiří-Jan was totally plausible and mutually compatible with each other, I knew nothing about Matěj from the Matěj-Jiří line. I found only one death for any Matěj, in Žabovřesky, 1753, age 65. Thus, his birth would have been around 1688. But I still had a giant question mark as to whether he belonged to me or not at all. If he was “my” Matěj, then in Alt. A he would have been about 30 years younger than his brother Jiří (who was later the centenarian guy); unlikely, but not impossible. In turn, in Alt. B it was more difficult, if not impossible, to “cram” another generation between Matěj and Jan, so this Matěj probably does not belong to my family tree.
I finally gave up. I still greatly prefer Alternative A, but until I get more information about Matěj or older generations of Šnajberks, I just cannot get past it. It is a brick wall.
I confessed that I was really sad that I could not definitively add the centenarian Jan to my direct ancestors, even though I had made some connection. I wondered if Pavel, who was stabbed by the Hussar’s sabre, might also belong to the Šnajberk family. Wasn’t it be possible to connect him with my Jiří and thus piggyback onto the glory of his story?
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In Pomněnice 1722, Pavel Šnajberk married Kateřina Kurková
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In Ondřejovice 1729, Pavel Šnajberk marries Kateřina Bulíková (and Anna Šnajberková of Ondřejovice was a witness).
Unfortunately, neither of these records listed the father of the groom.
Remember that in 1726 my Jiří married in Ondřejovice, and in 1723 the second son of Matěj (by the same name) also married in Ondřejovice. Pavel Šnajberk was living in Ondřejovice then, therefore he was the son of Matěj and was born in 1705. His sister Anna (who was born in Ondřejovice in 1709) was the Anna who was a bridesmaid at his wedding.
His identity is difficult to pinpoint. In 1726 he was a witness to the wedding of Bartoloměj Šnajberk of Pomněnice, son of Jan Šnajberk. In the period around 1722 the second Jiří Šnajberk and his wife Ludmila worked around Pomněnice (remember that he is also the son of Jan Šnajberk). So with much less certainty, I connected Jan (the centenarian heretic) as his father.
In these situations, godparents and baptismal witnesses are always extremely useful. I made a list of all the children born to Pavel and Kateřina with their corresponding godparents. As I expected, you can distinguish two separate groups of people by their different witnesses, with only one exception: the first child, born in August 1722, had an unknown set of godparents who never showed up again later; perhaps this was because the child was born 2 months after the wedding, and it may have been difficult to find witnesses in their new residence.
The last piece of the puzzleI do not even need to answer it, because despite every disappointment, in the end I was able to experience the reward of the rich joy of discovery and adventure. But for myself, and perhaps for other genealogists, I would respond to the question of, “Why are you looking for your ancestors, anyway?” in the paraphrased words of George Herbert Leigh Mallory. “Because [they’re] there.”