My ancestor Anna Šperka was the second wife of Mathias Brosch. His first wife was also named Anna. They were married in the Místek parish on 16 January 1725. Her father was the late Joannes Gach from upper Hodonovice. She died 2 June 1737 at age 36. This gives her an approximate birthdate of 1701….
Author: Kate Challis
Ancilla
I found this record where my ancestor is described as “honesta ancilla.” I had not ever seen that before, so I thought I’d blog about it. Here’s my transcription: 4 Augustus [1744]hujus copulatus honestus Georgius Jurassek adolescens colonus ex Ribarzeritz et honesta ancilla Elisabetha Francisci Sperka propria filia ex Starzitz testes Mathias Wesselka ex Chlebowitz…
Theory on the Origin of the #
The Wikipedia article about the # sign has its own shaky theories about the origin of the symbol, but I’m finding that there’s a striking resemblance between the shape of a German Current capital “N” and the #, a scribble that has evolved to mean “Number.” Tell me with a straight face that you don’t…
Fraissen
On one half of the register, the cause of death appears as “Fraissen” with two s’s. On the other half, the word appears as “Fraisen” with one s. This 2011 post on the German-Bohemian ancestry forum speculates that it could mean epileptic seizures, measles, or just some vague description that the parish priest or clerk…
Beautiful Handwriting
Gemeinde Rattimau = Parish/Community of Vratimov It seems like the Parish was actually made of more than one village. Vratimov records are always with those of Horní Datyně, Hrabová, and Kunčice, to name a few. Kunčice, by the way, as in Gross Kunzendorf, a village that is no longer on the map. It was razed…
Polish Birth Records in Czech Archives
Today I found some Polish birth records in the Ostrava Land Archives online! See? Basically, this book includes birth records for a lot of teeny tiny towns, including two that are in present day Poland. It looks like these are Silesian villages. Clearly, the borders were very different back then. Here is what I think is…
“Magd Tocht”
In this 1835 death record in the Kunčice-Vratimov parish, this child is described as, “Anna der Marina Waschiczek Mgd Tocht.” In these Czech records, typically the format of a child’s death is like this: [given name] of [father’s given and surname], [father’s occupation] of [place] This entry doesn’t fit that format. Instead, it’s: Anna of [mother’s given…
Cause of death: Normal
While doing some research on some Trojanovice Czech ancestors today, I came across an interesting cause of death: gewöhnlich Honestly, it took me a while of plugging things into google translate for me to figure out what in the world this word was. What was weirding me out so much was the occurrence of this word!…
Interspersed index organized alphabetically by year
In my personal research I came across a register of births that was weirdly organized. This is how I think it goes: Village 1 birth records Village 1 birth index Year 1, alphabetical by surname index of births for village 1 Year 2, “ Year 3, “ Village 2 birth records Village 2 birth index Year…
I’m Back! Genealogy Goals and Projects for 2015!
Hey! I’m alive! And now that I’m officially 6 weeks postpartum (as in, my life is returning to normal again!) it’s time to resume this blog! I took an almost year-long hiatus from this blog because I was working on family present. Teehee. And here she is! Miss Cora Madeline Challis! Weird that they posted…