Author: Kate Challis
Moravians vs. Moravians
Jan Hus started what later became the Moravian Church (another name for it: the Unity of the Brethren Church) when he rejected practices of the Roman Catholic Church in the late 1300’s. He was burned at the stake in 1415 by order of the Council of Constance. After that, other Hussites rebelled, there was a…
United States Passport Applications available on Familysearch.org!
I looked at some of the recently added records to Familysearch.org’s historical records database, and I found a new set of records added just on 30 December 2013: United States, Passport Applications, 1795-1925. Specifically, this collection contains, “United States Passport Applications from two different NARA collections: M1490, and M1372.” Since there are only 2,320,105 images,…
Mozart lived closer to my ancestors than I do to my parents
My kids have been listening to “Mozart’s Magic Fantasy: A Journey Through the Magic Flute.” I keep finding songs from it stuck in my head. “Pa-pa-pa-papageno!” and the Aria of the Queen of the Night. Which my kids ask me to perform for them, and I gladly oblige. Haha. I began reading Mozart’s wikipedia page. The film…
Surname Saturday Kreczmarská, Kreczmarski
In my previous post about my fourth great grandmother, Anna Kreczmarska, I linked to the surname density map kdejsme.cz for the surname Krečmar. This variant spelling is not found anywhere close to Ostrava. However, a friend pointed me in the direction of a different surname spelling variation: Kreczmarská and Kreczmarski. In an email correspondence with Carolyn…
Follow Friday: Michele Simmons Lewis
Today I’m going to link you to one of my favorite bloggers in the genealogy world: Michele Simmons Lewis author of ancestoring.blogspot.com. While not a Czech researcher, her insights into genealogy research apply to all geographical areas of interest. She took a short blogging hiatus (phew! Good to know I wasn’t the only one!) these past…
The 5 Families that owned 8% of the Czech Land
In a previous blog post I took an excerpt from the book Bohemia and the Čechs, the History, People, Institutions, and the Geography of the Kingdom, Together with Accounts of Moravia and Silesia, by Will Seymour Monroe that says that five families own nearly 8% of the land.For my own perspective, I tried to find a size comparison…
Predictions for Czech Genealogy Research in 2014
I’m back! Woohoo! What a great start to the year! I’m so excited to continue researching, writing, and learning about genealogy. Here are my predictions for what will happen in the world of Czech genealogy research in 2014: The current Czech indexing project on familysearch.org will be completed Czech census records will begin to be…
See you in January 2014!!
I am officially going to take a blogging hiatus until January 1st. My whole immediate family is coming here for Christmas and there is a lot left to do to prepare. Right now I need to focus on my living family more than my dead family. But don’t worry, I have a goal to blog…
How should I respond when I find out someone’s ancestors were on Schindler’s list?
I had an interesting genealogy experience yesterday. I did some transcription work for a Jewish man whose recent ancestors were on Schindler’s List. I’ve been thinking about this question ever since – what is the correct response to learning this? Obviously, you can’t say, “That’s awesome.” It isn’t. The fact that Oskar Schindler saved ~1,200 Jewish…