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…
Category: Czech Land Records
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…
Velkostatek: the Estate
The Czech word for “Estate” is Velkostatek. According to Wikipedia (as translated from Czech to English by Google translate):“The estate is the name for a farm with an area greater than 100 ha [ha = hectares. 100 hectares = ~247 acres] agricultural area. In the history of this term also denoted a feudal estate . In the Middle Ages, and especially in the early modern…
Czech Land Record Transcription Process
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…