Written by Kate Challis and Lukáš Svoboda who blogs here.Your Czech ancestors almost certainly had some kind of contact with the village rychtář. Who was he, and what exactly did he do? Czech: fojt or šoltysGerman: Richter, Vogt, Schultheiss Latin: judex, scultetus, advocatusThere is no simple equivalent translation into English, therefore it is often translated as…
Category: Historic Czech Occupations
Workday Wednesday: Pasekář, Farmer
This is one of those untranslatable words that means a specific kind of farmer in Czech. You cannot simply translate it to, “a farmer on a clearing” without losing the nuanced, rich meaning of this word. When my husband and I went to Trojanovice, we were told point blank, “this is a paseka.” Well, actually,…
Porodní Bába
Midwifery is an occupation as old as time. As long as people have been having babies, there have been people to help assist with the birth. Traditionally, this would be the midwife. Not only did midwives deliver births, but they also had a legal duty in terms of witnessing births established in Roman and medieval…