I found a beautiful map of Silesia in 1741 on the Ostrava City Archive’s website, which is http://earchiv.ostrava.cz. Here is a direct link to the description of the map. To view it, click, “zobrazit digitálnie kopie.” That will open up the map in a new tab in your browser. This is what you will see: The…
Upcoming series on Navigating Czech Archives Websites
After a recent blog post about upcoming changes to portafontium.cz, I got an email asking for clarification about what that means. I realized that it would be helpful to others to provide some tutorials about how to navigate the Czech archival sites, especially from a native English speaking perspective. After all, one of the main…
Beautiful Savior, or Schönster Herr Jesu
I noticed a few weeks ago that one of my favorite songs in the LDS Children’s Songbook is actually a Silesian folk song. According to the songbook, the words are supposedly from the 12th century by an anonymous composer, though this blog says, “it is better to associate the hymn with followers of John Hus,” which…
2014 APG Professional Management Conference
I was able to listen to 1 and 3/4 lectures of the 2014 APG Professional Management Conference this morning as I drove to Costco, shopped, checked out, drove to Walmart, shopped, drove home, and cooked lunch for my family. Judy G. Russell AKA “The Legal Genealogist” was an awesome presenter. I thought she did a great…
Follow Friday: Jiri Kastner’s unofficial news about upcoming changes to Portafontium.cz
Across the world, a Czech genealogist named Jiri Kastner found my blog and we started a correspondence. He introduced me to Rodokmen, which is google plus’s Czech Genealogy community. It is like generation 2 of genealogie.taby.cz. Anyway, you should “czech” out Jiri Kastner and his posts in the Rodokmen community if you are interested in Czech…
Iowa Genealogical Society Hiring a Part-time Executive Director
The Iowa Genealogical Society is looking to hire a part-time Executive Director. The salary will be $20,000-25,000. The job description is as follows: “This person will work with board members and current staff to implement the Strategic Plan developed in 2012. The plan is a good one, outlining committees and goals which would bring in…
Wordless Wednesday: Victor Frederick Vasicek 1926-2003
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…