I gave a presentation today at the Czech Heritage Society – Harris County Chapter for their Summer Genealogy Meeting. It was called “Finding Czech Parish Records: Moravian-Silesian Region.” If you click on that link, it will allow you to view and download my presentation. Feel free to share this with anybody who might find it interesting…
Long lost gold: “Centennial History of St. John the Baptist Parish, Ammansville, Texas 1890-1990”
I was recently hired to work on redesigning and enhancing Arabic 041 (the first year High School Arabic class) for BYU’s Independent Study. It has been a really fun project, and between that and our upcoming move to Iowa in two weeks, I have had very little time to work on family history. Because I…
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…
Find-a-Grave and giving back
Hey! So, a lot to write about. Today I went to the 3S Genealogy Symposium hosted by the Friench Simpson Memorial Library in Hallettsville, TX. There were some excellent speakers, and I learned a lot. Enough for several blog posts. During the break, I went to the Hallettsville City Cemetery. I have some collateral lines…
Genealogy look-ups at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church of Fayetteville, TX
St. John the Baptist Catholic Church is one of the earliest Czech Catholic churches in Texas. It is a valuable repository of Czech genealogical records that I am excited to use. From to the Fayetteville County History site: Many Czech and German immigrants settled in this area in the mid-1800s. After many years without the services…
Search Strategy: Finding the Parish of a Village of Origin in the Czech lands using only online tools
So you have a name of a village in the Czech lands. You know that records must exist somewhere. You learn that they have likely been digitized and are available online, as part of a massive movement of many of the state and local archives in the CR to promote accessibility. The end goal is…
Discrepancy between standards for temple submission and the GPS
I am working on submitting my ancestors’ names to the temple, where temple ordinances will be done in proxy for them. Here is a link that explains more about temple ordinance work. The purpose of this blog post is to point out an interesting discrepancy that I see between the bare minimum requirements to submit a name…
Texas Immigration Agent Records: Private agent “F. Russek”, the North German Lloyd line, and a new repository of records!
My hunch was that I might find some advertisements for immigration agents in old newspapers. That hunch was verified in about two seconds. I’m in the midst of researching several immigration agents I found this way. One was a man in New York who brought at least 120 people from the German and Czech lands to…
Texas Immigration Agents Records: Do they exist, and if so where to start?
The 30 September 1887 newspaper “the Galveston Daily News” contains the only known passenger list for a group of incoming Texas immigrants, the majority of whom were German and Czech. (located here, page 8). The arrival manifests were destroyed in the 1900 hurricane in Galveston. The Bremerhaven-Bremen departure lists only exist for the years 1920-1939 (accessible…
The purpose of this blog
Edited 2017 I am a fifth generation Texas Czech. I am passionate about history, research, and languages. I love the mystery of deciphering old documents and analyzing the information they contain to form an understanding of the past. I am particularly interested in Czech records and research. My enthusiasm and energy for genealogy is driven…