I was confused about why the matriky in use today are stored in matriční úřady (registrar’s office), not in the farnost (parish). This did not make sense to me. Catholics who get baptized want to still keep matriky books today, because they are a record of a religious ordinance/rites. How can the government justify itself…
“…and to the Swedes a fiery hell!”
I saw in the footnotes of a book about Frenštát that it didn’t even make it onto Jan Amos Komenský’s 1633 map, no doubt having been destroyed during a siege during the Thirty Year’s War. Well, that author was correct. It’s not on the map. Where are you, Frankstadt? I was curious to find out…
The mystery of the page+ long marriage entry: 4th degree consanguinity and Incest
Someone on the facebook genealogy group posted a link to an incredibly long (1+ pages!) marriage entry in the matriky for Lomnice nad Lužnicí. She wanted to know what it meant, and I was curious too. Here is an abstract of the record: On 5 September 1762 Wenceslaus Wondruschka of Záblatí, legitimate son of Laurentis…
What I wish I knew about Czech History
A little over a year ago I returned from my first trip to the Czech Republic. It was a life changing experience. The main thing that changed for me was starting to understand just how little I actually know. A tiny bit more than nothing. It was actually a very overwhelming, humbling, humiliating feeling. I…
Estcha Máme Plenty!
I am learning Czech, and this is a translated cross-post from my language learning blog here. Děda JoeGrandpa Joe Joe a AnežkaJoe and Agnes My great-great-grandpa Josef Jan Vasicek immigrated to Texas when he was 16 years old. He was the youngest son of the Vasicek’s. And he never saw his parents again after he…
House Numbering in Frenštát
My fourth cousin in Trojanovice sent me a copy of a history of the town of Frenštát from 1904. I started to read it in Czech, and of course I need to share what I am learning, because it is very interesting. Here is a translation of pages 7 and 8. ———————————————————————————————– House numbering was…
How to trace Czechs before House Numbers
House numbers in the Czech lands are great. But they were not a thing until the 1770s/1780’s. And not all of our ancestors were the “knedlíky” kind. If you have ever eaten dumplings before, you know exactly what I’m talking about. They sit in your stomach forever, like bricks. Well, it’s nice when ancestors are…
Želary, část druhá [part two]
Část první [part one] is located here. My cousin (4th cousin once removed) Josef Petr in Trojanovice – who is just as much into genealogy as I am – gave me some really great answers to some questions, which I am sharing (with permission). The only problem is that his answers have sparked 10,000 more…
I am a GeneaBloggersTRIBE team member!
Guess what? GeneaBloggers was about to die. Thomas MacEntee was moving on to his new site: AbundantGenealogy.com. He basically realized that the vast majority of the traffic to his site comes from Facebook instead of blogs, and it wasn’t really worth all his gargantuan effort to continue with it. This post explains the pros and…
How should I record the given names of my Czech ancestors?
No, seriously…how should I record the given names of my Czech ancestors? I used to think that the only way to record a given name was strictly by what was written in the record. I even went so far as to claim that any deviance from this method was “fiction.” Let me clarify. I am…