Structure of Records

Kate Challis is preparing headlines of columns, so I decided to look at their contents and abstract the common patterns that may help you to with basic orientation.

More examples explained in Czech are also on Blanka's site. So there are not mentioned Czech records, but their structure is the same and could by easily abstracted by analogy from the Latin or German ones.

Czech casualities in WWI

About a million of men from the area of Bohemia and Moravia participated in WWI. Not all of them returned home, many were killed in the battlefields or died because of diseases that spread among the soldiers. Where to find information about those who never returned? There are several possibilities.

Soldiers of WWI - from our family archives

First of all I have to mention that none of the databases is available in English. I know it's sad but hey, you can improve your Czech! ;) And one more warning - not all casualities are included in the databases which are described below. Many soldiers are still not there, but the Military Archives update the database time to time.

Which archives to search? vol. 2

This question appears repeatingly in Czech Genealogy group on Facebook. I have village xy and I don't know in which archives to search for the parish books. I have already written a post about how to search for the proper parish in GenTeam.at, but what if you don't have GenTeam access? 

Check in which district the village is.

List of districts and archives to which they belong

I have prepared a list of archives and the districts which belong in those archives. There are 77 districts in the Czech Republic incl. Prague, so it's not a long list. District names are both with diacritics and without it so anyone can search the list. Under every archive name there is a link to the digitized parish books of that archive.

Prague map from 1938

Many people lived in Prague before they decided to leave Bohemia - maybe your ancestors were one of them. Of course Prague today is a bit different from the Prague before WWII and it's useful to know that not all streets have the same names and so on.

Welcoming new year

I have already written a blog post about Christmas traditions, but what about those welcoming new year? What customs were connected to new year in Czech past? There were many of them and I have selected only some of them. I have used wonderful book Veselé chvíle lidu českého written by Čeněk Zíbrt - there are many of those new year's customs mentioned in this book. 

New Year's Run in Czech Silesia, abt 1735.

2017 Pittsburgh CGSI Conference

Have you heard? There's going to be the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International Conference in Pittsburgh in October 2017. 

And you know what? I'll be one of the speakers! 

I will have two lectures - After the Roof - Surname Changes in the Czech Past and Life in Bohemia and Moravia in the 18th Century - and one workshop which will take place two times - Reading Kurrent. 

So - see you there!