PortaFontium website guide

As many of you probably already noticed, Pilsen archives moved completely from ActaPublica.eu to PortaFontium.eu website. Website is available in two languages - Czech and German, English is missing and I'm not sure it's planned to be implemented. As many of you don't understand neither Czech nor German, I decided to prepare an illustrated guide through this website.

Immigrants from Tasov, Hodonín, Moravia

Tasov is another small village on Czech-Slovak borders. It's located near Strážnice, well known for its open-air museum and festival of folklore traditions. Tasov is one of those villages where it wasn't easy to live in - poor part of country on the slopes of White Carpathians where the most common way of living was agriculture. Most of the farmers here owned just a small piece of land, usually about 5 acres. Many people from here left to find their happiness across the ocean - here are those whose birth record contain a note about their emgration. The timespan covered is between 1885 and 1900.

Testimonium matrimonii contracti

I'm preparing a blog post about immigrants from Tasov, Hodonín district, in Moravia - and I've accidentally bumped into one document I'd like to show to people who are interested in Czech genealogical research. It is "testimonium matrimonii contracti", which means testimony about contracting a marriage. Such documents were provided to people who wanted/needed to prove they were married. 

My experience is not many people know that church records (which are usually not available online) contain much more information than marriage licences (which are often available online). So if your ancestors were married in U.S. and you don't know where they came from - don't forget marriage church records. :)

Moravian Land Archives in Brno, parish Hroznová Lhota, book no. 5363, available online.

Immigrants from various places

I run into evidence about immigration sometimes, often only one person from whole village. As I see it as nonsense to create a special post for such cases, I decided to create this post which I will update in cases I find some new record.

Most common Czech surnames

When you are searching for a family in Bohemia or Moravia and you don't know where the family was from surname often helps. There are surnames which occur only in a few specific villages and you can determine where the ancestors were from. But then there are those surnames which occur in tens of thousands. Here are ten of those most common surnames - how many people have them, what they mean and so on.

History of villages: Nemějice, Bohemia

There are many small villages which has long history, but there are is just a little information published online about them. Writing a history of such village is quite complicated task and I'm trying to do my best in such tasks. One of those villages is Nemějice in Písek district - it was problem to find detailed information about this village online, but I have tried to compile at least those few notes I have found. 

Marriage notes - part I, German notes

I translated a marriage record today for one client from U.S. and it brought me to idea writing about notes by the marriage records - information about marriage banns, birth certificates or church dispensations. Most people who are searching for family history in Bohemia or Moravia are going to find information about banns in marriage records, but it's often hard to translate and therefor often omitted. So - what could be written there and how to handle such notes?