Old Czech (and Slovak) postcards and photos

Those of you who are on Facebook maybe already noticed them - groups or pages focused on posting old photos, postcards, drawings and other pictures from Czech Republic (and also Slovakia). I have some of these pages as my favorites and I wanted to share them with you. There are quite many of them so I'll mention only those which I really like - and links to the rest are at the end of this blog post.

Maps of Czech catholic parishes

Czech Catholic church system is divided among seven (arch)episcopates which have their residencies in Prague, České Budějovice (Budweis), Plzeň (Pilsen), Litoměřice, Hradec Králové, Brno, Olomouc and Ostrava/Opava. All parishes in the Czech Republic are divided among these episcopates - and here are maps of these (arch)episcopates divided to parishes. These maps can help you when you need to search surrounding parishes for marriage or birth records. Here is a link to zip file with all the maps packed: Packed ZIP file of Czech parish maps.

First names in parish books

I had similar blog post (web page) on my old website. As I think this overview is quite useful, I decided to add it to this blog as a specific post. So - how did the names look like in registries? Here is a selection of most common first names as I collected them few years ago for my Czech personal genealogical website. It shows names in three different time periods and two or three different writing styles.

Cheap tickets to America! Ads in old newspapers

It was one of the first times I read about emigration to U.S. and other countries in 19th century when I found out a mention about emigration advertisements which were published in Czech newspapers. These ads offered cheap tickets, full service connected to emigration and much more. I never paid to much attention to this until I bumped into one of such ads in old newspapers when looking for another article. 

Protestants in Bohemia and Moravia after 1781

When Patent of Toleration was issued by Emperor Josef II. in 1781, about 80 thousands of people living in Bohemia and Moravia decided to change the church in next few years - it was just 2 percent of Czech population. The recatholization had its impact when comparing the numbers before Thirty years war and after 1781. This blog post focuses on years 1781 to 1918.

Jewish roots in Bohemia and Moravia

Czech genealogical research is quite easy if your ancestors were Catholic or Protestants. But what if they were Jews? Well, the research is not too easy in such case. There are several reasons - so let's take a look on Czech-Jewish history and genealogical research and what's available for this specific population group.

Raschwitz or Rašovice? Municipality lexicon of Litoměřice archives

There are many useful tools available online, some created by the volunteers and genealogy fans, other created by the archives themselves. One of those which I see as extremely useful and were created by the archives, is the Municipality lexicon of Litoměřice archives which is available on website http://www.soalitomerice.cz/slovnik/slovnik.php?lang=en.