Thursday, July 17, 2014

Czech Censuses 1843-1921 part III. - online sources

I have mentioned in part I of this mini-series there are censuses for Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia available online. I was asked several times where to find these censuses, so I decided to provide an overview of websites where censuses are placed online.

Largest source for Czech censuses online is definitely website FamilySearch.org. FamilySearch scanned almost all Czech censuses during its cooperation with Czech archives. Direct link to the collection: https://familysearch.org/search/collection/1930345

Czech censuses - districts on FamilySearch.org

FamilySearch cooperates with following archives: 
  • State Regional Archives in Třeboň
  • State Regional Archives in Litoměřice
  • State Regional Archives in Zámrsk
  • Land Archives in Opava
Censuses from these four archives are published on FamilySearch (as well as on archives' websites as you can see below). They are divided by district where the villages belonged - but the system is a bit confusing as the State Regional Archives in Litoměřice divided the censuses not by current districts, but by districts from 1930's.  How to find where the village you are searching? Take a look in the Lexicon of towns in North and Northwest Bohemia.
The rest of archives is divided by current districts so once you have the correct district, you should be able to find the village census records.

Some of the archives covered by FamilySearch also have censuses available on their own websites:

Digital archives in Třeboň
Třeboň archives and its wonderful system. It (of course) contains the censuses as well. There are currently (July 2014) censuses from districts České Budějovice, Český Krumlov, Písek and Tábor. Link to the collection: https://digi.ceskearchivy.cz/DA?lang=en&menu=0&doctree=1s

State Regional Archives in Zámrsk
Censuses from district Hradec Králové are available for direct download from the e-studyroom of Hradec Králové district archives: http://vychodoceskearchivy.cz/hradeckralove/4270-2/ 
Each village which is clickable has a zip packages with censuses available - just search for "sčítací operáty" on the webpage of the village, for example Babice:

There are two census years available in case of this village, 1900 and 1921. When you click on the year, you will be able to download a zip package with the census. 

Trutnov district censuses are available on FamilySearch only. There are also few censuses published from the Ústí nad Orlicí district - link here: http://vychodoceskearchivy.cz/ustinadorlici/ebadatelna/ - search for "sčítání lidu".

Pilsen State Regional Archives
I just found out censuses are available in the Porta Fontium system of Pilsen archives for two districts, Tachov and Domažlice (West Bohemia). Wow! Link: http://www.portafontium.cz/searching/census - website is available in Czech only, you need to write correct village name to the field "Místo" to see if censuses are online for that village.

Brno City Archives
Census for Brno city is available directly on Brno website. It covers years 1850, 1857, 1870, 1890 and 1900 and is fully available in fulltext search mode and in English. The link is here: http://digiarchiv.brno.cz/home?lang=en 

Ostrava Town Archives
Censuses for Moravská Ostrava are available on website of Ostrava town archives: http://earchiv.ostrava.cz/amo/. As the website is not available in English, here is a short guide. It's available here: Guide to Ostrava Town Archives - Censuses.

Other archives are currently scanning the censuses, so hopefully there will be more of them available in near future. And I most probably also missed something... :)

7 comments:

  1. This is will be very helpful. I'm posting the link in the Czech Roots Project Google+ community. Awesome and thank you!

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  2. How does the census of Domazlice work? I only see 2 pages for Petrovice.

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  3. There are 6 different Census years listed when searching Petrovice. Which search box are you entering petrovice in?

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  4. There are 6 different Census years listed when searching Petrovice. Which search box are you entering petrovice in?

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  5. I clicked scitani lidu on he top of the page for portafolium. A list come up for the villiages. What am I doing wrong?

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  6. Enter Petrovice in the Misto box and hit Scitani lidu. How many entries does it return for you?

    http://www.portafontium.eu/census/soap-do/1869/havlovice-petrovice
    http://www.portafontium.eu/census/soap-do/1880/havlovice-petrovice
    http://www.portafontium.eu/census/soap-do/1890/petrovice
    http://www.portafontium.eu/census/soap-do/1900/petrovice
    http://www.portafontium.eu/census/soap-do/1910/petrovice
    http://www.portafontium.eu/census/soap-do/1921/petrovice

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