Aunt Kateřina's proverbs

Let's finish this year with something a bit more cheerful. Do you know Saturnin? No? It's a story from the writer Zdeněk Jirotka about one wonderful butler whose name is Saturnin. He is a butler of Jiří Oulický, young man with interesting relatives. One of those relatives is Aunt Kateřina who loves to use proverbs. And as Czech is very interesting language, I decided to write a blog post about these proverbs. I translated some of them literally, some of them have English parallels.

PF 2015

Year 2014 is coming to its end and I'd like to say "thank you!" to you all who are reading this blog. To those of you who are bringing more blog ideas, who help me to better understand needs of foreigners who are researching Czech roots. Special thanks to those who donated - we are writing this blog in our spare time (and there is not too much of it for last couple of months) and we appreciate your help.

This blog was created more than three years ago and it has 120 blog posts published (121 with this one). I know I'm not able to write regularly but I'm trying to bring you more and more information. I (and Michaela too) will try to continue in posting next year but there are quite many issues in my private life which hold me back from writing. 

I wish you many discovered ancestors, no brickwalls and as many hours spent on research as possible. :) No faulty writing, no drunken priests, no missing images and parish books, some black sheep and as much luck as you can endure. 

Let the year 2015 be better than the current one - in every possible way.

Explanation! :) PF means Pour Feliciter (French) and is a widely used wish in Czech Republic meaning wishing you luck in the upcoming year. It's a tradition in the Czech Republic and we send PF cards to our friends and families.

Czech Christmas Traditions (updated)

Well, this is not too much of a genealogy post, anyway I decided to put together those traditions which we are used to keep. There were less of these traditions when I was a child because we were not too "traditional" family, but as I'm growing older, I'm trying to incorporate more old traditions to our family life - just because I like them. And I like them mainly thanks to my own interest in genealogy. 

Josef Lada

I don't remember the first time I saw artworks of this artist. But I love them since childhood. I had (and still have) books with his illustrations, I love postcards with his paintings. Josef Lada, painter, writer and illustrator. I bought a calendar with his illustrations to our kids last year - and I think I'll do the same this year.

Using old and current maps in your family history

I'm working on a family history where one of the ancestors in paternal line froze to death "by the holy cross above Snět" in 1855. I decided to use this case as an example how to work with old and new maps together. I used old maps from the Stabile Cadaster mapping and current tourist map available on Mapy.cz.

Czech history timeline - updated

There are several dates which should be remembered because of importance to our ancestors lives. This post was inspired by Czech genealogy website of Lukáš Pěnkava - I have ommited some of the dates and added others as I see some more important. This timeline can be very useful for writing family history. It covers years 1526 to 1918.