German-speaking inhabitants of the Czech lands

I found an interesting map of the percentage of native German speaking inhabitants in the court districts of the Czech lands before the WWII. It shows the density of the German speaking population in the border area - Czechoslovakia was forced to give up these parts of the country to Germany in the Munich agreement of 1938.

Serfs register 1651: A map of the regions

I was asked about a map of the regional division for the serfs registers, which was created in 1651. I already wrote a blog post about the administrative system of Czech regions and districts in 2015, but I haven't mentioned the serfs register there.

Czech Old Maps Online

I promised to publish here a list of links I had in my presentation  in Lincoln, Nebraska, about old Czech maps. And as "sharing is caring" (motto of the Czech Pirate Party I'm member of), here is not only the list of links, but a bit more.

Guide to the Zámrsk archive website

The regional archive in Zámrsk has probably the most confusing system to access digitized materials of all Czech archives.

Area: In this archive are stored materials for North-East Bohemia and North-West Moravia. More precisely we are talking about areas of today Hradec Králové region (districts: Hradec Králové, Jičín, Náchod, Rychnov nad Kněžnou, Trutnov) and Pardubice region (districts: Chrudim, Pardubice, Svitavy, Ústí nad Orlicí), but as usual, there could be also areas from around borders of both regions (so from SOA Praha, SOA Třeboň, ZA Opava, MZA Brno) and vice versa.

Map of digitized parishes (and therefore of the area covered by Zámrsk materials.)

Stabile cadaster maps (updated in Nov 2017)

This post is already available on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/back-to-basics-100483994

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.

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.

Political districts, court districts, district offices...

All (well, almost) you always wanted to know about districts in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. Or at least those important bits which could make your research a bit easier. Not much, but at least a bit. The districts as we know them were created in the middle of 19th century, during huge administrative reform initiated by the Emperor František Josef I. Czech lands were divided into several regions and number of domains before this reform. 

German and Czech names of places, towns and villages (updated)

There is plenty of villages in the area of what is today called Czech Republic which were known under two different names in the past, one Czech and one German. This was caused mainly by presence of two large groups of inhabitants in the area. This fact has its roots deeply in the middle ages.

Maps of Czech catholic parishes

You can find this post on my Patreon website: https://www.patreon.com/posts/87965129

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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.

Stabile cadaster maps, part II

As I mentioned in my previous blog post about stabile cadaster, stabile cadaster maps contain many information useful for anyone interested in family history research. So - what exactly is shown on the maps? What information can you find there? And how to use it in your research?

Military Surveys and Mappings

There is wonderful source of old maps - three military mappings which took place in 18th and 19the century. Whole Hapsburg empire was mapped and Czech maps are available online for those who are interested. And I believe many people are interested in old maps of regions where their ancestors lived. These maps have also on big advantage - the website they are placed on is available in Czech, German and English. I already mentioned them in one of the previous posts, but let's check them in detail.

How to search in Czech cadastral register

Czech cadastral register (register of houses and plots) is available online. It's very useful when you want to find out who's owning the house today, what's the plot number of the plot where the house is standing and so on. Unfortunately the website is available only in Czech, so I've decided to prepare a short guide to it.

Maps

As you are often doing research in places you have never been to, it's quite important to have good maps to search for the proper towns, villages and other locations. There are many maps and other websites which can help you in your research and which can provide you better idea where your ancestors lived.