My latest genealogy project has been tracking down my mother-in-law’s ancestors on her mother’s side. When I asked her where they were from, she said that her grandfather, Wilhelm Franz Parsch, was from Austria and her grandmother, Emily Brigitta Tietze, was from Czechoslovakia. She had some information on the towns they lived in but had never been able to locate any records. She asked me if I could work on it and uncover more of her Czech Republic ancestry records.
Finding a Place to Start
Knowing that I often need to ask my mother-in-law, Helen, about something several times to get the correct story, I started asking about the town names and locations. After a while, she remembered that the Tietzes were from Dobern in “Sudetenland”. That’s helpful information! Sudatenland was a very specific area along the border between Bohemia, Germany, and Poland. After searching through old and new town names, I pinpointed the town’s current name, Dobrná, a tiny place in the Liberec region of modern Czechia, west of the city of Dečǐń.
Czechia’s Fantastic Online Archives
Next, I started searching for old church records in the region. That’s where I ran into a happy bit of luck. The country of Czechia has converted its state archives to digital format! Hooray! You can’t find every record on their websites, but you can find a lot, including old Catholic church records from as far back as the late 1600s. The best part? They’re all free to search. Fantastic!
After some digging, I found my husband’s great-grandmother’s baptism record, as well as records for the maternal lines on that side back to the early 1700s. I added a whole lot of people to the line during that search. Genealogy paydirt!
When you go to a Czechian state archive, don’t be scared off by the language. But, don’t try to read it either (unless you actually know how). All the modifiers boggle the mind! Instead, know what towns you’re looking for and type them into the search bar. The results will lead you to pertinent records for that town. The archive generally lists church records by baptisms, marriages, and deaths, in that order. So, if you find three sets of documents for the same town during the same time period, begin with the assumption that that’s the order they’re in.
The online record will be in the language of the region. The records I found from northern Bohemia were all written in old German. The handwriting is a bear to read, but you can usually pick out names and dates. Again, make sure you know the old town names, as these will be written there.
How to Use the Czechia Online Archives
To search the Czech Republic ancestry records, first, go to the website for the state archive in the region you want to search. I went to Státní oblastní Archiv v Litoměřicích.
If you don’t speak or read the language, turn on the translator in your web browser. The main function buttons on the site will translate, which helps a lot. As you can see from this picture, the E-study room is clearly marked. Other archives have their websites laid out differently, but access to the digital records is usually clear.
Once you’re in the digital archive, search the town you want. (You don’t even have to add the modifiers if you don’t want to!) Any records pertaining to that town will appear in the search. I have a search of Dobrná pictured here with the first few Catholic church parish record listings. There are pages and pages!
Click on the search result for the time period you want. A thumbnail of the first image will appear.
Next, click on the thumbnail you see and you’ll find yourself on the first page of the digital records for that parish register.
These records aren’t nicely indexed. You’ll have to do your digging the old fashioned way – by searching every page. So, find some time, a cozy chair, and a therapeutic beverage of choice!
It helps to know the approximate year you want, but I would recommend searching a few years before or after the date you think you know. Birth and marriage dates regularly got mixed up across the generations as people moved from this region of Czechia to the United States. It’s amazing how many old tombstones actually have the wrong dates on them! But then, when your kids are telling the stone cutter what to write and you lied about your age for all these years… well, I’ll save this rant for another post.
I hope you find this bit of advice helpful for finding your ancestors in Czechia. I’ve had a good time searching. I still haven’t found that Parsch family though. Maybe they were protestant?
Image Credit: Dům číslo popisné 59 v Dobrné, photo by Jan Polák, 27 Sept. 2013, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dobrn%C3%A1,_d%C5%AFm_%C4%8D%C3%ADslo_59.jpg
