Czech Ancestors

This is from a post to our family blog.  More to follow, just wanted to post a little of what we've been finding lately:

. . . The biggest thing that has been consuming our time lately has been our Czech genealogy.  Mom and I asked Michelle [my little sister who is visiting from out of town] to come look at some of the records with us that we have been finding online (these ones are on the Litomerice archive website, matriky.soalitomerice.cz).  Within an hour or so Michelle was reading all the old Gothic alphabet as well as Mom and I (which took us much longer to get a hang of), and Michelle knows German so that helps too.  And since then I’ve joked that we’ve created a monster.  :)  Michelle has really gotten into the research, often staying up into the night hours later than Mom and I can last.  We’ve found so many records for “new” ancestors that we didn’t know of before, and there’s so much potential for possibly hundreds of more records to find, since these Czech records haven’t been available online in the past so much of this work has never been done before.  It’s so exciting! 

So I thought I’d share just one of the records we recently found, and I’ll eventually add all the other information to my genealogy blog once we get through translating them in the future.  Anyway, here’s the birth record of Anna Rosalia Moras (we’ve also found it spelled Moris, Mraz, Moraß [Morass], and Morias; and we’ve found her name listed as Rosalia in some of her children’s birth records, but more often listed as Rosina). 

It shows that Anna Rosalia Moras, my 6^th great grandmother, was born on 15 November 1722 in a town called Hettou (now called Hettov).  Her parents were Jacob and Catharina (unfortunately we’ve found in this book that the earlier  the records get, the less likely they are to include maiden names for the women or details such as house numbers or occupations, like we have found in the later records, but it’s still cool to find these records this far back). 

My grandfather is Carl John Spohr Jr., his father was Carl Sr., his father was Ludwig Spohr (who was known as Louis after he came to America), his father was Karl Spohr, his parents were Franz Spohr and Johanna Katharina Panowitz.  And in our recent searching we have found that Johanna’s parents were Adalbert Panowitz (we’ve found the following name variations for him: Adalberth, Panowitz, Panowetz, Panowicz, & Panowecz) and Barbara Elisabetha Kohl (also Khol).  Barbara’s parents were Wenzl (also listed as Joannes Wenceslaus) Kohl and Anna Rosina/Rosalia Moras from this record.  And, from looking at this birth record we find that Rosina Moras’ parents were Jacob and Catharina Moras (no maiden name listed for Katharina).  So, this month we have found 3 more generations (plus lots of siblings) on this line. 

This record is from a Catholic parish book that has birth, marriage, and death records from the town of Hettov and several surrounding towns between 1699 and 1759. http://matriky.soalitomerice.cz/matriky_lite/pages/zoomify.jsp?page=68&entityRef=%28%5En%29%28%28%28localArchiv%2C%5En%2C%29%28unidata%29%29%2810019%29%29

We’ve got a lot more information from these parish records, but I just wanted to show a little bit of what we’ve been working on.  It’s been so fun working on this with my mom and sister.