Madison
County Genealogical Society
Minutes of the Meeting - June 9, 2011
The June 2011 meeting of the Madison County
Genealogical Society was held at the Edwardsville Public Library on Thursday,
June 9, at 7:00 pm.
President, Robert Ridenour, called the
meeting to order.
The following reports were presented.
In the
Library
Elsie Wasser reported that the Society had
received the following:
Descendants of Miss Maria(h)
Ives, 1805 New York - 1868 Illinois and Her Spouse Lorenzo Dow Plant 1804 North
Carolina - 1861 Illinois written and
donated by Saundra Morris, Lincoln, Nebraska
The History of
Railroads in Edwardsville, Illinois by William J. Harteau
The Buchanans
of Ohio by Jim Buchanan - Donated by Elsie Wasser
Edwardsville -
Postcard History Series written and donated by Cheryl Eichar Jett
Images of America
- Route 66 in Madison County written and donated by Cheryl Eichar Jett
Revolutionary
War Pensions by Lloyd deWitt Bockstruck - donated by Elsie Wasser
Added to the Family Vertical File:
Charles
(Karl) Duelm by Barbara Hitch
Johann
Nicholas Deck by Jean LaFountain, Waseon, Ohio
GIFT
MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE
Do you have a family member that is
interested in (or even obsessed with) genealogy? A membership in the Madison
County Genealogical Society would be a very thoughtful gift. A gift card will
be sent to the recipient of any gift membership.
The following memberships are available:
Individual/Family Annual Membership $20.00
Patron Annual Membership $30.00
Life Membership $250.00
Contact our Secretary, Barbara Hitch, at racerbarb@aol.com,
about a gift membership.
June Meeting
On June 9, 2011, the meeting of the Madison County Genealogical Society was
held at the Edwardsville Public Library. A presentation
titled Finding Your
Czech and Bohemian German Ancestors was given by Dan Vornberg, a
retired environmental professional. He has mid 19th century Bohemian and
German ancestors, along with a heavy dose of early Colonial ancestors.
Genealogy has been his life-long hobby and he has been giving talks on methodology
for a number of years. Dan is active with the St. Louis Genealogical Society.
The Czech Republic church records from the seventeenth century up to 1900 have
been collected in a group of archives. Thirty years ago the information was
available to Americans through a protocol of writing the Czech Embassy in the
US. Now, many of those records are being made available on the internet. Regardless, of how you access them, there is a
high probability of finding your Czech and German-Bohemian ancestors in those
records, which allow a researcher to systematically work their way back into
the seventeenth century. This applies without regard to the social status of
the persons. If the ancestors were tradesmen and not tied to the land, the
Central European system of recording births, marriages, and deaths makes it
possible, in some cases, to follow internal migration from parish to parish, if
the family moved in search of employment.
Finding the place of origin (hometown) of your ancestor is very important if
you are to be successful in tracing your family roots back into the seventeenth
century. There are several sources that could give you this information:
Passenger arrival lists
Passport applications to return for a visit
Obituaries
Jan Habenicht's History of Czechs in America
Church Records
Family Keepsakes
County Histories
Family Histories
Berni Rula/Soupis Index of 1654
US Agricultural Census 1850, 1860, 1870
There are many other sources that you will want to check:
Ancestry.com
Immigration and Emigration under "Passport Applications" and
"Passenger Arrival Lists"
US Federal Census
Wiki familysearch website for the Czech Republic: "Czech Republic":
https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Czech
Republic
Click on Online Databases for information on Church books from the Archives
Familysearch.org
Click at the top "Try the new site"
On map click on Europe
On list pick Czech Republic includes Moravia (or Slovakia or Hungary)
Then pick Regional Archive or countrywide Marriage Records or Baptisms
Under Regional Archives pick parish if records have been scanned yet
Then pick appropriate record and year range
Or pick Czech marriages or Czech baptisms to search Czech Republic wide.
The database is growing.
A Handbook of
Czechoslovak Genealogical Research by Daniel M. Schlyter, Genun Publishers,
Buffalo Grove, Illinois 60089 (copy at St. Louis County Library Special
Collections)
Administratives
Gemeindelexikon der Cechoslovakischen Republik (Administrative Gazetteer of the
Czechoslovak Republic), issued by das Statistische Staatsamt. Prague:
Rudolf M. Rohrer, 1927, 1928 (Ref 943.7 E5a; Vol. I on FHL film no 496719
(includes index for Bohemia from Volume II) and Vol II on film no. 496720).
Czech Republic Website including links to Online Parish records. Newsletters
keep you up to date on data that is being added. http://www.ceskearchivy.cz/
History of Czechs
in America by Dr. Jan Habenicht with a foreword to the English edition by
Paul M. Makousky. Translation to English by Miroslav
Koudelka, Olomouc, Czech Republic. Czechoslovak
Genealogical Society International, 1996.
Genealogical
Guide to German Ancestors from East Germany and Eastern Europe Edited by
Arbeitsgemeinschaft ostdeutscher Familienforscher e. V., Herne, Germany,
translated by Joachim O.R. Nuthack, Edmonton, Canada, and Adalbert Goertz,
Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, USA. Published by Verlag Degener & Co, Inh
Gerhard Gessner, 1984. Newstadt/Aisch, Germany. (copy
at St. Louis County Library Special Collections)
"Czech
Research Outline" by Shon R. Edwards: http://www.shon.150m.com/
An update of the Czech and Slovak records being digitized has recently been
added to the cgsi.org website: "Records being Filmed/Digitized in the
Czech and Slovak Republics":
http://www.cgsi.org/news/2009/11/23/records-being-filmeddigitized-czech-and-slovak-republics
This presentation was well received and generated several questions.