Thankful Decisions

 All of us are affected by the decisions we did or did not make. With Thanksgiving 2022 being this week Thursday, many persons tend to look back and in their mind at least give thanks to the blessings and gifts they have received either for that year, or even prior years. However, we are also affected by the decisions made by people we never knew, whether they be currently living, or have passed away. This includes decisions made by our ancestors.  As I was doing genealogy this past year, and having accomplished more reading, I have come to be thankful for the decisions made by our ancestors to emigrate. This post will focus on the decisions of our Bohemian ancestors, which actually includes a few lines in the family tree. 

Rudy Hovel Farmstead in Sun Prairie, WI; abt 1957

Josef and Anna Havel with their eight surviving children emigrated in 1868 arriving in Baltimore, MD on 18 July. It was a four month journey, with Joseph at 60 years old, and his youngest child less than a year old. Josef and Anna were from southwest Bohemian village of Dolni Chrastany. Then there was Josef Duscheck, whose daughter, Amelia, would marry Martin Havel, the third oldest child of Josef and Anna, Josef D and his family came over 14 years earlier arriving in August 1954, according to citizenship papers.  Those same papers indicate that he and his family arrived at the port of Quebec. Josef Duscheck was a busy man having fathered, with two different wives, sixteen children (of which I know of), six of whom, including Amelia, were born in the United States by his second wife Rosalie. Rosalie is a second great grandmother, and mother to Amelia. Joseph and Rosalie were from the Landskron area in northeast Bohemia, probably not far from the border with Moravia. This region consisted primarily of long time Germans and was, like Dolni Chrastany, part of the Sudetenland. 

Dolni Chrastany, Stable Cadastre ~1836

The Havel and Duscheck families were not unique for their time, both are evidence of chain migration, whole families moving to the US and usually meeting persons they already knew. The Havel family joined Jakub Fitzl, who was from Dolni Chrastany and arrived earlier. The Duscheck family was also part of chain migration. Around the Waterloo, WI west to Sun Prairie, east to Watertown and south in to Jefferson County, many common surnames for the area can be found come from the Landskron region--Maly, Langer, Blaska, Betlach, Motl, Skalitzky just to name a some. As I was searching through records on the Duscheck family last winter, I was surprised at how many surnames I recognized from growing up in Sun Prairie, WI--and those are the ones I could read in the odd German Kurrent script. Chain migration involved whole families as we see with the Havel and Duscheck families. Chain migrants tended to take less risk, seek less accumulation of wealth and would tend to marry in their own ethnic group. There is one more ancestor who came from Bohemia, and she did not fit the chain migration mold.

Martin Hovel and Amelia Duscheck Hovel

Teresia Kamen, my Dad's grandma, arrived in the US at the port of Baltimore in June 1872. She was what is referred to as a lone wolf migrant, she was by herself. What is unusual is that most migrants from Bohemia were part of chain migration yet she was not. Further, however, most lone wolf migrants were male, she, of course, was not male. A remarkable bit of daring for the young woman from Ujezd, breaking social constructs common at the time. As it turns out, Ujezd is not far from Dolni Chrastany where the Havel family had lived until leaving for the US. 

Kamen House in Ujezd
Stable Cadastre ~1836

Emigration involves a series of factors, and it is not my intent to go through the varied factors, but to indicate why we were fortunate for the migration of these families and individuals. There were a number of significant events that occurred, and I believe these family groups were able to better sustain here in the U.S. than if they were back in Bohemia. I will cover just a few of the major events. First, there was the panic of 1873, starting in October, which led to the long depression which lasted until March of 1879.This actually began with bank defaults in Europe. During this time frame Martin Havel and most of his siblings and would move from Wisconsin to start farming the fresh prairie soils of Iowa. Theresia Kamen would marry Mathias Pitzenberger in 1873. Sometime before 1870 the Duscheck family had moved to just north of Sun Prairie, WI. 

Theresia Kamen with her Grandson Roy Hovel

Almost each decade following would see a recession until perhaps the 2010's. Our ancestors experienced similar events to the the Dot Com crash of 2000. Of course their was the Great Depression. Many farmers were able to better adjust to the Great Depression than non-farmers. Rudy Hovel, my grandfather took on his Sun Prairie, WI farm on 4 March 1929, just months before the stock market crash, although the depression is said to actually have started in August, two months earlier.

Ida Pitzenberger, daughter of  Mathias & Theresia Kamen Pitzenberger
and Rudy Hovel, son of Martin and Amelia
Ida's parents were both immigrants to the United States

Two of the largest events were the two World Wars in which then Czechoslovakia was in the middle. While the US was involved in both conflicts, it is safe to say that living and enduring territory under siege is quite different from being safe on the home front. The continental US was never really threatened during those engagements. Perhaps the worst situation was WWII, and the turn over of Sudetenland to the Germans. The Lanskron area and Dolni Chrastany were in the Sudetenland. Further, those persons of German descent were required to join the Germany army. Not asked, required. Now, the Havel family was originally from Ratiborova Lhota, which was not part of the Sudetenland, and was said to not have been settled by those of German origin. Although, given my DNA ancestry I have to think they perhaps have some German blood. However, Josef Havel's wife may well have been German, as her surname Jodl, and her being from Hlvatace would indicate. Theresia Kamen, from Ujezd may not have been part of the Sudetenland, but I  have not been able to figure that out as of this moment.

Rudy Hovel Farm and Martin Hovel farm
1913 Plat map

Of course, my Dad was in the European Theater of the WWII, and had his trials and tribulations, as did his parents on the home front. Although I have to think that those kin living in Bohemia at the time were in a frightful situation. Czech conscripts may well have been sent to the dreaded Eastern front. If Colonel Klink is to be regarded as a reliable source, he kept threatening to send Sgt Schultz to the Eastern front, i.e. the Russian front. Joking aside, we often hear of the difficulties of our soldiers but that made me think about the German soldiers and the army conscripts, and the villages they occupied. War is terrible. All are human, although war may bring out the worst in our race. Little known is that starting in about 1948 Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia, perhaps as many as 250,000, with over 14,000 killed. We had some Jodl ancestors living in Dolni Chrastany, at house #18 when my sister, dad and aunt visited the ancestral homeland in the early 1990's. The Jodl family has been long in Bohemia, since before 1737, so maybe they were Bohemian, or if originally ethnic Germans they were considered sufficient Czech by that time. Or, that Dolni Chrastany, as a small rural outpost, was not worth worrying any ethnic German settlers.  

Josef Havel farm near Fort Atkinson, WI
(identified as Haffell) 1872 Plat Map

As bad as the wars were the most striking evidence of the conditions of Bohemia can be seen in the visit of Eastern Europe, including Bohemia, by the renowned African-American educator Booker T Washington. In Tara Zahara's 2016 book, The Great Departure, Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the making of the Free World  she comments on the situation Booker T Washington found during his 1910 visit to the then Austro-Hungarian Empire. First, Washington, she says, saw many parallels of the racial politics in the US and the social terrain of the Austrian Empire. Washington would conclude that the condition of the

Slavs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was 'more like the Negroes in the Southern States than is true of any other race or class in Europe.' Not only were they agricultural people like the slaves, but they were discriminated by the ‘dominant classes’ of Austro-Hungry. It was not by skin color as in US, but the language they spoke. He concluded that peasants, workers, and Jews of Eastern Europe lived in more debased conditions than African Americans in the south, he made this observation after touring a desolate Bohemia farm. (p. 66)

Our Bohemian Havel and Duscheck lines were primarily farmers in the old country, with the Havel's farming more than forty acres, and the Duschecks perhaps half amount or less, although I lack the source documents for the Duschecks that I have for the Havel side. Part of Booker T Washington's trip, per Zahara, was to look to obtain workers from Eastern Europe to replace African Americans working in the cotton fields and sugar plantations. Washington would discard this idea in part due to the poverty he found in the villages, including Bohemia. Zahara writes: "He was so distraught by the poverty he encountered in Austria-Hungary that he began to sympathize with the movements to limit immigration. He believed the arrival of destitute Eastern Europeans would be a new kind of 'racial problem'." (p. 67)

Martin and Amelia 

To me, this was an eye opener as to the conditions in Eastern Europe, including Bohemia in the early part of the 20th century. It is instructive that Washington found that the poverty among our Eastern European kin was worse than the plight of the African-Americans in the United States at that time. Our ancestors moved from serfdom to subjects, to free peasants, but that did not mean discrimination as a peasant was still not present, or that they could well make their way in the world. But, yet according to Booker T Washington's account it would appear our kin, in the old country, had little means or opportunity to increase their standard of living. Maybe there was even a digression in the standard of living. While Booker T Washington was visiting Europe in 1910, Amelia and Martin were farming, with 22 year old Rudy at home who was also farming. By 1913, Rudy would own his own 80 acres, purchased from his parents, and he was married in February of that year to Ida, whose mother was Theresia Kamen. Theresia and her husband, Mathias Pitzenberger, had apparently retired from farming in 1910 and were devoting their time to their general store in Festina, IA. Josef and Anna Havel died in the 1880's, Josef Duscheck in the 1870's, but Rosalie is still alive, but has moved off the farm in the town of Bristol and is living in the village of Sun Prairie with her son Edward. 

Rosalie Duscheck (L) with daughter Marian Lohneis 
and granddaughter Anna Lohneis (center)

Given the abject poverty encountered in rural Bohemia during Booker T Washington's visit, I have to say that the lives my kin had in the US was probably much better, at least from a socio-economic standpoint, than those of any kin they had in the old country. Dolni Chrastany, Horni Houzovec and Ujezd were definitely small rural outposts of Bohemia. I doubt Martin had any regrets in purchasing land with the deep prairie soil in Iowa, compared to the slopes and tired soils of Bohemia. Nor, would Josef Duscheck who first bought a farm in the town of Milford in Jefferson County, WI before moving to the town of Bristol. Tara Zahara seems to think the migration from Eastern Europe was important to the making of the west. She does point out, however, that immigrants were in a worse situation here in the US or other western than what they had been in the old country. Exploitation did occur and there were instances of human trafficking. My ancestors  did not fall into that situation, but they helped the nation by providing food for a growing population. I am, however, thankful this Thanksgiving for the decisions of my Bohemian ancestors to emigrate to the United States. I think they made the right choice. 

I express Thanksgiving wishes to the readers of this blogpost. May you be grateful for the decisions you and your ancestors have made. Even decisions thought to be wrong can turn out to be a learning experience or a silver lining. 

A Sorry Farm

In a few previous posts I have pointed out that when doing genealogical research some interesting pieces of information may be found. This information may be funny, curious, odd, valuable, or just confusing. In southern Bohemia it is often perplexing. It is well known that the hills and valleys of southern Bohemia provided marginal farmland. Yet, many of my ancestors farmed that land. The Havel farm in Ratiborova Lhota was in my direct pedigree line for almost 200 years. I am sure some of our ancestors met with limited farming success. Looking at a translation of a land register for Chvalovice (what we now know as house #1) provided perspective on what I have concluded was a sorry farm. 

Chvalovice #1 Farm house
(1 in red, by house,1 in black nonbuilding areas) 
1830's Stable Cadastre

In a period of thirty-three years this Chvalovice farm saw four different owners, and three of those four owners had to give up the property due to an inability to make payments, or what was referred to in two cases of the three cases--poverty. For a period of 25 years, so the bulk of that time frame, the farm was managed by a 7th great grandfather, Jakub Span, from February 1662 to February 1687. Jakub obtained the farm from Fillip Liendl who "was not able to meet the payments on this farm, and as such willingly ceded it to Jacob Span of Chvavolvice." Liendl is the first to lose the farm. The Span surname would eventually be changed to Jiral. Jakob paid 120ſß at the time for the farm. By 1686, the year of his death he left a debt of 23ſß 44g 41/2₰. The currency in use is the Meisnish Schock Groschen and from here on out, instead of having to type the funny symobls, the currency will be referenced as in the following two examples: (1) the 23ſß 44g 41/2₰ where 23 is Schock Grossen (Schock is not a coin, but refers to a system of 60--that is 60 grossen makes a schock grossen, 44 is Grossen, and 41/2 is phennig, where I become sufficiently anal to use a full payment it will be, as an example, 23-44-41/2. If a whole number is used it will be schock grossen, such as 120. Understand?  23 Shock grossen times 60 will equal Grossen, So 23 Schock Grossen equals 1380 Grossen.  

Parcel owned by House #1 1830's Stable Cadastre

After Jacob died, his son Hans took over the farm in February 1687, at the same price of 120.  The commonality among the varied municipal and domain rules for inheritance was a single heir, due to no division of property. The other offspring would have to leave and establish new households. Hans, probably the youngest son of Jakob, got the short stick. Poor Hans, who became victim #2, things  did not go well for him from the start. Was he too young and inexperienced to take on the farm, climate affect the property, or just plain bad luck? We really don't know the answer. The register makes this statement: " In 1688, just after having taken over the property, no payment was offered "this year due to poverty." Hans did make a payment in 1689, and the register makes this recording: "1690 on the 7th March, again the owner showed the inability to make a payment." Half the required payment was made in 1691. The following year, 1692, on 26 February it was noted that "Hans Span, owing to reasons of poverty and inability to meet payments against his farm, ceded it for purchase to Georg Bauer in the previous valuation of 120ſß ...." Georg would also take over the remaining debt. Georg, however, did not do much better than Hans, and he was the third victim of this sorry farm. In 1695 he ceded the farm to Wenzl Kriz on the 21st of May 1695 due to poverty.

Land Register Entry of 1692, Hans cedes farm 
to Georg Bauer, (Ordinal 20, image 257)

Chvalovice #1 was not a large farm, nor a small holding. In fact, it compared well in tillable area to some other comparable ancestor farms for which I have information. A summary record from before 1662 indicates a field area of 15 strich. A strich was based on what was required to sow the varied parcels. I could do a calculation to acres, but I suspect it would not be accurate, because while I know what strich to acres was in the late 1700's it may well have been different in the mid 1600's. Instead let me compare some farms that were in the family in the same era. Jakob's son and Han's brother Nicolas Jiral bought Chvalovice #13 which was only 6 strich of arable land in 1673. Dolni Chrastany #3, which would be purchased by Jakob's grandson, Lorenz Jiral in 1716, was recorded in an earlier record of having been 14 strich of arable land. Lorenz owned Chvalovice #1 for a few years before moving to the larger holding, which he purchased from his father-in-law in Dolni Chrastany. The farm at #18 Dolni Chrastany, which would become owned by Franz Havel in 1796 through marriage to Teresia Jiral was 12 strich and 3 viertel, or one viertel (four viertel equals one strich) short of 13 strich of arable land. Of these ancestor farms, Chvalovice #1 contained the most arable land. Although it would be comparable in area to Dolni Chrastany #3, being just one strich more of arable land. 

Farm Comparison

Besides arable land, the farms also had meadow land which was measured in cartloads, likely as in harvest of hay. Chvalovice #1 and Dolni Chrastany #3 each had 3.5 cartloads, Chvalovice #13 had only one cartload of meadow area and Dolni Chrastany #18 had four cartloads. Ability to produce ample crops, for human an animal food, clothing (yes they would grow and spin flaxseed, and perhaps had some sheep), and perhaps to sell on the market was a key factor to the existence of our ancestors. We know from information in the Urbaria of 1773 for Ratiborova Lhota the fields were in a system of three, where every year one third of the arable land lied fallow. This also placed on emphasis on crop rotation. The concept of allowing land to lie fallow for a year, and a system of rotation was created in the middle ages, and so it came to be used at this point in Bohemia. As isolated as southern Bohemia was, they still would have been the recipient of  knowledge transfer affecting crop production. The domain may very well have dictated this production/conservation measure. While, the records indicate that no woodland existed for any of the farms we don't know if that meant they owned no woodlot or the woodlot did not produce anything for the year in which the calculations were accomplished in the 17th century. For example, the cadastral mapping of the 1830's shows the Havel farm at Dolni Chrastany having some woodlots, and no land purchase appears to show in the land register. Not to mention what a farm had a farm kept. These farms really did change in size for over 200 years. As to firewood, recent research shows that much of the cooking wood, if not even some heating wood, the fence wood likely came from coppicing of trees.  Many varieties of hardwood deciduous trees provide an ability of coppice, ash being one example.  I am not sure if the smallholding at Chvalovice #13 would be able to practice the system of three given its limited area. It was a meager existence for our ancestors--peasants as they were--with marginal land, and most usually another trade to supplement their farm income or help offset farm losses.

Parcels (531 and 533 owned by House #1)
1830's Stable Cadastre

Farm value did not much change over the years, and it is instructive that the value of our sorry farm at Chvalovice, while the largest in terms of arable land, was valued at 120, or six less than the 126 for the farm which had one less strich of arable land at Dolni Chrastany #3. Chvalovice #13 was valued at 106 even though it had less than half the arable land of Chvalovice #1 (6 strich compared to 15). Many factors likely influenced farm value, yet I find this striking. Jakob made a go of the Chvalovice farm, and had, through 1686 made payment owing just under 24 on the farm. A general rule of thumb is that a farmer makes a payment of about 4 a year, meaning that it would take thirty years to cover the payments on a farm valued at 120. Thirty years remains a standard term of mortgage today. 

Mueller's Map--early 18th Century
Unt Kraschum is Dolni Chrastany
Kolowitz is Chvalovice

I suppose anticipated yield would affect property value, and while our ancestor farmers were generally illiterate, which would discard the farmer keeping a log of their own harvests, they would have had a good idea of what their yield produced relative to sowing. In any event, the domain did keep records. In fact, according to Die Grundsteuer-Verfassung in Bohem (see note 4) the "...individual subjects were to make them (declarations of yield and properties) publicly in the presence of the community headman and community committee."  Declaring your yield publicly was to prevent understatement. Their own method of an audit. It seems the domain counted on a bunch of tattle talers to keep things above board. Our ancestors did not own the land outright, and had to pay taxes to the state and fees to the domain. At times, as we know from Mathias Havel's 1773 Urbaria record, the domain fee required a certain amount of grain, referred to as a tithe. Given the time and localized weather, at times a yield may well have been less than the seed to sow a field. I have been unable to locate a soil survey for the area, which I could compare against the 1836 cadastral survey of the property with a soil map. Better, yet, it would be fun to compare it to the Iowa prairie soils Martin farmed after his arrival in the United States. Martin would farm a whole different landscape (mostly very level) compared to his father's farm in Dolni Chrastany. Farming in southern Bohemia was not easy. 

Parcels above creek owned by House #1
Meadow and arable land
1830's Stable Cadastre

If life was not sufficiently difficult, add to the mix the forced labor for the domain a peasant farmer had to perform over labor on his own farm. The affect of this institutional factor cannot be discounted, particularly when already in a marginal situation. While Chvalovice and Dolni Chrastany did not have the onerous restrictions of the Krumlov estate, it appears they still had robota labor, the serf level of labor a peasant was required to provide to the domain. The era of this post--mid to late 1600's to the mid 1700's was during a time of increasingly restrictive manorial control. In other words, the domains increased what and what could not be done by their peasant subjects. This meant their crops may have been last in and last harvested. If a freeze came, the domain was just happy to have their crop harvested. Long hours were required. 

1952 Topographic Map of Dolni Chrastany
Provides indication of hills in this area

Yield was also affected by weather, and perhaps the poverty was induced in part by climate. It is well documented during the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850) which affected Europe, that the coldest part was from 1645 to 1715, which fits well with poverty documentation described for Chavolvice #1 (1). That environmental history document also noted that the area was generally one degree Celsius cooler than present which led to climate induced failures:

Winters were bitterly cold and summers were often cool and wet. These conditions led to widespread crop failure, famine, and population decline. The tree line and snowline dropped and glaciers advanced, overrunning towns and farms in the process. There were increased levels of social unrest as large portions of the population were reduced to starvation and poverty.

However, none of the other three farms to which this farm is compared, nor the Havel farm in Ratiborova Lhota had any remarks in the relevant land registers for the periods examined that the farm was ceded due to poverty or an inability to make payments. While this makes me want to discard the harsh climate theory, one cannot fully do so, as perhaps the land holdings of Chvalovice were more susceptible to flooding or other climatic-induced damages. The land may have been of poorer quality, in a flood zone, steeper slopes with poorer (i.e. washed out) soils, than some of the other property. Our Bohemian ancestors were a crop away from starvation, or poverty, and hence a site with more grade, or susceptible to flooding, or poorer soils could make a big difference on yield. A reduced yield from just one field could make a difference in the ability of a farmer to provide for their family.

Arable and meadow parcels owned
by House #1, 1830's Stable Cadastre

The arable land in Bohemia was often in odd-sized parcels, no wonder they outlawed further division of property, in many cases long and narrow, which we would consider small by today's standards. The farmland was not like what was found in the United States, large square chunks of 160 acres being the standard sized farm in the US, following the Homestead Act of 1862. The generally contiguous (part divided by a rail line) 80 acres farmed by the Martin Hovel, and later Rudy, near Manly, IA was quite different from the fragmented farm Martin helped farm with his father at Dolni Chrastany #18. The early pre-1662 land register accounting for Chvalovice #1 mentions 18 arable parcels and another three meadow parcels. The #18 Dolni Chrastany farm had over sixty parcels according to the cadastral survey of the 1830's. Fragmentation affects ability to farm, and while tillage by beast and man, may have been less affected than with the large equipment of today, loss may have been greater due to so many property lines to be minded. The parcels were small and scattered, leading to inefficiencies in planting, tending and harvesting crops. When one lives on the razor edge of poverty any inefficiency in production can matter.

Parcel owned by House #1
1830's Stable Cadastre

In the end, we really lack any specific knowledge of why Fillip Liendl, Hans Span, and Georg Bauer all failed, and settled into poverty on the farm at Chvalovice #1. It was likely a combination of factors as so often happens in life today. My record for Chvalovice #1 is not complete, but runs from 1662 to 1706. There are other registers, but for my pedigree research it does not make sense to have this translated. This record was found and translated by Richard D'Amelio, at no cost, as he worked on the record for Chvalovice #13, which drew him to this record. I am grateful that he accomplished this as it certainly provides a more depth into life of our ancestors in 17th and 18th century Bohemia. It is unfortunate that the sorry farm could not have been more productive for at least those three farmers. 

Notes/Sources:

1. https://www.eh-resources.org/little-ice-age/

2. Trebon Archives Land Registers--Chvalovice and Dolni Chrastany. Translated by Richard D'Amelio of Bohemib Research Services. 2022

3.  https://ags.cuzk.cz/archiv/openmap.html?typ=skicic&idrastru=PRA280018370. Indication Sketch
and https://ags.cuzk.cz/archiv/
Sources of Map images in this document.

4. Falk, Vincent, 1847Die Grundsteuer-Verfassung in Bohem, Translation provided by Richard D'Amelio 2022.

5. Velkova, Alice. 2011. "Household Formation in Bohemia 1700-1850: Inheritance Practice and Family Strategy." The Czech Historical Review 109/2011 no. 2. 

6. Ogilvie, Sheilagh. 2005 May. "Communities and the 'Second Serfdom' in Early Modern Bohemia." Past and Present. Oxford University Press. No 187.

A Tale of Two Smells

I am sure everybody has an experience of wondering what that odor they smell is, and from where it is coming. Smell is one of the five senses, and what we smell we can find invigorating, pleasant, or down right disgusting to the point, well, you want to perhaps puke. I recall once being at a football game at UW-Whitewater, while in college, and the person behind me was drunk and ended up throwing up on me. I almost had to throw up with the stench. Luckily my dorm room was not too far. There are also odors that we experience, and we probably know the source. My wife likes to eat stuff that leaves an odor. 

Source: Google images

Sometimes for lunch my wife will make tuna salad. Unlike Marie Barone, I think she makes sure to put celery in her tuna salad. There was a different Everybody Loves Raymond episode that centered on a new fangled can opener, and Ray could not get it to work right while he was opening a can of tuna and the tuna and juice fell all over the place. My wife may not spill tuna juice, but the odor gets to me. Think about the tuna container, one of those bags, not a can, and that goes in the trash. Well, unless the trash is taken out that day it will smell and smell. It was worse every time I opened the door under the sink. There was plenty of room left so I did not bother to take it out. We use bags from grocery shopping, or other places, and since we often take our own bags we can get in short supply of the bag to line the trash can. Nonetheless the smell was rather disgusting. Perhaps not as bad as that guy who threw up on me in the 1970's. 

I could also smell it when I would open the dishwasher which contained dirty dishes. I am not sure if there is a food smell worse than tuna, except for perhaps uncooked poultry packaging in the garbage. I don't even think herring, or even sauerkraut, other two likes of hers, smell as bad as tuna waste. I suppose in Raymond's house, given Debra's level of housekeeping the tuna smell stuck around awhile until Marie came over to do a deep clean. In our house, I think of the poor cupboards that have to be with the tuna smell all day before the trash is emptied. Of course, then it moves to the trash container where it can ferment even further until the weekly pickup arrives.

Everybody Love's Raymond 
Dialogue on Tuna Salad
Source: Google

In my mind, however, this pales in comparison to the dog s$#t smell I come across in autumn. When I could walk, my daily walk took me past the house, and for a few weeks I thought that the homeowner should pick up their doggy do. After a while, it occurred to me that it was not dog s$#t, but the fallen leaves of a gingko tree. Since I cannot walk, my daily bike ride route takes me past the tree not once, but twice. If there ever was a way to ruin a pleasant bike ride, it is the dog-s$#t tree. One could not even enjoy its yellow fall color because you just want to get past. Even though it is outside, and the wind is blowing the stink is still terrible. The homeowners seldom pick up their leaves, and if they do it is at the end of the season. Perhaps they don't have the sense of smell I have, they are used to it, or they stay inside, but man, I can not figure out why they don't pick them up and take them to the village drop-off site. Maybe, just maybe, they too find the smell overwhelming and do not wish to pick them up. Just the other day, with a strong wind, I was biking and could smell it a block or more away. I would have thought the wind would better dissipate the smell, but it was still strong. 

Smelly Tree and its downed Leaves
Photo by author 11/9/2022, still smells

This is a good reason to never plant a ginkgo tree. Even if the fetid odor is only present when the leaves fall, I still would not plant that tree. I don't know what else it could be. This is the only thing that seems to correlate. Just typing this, my nostrils are flaring with the imagined disgusting smell. I have now come to call that large gingko tree the dog s$#t tree. A very fitting name. The odd thing is, the reek is just as bad in cooler as warmer temperatures. I have to suffer through that smell, as I do the tuna smell that emanates from the garbage. Of course, my wife would tell me to suck it up.

Surnames

Southern Bohemia provides an interesting assortment of records that sometimes do not match. I do not think it is the fault of the records, or the people, much has to do with the culture and era. In other words, as hard as it may be, I do wish to place 21st century sensibilities to decide what was right or wrong in the 17th and 18th centuries. One issue of difficulty is surnames. Surnames started to come into use in the middle ages, but in some of the small rural outposts of southern Bohemia surnames were transitional, if present, into the 1700's. It was in that century that surnames seem to become standardized for some hamlets in Southern Bohemia. I see this in my own family tree, particularly the Jiral line. 

The most difficult aspect to researchers in southern Bohemia are what are known as After the Roof surnames. An After the Roof surname occurs when a person has adopted, or thrust upon them, the name of a previous owner of a house they now occupy. Here is an example, I have a brother who married a woman and they bought her father's farm. If this was long ago Bohemia he may not have been known by Hovel, but instead become known by his father-in-law's last name. For good reason, after the roof surnames are usually a man inheriting his the surname of his father-in-law. The first example I had of a likely after the roof surname may have involved Hans from Klenowice. Hans married Jakub Havel's widow, and the 1651 Soupis (census) referred to him as Hans Havel. It is possible his surname was Havel, but my guess is the Havel surname in this case was an after the roof surname. At some point, the empire, and some domains desired to curtail the after the roof surnames, and from this you will see why. While surnames reportedly started to be used in the middle ages, we have already seen with the Havel family how the surname developed from a first name in the 17th century. Let me now explore surname issues relative to the Jiral-Ruesmueller side of the family tree. 

1714 Seigniorial Register (Seg Reg.), Lorentz Zimmerman

I know from experience that that persons here in the US, particularly with farm consolidation, refer to one of the acquired farms by the prior farm owner. That was common in Fitchburg where a new owner referred to part of his holdings as "the old Fahey farm." I also heard from a relative that even after Rudy sold his Iowa farm (previously owned by Martin) it was known for years as the Hovel farm. In the old country it was not really different, it was just the name stuck. We see evidence of what farms were called in 17th century Bohemia in Ordinal 7, which dates from 1662-1670, of the land registers. The Kopac farm (which would become number 18) is referred to as Dwur Kopaczowksy--or the Kopac farm. At Chvalovice we see the land register refer to what would become known as house #13 as Challupa Giralowski--the Giral farm. The Challupa is a reference to holding representative of a small peasant cottager--Chalupnick. (The Jiral timeline does not match with the name, but given the prior name crossed out, it was a later addition.)

You never know what you get with south Bohemian records. As Richard D' Amelio, who I use to translate the complex land register records (but more importantly provided guidance, insight, hints, and even assemblage to better comprehend the records) commented that use of parish records will hopefully clear up rather than  "cloud the research further but who knows in southern Bohemia." 

1701 Seg Reg. Nikolas Zimmerman

In researching my ancestors we used available digitized records for the 17th and into the 18th centuries. These records included land registers, Seigniorial registers (land owner, subjects and orphans), and parish records. Due diligence was accomplished, and I can express with a high level of confidence what is reported. It required working through the varied sources to assure that it all made sense. To set the stage for the Jiral line, Theresia Jiral, my third great grandmother (mother of Josef Havel b 1808), was born to Mathias Jiral and his wife Catherina Ruesmueller. Theresia married Frantisek Havel just over 226 years ago on 25 October 1796. 

Jiral Line Chart

The above pedigree chart shows the surnames, as I have them recorded on the Jiral and Ruesmueller branches. I will not always provide relationships, so the above chart will be useful. The chart is in twenty-first century speak, but a deep dive into the varied records provides a  look at the surname issue in the 17th and early 18th centuries. It is rather complicated, and took some time to investigate and sort out. 

In 1716 when Lorenz took on the farm at Dolni Chrastany (now known as #3) from his father-in-law Jakub Ruesmueller the surname is written as Jiral, but before 1716 there are other surnames in use for the family.  The first available record I have had transcribed for the Jiral family is the 1672 Seignorial Register for the village of Chvalovice, a 35 minute walk from Dolni Chrastany. In this record there is a notation by the name of the bride, Katherina Sikl's (aka Tesar) name: "[Katharina 18yrs] ist Ihr d (29 Apr( dem Nikolasen deß Jakob Span Sohn v. Kolowitz zuheyrathen verwilligt worden." In English this is: "Katharina 18yrs - she was granted permission to marry Nikolas, Jakob Span's son from Chvalovice on 29th April".  Nikolas Span, is Lorenz's father.  The marriage records the same surname and identified Mikulass, son of Jakob Span who married Katherina daughter of Mathias Tesar. Here, Katherina is identified by Tesar, but the land register has her father's surname as Sikl.  

1672 Seg Reg. Matej Tesar (Sikl)
Notation by daughter Catherina's name given permission to marry
Nikolas, so of Jakob Span

Tesar is in Czech what Zimmerman is in German, and what Carpenter is in English. The parish records did not use Sikl, but rather a vocational or occupational related surname--carpenter. As regular readers of this blog will know, small farmers regularly had to have a second occupation in hopes to provide sufficient income to support their family. The land the Sikl's held was known as a small holding, and in fact, it had only about 4.26 acres of arable land. You would not be able to support a family from this small acreage, and thus the need for a secondary source of income. Nikolas Span (Jiral) would take on the Sikl farm in 1673, and later his son Lorenz would own the farm for a short period of time before moving to take his father-in-laws farm in Dolni Chrastany.  Many of my Havel ancestors trained as weavers, the Sikl's were carpenters. The Jiral side, besides having Span, also had, after Nikolas married Katherina, the surname Tesar.  

1696 Seg Reg (account of orphans)
Nicolas Zimmerman, Challuper; Lorentz is three years
at the time of book entry.

We see Tesar being used when Nikolas's son Lorentz (Laurentius in the above pedigree chart) was born in 1693, and when he was married to Marianna Ruesmueller in 1712. However, into the early 1700's when German came into use, the Seignorial Registers will use the surname Zimmerman, which is the same meaning as Tesar . We came to figure out this was the same person when, fortunately, one record recorded Zimmerman oder Jiral, meaning Jiral as an alias. There was also a record where Nikolas was recorded as Nikolass Gyral od[er] Teserzen. The key being Teserazn which put the Tesar surname as an identifier by occupation.  We were also fortunate that when Nikolas took over his father's farm the land register recorded Nikolas Jiral oder Span. Hence, we can see several surnames, but they all relate to each other, and point to the same lineage. In brief, from the records we knew that the Span family also went by Tesar, Jiral (or Gyral). Looking at the all three record types allowed the puzzle to be pieced together. 

What we don't know is how the Jiral surname came about. Richard D' Amelio was gracious to take a look back in earlier land register records to see if he could find a reference to Jiral, and on 27 Oct 2022 wrote: 

I had a quick flick through the Chvalovice section of the land register hunting for a source of the name Jiral… unfortunately, I didn’t get any further with that, but I did find that Nikolas’ father Jacob Špan took on Chvalovice No. 1 in 1662. The linking evidence is that Nikolas is named as recipient of inheritance after Jacob Špan’s death, and following Nikolas’ death (at Chvalovice No.13) a redistribution of his portion names the same list of heirs as those listed against his smallholding.

This report, while providing nothing definitive on the Jiral surname, shows how Richard, and I linked individuals through the varied records. There is a high level of confidence due to the land registers recording heirs, and the heirs matching both Jacob and more importantly Nikolas. For a while, at least, the after the roof name, Tesar stuck with Lorenz, but when Lorenz moved to Dolni Chrastany the surname Jiral becomes settled. He was finally free of the after the roof surname Tesar. But why Jiral and not Span, we have no idea.

1714-1726 Seg Reg. Jacob Ruesmueller
with Lotentz Jiral od (oder) Zimmerman 

Now, if that was not sufficiently complicated, at one point, in 1715 when Lorenz sold this smallholding in Chvalovice, Lorenz was referred to as Haisl. That had us wondering, until the deeper dive showed that after Lorenz's father, Nikolas, passed away his mother, Marianna, remarried a man named Mathias Haisl. Lorenz was known, for a brief period of time, by his stepfather's surname. 

What I find of interest when two surnames existed, it appears the after the roof surname was more common for parish records, than the land records. This makes some sense. The parish records probabaly recorded the surname as commonly used, or what I call the colloquial surname. Place yourself in this era. I am taken back in time to the late 1700's in southern Bohemia, and if that was not sufficient of a miracle, I can also speak fluent Czech and German indigenous to the time. I find myself in the small village of Chvalovice, and am inquiring about the Jiral family. Those residents I meet, after wondering why I am dressed so funny in my jeans and sweatshirt, are familiar with first names, and perhaps occupations. Yet, they scratch their collective heads with Jiral. That is until the village headman appears wondering what the commotion is about. The headman recalls a land register entry from a few years prior (Village Headsman often helped negotiate sales) that who people refer to as the Tesars (carpenters) were also known as Gyral. The guy then says "You mean Nikolas Tesar, who lives down the road a bit." House numbers were not available at the time, so I may ask what the house looks like. We certainly see the development of surnames related to occupation--Carpenter, (tesar (Czech)=zimmerman (Ger)) Smith, Cook, Weaver, Farmer, Sheppard to name a few.  This is not unique to Bohemia, but they seemed to have taken the after the roof surname to a whole different level.

Yet, things get even more complicated on the Ruesmueller side of the  Jiral line. This one presented a real puzzle. As we know, the Havel family came to the property at 18 Dolni Chrastany via Frantisek's marriage to Theresia Jiral. The Jiral family came to the property by Mathias' (Theresia's father) marriage to Catherina Ruesmueller. We find in 1702 that Catherina's grandfather, Bernhard, acquired the farm in 1702 from Veit Turek and Bernhard is married to Veit Turek's daughter. Veit Turek bought the farm from a man with a first name of Matej, but no surname is provided, it may have been his brother, but we don't know. (Itrust you are following all of this.) Yet, there is also the name Veit Kopac. And, to confuse matters even more, the surname Paur is also seen. A Veit Kopac married Katherina Fitzl on 25 Nov (or Dec) 1680, and the farm sale to Veit Turek occurred on 21 May 1681. When Veit died, about 1715, a side note in the land register lists his children as heirs--including Margareth. Bernard Ruesmueller married Margareth.

 1696 Seg Reg. Jacob Melchior (aka Ruesmueller)

Comparing the land register information to that in some of the Seignorial registers we find that Kopac, Turek and Paur are likely all the same family. We are also fortunate of the interplay between the records and that the villages had small populations. The land register indicates only one sale for 1702 and that is of Veit Turek to Bernhard Ruesmueller.  This is verified by a Seignorial record which noted permission was granted to Margareth Kopac to marry Bernhard. But, she was also known as Margareth Paur, probably another after the roof surname. The marriage record of Bernhard Ruesmueller on 19 Nov 1702 is to Margartha Paur. The farm was sold to Bernhard a few weeks later on 7 December 1702. The one sale in that year, the entry in the Seignorial records of permission to marry and the parish marriage record, all pointed to multiple surnames in use for the one family. And, they just happen to be in my family tree!

1701 Seg Reg. Jacob Paur Ruesmeuller
(Paur is crossed out)

The surnames vary perhaps by time and record. Many of the parish records use Paur, while the land register uses Kopac and Turek. Although Veit's marriage in 1680 is Kopac, not Paur, which lends support that Paur is an after the roof name, or perhaps a vocational designation. Paur can be read as Baur, or Bauer which are builder and farmer, respectively. We have to understand that much of Dolni Chrastany was settled by ethnic Germans and became part of the infamous Sudetenland controversy of WWII. Yet, it was not far from the Havel ancestral village of Ratiborova Lhota which was not part of the Sudetenland. This area is in an interesting area of cross-culturalization.  I had trouble finding Catherina's father Wenzel's (b 1711) birth record. Richard D'Amelio located it, but it has his surname as Paur, probably an after the roof name since his father married a Turek/Paur/Kopac, not unlike what was used with the Jiral family. 

 1696 Seg Reg. Veit Kopac family

At first I thought Catherina Ruesmueller's (Theresia's mother) family was exempt for the surname difficulties. But, I was wrong. We know that Lorenz (Mathias's father) Jiral's first spouse was Marianna Ruesmueller, who was a sister to Bernhard Ruesmueller, Catherina's grandfather.

Lorenz's first wife, Marianna, was a Ruesmueller, yet her surname in the marriage record appears as Krejci, which means tailor. They were married on 20 Nov 1712, and the land register notes a sale to his son-in-law Lorenz Jiral on 9 Nov 1716.  The 1714 landed subject register provides verification as contains a note by Marianna’s name, with her having received permission to marry in 1712. The marriage would have taken place in her home parish and this is the one marriage that corresponds to the sale of property.  The timing also fits when Lorenz took on Chvalovice No.13 in 1713. Furthermore, a Jakob “Krejcí” did not exist in the village according to the seigneurial registers, but we know that the Seignorial Reg for 1714 is clear that the name is Jakub Ruesmueller. But, there is yet another surname.  Jacob R was also referred to in the 1696 Seignorial register as Melchior. While the previous owner of the farm was Bauer, it may be a play on an after the roof name since a Melchior Bauer was owed money for the sale from Jakub. From the records we see that early on the Ruesmueller family used Krejci and Melchior. In this case, however, we only see these alias names used one time each as by 1701 Ruesmueller is used exclusively in the Seigniorial registers. The use of "Kregczyho," that is, Krejci, is also this one time outlier.

Seg Reg. Veit Kopac, 1701
Note by daughter Margareth given permission to marry in 1702. 

Why did the records use different surnames? First, the records were kept at different places, the Church records at the parish church in Netolice, and the land registers at the domain's regional office. Hence, the writers of each likely seldom saw each other. The parish priest was closer to the residents and here is where the colloquial surname comes into use, the priest used what was used by the people, as they would get the required information from the families, or in case of baptism from the Godparents. One can see why the authorities desired to curtail the use of the after the roof surname. As we have seen, a man married a woman and took over her father's farm. As Richard D'Amelio said, can you "imagine again, a male pedigree line in which several generations took over the holding of a father-in-law… the list of names in use by all those individuals may be lengthy… it’s a wonder anyone remembered their real name." And, that may be the case with the all the names used by these ancestors. While we don't know how or when the Jiral surname originated, we know that Nikolas used the surname Jiral after Span, and Tesar (Zimmerman in Ger.). I am just glad the first names did not change. 

Sources: Land, Seignorial, and Parish Registers for Netolice at Trebon Archives

Special thanks to Richard D'Amelio of Bohemib Reseasrch for knowledge provided, guidance, and assistance in arranging, locating, and transcribing records.