As many of you know, one of my hobbies is genealogical research. For the Hovel branch of the family the last arriving immigrant was my grandmother Ida Pitzenberger's mother, Theresia Kamen. She was from Ujezd, Bohemia and arrived in the United States in 1872. Ida's father arrived in the US in the 1850's with his parents and two brothers. Grandpa Rudy's father, Martin Havel, arrived in July 1868 with his parents and siblings. His mother, Amelia Duscheck, was born in Jefferson County, WI, but her parents arrived in the Americas via the port of Quebec in August 1854. Doing research of the varied Bohemian records is not easy, and that is why I had to chuckle when a Facebook post showed that a New England Historic Genealogical Society was sponsoring a workshop on deciphering old handwriting--in English.
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| Class on English Script |
I have done some research on the Yankee side of my wife, and quite frankly, compared to Bohemia it is a cakewalk. In its post on deciphering old handwriting, that New England society describes old handwritten records, with archaic English terms, unknown abbreviations and sometimes just illegible writing which render them difficult to rad. This is nothing compared to Bohemia. Depending on the era, you may see parish records written in German, Czech, or Latin. Occasionally you find a combination of two, or even all three. I think it was Josef and Anna Havel's marriage record which contains all three. In southern Bohemia it is not uncommon, as I have realized this year, to have what are referred to as after-the-roof surnames, you change your last name to follow the persons house you now live in. If that is not bad enough you have to add in the legibility of handwriting, with a fountain pen. Abbreviations also occur. In some unusual cases the script is rather elegant, but most of the time it is confusing. The letter B looks like L and T looks like S or a Y.
At times I can pick out a name or two, but I generally have to know what name I am looking for. I have come to rely on a translator, because I realized I may have gotten names right, but not places. The translator provides another level of clarity, not to mention I may have had the surname spelled wrong. I am to the point in which I may have to engage the translator to find records. I tend to rely on an index, where they are available, and the older the record, generally, the less available is an index. Of course, some indexes, like the records, use the German Kurrent script which are rendered meaningless to me. The problem is the indexes often miss persons. I also have found persons on a page different than what was noted in the index. Indices for the Duscheck and Appl lines are extremely difficult because sometimes they are arranged by village, meaning you have to know the village. Knowing the village is always helpful, but sometimes you lack that particularly if the marriage was in the village of the bride. As Bohemian records progressed they provide much more information even grandparents. Knowing village and era will help, but finding records can still be difficult.
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| Death Record (2nd entry from top) of a 3rd Great grandmother, 1819 3rd Column from right contains her first and then last name can you figure our her name? An example of German Kurrent |
For example, one ancestor Marianna Rokusek married Thomas Vavruska. I have not been able to find her birth, even knowing her home village, or their marriage record. I have their marriage nailed down to a few years by finding them in what are known as the Seigniorial Registers. These registers were essentially an an annual census of some persons in a village that are subject to a domain. I emphasize some, because they were often the "landholding" class, and tenants may not have been listed. What was recorded would vary not just by domain, but even perhaps by year. You can read about them here. Finding the Seignorial Register for some villages is difficult because they lack an index, those with an index, once you know the village and how they wrote the village name is rather simple to find the page but finding the family, given the script, can be more difficult. I found Thomas Vavruska and his wife Marianna married about 1719 and living in his home village. But, were they in his home village? There is a note by their name, and in the table I keep I had placed the record, which I share with my translator on Google Docs, but not yet designated for translation, because I was trying to figure out which of the varied records would be more helpful. The translator, who occasionally checks the Google doc, saw the record and emailed with the following information:
Further, the last seigneurial register entered in your table (not indicated for translation) relating to Thomas Vavruška in 1731… the changes remove (cross out) the family from the lodger section of Nestanice… but the note beside him states “zu Strpp in seiner aigenen Chaluppen“ and then “zu Strpp Verschrieben“…. That is “at Strpí in his own cottage/smallhoding” and “registered/assigned to Strpí”… only I couldn’t see anything to that effect in the 1731 seigneurial landowner section for Strpí or the land register, and of course a few of the seigneurial registers for subsequent years appear missing (by which time he’s taken on the Chelčice property)…but he does also appear in the Strpí section of the same 1731 seigneurial in the lodger section (ordinal 60 image 49) with the same message “In seiner Eigenen Chaluppen in Dorff”. The only explanation I can offer is that he took on a Dominikal cottage briefly. As a Dominikal cottager he would still be classed as a lodger, and so consequently won’t appear in the Rustikal land registers… there are a few Dominikal land registers for Libějovice dominion, not for the time or place in question.
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| Thomas Vavruska lined out in 1719 Seigniorial Reg. V. of Krtely. Note beside name. |
Yet, even knowing Thomas and Marianna were likely married between 1717 and 1721 (I always give a few years either side) I still could not find the marriage looking in the records for both his and her home village. It may be I just could not read either name. By 1735 Thomas is married to another woman, Catherina from Chelcice. I also know that he had a third wife, Elizabeth, as that is recorded in the 1750 Seignorial Register and I have found that marriage record. I am sure the difficulty is with an inability to easily discern the script.
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| Birth record of Joannes Dusek Landsberg, 1680 |
If you can find a family in a Seigniorial record you get an idea of location, and age, if not the parents, at least the children. Age in the record can vary from the actual birth/baptismal record by several years. Sometimes it is almost spot on. I have to give a great deal of credit to Richard D' Amelio, who does my translations. He knows his stuff and the abbreviations for the German and Latin and now Czech. He is a member of many of the same Czech genealogy Facebook groups of which I am a member and if there is ever a translation problem he can usually figure it out. For example, I had a record I partially translated and then had another professional (before I found out about Richard) and posted it on Facebook asking for assistance. People gave opinions, but Richard weighed in and noted that some of the script was not fully formed in terms of its loops, or angles or whatever. Sure enough, I found that person in the village he recommended. Richard is the go to person in transcribing and translating the varied scripts. I am not sure how he does, it is a real gift.
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| 1719 Seignorial Register, Thomas Vavruska and wife Marianna also show on this page in the same village, with note |
I could write a whole blog post on the difficulties of the German Kurrent script, but it is too intricate and difficult to read, so why would I try to make sense of it for a blog post? Of course, my handwriting is nothing to brag about. When I worked, persons who worked under me became experts at deciphering my script.
I recently completed reading the Ross King book, The Bookseller of Florence, which involves manuscripts, codices, and books in the 14 and 15th centuries from handwriting to the advent of the printing press. Which script to use was often an issue, and he would make note of certain books made with ungainly script. This is at the advent of the printing press when each letter was handmade and handset, in reverse, sometimes only a few lines at a time to print. This is at the height of the Renaissance and scholars and monks were turning out translations of Greek texts. There was a thirst for these texts from bishops and cardinals to dukes and the merchant class.
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| From Ross King book The Bookseller of Florence 42 line Gutenberg Bible |
Perhaps the most difficult texts to discern in Bohemia are the Land Registers which record payments made for a property purchased, contracts between a buyer and a seller and even marriage contracts. Richard found a marriage contract between Frantisek Havel and Theresia Jiral. However, they go further. One may be given an idea when a family member who was receiving payments for the property passes away and the payments go to the domain, or one of their descendants. It would have information on when an owner died, and when heirs of the family are paid, and how much. Richard has translated several registers for me and those for the Havel family has been very helpful. The oldest parish record for my direct Havel lineage is Simon's marriage in 1703, which is because records before 1694 are not available, either missing or lost. Using the Seigniorial, Land Registers, and the Urbarium records Richard was able to get the family back to Jan Wolf, Simon's 2nd great grandfather to the year of 1585. He accomplished this by comparing tax or rent payments in the Urbaria records with the Seigniorial and available land register information. One cannot just rely on parish records.
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| Detail of 1603 to 1606 Land Register Entry Havel family, Ratiborova Lhota |
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| Marriage record of Simon Havel, 1703 |
This gets me to an interesting point, at least I know script and while I have difficulty reading the German, Czech or Latin in the old records, I might be able to make headway on some records, at least finding the relevant ones. The question arises, however, whether students taught today be able to do this research? Most schools no longer teach cursive, and while the German Kurrent is a far cry from our cursive, older records contain script I can at times discern, because it is more like our lettering. But, in fifty years will one of the neighbor kids be able to read even English cursive?
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| Cartoon from WI State Journal |
As one can see from some of the images in this blog post, some of the 17th century records are easier to discern than records from the 19th century. It all depends on the script that is used. Handwriting makes a difference too, but one does not need to tell my wife that. The hard copy calendar we keep, she will often rewrite an appointment I had written in to make it more legible. Of course, now that I have a fancy cellphone, we also keep a joint calendar to access electronically. Maybe I need to start using abbreviations in both the written and electronic record to really get the wife upset, use of Latin would be even better. Maybe it is not all in the script, but being able to read the script certainly helps.
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