All posts in Czech & Slovak Genealogy Research

Czech and Slovak registers rarely come in a language you speak, and the handwriting can be harder than the words. The good news is that records follow predictable patterns, so you do not have to learn the languages to read them. This guide explains which…

No single website holds Czech and Slovak records. The best Czech registers are on the regional archives’ own portals, many Slovak registers are on FamilySearch, and a tree platform ties it together. This guide compares the main options and says what each is good for….

Parish registers tell you about individual events. Censuses and civil registers show the household and the village around it, and they can confirm relationships, occupations and places of birth. This guide explains the Czech censuses of 1857 to 1921, where they are held, what they…

To research Slovak ancestors you need to understand the Kingdom of Hungary. Until 1918 the territory of present-day Slovakia was part of it, and that shaped which records exist, which language they are in, what the villages were called and where the registers are now….

Parish registers, called matriky, are the backbone of Czech genealogy, and unlike in many countries, most of them are free to browse online. They record baptisms, marriages and burials, usually in Latin or German, and they can take a family back to the 1600s or…

Almost every Czech or Slovak search stalls at the same point: the family knows it came from “Bohemia” or “Slovakia,” but not from which village. Because registers are kept by parish, and village names changed with borders and languages, the village is the key that…