All posts in Czech & Slovak Regions, Borders & Emigration

If your Bohemian or Moravian ancestors spoke German, your research has its own history and its own pitfalls. The records are in German and Latin, the villages have two names, and most of the German-speaking population of the Czech lands was expelled in 1945 and…

Southern Slovakia has been home to a large Hungarian-speaking community for centuries, and families there often turn up in Hungarian records, Slovak archives and sometimes Hungarian National Archives microfilms. The same village may appear under a Hungarian and a Slovak name, and a person may…

Most Americans with Czech or Slovak ancestry descend from people who left between the 1850s and the First World War. When and why your ancestors left helps you choose the right records, understand what they say and guess where in Central Europe to look. This…

Many Americans who say their family is Slovak are actually Carpatho-Rusyn, from the mountain villages of eastern Slovakia and neighboring areas. Their records have a distinctive history, because their church, the Greek Catholic Church, was closed by the communist government in 1950 and restored only…

Slovak ancestry is organized by county, parish and archive, and the coverage for a given village can be very different from the coverage for its neighbor. Understanding how Slovakia was organized under the Kingdom of Hungary, and what actually survives in the archives, helps you…