My maternal ancestry is from this part of the world - Bohemia in what is now Czechia. It is so much fun to find out about them, their families and their lives! We're talking 1800 to 1880. Almost all of my research has been in online records written by hand in German, then scanned by the Czech-German cooperative records project. The script is really different than our script, so I took an online course from GermanologyUnlocked. (See the combo of German and Genealogy?) Once the pandemic lifted enough to travel, I decided to put my feet on the old ancestral lands. Cool, right?
Not so easy. It turns out that after World War II, the Czechoslovakians expelled all German speakers. Reminds me of Macbeth: "Out, out, damned spot!" Not content with that, the Communists tore down their houses, churches and roads in the '50s! Some Germans grabbed what records they could on the way out of the country. Who knows what records were saved and where they were? Sixty years after the end of WWII, the Czech and German governments decided to gather all the records together systematically, and then scan them. They put them on a site called portafontium.eu. Around the same time, people started recording all they could about the "extinct villages", took pictures, and published a pair of books about wandering the forests looking at extinct villages. Some of the old churches, just foundations now, were consecrated again by the Catholics.
What does this have to do with the 4th of July, you ask? In tracking down my ancestors' records, the only archive in which I could hope to find something was in Horšovský Týn. It took several back-and-forth e-mail exchanges before I feel they believed I was a serious researcher. I got an appointment for the only day they were open during the week we were planning on being in Czechia. I asked for some records to be ready for when I, Neal and Danny arrived. I also made sure we three made it to town on Sunday, before the Information Center closed for the 4th, 5th, and 6th, because their site said that they had these two books about wandering the Bohemian Forest looking for extinct villages! We got there, we bought books and other souvenirs, and the boys had to peel me off the ceiling.
On Monday, we showed up at the Archives to find that the only person who spoke English was out sick. Google Translate was a lifesaver. I would speak to my phone, it would translate to Czech, they would speak to their computer, it would translate to English, and by the end of the day, the two Czech archivists and I were friends. My Germanology course was vital, also. I found lots of records with the right surnames and took pictures (90 of them) to study later. I left the archivists with souvenirs from Bergen, Norway as a thank you. They gave me some from Horšovský Týn in return.
My great-grandmother was born in Plöß, at #25. Probably #25 is the farm they had for several generations. The extinct village book that covers Plöß has a map of the town, and #25 looks fairly large. Tomorrow is the big day of driving to current Ples, then exploring extinct Plöß. Won't it be wonderful if there is a bar or restaurant that is run by someone who loves history?
Continuation: Yes! Plöß is coming back to life! There's a restaurant with pictures from the 1800s on the walls, and good food and drink. We think that that family is responsible for the CPR of the town. It is becoming a summer vacation spot, where you can rent a small house and then hike and bicycle all through the Bohemian Forest.
The cemetery at the end of the road is beautifully restored! It gave Neal and me a thrill to see.
None of the gravestones match my g-grandma's birth record exactly, but there are a lot of Leibls and also Wilds, which was her mother's maiden name. We think we have a picture here of Plöß #25, where she was born.
What a feet-on-the-ground genealogy trip! I floated back to our hotel.
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