When researching towns in Austria, it's helpful to learn about the Austrian Empire which was made up of many other countries and states (such as Moravia, Bohemia, Silesia, Salzburg, Bukovina, Hungary, Tyrol)."The German Bohemians almost became a lost people. It is extremely difficult to track their life in America. Few archives recognize the existence of the German-Bohemians as a distinct cultural group. Usually they are lumped together with other nationalities. Some census-takers listed them as Austrian, since their homeland was under the rule of the Austrian Empire when they immigrated. Some were labeled as German because of the language they spoke. Still others were called Bohemians, a term which hardly distinguished them from their Czech neighbors. In fact, in the 1905 Minnesota census, Brown County, the home of the most German Bohemians in Minnesota, was noted to have the second-largest Czech population in the state, when in fact there were only two Czech speaking families in the County. Not until the 1920s census were the Böhmish listed as German speakers from Bohemia." Source: German-Bohemian Immigration to North America by Robert J. Paulson, German-Bohemian Heritage Society (Word document: www.svu2000.org/conferences/02.doc) |