https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Czechia_Online_Genealogy_Records
www.genteam.at/ Registration is free. Change the language at the top right to English. Click "Gazetteer" to search for towns in Austria, Czech, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Check out their other databases. When typing into the search bar for Last Name, you have to choose from names that are suggested. If nothing is suggested, their database does not have anything for that last name. Click "Search" to start the search. You can also do an "Overall Search" but this will not find the same information for towns as the Gazetteer search does. If search results are displayed, click the icon in the "Details" column and a window will open with more information.
Use translate.google.com to translate Czech words to English
Taufe = BaptismTrauung = MarriageTod = DeathHow to search for free records:
This example shows how to find Grafenried church records.
Start here: http://www.portafontium.eu/
Click "Deutsch" to change the language to German (or leave it as it if you can read Czech)
Click "Matriken" or "Matriky" (church records) - depending on what language you are using.
You'll see 5 links:
Církev Římskokatolická (The Roman Catholic Church)
Církev Evangelická (Evangelical Church)
Církev Československá (Czechoslovak Church)
Církev Českobratrská evangelická (The Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren)
Okresní úřad (District Office)
Click the first link for the Roman Catholic Church.
You'll see letters of the alphabet - click G and a link for Grafenried will appear.
Click the Grafenried link which will take you here.
You will be presented with 12 parish books from Grafenried. Note that the page switched back to Czech language (changing to Deutsch doesn't work).
Click any of the parish books to start browsing church records.
News: Around December 2013-January 2014, many records including Grafenried parish books were moved from the Actapublica website to the Porta Fontium website.
Brno Moravian and Niederoesterreich (north of the Danube) records were once available free at the Actapublica website which had Actapublica in the web address. It appears the URL has changed to mza.cz. New URL: https://www.mza.cz/actapublica/matrika/hledani?&lang=en
This page has directions: https://www.mza.cz/actapublica/page/view/napoveda
Try searching for Brno and there should be several pages of results. The language on the website can be changed to English, but not everything on the page will appear in English.
More info: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Brno_Moravian_Provincial_Archives,_Czechia
Step by step directions: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Brno_Moravian_Provincial_Archives,_Czechia_Census_Records#Finding_Your_Parish_Records_in_the_Archives
State Regional Archives Trebon (Státní oblastní archiv) has many records and databases available free online at: https://digi.ceskearchivy.cz
Their databse includes Dictionaries (English-Czech, German-Czech, Latin-Czech), South Bohemian Census (1857-1921); Maps; Books; Land Registers, Photos, Postcards; and much more. New items added daily!
How to search for free church records:
Start here https://digi.ceskearchivy.cz and sign into your free account to access the save button. Be sure to change the webpage language to English if you can't read Czech.
After going to that URL, the first welcome page will change to the archive pages: https://digi.ceskearchivy.cz/Introduction
Click "Parish Registers" in the left column of the Folder Tree tab.
Click "Roman Catholic Church"
Villages are listed by Czech names. Example: Nový Svět [Novy Svet] is the Czech name for Neugebäu [Neugebaeu]. You can also use the search bar to search for town names in German.
Click the letter of the name of a city you are interested in, then click the town name.
If the text in the "Book" column is in bold lettering, it is clickable. Click it to see church records. Example follows:
B = Birth records. M = marriage records. D = death records. Register normally means "index" but in the Trebon records, it seems to mean book.
Let's say you are looking at Novy Svet: https://digi.ceskearchivy.cz/Parish-registers-Roman-Catholic-Church-N-Novy-Svet and you want 1836 deaths. Click "Book 11 Register D 1806-1870" which will open the book and now you are here: https://digi.ceskearchivy.cz/6096/1. At the bottom left corner of the page is a drop-down menu to change image numbers. Image 151 has the death record for Barbara Hany on May 22, 1836 https://digi.ceskearchivy.cz/6096/151/2027/907/63/0. At the bottom right area is a Save button. Logging in will enable you to see more features such as exporting whole images, visible area, or selected area to your computer; choose high resolution and either jpeg or pdf. A watermark will automatically appear at the bottom of the exported file.
Pictures of Novy Svet: http://www.zanikleobce.cz/index.php?obec=3459
How to search for free church records (note that this website can be very slow to load):
The online archive includes Pribram (Příbram) and Sedlcany (Sedlčany) where Mohelnitzky / Mohelnicky families can be found. Pribram has 103 registers. Sedlcany has 38 registers.
Start here: http://ebadatelna.soapraha.cz/pages/IndexPage?0 (change the language at the top right to Cesky, English, or Deutsch)
Click "Register Records" which will open a search page https://ebadatelna.soapraha.cz/pages/SearchMatrikaPage?2
Another option is to search in "Archival Records" at https://ebadatelna.soapraha.cz/pages/SearchArchivaliePage?8
Start typing a town name in the "Locality" box and some suggestions will pop up. Choose any of the suggestions you are interested in.
You can also search by "By Keyword" and a date range.
For church records, change "By Keyword" (by clicking the down-arrow) and choose "By Provenance Type"
Searching "By Provenance Type" gives you options for searching in specific denominations of religions such as "Roman Catholic Church"; "Evangelical Church" and more.
Leaving it at the Roman Catholic Church option, find "Sedlcany District Pribram" if you want to search for Mohelnitzky families.
Click the red Search button.
The results page will show many columns of information. In the "Sedlcany District Pribram" example, there will be "Sedlcany 01" "Sedlcany 02" etc in the first column. Look in the other columns to see what years and type of church record you want to see. Clicking anything from the first column will open the book. You can page through to look for an ancestor.
Images can be downloaded as jpeg by clicking the red down arrow below the image. Next to the down arrow is a number that tells you the size of that image, such as 1.16 MB.
See also https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Prague_(Praha)_Regional_Archives,_Czechia_Church_Records
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Click on the titles below which will open other webpages.
In English, this is the Bohemian Forest museum. It is located at Ungargasse 3 in Vienna. The museum is open on Sundays from 9 am to noon or by appointment. Interview with Dr. Gernot Peter, curator of the Böhmerwaldmuseum.
Page updated on 23 July 2023 © Debbie Blau