Czech Genealogy Research
Get to know your Czech roots and the history of your family
What can you learn about your ancestors using our services?
In registers of vital records, you can find every ancestor’s three basic records – date of birth (christening), marriage and death (funeral). But you can learn much more than just data on the events mentioned above. For example, you can find out where your Czech ancestors lived, what they did for a living, what kind of social status they had, whether they moved or had more wives or husbands or how many siblings and children they had.
When searching the registers, we can sometimes get to the beginning of the 17th or the end of the 16th century, the time when registers of vital records started emerging. It all depends on existing materials from the given area.
Registers of vital records are the basis for creating a family tree, but we can search other sources as well like census records, military archives, land and farm register books and other archives. These archives are valuable sources when creating a general overview of your Czech ancestors’ life stories that we put in your family book.
How does our collaboration work?
Step 1: Choose a type of family tree
We treat every client and their wishes individually. If you don’t know what your family tree should look like, there are two basic ways we can conduct in our research.
First option: Direct lineage family tree
In this case, we will look for ancestors of the family’s direct paternal lineage. What does this mean? The paternal lineage captures your mother’s or father’s direct male ancestors, that is your grandfather, your great-grandfather, your great-great-great grandfather etc. including their wives. To get a better understanding of the lineages, look at the simple schemes below. We can also combine two or more direct lines (e.g. your father’s and mother’s or all the grandparents’ lineages).
Direct paternal lineage:
Father´s side
Direct paternal lineage:
Mother´s side
Combination of these
Second option: Ahnentafel
When creating an ahnentafel, we start from the family’s youngest member and continue with their parents, every parent’s parents and so on. To get a better understanding of what an ahnentafel is, take a look at the graphic scheme below. An ahnentafel gives you much more complex information about what genes and different family lines can be found in your family. However, you need to keep in mind that creating an ahnentafel takes more time.
Ahnentafel
Third option: Tailored genealogical services
Do you want us to look for specific document? Are you interested in a particular person? Or maybe you´re planning your trip to Czech Republic and want to know the places where your ancestors lived so you can visit them. Let us know, we will be happy to help.
Step 2: Prepare all the information and data you have about your ancestors
Do you know what kind of a family tree you’d like to get? Great!
In order for us to start looking for your Czech ancestors, we need you to give us the basic information that we will proceed from. The general rule is: the older data you have, the easier the start is. So in the first phase you will send us information about your oldest ancestors from all the family lines you want us to look into.
The best-case scenario is that you prepare copies of the records where we can look for the data we need by ourselves. We mean the following in particular:
- birth certificates
- marriage certificates
If these are not available, you can give us the data we need without the certificates. In this case, we need you to tell us:
- first and last name of the oldest known ancestor/ancestors,
- date and place of their birth,
- or date and place of their marriage.
Don´t you know the exact place of your Czech ancestors´ origin?
If that´s the case, send us all the information you have including names, estimated time of your ancestors´ arrival to the new country and even your family stories. We will do our best to locate the place of your ancestors´ origin.
Step 3: We create an offer based on the provided materials
As soon as we know what you expect from your family tree and we are provided with all the materials we need, we will see if archive sources are available. Then we prepare and present you with our quote. When you approve the offer and the price, we sign a binding order and inform you of our schedule of work.
How long does it take to create a family tree?
The time needed to search for your ancestors varies depending on the extent of the search. Huge ahnentafels take much more time than looking for direct paternal lineage. In general, the minimum time needed to create a family tree including a family book is 2-3 months. If you want the tree to be ready by a certain date (e.g. as a present), you should expect that it could take even more time and contact us as soon as possible.
Do you want to know the history of your family? Contact us
We are located in the Czech Republic, but we have no problem taking care of our foreign customers via e-mail or Skype.