We are looking for our ancestors part 2. Police Headquarters Prague II – General Registry

The older, the more stingy

From the registries we read mainly the dates of births, marriages and deaths of individual persons. Furthermore, in the records we find data on the profession, residence, parents, religion and causes of death of ancestors, although in this context it should be noted that the register books developed gradually into a modern form. Therefore, in general, the older the records, the more prudent they are to provide information.

The names and professions of the godparents of children or witnesses at weddings are less important, although the social status of the family can also be deduced from these data. “If the godfather of a child became a city or a professor, it can be assumed that he had economically secure and generally respected parents who normally moved in the company of educated and well-accommodated people,” says historian and genealogist Lukáš Cvrček from Czech Archives.

On the contrary, according to him, data on midwives and pastors, which also form an integral part of registry records, are essentially insignificant for genealogical research.

Faith matters

The keeping of registries in the Prague archdiocese was ordered by the Prague Synod in 1605 on the basis of the guidelines of the Council of Trent in 1563. The oldest surviving Prague registries date from the end of the 16th century and are mostly non-Catholic (near the churches of St. Henry, St. Stephen, St. Thomas). With the advancing re-Catholicization after the Battle of Bílá Hora (1620), Catholic registries were added, which were soon kept at all Prague parishes.

The summer series of the Prague Daily on Pedigrees will continue on the web next week. In the next part, we will explain what conscriptions are and how to work with them in the search for their ancestors. If you have any questions about the experts, do not hesitate to send an e-mail to [email protected]. University-educated professionals from Czech Archives, who teach in genealogy courses, will answer.

“The registries originally represented purely ecclesiastical records, which were kept separately according to individual religions. It is therefore important to find out the faith in advance, because, for example, Prague’s Jewish registries are stored separately in the National Archives. If we do not know the religion, I recommend trying to look for Catholics who, as a result of successful re-Catholicization, represented over 90% of the population of the Czech lands before the establishment of Czechoslovakia, “notes Lukáš Cvrček.

Within the doctrine of Enlightenment absolutism, registries have entered the sphere of state interests since the 18th century. By the decision of Emperor Joseph II. have gained legal evidence and the weight of public documents. The state also began to determine the structure, language and arrangement of registries for the churches. The Toleration Patent of 1781 contains the creation of non-Catholic registries, which, however, became a public document only in the following decades.

In the second half of the 19th century, civil registries were created for the needs of people without religion and believing states of unrecognized churches, which were kept by the City of Prague and the district political administration. As of January 1, 1950, the registries were nationalized as part of the communist campaign against religion, confiscated from the churches, and handed over to national committees. Already closed volumes traveled to the archive, where today they form a collection of over 2,500 volumes.

How we lived in Czechoslovakia. Old Town and Josefov

Try it for yourself

The collection of registries is digitized and accessible to the public in the online research room of the Archives of the Capital City of Prague on the web http://www.ahmp.cz. Here, just click on the icon called Archive Catalog in the right part of the page and after opening it, click on the Collection of registries button in the upper left corner.

The digitized matrices are divided according to the districts into internal, ie four historical Prague cities and Vyšehrad, and external, ie. to other parts later connected to Prague. For the outer circuits, it pays to increase the number of displayed records from the preset nine to 51 in the drop-down box on the right, in order to show really everything from Bohnice to Žižkov.

“Furthermore, it is necessary to choose between Catholic, civil and non-Catholic registries, which contain the documents of the Evangelical, Old Catholic, Orthodox and Czechoslovak churches. These are numerous compared to others. Then all you have to do is choose the right parish, time range and type of registries, which are divided according to the type of records into born, devoted and deceased. Then nothing prevents you from viewing the digitized pages of the registries, “says Lukáš Cvrček, adding that it is not possible to simply download scans from the online research room of the Archives of the Capital City of Prague, as is the case in most other Czech archives. For this reason, researchers have to make do with a link to the relevant page in the register, or they can use the application, for example, to make a cut-out from that page and download at least a clipping.

The Dominicans invite people to the renovated monastery. It will open at the end of summer

Not everything is online

The oldest Prague registry office of the parish church of St. Jindřich in Nové Město, which has been maintained since 1584, was also published in a book edition of documents prepared by Jaroslava Mendel before its digitization. On the other hand, newer matrices, records are still protected by personal data, you searched in vain on the Internet and in books.

“By law, the public does not have free access to registries born with records younger than one hundred years. In the case of marriage or death records, this period then lasts 75 years from the last entry in the relevant volume. The only exceptions are the demonstrable direct descendants of the surveyed persons or people with full or official power to inspect, “warns Lukáš Cvrček and adds:” These so-called living registers are stored at the territorially competent registry offices of individual city districts. The volumes concluded before the end of 1949 were centrally concentrated at the office of the Prague 1 City District, from where they will be handed over to the archive after the deadline. If you request access to these records, it is definitely worth knowing the exact date and place you are looking for. If you don’t know him, first try to search the National Archives in the Prague II Police Headquarters (see previous parts of our series) to make it easier for officials to work and speed up the search for records, “concludes genealogist Cvrček.