Do you know if your family was Czech, Bohemian, Moravian, or Czechoslovak - and why it matters?
If your ancestors came from Central Europe and you have spent years trying to make sense of the contradictions in your family history, this book was written for you.
Czech-American genealogy is full of confusion that is not your fault. Your great-grandmother called herself Bohemian. Her immigration papers say Austrian. The family argued about whether they were Moravians or Czechs or Slavs or Czechoslovaks. And nobody left alive can explain why all of those answers seemed to be correct at the same time.
They were all correct. The Quick Guide to Czech Identity finally explains why.
WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER IN THIS BOOK:
- Why Czech ancestors listed themselves as Austrian on Ellis Island records - and what that actually means for your genealogy research
- The real difference between Bohemian, Moravian, Silesian, Czech, Czechoslovak, and Sudeten - and which one applies to your family
- The complete history of the Czech lands from the Celtic Boii tribe through the Great Moravian Empire, the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Habsburg centuries, and the five Czechoslovak Republics to the modern Czech Republic
- Why the Czech language was nearly destroyed after 1620 and how ordinary people kept it alive in kitchens and folk songs for a hundred and fifty years
- What happened to Czech surnames at Ellis Island and how to find your family's original name in the Czech records
- A genealogist's guide to reading Czech, Latin, German, and Kurrent script in historical documents
- How to access digitized Czech parish registers and civil records from the comfort of your own home
- The truth about Bohemianism, the word bohunk, and how the name of a Central European kingdom became associated with an artistic lifestyle that had nothing to do with the actual Czechs
- Why your ancestors may have identified as Slavic - and what that identity actually means and does not mean
FROM THE AUTHOR:
"This question comes to me again and again, especially from families whose ancestors left Central Europe seventy, ninety, or a hundred and twenty years ago. The terminology is genuinely confusing, and for good reason. The land we now call the Czech Republic has changed names, rulers, borders, and national identities more times in the last fifteen centuries than almost anywhere else in Europe. Every name your family used was a window onto a different moment in that long, layered story. This book is my attempt to hand you the map.
If you have ever stared at an old photograph of someone you resemble but cannot name, or found a village on your family's papers that no longer appears on any map, or simply felt the pull of a heritage you could not quite locate - this book will give you what you have been looking for.
A complete, readable, and deeply human guide to one of Europe's most layered and least understood national identities.
Your heritage is deeper than you knew. It is time to claim it.
Also available as a Kindle ebook. Czech history. Czech genealogy. Bohemian ancestry. Moravian heritage. Czechoslovak history. Czech diaspora. Central European identity. Ellis Island records. Czech language guide. Czech American heritage.
