Czechia Genealogy

Guide to Czech Republic ancestry, family history, and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, family history, and military records.

Country Information
Czechia, officially known as the Czech Republic, is a country in Central Europe bordering Poland, Germany, Austria, and Slovakia. It includes the three historical territories of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia. From 1918 to 1993, it was the Western part of Czechoslovakia. The official language is Czech.

Finding Town of Origin
Records are created and organized on the local level. If you do not know the name of the village or parish your ancestors lived in, see
 * Czech Republic Finding Town of Origin, using United States records.
 * Czech Republic Determining a Place of Origin
 * Czech Republic Emigration and Immigration.

Archival Regions
Czech Republic records were created on the town or parish level, then collected and preserved on the archive level. First use GenTeam Free Gazetteer to find out which archive holds the records that you need. [[Media:1-Genteam_Gazetteer-Instruction.pdf|GenTeam Instructions]]. Click on the archival region covering the location of your parish, either on the map or from the list.

Districts (okresy, singular okres)
In 1960, Czechoslovakia was re-divided into districts (okres, plural okresy). In the area of the Czech Republic, there were 75 districts; the 76th Jeseník District was split in the 1990s from Šumperk District. Three consisted only of statutory cities Brno, Ostrava and Plzeň which gained the status of districts only in 1971. The capital city of Prague has a special status, being considered a municipality and region at the same time and not being a part of any district, but ten districts of Prague (obvody) were in some ways equivalent to okres. The older seventy-six districts lost most of their importance in 1999 in an administrative reform.

However, the FamilySearch Catalog for the Czech Republic and the FamilySearch Historical Record are organized by these historical districts.

For individual maps of each district, see Districts of the Czech Republic.

Additional Language Helps
Except for modern records of the 1900s, records in the Czech Republic were written mostly in Latin and German. Other languages sometimes used in Czech records include Old Church Slavonic, Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish.
 * German Paleography Seminar - Lessons on German Handwriting
 * Old German Script
 * Part 1
 * Part 2
 * Czech Republic Handwriting
 * '''Latin for Genealogists

More Czech Republic Research Strategies
Research strategies give guidance on how to research or what records to search for first. Below are additional research strategy Wiki articles for the Czech Republic.
 * "How to" Guides
 * Getting started
 * What's the next step?
 * Finding your ancestor in the records
 * Tips for beginners
 * If You Are Czech Citizen...
 * Beginning Czech Republic Research
 * Records Overview

More Czech Republic Research Tools
Research tools can include resources that assist in locating correct records to search and determining the correct locality to search in. Below are links and Wiki articles to research tools in the Czech Republic.


 * American Friends of the Czech Republic website gives a brief how to and where to find your Czech Ancestors with links to sites.
 * Reference Aids Overview at the Family History Library
 * Prague Conscriptions (1850-1914)
 * Jewish Registers
 * Czech Family Tree
 * Central European Genealogy Research Community on FaceBook - Scroll down to Archives for North Moravia - Czech Republic. You must be logged into Facebook to see this resource.
 * Websites

FamilySearch Resources
Below are FamilySearch resources that can assist you in researching your family.
 * Facebook Communities - Facebook groups discussing genealogy research
 * FamilySearch Historical Record Collections
 * Family History Center locator map