The Czech Republic and the flag of the Czech Republic
Welcome to the Bohemia, Czechoslovakia, and Czech Republic Knowledge Hub Page of Onward To Our Past®. Here you should find a wealth of useful information, insights, and links for your genealogy and family history work regarding Bohemia, Czechoslovakia, and Czech Republic.
My goal here is not for this location to be the ‘be all and end all’ of your search for your Bohmian and/or Czech family history and roots. Rather I plan for this to be a knowledge hub from which you can learn, link, find additional resources, and return with questions, ideas, and new findings.
Since I am a Genealogical Historian, I will begin with just a bit of history for us.
This is a photo of the 1700’s map of Bohemia I found in a used book shop.
HISTORY OF BOHEMIA:
As genealogists and family historians, we are accustomed to trying to find things that have been largely lost in the impenetrable vaults of time. However, I must admit that as I began my journey back in time to find what I could about my elusive Bohemian great-grandfather Joseph K. Vicha, I was quite surprised to learn that the entire Bohemian immigrant community has been largely ignored and little studied. This being true even though the Bohemians were a vibrant, integral, and important segment of major cities in the United States such as Chicago, Illinois, Cleveland, Ohio, New York City, New York, and St. Louis, Missouri. Plus a significant number of small cities and town scattered across the Midwest and Southwestern farm belts.
Another early item that you will become aware of is that our ancestors were alternately listed as Czechoslovaks, Czechs, Austrians, Slavs, or even at times the pejorative, ‘bohunks’. In the records in Cleveland I find that they were fairly consistently listed as ‘Bohemian’ in all the records I have been finding.
Quick overview of the names you will find for the same geographic area as Bohemia
- Historic to 1918: Bohemia or Ceska
- 1918-1938: Republic of Czechoslovakia
- 1938-1945: Annexation by Gemany
- 1945-1960: Czechoslovak Republic
- 1960-1990: Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
- 1990-1992: Czechoslovakia
- 1993 to present: Czech Republic
Miroslav Koudelka’s book title tells it all about Czechoslovakia …. at least by one measure.
I quickly discovered that my ancestors were indeed Bohemian (not bohemian) and that Bohemia, now a significant region of the Czech Republic, has a long, rich, and tumultuous history. Bohemia was one of the leading and most enlightened countries of the European continent far before any other of the Western European nations knew much of anything about enlightenment. They were centuries ahead of all of Europe in their educational system, cultural development, and political, religious, and economic freedoms. Unfortunately there also existed a lot of animosity towards the beliefs and freedoms enjoyed by the Bohemian people, especially by the Roman Catholic Church and the Habsburg Empire. Shortly after the judicial murder of Jan Hus (he was burned at the stake for being a heretic) his followers, the Hussites, were set upon following the issuance of a Papal Bull by Pope Martin V. Thus began three, yes three, Crusades by the Catholic Church with the express mission of destroying all Hussites. These Crusades are most often referred to as the Hussite Wars and lasted from 1420 to 1434. After a short period of peace following the failed Catholic crusades, came the Battle of White Mountain and The Thirty-Years War. This war devastated Bohemia and her peoples, it changed it into a nation enslaved by a neighbor State and nearly destroyed her simply for her beliefs. Then followed what is called doba temna or Dark Age when for 150 years the Catholic church sought to eradicate all vestiges of Czech identity. I suggest you read about such early Bohemian historical figures as St. Wenceslas, St. Procopius, Karel Havliček, and of course, Jan Hus. As I personally dug deeper and began to learn more about the Thirty-Years War, which in history class I had only been taught to memorize the start and end dates I was shocked to learn of the devastation rained down upon Bohemia. I learned about the Counter-Reformation. I learned about the uprising of 1848 and the Battle of White Mountain. My spirit sank as I learned of the reprisals and the attempts to exterminate Bohemia and her people. However, best of all, I began to understand my ancestors, my personal history, and the foundations for many of their beliefs that were handed down to me for my life generations later, especially since my ancestors were ardent Freethinkers.
I am sure you wonder why might our ancestors may have left Bohemia. In my case, I knew my family legend of the onus of military service (conscription for a ten year term) to a foreign master of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Habsburgs. I also knew of their persecution because of their Freethinking ideals.
However, I gained a better insight when I read Kenneth D. Miller’s book The Czecho-Slovaks in America. In his book, Miller states “It was possible inBohemia under the old regime to distinguish three classes of peasants. First, there was the “sedlák” or famer, who was the owner of a farm of from twenty-five to a hundred acres and a nice “statek,” or farmhouse. Then there was the “chalupník” or cottager, who owned a small cottage, and from five to twenty-five acres of land. Peasants of this class made but a scanty living from their farm, and were apt to eke it out by hiring themselves out as day-laborers or farm-hands, or by carrying on some form of industry in the home during the winter months. The third class is made up of “nadeníci” or day-laborers, who owned no land at all, but generally lived in a tiny cottage on the farm of the “sedlák” or on the great estate of the nobleman, receiving their rent as part of their wages. These people were miserably poor and lived a hand-to-mouth existence. Czech cottagers – The immigrants toAmerica were largely from the second class. The “sedlák” was too comfortably fixed to want to leave his homeland, while the day laborer was too poor even to think of emigrating. But the cottager was in the position where it was difficult for him to make a decent living, while at the same time he was in possession of some property which could be sold or given in security in order to raise the money necessary for the journey.” I found this particularly interesting since in the Bohemian records I have located, several of my ancestors were indeed listed as “chalupník”, or cottagers.
Unfortunately, I shouldn’t have been surprised. A member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, Professor Francis Dvornik, states in his book, Czech Contributions To The Growth of The United States, “The fact that, so far, no attempt has been made to present a synthetic picture of the Czech immigration into the United States, and at evaluating Czech contributions to the growth of their new country, in a language accessible to all Americans, induced me to publish this essay, in the hope that someone else, more informed and better equipped, would one day complete it.”
In the excellent reference book compiled by George J. Kovtun, former Czech expert for the Library of Congress, Czech and Slovak History: An American Bibliography, you will find an Introductory Essay titled The Beginnings of American Scholarship on Czech and Slovak History written by Stanley B. Winters. In this enlightening essay, Mr. Williams points out that the first doctoral dissertation on Bohemian history was not written until 1914 at Harvard University by future professor Robert J. Kerner. The second would not appear until 1930 at the University of Southern California, Berkley. Not until 1957 would there be the first dissertation on Moravia and the first on Slovakia not until 1961. Author Winters also notes “Since the beginning of the twentieth century, historians of the Slavs of Central and Eastern Europe have faced professional and intellectual problems that slowed the development of their field. He also adds praise for the pre-World War I writings of Emily Greene Balch and Thomas Capek.
An excellent background book on Czech immigration to the United States is Jan Habenicht’s seminal work, History of Czechs In America and translated into English by Miroslav Koudelka. By chapter, Jan recounts the Bohemian immigrants in 47 of the 50 United States. An excellent resource, however I will make one note about the author here. It is widely acknowledged that Jan Habenicht allowed his prejudice for the Bohemian immigrants who stayed aligned with the Roman Catholic church to show in this work. As a result it is not balanced with an equal discussion or inclusion of those Bohemians who were Freethinkers, a group of slightly over half of the immigrants to the United States.
Immigration began slowly and grew until the beginning of World War I. According to Eleanor E. Ledbetter, in her work The Czechs of Cleveland, there were only three Bohemian families in Cleveland in 1850, in 1860 only fifteen, and that by 1910 it was one of the largest Bohemian cities in the world, outnumbering even New York at that time, with an estimated population of some 50,000 first and second generation Bohemians. Thank goodness for Ms. Ledbetter, the Cleveland Librarian, who wrote this booklet! When you do serious research on the Cleveland Czech community, it is often the only resource anyone can cite. I am glad it is here. I am amazed that it is basically all there is.
According to Vaclav Snajdr, founder of Dennice Noveveku, one of the early Cleveland Czech-language newspapers and president of the Pilsener Brewing Company, in The Bulletin of Western Reserve University, there were three distinct periods of Bohemian immigration. The first was in the 1850’s. For us as genealogists it is very interesting to note that Mr. Snajdr points out that at this time the railroad did not connect Cleveland to the East, so “These immigrants came to Cleveland via boat from Canada, Montreal and Quebec…” The second period of Bohemian immigration was from 1860 to 1866, the period of time of the Austrian wars with Prussia and Italy, both fought mainly on Bohemian soil and which Mr. Snajdr points out ‘ruined many families’. The third period, and by far the largest in terms of numbers of immigrants, was during the decade of 1870-1880.
Leo Baca’s series of books, Czech Immigration Passenger Lists, can be a huge help for Bohemian immigrants as these nine volumes include not only Ellis Island immigrants, but also those who entered the United States via Castle Garden, New Orleans, Galveston, and Philadelphia. As a Clevelander, it was also interesting for me to read in The American City, that the City of Cleveland provided every immigrant who arrived on Ellis Island and stated Cleveland was their destination, with a copy of “The Immigrant’s Guide to the City of Cleveland, Ohio”. This ‘neat booklet’ was the work of the city immigration officer at the time, R. E. Cole, and was written in Czech, English, German, Hungarian, Polish, Yiddish, Slovak, Croatian, and Italian. Some 35,000 of these were given out and contained advice and information on the city.