Bohemian Rhapsody

I've always been very proud of my Czech heritage. However, that same heritage has also given me reason to curse it because it's been a challenge trying to discover my roots there. It's been a thorn in my side all these years, but about 3 years ago I decided to bite the bullet and try, once again, to find my roots in Bohemia.

First step - get into the closet - way in the back - and dig out the boxes I had stuffed in there years ago. A challenge in itself.

Second step - find out just exactly what was in those boxes. Another huge challenge - going thru all the pictures and newspaper clippings and documents, etc. that my family had accumulated for years and years. This took hours.

Third step - Now we're getting somewhere.......I found my grandfather's birth record. My grandmother must have given it to me awhile back. My grandfather had come to America in about 1906. He was born in 1901 in Bohemia and during the 1970s my grandparents had made several trips back to the home land. He must have picked it up on one of those trips as the date on it was in the 70s.

Fourth step - Figure out just what the heck the birth record said - since it's all in Czech. A daunting task.

A few months ago a good friend of mine, who is Slovak, told me about a website he had run across where you can find penpals all over the world. He had found a couple of people that lived near where his family was from in Slovakia and had contacted them. He'd had a lot of success with them helping him find his family there. I decided to give it a try. I now have two wonderful ladies, Mila and Jana, that live in the Czech Republic as penpals and both live within about 20 miles of where my grandfather was born.

I sent Mila a copy of the birth record and she emailed it back to me - translated! The birth record was a wealth of information - more than I had even hoped for.

The first thing I learned was that my grandfather's name was not James, or Jim as he was known, but Vaclav. I'd never heard this name and wondered if James was the translation for it. However, I found that the translation for it is actually Wenceslas, as in "Good King" the Christmas song. Since there is no good translation for the name into English, most men with the name Vaclav chose James when they came to America.

The birth record also, of course, had his birth date, which I already knew. The next thing was where he was born. The town's name was Libusin (pronounced Leebusheen). I was off to find out where Libusin was and anything I could about the town. Unfortunately, the only thing I could find, that I could actually read, was that the town was in the Czech Republic. That was a huge help. :-(

I emailed Jana and asked her if she was familiar with the town and she told me that it was about 10 miles from her home. I emailed Mila with the same question and she told me that she was also familiar with it, but couldn't tell me anything about it. However, a few days later she sent me a couple of Czech websites that had pictures of the town on them!!

When I was going through my boxes I found a couple of pictures of my grandfather standing in front of a building. He had written on the pictures that it was where he had been born. Imagine my surprise when I found a picture of the exact same building on a website and it had the street name with it!! Now I'm getting somewhere!

Next on the birth record was my great-grandfather's name, his birthday, where he was born and what he did for a living. Then, my great-grandmother's name, her birthday, and that she was the daughter of a farmer. WOW!!! The info didn't stop there either!!!! The names of my GREAT-GREAT grandparents were on the record also!!

Armed with information I went to search for anything I could find on my long-lost ancestors......which ended up amounting to.....Nothing.

I'm not giving up. With the help of Mila and Jana I'm going to find my roots in the Czech Republic some day. Hopefully some day soon.