One warning first. Searching parish registers is not like searching Google. You do not type in a surname and get a list. The books are scanned pages that you leaf through, and the only road to an ancestor leads through a place and a year. If you know where and when your grandfather was born, you will find him within an hour. If you know only the surname, it is much harder; a rare name, the surname map at kdejsme.cz or a register with an index of names may help. That is why the first three steps are not in the archive at all.
1. Open the drawer
Birth and marriage certificates, a death certificate, a funeral notice, a military service book, a certificate of domicile. Each of them has a name, a date and a place. You are looking for the oldest person whose place and year of birth you know for certain. Usually that will be a great-grandmother or great-grandfather born around 1900. Their birth certificate is usually still somewhere at home, and if not, ask the oldest relatives while you still can. Record the conversation.
2. Gather the family documents
Write down the names, dates and villages from birth certificates, wedding certificates and family notes. Keep a reference to each document so you can compare the information with the records you find.
3. Find the parish
This is where most attempts end. Registers are not arranged by village but by parish, and a small village had no church. Horákov near Brno belonged to the parish of Tvarožná, Hostěnice to Pozořice. When you type "Horákov" into the archive, a good portal suggests the parish itself (ActaPublica can search by village). If not, a map helps: look for the nearest church with a rectory, usually in the neighbouring town. Beware of two traps. The parish may have changed over time when a new rectory was founded. And a village with a German name in the books (Borstendorf is Bořitov, Hostienitz is Hostěnice) is searched in the archive indexes under its Czech name.
4. Choose the archive
The registers are divided among eight archives roughly by region, but by the regional borders of 1960, so there are exceptions at the edges. Each archive has its own portal and each works a little differently, but all of them are free.
| Where your ancestor lived | Archive | Portal | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Moravia, Zlín Region except the Vsetín area, the Prostějov area, and Jihlava, Třebíč and Žďár in the Vysočina Region | Moravian Land Archives in Brno (Moravský zemský archiv) | ActaPublica | search by village; census sheets 1857 to 1921 separately at mza.cz/scitacioperaty |
| Moravian-Silesian Region, Olomouc Region except the Prostějov area, the Vsetín area | Land Archives in Opava (Zemský archiv v Opavě) | ZAO Digital Archive | parish registers and other sources for northern Moravia and Silesia |
| Prague | Prague City Archives (Archiv hlavního města Prahy) | AHMP Archive Catalogue | also the Prague population register 1830 to 1910 and, gradually, the censuses 1869 to 1921 |
| Central Bohemia | State Regional Archives in Prague (SOA v Praze) | eBadatelna | registers and other digitised records of the archive |
| South Bohemia, the Pelhřimov area | State Regional Archives in Třeboň (SOA v Třeboni) | DigiArchiv | registers, chronicles, censuses from the district archives |
| Plzeň and Karlovy Vary Regions | State Regional Archives in Plzeň (SOA v Plzni) | Porta fontium | run together with the Bavarian archives |
| Ústí nad Labem and Liberec Regions | State Regional Archives in Litoměřice (SOA v Litoměřicích) | SOA Litoměřice Digital Reading Room | the link "E-badatelna" on the archive's site soalitomerice.cz; on 25 October 2026 it reported that it was temporarily out of service for technical reasons, so try again later or write to the archive's reading room |
| Hradec Králové and Pardubice Regions, the Havlíčkův Brod and Semily areas | State Regional Archives in Hradec Králové (formerly Zámrsk) | Archive online (ARON) | books can often be downloaded whole |
| Jewish registers from the whole country | National Archives (Národní archiv) | VadeMeCum NA | collection HBMa, books 1784 to 1949 |
Slovakia has its church registers free on FamilySearch (a large part can be searched by name), Austria on the Matricula portal. An ancestor from Volhynia, Vojvodina or Chicago is a different story and a different article.
5. Find the book
For the parish you will see a list of books: births, marriages, deaths, each with a range of years, and from 1784 usually each kind separately. Before 1784 everything is usually in one book. Choose the kind by the event you are looking for, and the years by what you know. Larger parishes also have the book divided into sections by village: in the Tvarožná book of births 1784 to 1811 the Horákov section is one continuous block of thirty images, not records scattered through the whole book. Many books also have an index, either at the end or as a separate book. And that is step six.
6. Use the index
From 1790 the books were supposed to have an alphabetical index: surname, first name, year, village, page. It looks like this:
Index of births, Pozořice 1784 to 1834, letter R
1796. | Rzitschanek Niklas | Pozořitz | 26.
Mikuláš Říčánek, born 1796 in Pozořice, record on page 26.
Moravian Land Archives, Brno, E 67, book 1590, Pozořice, index of births 1784 to 1834, image 87
Even an index takes a little practice. The year appears only once in the margin for the whole year, and the village column next to Mikuláš is written half a line lower than the name, so at first glance it seems to belong to Holubice; that he is from Pozořice is confirmed only by the baptism record on page 26. The priest wrote the index as he heard the names, so Říčánek appears here as Rzitschanek and two lines lower as Rzitschanekin, with the ending -in that marks a woman in German. So translate the surname into German in your head: Ř is Rz, Č is tsch or cz, Š is sch, and ž and ě the priest wrote as best he could. The number at the end of the line is the page of the book (the heading says "Seite der Matrik"), not the image number on the website. To find the image, open the book roughly in the middle, look at the page number and adjust.
7. Read the record
Here is a marriage record from 1835 from Hostěnice. It looks frightening, but it has a clear skeleton. From left to right: date, house numbers, the groom with his parents and village, religion, age, status, the bride with her parents, religion, age, status, witnesses.
Marriage, Hostěnice, 15 September 1835
15. September 1835, Hostienitz, Joannes Hoenigsberger, Cooperator. 44 / 13. Franz Hromek, Viertler in Horakow, Herrschaft Sokolnitz, Sohn des Georg Hromek, Viertlers in Horakow, und seines Eheweibs Innocenza gebornen Neužil … katholisch, 25, ledig. Marianna, Tochter des Martin Říčánek, Häuslers in Hostienitz, Herrschaft Posořitz, und seiner Ehegattin Josepha … katholisch, 22, ledig. Beistände: Anton Florian(?), Wagnermeister in Hostienitz; Jakob Kudla, Bauer in Horakow.
On 15 September 1835 in Hostěnice the curate Jan Hoenigsberger married František Hromek, quarter-farmer of Horákov no. 44 on the Sokolnice estate, son of Jiří Hromek, quarter-farmer of the same place, Catholic, 25, single, and Marianna of no. 13, daughter of Martin Říčánek, cottager of Hostěnice on the Pozořice estate, and his wife Josefa, Catholic, 22, single. Witnesses Antonín Florián (the signature is illegible), master wheelwright of Hostěnice, and Jakub Kudla, farmer of Horákov.
Do not read it letter by letter. Look for what you know: the name you expect, the house number, the year. Once you find "Hromek", the rest falls apart into columns, and the columns are always in the same order. What you cannot read, skip. For the age and the house you only need the digits, and digits in Kurrent (the old German handwriting) are written the same way as today.
8. Take a step back one generation
And here is the whole trick. The marriage record does not only say when František married. It says he was 25, that he was from house no. 44 in Horákov and that his father was Jiří Hromek. Those are three facts, and each is a key to another book:
- Age 25 in 1835 means a birth around 1810. Give or take two years; ages in the registers are often estimates.
- Horákov belongs to the parish of Tvarožná, a different parish from the one where the wedding took place. Open the Tvarožná book of births 1784 to 1811, Horákov section.
- Jiří Hromek, house 44 is what you look for in it. On folio 55 there is: 3 December 1810, house 44, Franz, father Georg Hromek, quarter-farmer, mother Genofefa Neužilin.
With one record you have gained the exact date of birth and the mother's name as it was written down right after the birth. The marriage names her too, but differently (see the box below). The mother's name leads to another marriage: Jiří Hromek and Genovefa Neužilová must have married before December 1810. Weddings were usually held in the bride's parish; Genovefa was from Mokrá, which also belonged to Tvarožná. And indeed, the Tvarožná book of marriages has their wedding in May 1810. Out of it fall their parents, and you are in the 18th century. Every generation is one such step: a marriage gives the age and the parents, a baptism gives the date and the mother, then a marriage again. Roughly thirty years per generation, four steps per century.
Beware of records that contradict each other
The marriage record of 1835 gives the groom's mother as "Innocenza, née Neužilová". The baptism record of 1810 says Genovefa. Which is right? The baptism, because it was written down immediately and from the facts. At the wedding 25 years later the priest mixed the name up with Jiří's previous wife, Inocencie, who died in January 1810. The same record also describes František as single, although he had been widowed half a year earlier. Such contradictions are common in the registers, and the only defence is not to trust one record until a second one confirms it.
9. Write down where everything comes from
For every fact, note the book and the page: "Moravian Land Archives, Brno, E 67, book 1983, fol. 55" is an address at which you will find the record ten years from now, and so will anyone else. It will save you hours when you need to check something, and it is the only difference between a family tree and a list of names. In our application every fact therefore has a number that leads to an image of the record; at home a spreadsheet or a notebook is enough.
Traps everyone falls into
- First names get translated. Franz is František, Georg is Jiří, Wenzl is Václav, Johann is Jan. But Marianna is not Marie; it is a separate name, Mariana. In Latin they are Franciscus, Georgius, Wenceslaus, Joannes. One person has three names in the books.
- Surnames are spelled as they were heard. Říčánek is Rzičžanek, Rzizanek, Rzitschanek and Řičánek in one parish within fifty years. Women get the ending -in or -ová depending on the language.
- Baptism is not birth. Older books give only the date of baptism, usually the day after the birth. Burial is not death.
- Months written with a digit. 7bris is September (the seventh month of the old calendar), 8bris October, 9bris November, Xbris December. Not July and August.
- Age is an estimate. Especially for the dead: "70 years" means an old person. Look for the year of birth within a range of five years.
- A child born out of wedlock has only a mother. From 1770 the father's name could be recorded only if he came forward himself. The chain continues through the mother, if at all; a note "legit." in the margin means the parents married later.
When to leave it to someone else
Nine steps sound simple, and the first two or three days are usually wonderful. Then comes a book in which the only legible part of a record is the house number, a parish with a ten year gap, or an ancestor who appeared out of nowhere. At that point, count how many more evenings you want to give it, and whether you enjoy the old handwriting or the result. If it is the result, send us the name, year and village of the person you got stuck on. We will find their record for free, usually within two working days, and show you where the road leads from there. What to do next is then up to you and the pricing.
