North Moravia_Genealogical Sources

Fundamentally there must be stated that for the area of today's Czech Republic civil records have been at first recorded in the year 1939 (also look at foreword and introduction in 'Die Zivilstandsregister im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren' [look at literature VI]). Therefore the genealogist normally has to rely on parish books. The area North Moravia and as well as that of the political county Sternberg was nearly exclusively inhabited by Catholics. Pfohl [look at literature X] lists in the year 1910 for whole Moravia only 86.069 Protestants, 37.989 Jewish and 6794 other confessors as well as 61.786 members of the Czechoslovacian Church and 49.026 non-denominational people, but on the other hand 2,421.220 Catholics. Members of the denominational minorities and Jews are appearing only occasionally within the county Sternberg.

The parish priests of the Protestant parish have been at first allowed to record parish books for private usage in the year 1781 through the tolerance commission of Joseph II. The entries however had to be presented to the Catholic parish book recorders and had to be copied through them, because only those books had official evidental value. In the year 1829 the Protestant parish priests did get the right to record official parish books. The entries however had to be copied to the Catholic parish books until 1849. For this reason there are only very few seperate Protestant parish books, which normally start in the last third of the 19th century.

The Jewish parish books did have offical evidental value until 1797, after that the Catholic parish book recorders did record the books until 1868, in which year the Jewish parish books did get back their offical evidential value.

(source: 'Die Kirchenbücher der Schönhengstgauer Sprachinsel', Josef Bezdek, Sudetendeutsche Familienforschung, 3. Jg. 1930/31)

It must be annotated that the above described denominational situation is only correct for the time period after about 1680. As the Swedish did occupy the towns from 1642-1648/50, there have been for example in the town Sternberg without exception Protestant marriages usual until about 1670. Afterwards after a short transition period only Catholic marriages again [Heiratsbücher Sternberg, look at literature, VIII].

To the history of the (Catholic) parish books are the following orders concerning the recording of the books through the Austrian court provable, which are listed in chronological order (look also at Blaschka [look at literature VI]):

- 1770 ban to name the father after his farming land without mentioning his surname, house numbers have been introduced since 1771 (Note: the house numbers were changed in some places after 1800 because of high building activities, also around 1880 for the reason of introducing new land records)

-1784 in Moravia the German language was introduced as official language, this probably was also the case for the parish books, at the same intruduction of a new tabular form pattern

- since the 20th Februar, 1784 through commission sperarated books for baptism, marriage and death cases

- ordered though court decree of 19th July ,1784 recording of each place seperately in an independant book

- 1790 indroduction of the indexes, which are listing the taken parish book events chronolocigally in order of the first letter of the surname

- 1794 mentioning of the bride or mother through citing the territory and place of her origin and the names of her parents.

- if children have been illegitimate or extramatrial the recording of the fathers name in the parish book was prohibited, an exception was only possible in the case that the father named himself as the father of the child and appeared with two witnesses at the parish book recorder, did he marry the mother it was possible to add his name to the baptizm entry with his particularly agreement (legitimatio per subsequens matrimonium 1795). In consequence of that, the father's search at illegitimate children is nearly without chance.