From: pboren@rand.org (Pat Boren)
Newsgroups: soc.roots
Subject: Re: Austro-Hungarian Empire records
Date: 12 Oct 92 17:47:26 GMT
Organization: RAND Corporation.

>       My grandfather, John Paul Richter, and grandmother, Mary Magdalena
>Zalmenek, came from the village of Velka, Moravia, in what is now
>Czechoslovakia.  However, they were born and raised in what was then
>the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.  Where are the records of that deceased
>bureacracy now ?

For genealogical research of places that exist in *present-day*
Czechoslovakia, I highly recommend using the services offered
through the embassy in Washington, D.C.  They will conduct two types
of search:  running account or individual vital statistics.

  The running account is based on information you provide about
  one ancestor.  They use it trace parents, grandparents, etc.

  The individual vital record is where you want only one specific
  item found:  e.g., birth record for your ancestor.

The beauty of their searches (in my case, through local church
records) is that you do not have to provide much information.
Obviously, the more the better, but in my case I didn't have much.
I provided them with the following:

  John Hirkala, born early 1830s perhaps in Kucin, near Bardejov,
	Slovakia.

I asked for a running account and received more information than
I ever dreamed for:  birthdates of "Janos," his wife, and children,
and his marriage date (including maiden name of wife).  And the same
information for three generations back (i.e., he was listed as a kid
to his parents along with brothers and sisters).  All told, I got
4 generations of information.  Wonderful stuff!

On the forms you receive from the embassy, you're asked how much
money you'd be willing to spend.  I said $100, and this came in at
$67.50.  The archives/records centers in Cz. conduct the research
and then let you know the cost--the embassy releases the information
to you after you pay.

Two more points about the embassy search:  It's important to put
a second town that your town is near (or county).  For example, there
are two Kucin's within 100 miles of each other.  Second, the record
searches are accurate.  I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to
Kucin last year.  I stopped in Presov, the small city that has the
archive center that did my research.  I was able to study the
handwritten church ledger for 10 crowns (35 cents).  Yes, it's much
cheaper in person, but I was glad that I found no mistakes or
omissions in what they had sent me.

Write   Embassy of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic
	3900 Linnean Ave, NW
	Washington, D.C.  20008
	(202) 363-6315

I must share a personal story to let you all know it's not hopeless
if you know nothing more than "we're Slovakian."  My uncle took a
heritage tour with a minister from Pennsylvania who knew a bit about
the history of the local PA town.  He knew that the settlers were
coal miners and came from eastern Slovakia, and that's about it.  On
the tour in Slovakia, at a dinner with school teachers and doctors,
the minister simply asked "ever know anyone named Hirkala?"  One
woman stated she'd had a teacher by that name who lived in Zborov.
The next day the tour bus pulled up to this man's house in Zborov,
and through an interpreter my uncle found of there are many
Hirkala's in the town of Kucin.  That's when I wrote for records,
taking a stab at Kucin being "our" home.  The records proved it
conclusively when we found John's son, John, my great uncle, with
the same birthdate we already knew.

I guess people don't move much from their family's original home
towns, so names can be localized.

Good luck in your searches.

Pat
-- 

	Patricia Boren
	pboren@rand.org