To be honest, finding a Blaha in the Czech Republic without any hint of family location was a bit daunting to me.
Vaclav Blaha came to the United States about 1881 according to one census record. Vaclav, or James as he was also called, was in Minnesota by 1885 when he married Mary Henych on 16 February 1885. They were married at the Church of St. Stanislaus in St. Paul, Minnesota. In the marriage record at St. Stan's were the names of his parents: Mathias Blaha and Maria Vones.
Looking through church records did not reveal any other obvious relatives of Vaclav in the area. Most of the sponsors for Vaclav and Mary's children were relatives on Mary' side. I thought of him as an "orphan".
The first breakthrough came in the 1905 Minnesota State Census. Vaclav and family were living at 621 Bay St. in St. Paul. With the family were living 2 girls with the surname Havel. Their occupations were listed as "cook" and "housework". It seemed likely they were not doing that work in Vaclav's home.
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1905 Minnesota State Census, St. Paul, Ward 5, James Blaha and family on 621 Bay St.
Retrieved from Ancestry.com. |
Since the girls were born in Minnesota, I started searching for them in records. I found a likely family in Rice County, Minnesota! They lived in Erin Township in the 1900 census and there were 2 sisters who fit the approximate ages of the girls living with Vaclav in 1905. The parents were Martin and Marie Havel.
The
Dalby Database was helpful. Martin's parents were Havel and Vohnek. The transcription gave Marie Havel's maiden name as "Vonesh". Very close! I started looking for other Vones/Vonesh families. Finding other Vones was not as easy as putting the surname in the search engine. Old fashioned genealogy was in order. Marie Vones Havel's obituary was priceless! Not only did it give details about her life, it gave her place of origin,
Drahotěšice. It also said that James Blaha from St. Paul attended the funeral. Could that be our Vaclav?
More research into the family revealed that Marie's parents also immigrated. Finding them was a page by page search. Their surname was indexed as "Wenoch". They were found in the Wheatland, Rice County 1885 Minnesota Census. Here's the interesting part. In going through other family members' records, it turns out not only was Mathias a "Vones" but Anna's maiden name was "Blaha".
The place of orign,
Drahotěšice, was so important. Without that information, finding Vaclav's place of origin would have been quite unlikely.
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| Drahotěšice, Google Maps |
Luckily, many of the church records for the Trebon area are online. I started by searching for the Vones children in the records. Here is Anna Vones' baptismal record:
Notice the beautiful handwriting! Not all records are this clear and legible! I didn't know at the time how relevant all the info in this record was.
Searching in the Trebon records is a page by page search. No search engines here. At the same time, finding a record is a bit more rewarding than doing a record search on Ancestry.
What is lovely about these Czech records is that they are packed with information. Not only does it give you the child's name and their parents, but also their grandparents and where they lived. At the time I was searching these records, I did not know if one or both of these lines was connected to Vaclav.
I continued to search for Vaclav's record. I came up with a number of Vaclavs, but none whose parents were Matej Blaha and Marie Vones. There was one Vaclav born in June of 1862, but his mother was a Nedved. I bookmarked it and kept searching.
I spread my search out to other places in the vicinity with Blahas with no luck. Either I couldn't read the records or the parents' names didn't fit.
A confluence of events took place. Arnie, the grandson of Vaclav, had a DNA match to a woman on FTDNA. This was an autosomal DNA match and FTDNA estimated that Arnie and EM were 2nd-4th cousins. That was exciting. More exciting was that fact that she had roots in
Drahotěšice! At this point, none of the surnames seemed to match.
Then, I enlisted Blanka Lednicka to do a "Family Localization". I sent her the info I had about Marie Havel, her parents, Anna Blaha and Matej Vones. I sent her the possible Vaclav records I had accumulated. The surnames of the few close matches were included. She took the info and ran with it.
The results were gratifying, even if I didn't do it myself! The record for Vaclav that I had bookmarked earlier, was indeed our Vaclav. How did she explain the difference in Vaclav's marriage record saying his mother was Vones and this woman's maiden name was Nedved?
Marie was born in 1820 in Drahotěšice. Her father, as you may or may not be able to read, is Bartholomew Nedved. (Now you'll appreciate the handwriting in Anna Vones' record above.)
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Marie Nedved's Baptismal Record, Sevetin, Baptisms 1809-1848; Book 6, image 24; Trebon Archives
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Marie Nedved was married to Jan Vones vulgo Blaha. The marriage record gives the same parents: Bartholomew Nedved and Katerina Bilekova. This is when she became Marie Vones. Jan and Marie had at least nine children. Only about three of the Vones children lived into adulthood.
The next important piece of information provided was Jan Vones' death in 1858.
In 1859, Marie Nedved Vones married Matej Blaha. Often in marriage records, it will be recorded that the bride is a widow and whose widow she is. Marie's record does not give that info. However, the parents are the same.
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| Sevetin Marriage Records 1836-1878, Book 17, Drahotěšice, image 43, Trebon Archives |
From the records found so far, it appears that Vaclav Blaha, son of Matej and Marie Blaha was their only child together. He was born on 10 June 1862 at Drahotěšice 9 and baptized on June 11, 1862.
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Baptismal Record of Vaclav Blaha
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The mystery is solved but the hunt continues. So much more was learned, but that'll be another day's blog.
