Porta fontium

Main page of The Porta fontium https://www.portafontium.eu/

The Porta fontium is a great resource for exploring Czech records. With some patience and research, you can find records about your family, especially if you know the village or town where they came from. It wouldn’t be impossible to scroll through records in the hopes of finding them without that information but you would definitely be challenged without an index. Let’s look.

​I revisited this site recently and it seems more intuitive to use. For example, if you want to search for records for your ancestors in a particular village or town, you can choose Matriky or registries. From there you can choose what type of records and the years: catholic, Greek, evangelical and others. Once you choose the religion, you will be taken to a page where you choose your village. They have these alphabetized which helps. Once you open up the village you will see the types of records and years that they are available. The writing is in the old Kurrent script so it might take a bit of time to figure out letters and then translations but once you know what your ancestor’s name looks like in that writing, you will find yourself recognizing it. Finding the records is the first step, translating them can be time consuming but a fun challenge.
 
I chose to look at Ostatni (Other) and it contains links to many other areas including maps. I have an interest in Bavaria which is included on this site. I was able to find older maps of the area under:  Wandkarten | Porta fontium.  Some of these maps are from the late seventeenth and eighteen hundred.
 
I am sure there are other intriguing documents to uncover on this site. I hope if you have ancestors in what was Bohemia or is now the Czech Republic that you will take some time and check out this site. Happy Researching!