I much enjoyed reading your musings; even more so because our family trees overlap in the Sokoli Dolezal line. I always love running across distant relatives through the ancestors that I find!
Joanna, I've heard of you through Mary Levesque. Might we continue this conversation by email? You can reach me at dolezaljosh@gmail.com. I'd love to hear more about your connection to Sokolí. So far, any attempts at turning up living relatives there have been fruitless. There might be some Nováčeks still living nearby, since Maria Obrdlíková's eldest son, František Nováček, was listed as head of household in later census data. But Karel Doležal immigrated, his sister Maria died at age ten, and the absence of information about his younger sister Fransisca's death leaves a lot of ambiguity about whether she had any children in Moravia or whether she might have immigrated, too.
Enjoyed this post very much. I am still in the academy in part because I am divorced (14 yrs now) and a full time parent. My sons are older, in the mid-20s, but still live with me. My career provides stability. I use family history as an escape (75% Czech, 25% Polish). I hope you get to share the history with your children at some point. In 2017 after a travel study program, my three sons joined me in Prague. We then spent several days in the Svec ancestral town and had a great time. We hiked, drank beer, and enjoyed our time together exploring the family history. Although it has been over a century since a Svec walked those streets, we reconnected to place and now that place lives on in our memory. We all still talk about it as a unique family moment of togetherness.
Good to hear from you, Michael. I hope to have a family experience like yours after I do a little preliminary recon this year. My children are still quite young, so I imagine it will mean more to them when they are older. My first trip to the Czech Republic in 2007 was much less purposeful. I had no knowledge of ancestral villages and no leads for living relatives. By chance I took a bus to Vimperk and hiked that area for a few days. I was struck by the similarity between that landscape and my childhood home in northwestern Montana. In fact, Czechia seemed like a cross between Nebraska (where my Doležals immigrated) and the gentler mountains in Montana (where my great grandfather settled after losing the farm). But some of that was also seeing what I wanted to see. I hope to see things a little more clearly this summer.
I much enjoyed reading your musings; even more so because our family trees overlap in the Sokoli Dolezal line. I always love running across distant relatives through the ancestors that I find!
Joanna, I've heard of you through Mary Levesque. Might we continue this conversation by email? You can reach me at dolezaljosh@gmail.com. I'd love to hear more about your connection to Sokolí. So far, any attempts at turning up living relatives there have been fruitless. There might be some Nováčeks still living nearby, since Maria Obrdlíková's eldest son, František Nováček, was listed as head of household in later census data. But Karel Doležal immigrated, his sister Maria died at age ten, and the absence of information about his younger sister Fransisca's death leaves a lot of ambiguity about whether she had any children in Moravia or whether she might have immigrated, too.
Enjoyed this post very much. I am still in the academy in part because I am divorced (14 yrs now) and a full time parent. My sons are older, in the mid-20s, but still live with me. My career provides stability. I use family history as an escape (75% Czech, 25% Polish). I hope you get to share the history with your children at some point. In 2017 after a travel study program, my three sons joined me in Prague. We then spent several days in the Svec ancestral town and had a great time. We hiked, drank beer, and enjoyed our time together exploring the family history. Although it has been over a century since a Svec walked those streets, we reconnected to place and now that place lives on in our memory. We all still talk about it as a unique family moment of togetherness.
Good to hear from you, Michael. I hope to have a family experience like yours after I do a little preliminary recon this year. My children are still quite young, so I imagine it will mean more to them when they are older. My first trip to the Czech Republic in 2007 was much less purposeful. I had no knowledge of ancestral villages and no leads for living relatives. By chance I took a bus to Vimperk and hiked that area for a few days. I was struck by the similarity between that landscape and my childhood home in northwestern Montana. In fact, Czechia seemed like a cross between Nebraska (where my Doležals immigrated) and the gentler mountains in Montana (where my great grandfather settled after losing the farm). But some of that was also seeing what I wanted to see. I hope to see things a little more clearly this summer.
It is so beautiful to see life as, “wild and precious.” The intrinsic value of the poem of one life; immeasurable!