Shirley

Do any of you know Cousin Shirleys last name? Gene...what? Theres a website where her mom is listed as having $$ in an account that was never paid out, and wouldn't it be fun to let Shirley know its there?

http://www.missingmoney.com/Main/Index.cfm

Other Interests...lol

Ok, while grandkids are WAY bigger in my life than their actual size warrants, I've also been checking on their past, and mine.

Specifically, the HESCH family tree. Wanna see something COOL?

That's the name Johann Hesch, written in SUTTERLIN , the old script used in church record books in Bohemia way back when. This is from an entry in Cimer, Bohemia, in 1839. Yes, it looks like hnpf, but the vertical stroke of the "p" is actually an s, the bump is c, and the f-looking letter is h. Honest!

Evidently, about 1200, German families were encouraged to go settle that part of Europe, since it was now under the control of a German guy.

I'm not sure when Hesches moved there, but we found two in the mid-1600's, so it was at least 250 years before they emmigrated to the US.

You'd think that they would have assimilated in that time, right? But Nooo, the two ethnic groups didn't particularly care for each other, and stayed separate as much as possible.

There were German churches in German towns, and Czech churches in Czech towns, and since the CHURCH did the recording of births and marriages and deaths, that's where we're looking.

The biggest problem is reading the handwriting of whatever priest was stationed there at the time. The records are a mix of German, Czech and liturgical Latin. Depending on the year, they're more, or less, decipherable.

AMAZING that those records are online, right?

The Czech government is digitizing them even as we speak. Village by village, new old books are showing up on this site: SOA v TREBONI and we only need to wait till they get to the H's...lol

According to their index, the town we need is Dolní Žďár (Nieder-Mühl), which is in the Jindřichův Hradec region, close to Horní Pěna, where the German church was.

What fascinates me the most is that some solitary priest wrote those names on the day a child was baptized, or a marriage took place, or someone died. Then, he closed the book, blew out the candle and went to bed, thinking that was it.....

The books stayed on some shelf for 2 or 3 hundred years, and now, in 2008, they're being re-discovered and distributed by something as bizarre as the internet.

AND, they're doing CATHOLIC records in exactly the part of Bohemia we need! Those Hesches needed discovering, I guess, so I'd stop thinking they wanted to forget.

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BTW, if you want to see a page in those Treboni records, click a letter on the left, fer instance C....when that comes up, click Cimer...and you'll get a chart of something called Kniha which means Book.

N is births, O is marriages, and Z is deaths. The index books are at the bottom, and you have to "page around" to find the H's (they're..ahem..in alphabetical order...lol) and that'll give you a snimek (page) number you'll need to find in the appropriate Kniha.

The Kniha are by year, ok?

Gawd, this is FUN!

They're GRAND kids!!

LOL...in the interests of equal time (but mostly because I missed 'em) I spent last evening with KQ and Mason.

"You honestly think I made that mess??"

OK, it was a little humid last night, but just look at all those curls! For a few minutes, Mase had a Mohawk, but then, it curled...awww!

I brought a kalidescope for KQ, but she was most interested in the plastic tube it came in. Mason's just waiting for his chance at it, here...lol

KQ is talking a blue streak--she can communicate beautifully with fairly thick adults and she's only 2 years old. The words tumble out as fast as she moves...lol Mason just turns those huge brown eyes on you and giggles. His tummy's been tickled so many times in his short life that he's developed strong arms to hold heads AWAY from it!

Profound thoughts just before sleep

Could it be that we live longer these days because we're the first generation to have our own teeth all our lives?

Okay, so maybe it's one reason then.

More baby pics...ok?

LOL...I forgot to show you her eyes! How amazing the world must be to a newborn, huh?

Leggies just like her mom had...long and skinny :^) LOL!

BABY PICS!

OK...here's the newest member of the family, Josephine Frances Murphy, born yesterday afternoon. She's 8 pounds and 20" long and totally adorable!

Yeah, she CAN hold her head up, and she's not even 24 hours old...and she nugs like she invented it!

Her mom's doing fine, a bit sore from all that pushing (not to mention the subsequent c-section), and daddy said he spent this morning just holding her and watching her sleep.....

Life is GOOD.