Lutovsky Project

Let's Be Frank....Part 2 of 2 The Tale of 5 Franks The over use of František didn't end in Bohemia. Once our ancestors...and all Lutovskys... made it to America it seems as if Frank, the American version of František, became the new favorite name...and the thorn in my side. All of the research was falling into place and I was moving right along. I found all kinds of information regarding Frank (who will now be known as "Frank #1"), highlighted below.  He was my Grandfather's brother from Generation 0 of the Lutovsky clan's beginning in America. I had found his wife, his kids...so I thought...and I made a new friend.   Adrienne, her husband Ben and their new baby Jillian I would like to introduce everyone to my new friend Adrienne Lutovsky. Adrienne and I met stumbling over each other researching Frank, since Adrienne is a direct descendent of a Frank Lutovsky. We thought this was so great. Getting to know a relative that we didn't know existed, we were wor...

Let's be Frank...or should I say...Let's be František? Part 1 of 2 I have seriously struggled with this very simple concept...is it wrong to poke fun of your ancestors from a couple hundred years ago..........if they were dumb asses? Of course, I'm sure that they didn't think they were dumb asses, and that they were just dutifully following traditions. And I know that they couldn't possibly have known that 300 years in the future they'd have an even bigger dumb ass descendent with a computer powered by electricity doing genealogy researching trying to piece their lives together...and then teasing them for naming their children all the same names. But this pretty much sums up this post I am typing right now. They clearly loved the names František and Anna. In all fairness though, it wasn't just the people in Bohemia who would give all their children the same names. I'm battling with this same thing with my Mother's Italian ancestors. Most of them were...

Spotlight on Slapy I'm interrupting my regularly planned blog to bring you this recent development about Slapy...which is pronounced "sloppy"...I'm not making this up. Just as a reminder, the map of Czech Republic that I posted earlier had several farming villages circled where I have found Lutovsky ancestors had lived. One of the villages is Slapy. Here's a close up of that map again. Below is another map, but this one from 1932 of the farming village of Slapy. Below the diagram of the houses is a list of the residents from that time with their house numbers. 44 houses existed in Slapy then. You can see where I highlighted below the diagram that house #14 was occupied by a Lutovsky at this time. However, I also have records of Lutovskys' living in houses #27 (and this is a very important house which has our attention at the moment...but more about that below...and also in my next blog post), #30 and #12. The records I have start from about the 1830s and go up...

Where is Southern Bohemia? When John Lutovsky imigrated to the US, Czech Republic was still called Bohemia, and would rem ain as Bohemia for another 27 years before it became Czechoslovakia. In all the paperwork that I have copies of, the Lutovsky clan lived consistently in the same areas for the past 300 years at least. I still have more to discover on where they were at more than 300 years ago, but I have a feeling probably not too far away, if away at all. Below is a map of modern day Czech Republic. I put circles around the areas where our L utovsky ancestors have been living. The top circle is of the town of Tábor. Tábor is both a town and a district, and today, districts don't really correspond to anything that we have in the US. Although, if we think of them as a county, that's probably close enough. The districts used to function similarly to how counties function here in the US, but in 2003 they basically took any governing responsibility, power and decision making awa...