"Some family trees have beautiful leaves, and some have just a bunch of nuts. Remember, it is the nuts that make the tree worth shaking." - Unknown

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 to the late 1800s.

And it turns out that the Lutovsky who occupied house #14 and worked this farm in 1932 was Bohuslav Lutovsky who was the 9th generation of Lutovsky to own the land. Below is a photo of Bohuslav plowing his field with a translation of the text.

Bohuslav Lutovsky in the field

Translation of text on the right: Slapy #14, In 1654, the land of Vybornych (meaning the empty land that was soon to belong to the Vybornych family) was still empty, the family of Vybornych is mentioned here around 1680. Since 1723, the landowner Vojtech Lutovsky, originally from Libejice, has been the owner of the land, who this year is marrying Annuroz Svatonova from Slap. The Lutovsky family is still active here and to this day it is the 9th generation of Lutovsky family in Slapy, house #14. In 1961, the house was reconstructed to its present form and, according to the chronicler in the village, it stood out very nicely.

A side note: If you notice in the text above the photo, after the number 14 it says "Grunt." That is an old Czech word for peasant. I wrote a blog about the words peasant and farmer being interchangeable many years ago. Although, still here in this article from 1932, peasant was still being used instead of farmer with no derogatory connotations. 

I haven't placed Bohuslav into our family tree yet, but I am working on it. It seems kind of impossible that in a village of 44 houses that there would have been two completely unrelated Lutovsky families. I have also heard that Lutovsky is not a common surname at all, and there only seems to be about 150 or so Lutovskys living in Czech Republic currently.

Back to House #27 in Slapy, which is right in the middle of the map above, right on the pond. This house has all of our focus at the moment because of an odd coincidence. I have records of our Lutovsky family living in house #27 starting sometime between 1840 and 1867.

Cousin Lutovsky/Zdeněk Lutovský

Zdeněk Lutovský

I'd like to introduce everyone to Zdeněk Lutovský. We have connected over social media several years ago just because we both have the same surname. We have never really known if we are related or not, although, I have told Zdenek a couple of times that he looks more like my cousins than I do...because he really does look more like my cousins than I do. You can decide for yourselves.

Zdeněk has also been doing research on his Lutovsky ancestors and just recently has discovered that some of his relatives lived also in Slapy, and in house #27. What a coincidence that is! I said wait a minute! Some distant relatives of mine also lived in Slapy, house #27.

The research is ongoing, but at this point we know, as I mentioned above, that my/our Lutovsky relatives lived in house #27 beginning sometime between 1840 and 1867. Zdeněk has discovered that his Lutovský relatives lived in house #27 in 1902 and beyond. So, we have a gap of about 30 years where we're not sure who was living in house #27, however, I am guessing that whoever lived there is going to be in both of our family trees, and this is probably the link we have been looking for.

Or, it's going to be the most outstanding coincidence the world has ever seen. Two completely unrelated Lutovsky families living in the same house one after the other in the late 1800's in a village of only 44 houses. That seems highly unlikely and improbable, but it is a slight possibility. That we are related through this (or these) common relatives makes much more sense and seems highly likely at this point, but research continues.

On another Side Note: The map above and the photo of Bohuslav Lutovsky plowing the field were sent to Zdeněk from the current Mayor of Slapy. Zdeněk emailed him and asked for his help, and he did help. He sent the above information to him, plus some other information which I will be covering in another blog post. So, thanks to the Mayor Slapy for this information!