Last changed 2026-10-06 · first mapped 2026-10-01 Follow what changes.
Comes out as a sheet for the reading room — what to ask for, who holds it, and every link written out in full.
This place
Where to begin
You know your family came from Hrabišín. Here is the order I would work in, cheapest and easiest first — and what to do when that runs out.
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Work out which country your year belongs to
This is the step almost everybody skips, and it is the commonest reason a record that exists cannot be found. The ground did not move; the border did. A baptism here in one decade may sit in a different country's archive from one twenty years later.
Years Who governed Whose archive 1200–1526 Margraviate of Moravia no archive holds this yet 1526–1918 Austria — Margraviate of Moravia
actapublica · familysearch · anno 1918–1938 Czechoslovakia
actapublica 1938–1945 Reichsprotektorat Böhmen und Mähren
arolsen · bundesarchiv 1945–1992 Czechoslovakia
actapublica 1993–2026 Czechia
actapublica Do this: take the year you are looking for, find its row, and note the archive. That is the one to search — not the one the village is in today.
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Find the parish, because that is where the book was
Before civil registration, the parish priest kept the register. A village without its own church was written into a neighbour's book.
- Chapel in Benkov
- Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary
- All Saints church (Dlouhomilov)
- Church of Saint George (Libina)
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When you run out — and you will
Everything above is what this atlas knows. It is not everything there is. Nine places in ten on this map have never been surveyed by anybody, so a gap here is usually our silence rather than the record's absence.
Do this: write to the archive named in the era table for your year, even if we hold nothing for it. Then tell us what you found — a gap somebody has personally closed is the most useful thing a stranger can give this map.
The archives named above: actapublica · familysearch · anno · arolsen · bundesarchiv. What each one holds and why.
Whose archive this ground was
Hrabišín sits in Moravia and Silesia. Which empire held it decides which archive holds its records — and for some of these years that is not the archive you would guess.
| Years | Who held it | Whose archive that means |
|---|---|---|
| 1200–1526 | Margraviate of Moravia | no registers survive Before registers. |
| 1526–1918 | Austria — Margraviate of Moravia | Acta Publica · FamilySearch · ANNO — Austrian Newspapers Online Acta Publica has the Moravian and Silesian parish registers, free and without an account — the same exceptional provision as Bohemia. |
| 1918–1938 | Czechoslovakia | Acta Publica |
| 1938–1945 | Reichsprotektorat Böhmen und Mähren | Arolsen Archives · Bundesarchiv |
| 1945–1992 | Czechoslovakia | Acta Publica |
| 1993–2026 | Czechia | Acta Publica |
No volumes recorded here yet.
The ground worth walking
Within 7 km — 20 places · 6 parishes · 5 burial grounds. These neighbours hold 47 catalogued volumes between them.
A register belongs to a parish, not to a village. A hamlet with no church of its own was written into the book of the church it walked to — and that book is catalogued under the other place's name. This is the ground to search before concluding a record does not exist.
Correctly placed and unread. A gap here is this atlas's silence, not the record's — the registers may well exist and nobody has walked them.
The nearest parishes
A church is a parish and a parish is where a register is kept — the register of a hamlet with no church of its own is kept at the church it walked to, so the distance is the useful part. Wikidata's coverage is very uneven: 34,612 churches in England against 105 in central Istria, so a short list here means thin data and not an empty landscape. Unchecked, and only inside a mapped record region.
Where the burials are
The other end of a parish: the register records the burial and the ground holds it, and a family that left no other trace very often left a stone. These are points on a map, not record collections — from Wikidata and OpenStreetMap, nobody here has visited one, and whether the burial register survives is a question for the parish or the municipality above. Grounds OpenStreetMap has not named are here too. They used to be left out, on the reasoning that a shape with no name is not a place anyone can ask about — which cost Senj its own graveyard, 2 km away and unnamed, while a named one 7 km off was all this page would show. Being unnamed is a fact about the map data, not about the ground. Only inside a mapped record region.
- A burial ground ↗ unnamed in OpenStreetMap 0.7 km OpenStreetMap
- A burial ground ↗ unnamed in OpenStreetMap 1.3 km OpenStreetMap
- Hřbitov Benkov ↗ 2.3 km OpenStreetMap
- A burial ground ↗ unnamed in OpenStreetMap 3.3 km OpenStreetMap
- A burial ground ↗ unnamed in OpenStreetMap 3.5 km OpenStreetMap
National sources for Czechia, unverified
From Wikidata, CC0 — the national archive and the national library where the country has one. Nobody here has opened these. The link answered when it was asked and that is the whole of what this map knows about them. They are listed because a country with no named source at all is the worse answer: 199 of the 237 countries here had nothing but the worldwide services, which cover everywhere and therefore say nothing about anywhere.
- National Archives ↗ national archive
- National Library of the Czech Republic ↗ national library
The sources for Czechia
National and regional sources that cover this ground whether or not anybody has walked it here — which makes them the answer, not the consolation, for a place with no volumes recorded on it.
- eBadatelna — Státní oblastní archiv v Praze Nobody has walked this one yet Prague, Czechia
The State Regional Archives in Prague, for CENTRAL BOHEMIA — the region around Prague, not the city itself, which keeps its own archive (see provider `ahmp-praga-publica`). Its own description: remote access to digitised registers and other archival records, and in the Register Records section «a complete digitized collection of registers of the Central Bohemia region». The site offers Login and Register, so an account exists; whether images open without one has not been checked here, which is why this row is `unsurveyed` and not `free`. - DigiArchiv — Státní oblastní archiv v Třeboni Nobody has walked this one yet Třeboň, Czechia
The State Regional Archives in Třeboň, for SOUTH BOHEMIA. Running since 2007 and badged «19 years of digitisation» at the time of checking, with a folder tree, a search and a three-language interface (Czech, German, English) — German matters here, because the records of this ground are largely German-language before 1945. The catalogue renders through JavaScript that did not fill in for an automated reader, so the holdings could be seen to exist but not counted. - Digitální badatelna — Státní oblastní archiv v Litoměřicích Nobody has walked this one yet Litoměřice, Czechia
The State Regional Archives in Litoměřice, for NORTH BOHEMIA — the ground that was the Sudetenland, so a family expelled in 1945-46 has its registers here rather than anywhere they later lived. Same software as Opava's digital reading room and the same breadth beyond registers: `Matriky` parish registers, `Městské knihy` town books, `Kroniky` chronicles, `Listiny` charters, maps, photographs and finding aids, all in one search. Reached via vademecum.soalitomerice.cz, which redirects here — the redirect target is the address to keep. - Archivní katalog — Archiv hlavního města Prahy Nobody has walked this one yet Prague, Czechia
PRAGUE THE CITY KEEPS ITS OWN ARCHIVE, separate from the State Regional Archives in Prague that holds the region around it — a distinction that sends people to the wrong catalogue. Holds the Collection of Registry Books and, unusually and valuably, the PRAGUE POPULATION REGISTER 1830-1910 (1920): a residence register naming people house by house, which answers «when did they arrive in the city and from where» in a way no parish book does. Also council minutes 1784-1945, photographs, parchment and paper charters. Interface in Czech, English and German. - Acta Publica Images, free, no account Brno, Czechia
Moravian and Silesian parish registers, free. The Czech regional archives each publish their own; this is the Brno one. - Digitální badatelna — Zemský archiv v Opavě Images, free, no account Opava, Czechia
The Silesian Land Archive's own digital reading room, and the other half of Czech Moravia-Silesia that provider `actapublica` does not cover — its row says the regional archives each publish their own and this is the Opava one. ELEVEN ARCHIVES IN ONE SEARCH: the land archive itself, its Olomouc branch, and the district archives (SOkA) of Bruntál-Krnov, Frýdek-Místek, Jeseník, Karviná, Nový Jičín, Olomouc, Opava, Prostějov, Přerov and Šumperk. 2,511,688 records and 20,689,527 digital attachments on the day this was checked, and it is actively grown — 574 records were added that day. FAR MORE THAN REGISTERS. `Matriky` are the parish registers (birth, marriage and death, Catholic and Protestant), but the same search also reaches `Sčítání` census returns down to the individual household sheet, `Pozemkové knihy` land books, `Kroniky` chronicles, `Kartotéky` card indexes including police registration cards for a town, `Třídní výkazy` school class registers, maps, photographs and charters. For a family that stayed put, the census sheet and the police card say what a register cannot. A SEARCH CAN BE HANDED TO SOMEBODY: /da/searchlink/<hash> is a stable address for a result set — checked on a Catholic birth-register search for Olomouc Sv. Michal 1760-1851, which returned 1,412 images with no account and no challenge. ONE CAVEAT, RECORDED BECAUSE IT WAS MET. The host sits behind a Radware bot manager, and an automated request is redirected to /da/human/challenge. A person in a browser passes it without noticing; a script does not, and this atlas does not work around bot gates. So the row is `free` for a reader, and anything automated should expect the challenge rather than treat it as the site being down. - Porta fontium Images, free, no account Plzeň, Czechia
A Bavarian–Czech joint portal. Parish registers of western Bohemia, free. - ANNO — Austrian Newspapers Online Images, free, no account Vienna, Austria
The Austrian National Library's digitised newspaper run. Full-text searchable, and it covers the whole empire — which is why it finds Croatian and Istrian names. - GenTeam.at Images, free, account needed Vienna, Austria
Volunteer indexes to the Habsburg lands — Vienna's parish registers, Jewish records, school and guild lists. Free with an account, and it reaches ground the church portals do not.
Sources that cover everywhere
Not about Czechia in particular — these reach most of the world, which includes here. They are listed after the local sources because a body that holds this ground's own paper is a better first stop than one that holds a little of everywhere's. Worth knowing they exist all the same.
- Internet Archive Images, free, no account
Full-text search across millions of digitised books, including parish histories, nobiliaries and local monographs that name ordinary people. - Arolsen Archives Images, free, no account
The former International Tracing Service. Concentration camp, forced labour and displaced-persons records for some seventeen and a half million people, free and fully indexed. - BillionGraves Images, free, no account
GPS-tagged headstone photographs. Smaller than Find a Grave but its coordinates are per-stone, which Find a Grave's often are not. - Find a Grave Images, free, no account
Volunteer-photographed headstones and cemetery indexes, worldwide, with very uneven coverage. Owned by Ancestry but free to read. - WikiTree Images, free, no account
A free, single shared tree with an unusually strong sourcing culture. Not a record source. - Yad Vashem — Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names Images, free, no account
Names and testimony pages for victims of the Shoah, free. - FamilySearch Images, free, account needed
The largest free collection of record images and indexes in the world. A free account is required, and a minority of images are restricted to Family History Centres and affiliate libraries. - Geni Images, free, account needed
One shared world tree. Useful for finding other researchers on the same line; not a record source, and its assertions are only as good as their citations. - JewishGen Images, free, account needed
The central Jewish genealogy resource — town-level KehilaLinks, burial and Holocaust databases, and revision lists for eastern Europe. - Geneanet Partly free, partly paid
Member-contributed trees and transcriptions, strongest in France. Much is free; a Premium tier gates some search and images. - Ancestry Images, behind a paywall
The largest commercial collection. Strong on the English-speaking world, censuses and immigration; weak on continental parish registers. - MyHeritage Images, behind a paywall
Commercial, with a large tree network and good European newspaper and directory coverage. Search is free; opening a record is not.
FamilySearch collections that reach here
A collection is a claim over an area, not a book standing in this town — so these are ranked by how specifically they reach Hrabišín. A free account is needed to open the images, and some are restricted to a Family History Centre.
Worth searching, and worth knowing it is a national index rather than a local one.
- Czech Republic, Censuses and Inhabitant Registers, 1800-1990 ↗ 1800–1990 2,316 records 123 km
- Czech Republic, Church Books, 1552-1981 ↗ 1552–1981 11,747,729 records 147 km
- Czech Republic, Births and Baptisms, 1637-1889 ↗ 1637–1889 32,738 records 147 km
- Czech Republic, Marriages, 1654-1889 ↗ 1654–1889 12,622 records 147 km
- Czech Republic, Archive of Třeboň, Nobility Seignorial Records, 1579-1859 ↗ 1579–1859 0 records 147 km
- Czech Republic, Civil Registers, 1874-1937 ↗ 1874–1937 0 records 147 km
- Czech Republic, Land Records, 1450-1889 ↗ 1450–1889 0 records 147 km
- Czech Republic, Northern Moravia, Opava Archive Church Books, 1571-1905 ↗ 1571–1905 0 records 147 km
- Czech Republic, School Registers, 1799-1953 ↗ 1799–1953 0 records 147 km
- Czech Republic, Southern Bohemia, Třeboň Archive Church Books, 1650-1900 ↗ 1650–1900 0 records 147 km
See who held Hrabišín between 1800 and 1920 →
The jurisdiction answer — which empire held this ground, and therefore
whose archive — could only be got at from the map until now. This opens it there, on
1863; drag the year from any point between 1200 and
2026.
Everything in Czechia · All 40266 places · Correct something on this page