Prepychy

Today we went out to find more ancestral clues and trails. We planned on visiting Prepychy, Vyrava and Cenilov, where we know at least 2 generations on Zilvars and Chudy’s lived from about1820 to 1880 before they showed up in Vienna.

A strait research……but, as I am learning, nothing is strait forward in genealogy.

First we engaged our GPS as these towns are so small they do not show up on ordinary roadmaps. The GPS took us down a reasonable fast road for about 40 KM then turned us onto a number of roads that were no wider than a car and towns that were smaller than 1 km. eventually we arrived at the church where the birth and weddings were recorded.

There was a funeral mass in progress, a band played, the village was out in force and the local nuns prepared and cleaned up the church. Meanwhile we walked through the cemetery and made a great find. Grave stones for the Chudy family dating from 1780 to the 1875. we now know that the Chudy’s have and still live there.

As the funeral wound down they made a procession down the road. As the priest came back to the church we stopped and chatted, we in English and German and he in Czech with a few words in English. We showed him our documents and he told us he was not from the village but knew someone who could help. He took us to the crowd on mourners who were still gathered and introduced us to a Mr. Petr Chudy. We showed our documents and he called over some more Chudy’s.

He then noticed that Ludmila Chudy lived at house # 12. he took us to the house which is still occupied by a chuddy family. They then found someone who spoke English and was able to translate. To make a long story short no one knew of our ancestor but with a village so small we concluded that we were all related somehow. We gathered contact information and gave out thanks and moved on to our next adventure.