Abyss Edge

Once I started researching, I quickly came up against a point in my genealogy that there were names without concrete records, only conflicting data added to the website Ancestry.com by distant relatives that my mother calls “the bad cousins.” 1 According to their account, Veronika Chrasteka gave birth to my great-great-great grandfather Valentine sometime in her fifties, so the veracity of their records is somewhat in question. They do also claim that Pavel and Veronika married in 1807, presumably in their village of Halenkov, so that was at least a place to start looking for records. This required learning something about Matriky, or Parish books, church registries kept in bureaucratic detail to keep track of Czech peasantry. 2

  1. On December 4th, 2020, Blackstone (NYSE:BX) announced that private equity funds managed by Blackstone (“Blackstone”) had completed their previously announced acquisition of Ancestry® from Silver Lake, GIC, Spectrum Equity, Permira, and other equity holders for a total enterprise value of $4.7 billion. Current Ancestry investor GIC will continue to retain a significant minority stake in the company. Members of the church of Latter-Day Saints are still offered free accounts on the site. ↩

  2. A search that eventually proved fruitful with the help of Czech genealogist and Piráti (pirate party) politician Blanka Lednická. ↩