Locate Historical Bohemian City
I just received a petition for naturalization and a declaration of intention in the mail for a person I'm researching. The documents list him being born in Wien, Austria in 1884 and his last foreign place of residence as Bernhof, Bohemia. Can somebody please point me in the right direction as where Bernhof (sp?) is located today. In his ship manifest, it's spelled Birnhof or Bienhof.
Thank you very much,
Tamara
答え
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Have you used the gazetteer on GenTeam.at? It's free to use, but you do need an account. I searched for Bernhof and variations in Bohemia and the closest match is an Albernhof (now Alberov). The Roman Catholic parish was in Sokolov and the records can be viewed on the Plzen archive website here. This may or may not be the town referred to--there are other towns called Bernhof in Austria itself outside of Bohemia, but that should get you started.
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It's important to remember that this area has seen major boundary changes, expulsions of German people, and renaming of German place names since WW1. "Bohemia" then referred to a specific subdivision of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Bohemia and Moravia nowadays roughly correspond to Czechia aka Czech Republic.
It might be a good idea to look at a map from that time, such as this one: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Böhmen_Mähren_Österreich_Schlesien.jpg
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