Nancy and Dad did some good work on the Smejkal side this week. They found a bunch of Smejkals in the Jistebnice archives, which led to Jakub and Rosalie's marriage record here: http://digi.ceskearchivy.cz/en/3359/40.
It's fairly hard to read and you'll notice that Smejkal is spelled "Schmejkal". Perhaps the variations in spelling depend on the nationality of the priests who kept the records? Jakub and Rosalie were married on January 23, 1844. The marriage record also lists the birth date of the bride and groom, so from there it's possible to find Jakub's birth record on April 27, 1822:
http://digi.ceskearchivy.cz/en/4507/88,
Go ahead and take a look at the entry (hopefully the links work for everyone), and you will see Jakub's name fairly clearly, but the last name is another hard-to-read variation of Smejkal. (Once you see it written like that a couple of times, it does get easier to recognize.) So did you notice the father and mother's name in the birth record? If you can't read it, don't despair, most likely Jakub had siblings! By looking in the records two or three years on either side of the entry, you might find a record for one of them, and if you are really lucky, the priest who wrote that entry may have written legibly enough for someone sitting at a computer almost two hundred years later to be able to read it ! Heady stuff! Be careful, though, time flies when you're having fun! Why stop at Jakub's siblings, when you could meet his mother and father (in print, anyway) as well as his grandparents! What does sleep matter when you're hot on the trail of your Great Great Great Grand Parents!! Amazing!
Take a look at the newly-updated family tree when you get a chance: http://bals.info/smejkal_family/Relatives%20of%20Anna%20SMEJKAL.pdf
and Thank you, Czech Digital Archives!
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