Family roots & ancestral connections

Genealogy

Family-history writings and genealogical research by Dr. Miloslav Rechcigl Jr.

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The Land of Mila Rechcigl’s Ancestors

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The Rechcigl Genealogy

The Rechcigl’s Genealogy. The Ancestry and Descendants of Mila Rechcigl and Eva Edwards with Information on Allied Families

Authors’ Tranquility Press · September 7, 2023 · 948 pages

This is a comprehensive genealogy of the Rechcigl Family, whose ancestors come from the Mohelka Valley in the north-northeastern part of Bohemia, neighboring the most beautiful region of Bohemia, appropriately called Český Ráj. meaning "the Czech Paradise." It is not a typical genealogy with the focus on one family but a composite presentation of family history, comprising a plethora of genealogies of the related key families.'

The compendium starts with a brief narrative, providing an overview of the country from which the Rechcigls have come. The overview of the section The Land our Ancestors is followed by a Genealogical Overview of our immediate family. The Histories of Key Families come next, including the Rechcigl Family, the Rajtr Family, the Danda Family, The Eisner Family, the Taussig Family, the Steiner Family, and the Steinbach Family.

A major part of the compendium is in the section entitled Genealogies of Allied Families composed of genealogies of individual families relating to key persons on both their father and mother sides. The Ancestor and the Descendent Charts comprise the next two sections. They are followed by The Kinship Report showing the relationships between speci􀌓c individuals and the Rechcigls. The last section covers genealogies of several other Rechcigl families, whose relationships to our family are yet to be determined.

The present vade mecum is unique which should be of interest to professional and amateur genealogists in general. Apart from providing data on a multitude of families, it allows researchers to make comparisons between different families in terms of their talent, longevity, or health aspects, in general.

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Family History and Genealogy

My interest in genealogy stems back from my desire to learn more about Augustine Heřman and his family. I soon learned about the existence of the Family History Room at the Library of Congress in Washington and later about the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore which maintains extensive holdings relating to family histories and genealogies.

It must have been in the late seventies and early eighties when I regularly began visiting these places to gather information on Heřman’s descendants. Initially, I focused on secondary sources, of which there are plenty, gathering existing family trees and other information about the descendants.

I soon found out that not all the information is reliable which led me to the pursuit of primary sources, including passenger lists, birth and death records, marriage records, land records, military records, preserved early minutes of the legislative bodies in Maryland and Delaware, cemetery records, county histories, biographical and autobiographical accounts, census records, etc. In time, I became quite knowledgeable and proficient in locating and understanding a variety of genealogical tools, including genealogical magazines, organizations and their holdings.

With reference to Augustine Heřman, I soon uncovered a number of existing inconsistencies and contradictions in data which I tried to resolve. In time, I was successful in resolving some of them. In many ways, this has been very fascinating work, giving one a feeling of a researcher who is attempting to prove or disprove specific hypothesis or a detective in the pursuit of clues to solve a crime or an intellectual trying to solve a very complicated crossword puzzle.

In addition to analyzing the primary data, I also began corresponding with some of the descendants of Augustine Herman in Maryland, DE and VA, as well as other parts of the country. Apart from ascertaining the reliability of pertinent data, this way I frequently learned of additional leads and contacts which I then vigorously pursued. In most such contacts I was met with receptivity and interest because I had always some new data which they lacked and which they welcome. One Southern lady was so delighted with the data I sent her that she sent me a fruit cake for Christmas. In some cases, they sent me their family histories and genealogies on which they worked for years. In a few instances I was even invited to their homes to see their memorabilia and other treasures. I soon became known in genealogical circles and began receiving inquiries from various individuals who thought that they may be related to Augustine Herman. Although in majority of cases such inferences could not be substantiated, nevertheless, in several instances they proved to be true, and this helped me to expand my information base.

The best contact I ever had was with a Maryland attorney McAdoo Brice, a descendant of the Maryland landed gentry, who lived on a beautiful estate in Maryland. Genealogy was his hobby. He had an extensive private library, containing every possible publication relating to history and genealogy of Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and Pennsylvania. As a result of his research, he amassed a fantastic amount of information on his ancestors, many of whom were directly related to Augustine Herman, just as he was. He had the data organized in a series of ring binders in typed form. During one of my visits, he let me copy almost any information I wanted which enhanced my records considerably.

Some of the data that I gathered on the Herman family was the basis of my article in MD Genealogical Bulletin in which I focused on the first three generations of Augustine Herman’s descendants. Although several Herman family trees were published before, they were usually limited to one particular vertical line. My approach was much more comprehensive, as it also covered all known siblings, i.e., all known descendants of Herman’s children for several generations. This work is, by far, not complete and my research is continuing. With the advent of technology, I have been able to enter the data on the computer which makes it easier to access and keep track of it.

Since then I have expanded my genealogy research to other areas, including the descendants of Moravian Brethren, the Bohemian ancestry of Count Zinzendorf’s wife Erdmuthe, who descended from King of Bohemia George of Poděbrady, and early settlers in America from the territory of Czechoslovakia. I also became interested in the genealogy of US Presidents, a number of whom, I found, had roots in the Kingdom of Bohemia. Last but not least, I began searching for my own ancestors.

I have amassed a large amount of genealogical data, some of which have been published. A number of genealogies, based on my research, have also been posted on Internet .

Remarkable GENI

If you’re one of the millions of people who’ve caught the genealogy bug and are itching to learn more about your family’s ancestry, you’ll want some resources to help you out in your genealogy research. After all, the ancestry journey to "find my ancestors" requires navigating the multigenerational web of births, marriages, migrations, and milestones that have made you uniquely you.

There are numerous genealogy software programs one could use to keep track of information collected during research and create reports, charts and books containing that information. For years I had been using the Family Tree Maker which I found highly satisfying until I discovered GENI.

Geni is a popular collaborative American commercial genealogy and social networking website, founded in 2006.

At the website users enter names and e-mail addresses of their parents, siblings, d other relatives, as well as profiles with various fields of biographical information about themselves and their relatives. From there users may graphically manipulate sections of their connections network to create a complete personal family tree.

The service uses the contact information to invite additional members to join, and builds a social network from the information collectively entered by members.

In February 2019 a new GEDCOM file import feature became available that allows the import of profiles which didn’t exist before on Geni.

Data from public records and family trees can also be imported from 13 supported web sites using an independently developed semi-automatic tool called SmartCopy, which is based on web scraping. Families are imported one at a time; the user can manually edit or verify the information before importing, and also choose between adding the information to existing profiles or creating new profiles. SmartCopy includes a consistency check feature that warns when data may be unreasonable. The user must ask for full access to the tool. SmartCopy is a third-party open source web browser extension that has been available since 2015.

A serious problem with online family trees is the inappropriate propagation of information from one ancestor or family line to another. This can happen if users make incorrect identifications between ancestors and others in the tree already. This can lead to strange results such as people born after their mothers have died or when their supposed parents were still small children. In 2019 Geni introduced automated consistency checking which alerts users to 28 types of such problems.

Relationship paths is a feature available for free to all Geni users. Relationship Paths show how any two people are most closely related on the World Family Tree.

GENI’s World Family Tree is a single, shared family tree that connects people from all walks of life, across countries, which as of 2025, has included ver 200 million profiles.

The tool offers both blood relationships and in-law relationships results. The outcome may be as simple as “10th cousin once removed” or as complex as “second cousin 8 times removed husband’s fifth great nephew!”’

Unique to other genealogy websites, Geni supports Y-DNA and mt-DNA data uploads directly from Family Tree DNA- results can be transferred easily and securely. Geni also contains Y-DNA and mt-DNA data from Ysearch.org and mitosearch.org, which adds over 200,000 more DNA profiles to their database.

The most exciting thing to any family and friends is hearing about the famous and historical people they were connected to. Geni has a great feature that attempts to find "How are you related?" to such people and the Top 100 is always an interesting place to start, but this needs to be taken a step further.

Being of Czech descent, I began my search focusing on the famous Czechs, who according to the Czech Universities website include the Holy Roman Emperor and Bohemian King Charles IV, Father of genetics Gregor Johannn Mendel, nationalistic composer Bedrich Smetana, world-renown composer Antonin Dvorak, philosopher and the first president of Czechoslovakia Thomas G. Masaryk, father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist Alphonse Mucha, major fiction writer Franz Kafka, writer and playwright Karel Capek, poet and laureate of the Nobel Prize Jaroslav Seifert, writer of international fame Milan Kundera, film maker, screenwriter and actor Milos Forman, dramatist, dissident and the first president of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, and world tennis champion Martina Navratilová. To which could be added the biochemists and Nobel Prize laureates Carl Ferdinand Cori and his wife Gerty Threse Cori, the Byzantine and Slavic historian Francis Dvornik, award winning historian Saul Friedlander, founder of American physical anthropology Ales Hrdlicka, opera Soprano singer Maria Jeritza, legal philosopher Hans Kelsen, discoverer of cocaine as a local anesthetic Carl Koller, theologian, philosopher and father of modern education Jan Amos Komensky (Comenius), the Holocaust novelist Arnost Lustig, composer and conductor Gustav Mahler, Bohemian King, George of Podebrady, Bohemian King Vladislav II, the anatomist and physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkyne, economist Jan Svejnar, actor Jiri Voskovec, actor, singer and playwright Jan Werich, General and Hussite leader Jan Zizka z Trocnova, and Talmudic scholar and creator of mystic Golem, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Betzalel, MaHaRaL of Prague. They are all listed in in GENI’s World Tree. While checking them individually for possible connection to us, lo and behold, I found them all related.

Among the Czech Americans there are also many individuals who attained prominence in various fields of human endeavor and are listed on the GINI’s World Tree. I decided to ascertain whether we are related to them. I found a bundle of connections.

Madeleine Albright - US Ambassador to the UN and US Secretary of State, Richard Bassett – Senator, Signer of the US Constitution, James Asheton Bayard, Jr. – US Senator from Delaware, Richard Henry Bayard -Mayor of Wilmington, DE, Chief Justice of DE Supreme Court, US Senator from DE; Thomas Francis Bayard Sr. - US Senator from DE and US Secretary of State, Thomas F. Bayard Jr. – US Senator from DE, George H. Bender - US Senator from OH, Francis Biddle - US Attorney General, Louis D. Brandeis - Associate Justice of US Supreme Court, Mika Brzezinski – TV host on Morning Joe, MSNBC, Anton Cermak – Mayor of Chicago, Eugene Cernan –astronaut, Michael Dammann Eisner – CEO of the Walt Disney Co., James Thomas Flexner – man of letters, biographer, Fred Figner – entrepreneur mostly in SA, Augustine Herman – 1st documented immigrant in the New World from the Kingdom of Bohemia, Otto Kerner – Governor of Illinois, John F. Kerry – US Secretary of State, Roy Kroc –founder of McDonald Empire, Lucius Q. C. Lama - US Senator, US Secretary the Interior, Justice of the US Supreme Court, Paul Felix Lazarsfeld – founder of modern empirical sociology, Jim Lovell –astronaut, Joe Manchin – US Senator from WV, Governor of WV, Sigmund Mandl - founder of Husky Wrench Co in WI, Richard Neustadt - political scientist, director of Kennedy J. F. Kennedy Inst. of Politics, Jarmila Novotna - lyric Soprano and actress, Frederick Philipse of Philipsburg – the wealthiest man in New Amsterdam, Thomas Pritzker - chairman of Hyatt, Frederic Prokosch – novelist, poet, Beardsley Ruml – economist and developer of the plan to collect taxes, Joseph Schumpeter, economist at Harvard Univ., body builder, actor, businessman and Governor of California Arnold Scharzeneger, Nicholas Sparks - novelist and screenwriter, Millard Tydings - US Senator from MD, Scott Kevin Walker – Governor of Wisconsin, Joseph Wechsberg - free-lance writer, with the New Yorker magazine, Caspar Weinberger - US Secretary of Defense and Health, Education, and Welfare, Rene Welek -founder of literary criticism and comparative literature, , novelist and playwright Franz Victor Werfel, founder of Gestalt psychology Max Wertheeimer, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise - founder of reformed Judaism in the US and Jeff Zeleny -Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, with CNN.

With the successful outcome of my search for finding notable historical personalities we have been connected to among the famous Czechs, I then focused on the possible connections with other nationalities. As it turned out, I have found a plethora of them. Some are listed below:

Among the US Presidents: President Joe Biden, President Barack H. Obama, President George Walker Bush, President William J. “Bill” Clinton, President Ronald Reagan, President Jimy Carter, President Gerald Ford, President Richard Nixon, President John F. Kennedy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, President Warren G. Harding, President Woodrow Wilson, President Theodore Roosevelt, President Grover Cleveland, President Benjamin Harrison. President James A. Garfield, President Rutherford B. Hays, President Andrew Johnson, President Abraham Lincoln, President James Buchanan, President Franklin Pierce, President Millard Filmore, President Zachary Taylor, President William Henry Harrison, President Andrew Jackson, President James Monroe, and President Thomas Jefferson.

Among other American relations we found, among others: Woody Allen – screenwriter, film director, actor, playwright, Neil Armstrong – astronaut, John Astor – business magnate, the first US billionaire, Leonard Bernstein – conductor and composer, Henry Bogart – actor, Col. Daniel Boone – legendary frontiersman, John Beale Bordley – Maryland planter and judge, developer of crop rotation system, William Bradford 3rd – Mayflower pioneer and Governor of Plymouth, William Cullen Bryant – romantic poet, journalist, editor of the New York Post, John Dewey - philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, Thomas E. Dewey – Governor of New York, Clinton ‘Clint’ Eastwood, Jr. – film actor, director, producer and composer, Sally Field - actress and director, Henry Ford - industrialist, founder of the Ford Motor Co. Benjamin Franklin – signer of the Declaration of Independence, one of foremost Founding Fathers, Hugh Hefner – men’s lifestyle magazine publisher, founder and editor of Playboy, Katharine Hepburn – actress, Henry Kissinger – US Secretary of State, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - poet, Maj. Gen. George D. McClellen, Jr. -soldier, civil engineer and railroad executive, Marilyn Monroe – actress, model and singer, Nancy Pelosi – Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Elvis Presley – singer, actor, “King of Rock and Roll,” Edmund Jennings Randolph – Governor of Virginia, US Secretary of State and US Attorney General, Harold Edward Stassen- Governor of Minnesota, Noah Webster – lexicographer, textbook pioneer reformer and editor, George Olson Wells - actor, director and producer.

Among our relations with British personalities I found: Julia Andrews – actress, singer, author, Isambard Kingdom Brunel - mechanical and civil engineer, Winston Churchill – Prime Minister of the UK, Charlie Chaplin – comic actor, filmmaker, Charles Darwin - naturalist, geologist, biologist, “Father of Evolution,” Diana - Princess of Wales, Edward V – King of the UK, Edward VII – King of the UK, Edward VIII – King of the UK, Elizabeth II – Queen of the UK, George V – King of the UK, George VI – King of the UK, John Lennon – musician, activist and co-founder of the Beetles, Horatio Nelson – Admiral of the British Royal Navy, Sir Isaac Newton – mathematician, astronomer, physicist, theologian, Florence Nightingale - social reformer, founder of modern nursing, Margaret Thatcher – Prime Minister of the UK, Alan M. Turing – mathematician computer pioneer, Victoria – Queen of the UK and Emperess of India.

French Connections: Marie Antoinette – Queen consort of France, Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot - military engineer and physicist and “Father of thermodynamics,” Coco Chanel – fashion designer, founder of the Chanel brand, Marie Curie – physicist and chemist, first women to win a Nobel Prize, Claude Debussy – composer, leader of impressionist movement, Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, Charles de Gaule - general, statesman, Alfred Dreyfuss - Army officer wrongly accused of spying, Gustave Eiffel - structural engineer, designer of the Eiffel Tower, Victor Hugo – poet, playwright, novelist, Claude Monet – painter, founder of impressionism, Napoleon Bonaparte – military general and Emperor of France, Louis Pasteur – chemist and microbiologist, Jean-Paul Sartre – philosopher, novelist, playwright, biographer, literary critic, political activist, Simone Veil – politician, magistrate and President of European Parliament, Holocaust survivor.

German connections: Ludwig v. Beethoven - composer, pianist, Wernher von Braun – aerospace engineer, rocket pioneer, Marlene Dietrich – actress and singer, Albert Einstein - theoretical physicist, developer of the theory of relativity, Emil Fischer – chemist, Nobel Prize laureate, Johann Wolfgang Goethe – writer, poet, statesman, Steffi Graf – tennis champion, Wilhelm Grimm and brother Jacob Grimm – joint authors of the famous Fairy Tales, Heinrich Heine – poet, Immanuel Kant - philosopher, Martin Luther – theologian, pastor, church reformer, Karl Marx – philosopher, economist, revolutionary sociologist, Friedrich Nietzsche - philologist, philosopher, Henri Nestle – confectioner, founder of Nestle Co., Max Planck – physicist, founder of the quantum theory, Richard Georg Strauss – composer, Richard Wagner - composer and conductor.

As it turned out, our family relations have been primarily through my late wife Eva Edwards (Eisnerova) ancestors which is not surprising, they having lived in Prague, the capital city of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Being members of the upper class, they intermingled with distinguished members and celebrities of the society. My ancestors, in contrast, although prominent and well-to-do in their own right, having been primarily millers, which was the most respected lucrative profession in the rural area, did not have opportunity to associate with personalities of the upper class of the society.

By now, most assuredly you got hooked. By joining you will find not only useful genealogy information from all over the world but you will find enjoyment and have fun by searching whether and how you are related to royalty and other distinguished personalities and celebrities.