Meixner Family History

Yesterday I posted a document regarding Frank Meixner, my great-grandfather.  The contents of the document were quite surprising to me.  I had always been told and had thought that my ancestors came from Germany.  This document states:  "Personally appeared Frank Meixner, who declares, upon oath, that he is the natural born subject of Osterich Empire, that he was born in Bohmen (or Borhmen) that he is 39 years of age, that he emigrated to the United States of America and arrived at the port of New York in the State of New York on or about the 26th day of August, 1881, ....".  It goes on to say he renounces his allegiance to the foreign state and that he will bear allegiance to the United States.  

From this I learned that Frank was actually from the Austrian Empire and was born in the country of Bohemia.  Seems we had been looking in the wrong place to find our ancestors!

I took this document along with information from my grandfather Harmon Meixner's death certificate to the head of the genealogy department at the Fort Worth Library.  He advised me that according to the information I had I should search in Abtsdorf, District of Litomysl, in the Country of Bohemia in the Austrian Empire.  In 1989 when I was doing this research Bohemia was no longer and the country was then Czechoslovakia.  Today the country is the Czech Republic.  Here is a picture I found on the Internet:

  

My contact said I should contact the Czechoslovakian embassy and that they would do research.  So I put together all the information I had and sent it to the embassy.  Many months later I received a report back with information and supporting documentation regarding births, marriages, and deaths of many of my relatives in the old country of Bohemia.  It was all in the Czech language so I then had to wait several more weeks until I could get the report translated.  The day I received the translated report I was ecstatic.  It was THE most exciting day of my genealogy research and remains the most significant. If anyone is reading this that is not a history buff or a genealogy buff you are probably saying "it doesn't take much to get this guy excited" or "really, you got that excited about receiving a report?"  For one thing this was the culmination of over 12 years of research and secondly I received dozens and dozens of names of relatives that I had not known before!  That's exciting stuff!  The report showed the marriage of Frank and Theresia as well as other relatives information back to the mid 1700's.  There are Meixners in several of the surrounding towns and many new branches of the family I did not know about before.  Here is the first page of the 10 page report:

I am continuing to search to find where the Meixners were prior to the mid 1700's  Maybe they came from Saxony and the area around the city of Meissen as some sources suggest.  I don't know when the Meixners arrived in Bohemia but this report indicated my g-g-g-g-grandfather Martinus Meixner was a "newcomer or colonist" in the area.

Next time I'll examine the German-Bohemians and go over a few of the reasons people were leaving Bohemia in the 1880's