VALACKS ORIGINATED IN ROMANIA
(Please be aware this post was written in 2004 and published at that time in the Houston Chronicle (Houston, Texas) newspaper. Some of the news in this post, therefore, may not be current. Current and future posts on this blog may revisit and update news on this and other posts on this blog. If you have questions and/or suggestions, please send Mic a note using the comment page -Don’t forget to use the orange “subscribe” button to receive new posts-Thanks, Mic)
The Valacks was a small ethnic group of Czechs who settled in Texas with other Czechs after about 1850. Initially from the Romanian areas of Europe the Valacks took several generations and several hundred years to migrate and assimilate in the Carpathians villages of the Moravian region of present day Czech Republic.
The Valacks were somewhat different from their countrymen. They spoke a distinctive dialect, were historically shepherds and, like other ethnic groups of the area, had their own identifying folk clothing style.
By the mid-Sixteenth Century Valacks began settling in villages of the Wallachian region of Moravia in today’s Czech Republic along the trans Carpathian mountain valley region and began assimilating among their neighbors.
For many years longtime Director of the Wallachian Museum in Roznov, Czech Republic, Dr. Jaroslav Stika, collected every piece of information he could locate on the Moravian Valacks. In 1973 he compiled a book on his findings, The Ethnographic Region Moravian Wallachia: It’s Origin and Development. His book was published in the Czech Republic in the Czech language.
Several years ago Stika gave Leo Baca, a well known author of Texas-Czech immigration records and a Texan of Valack ancestry, permission to have the book translated into English and published. The resulting English translation was recently completed by Kevin Hannan, Ph. D. and is now available for purchase. It is available for $12.77, postpaid, from Leo Baca at 1707 Woodcreek, Richardson, TX 75082.
The soft covered book contains one hundred sixty pages, twenty six black and white photographs and two hundred twenty six informative footnotes.
HISTORY OF MORAVIAN ONLINE
One of the major personal prerequisites to settlement in most colonies in pre-revolutionary British America was that one be of a Protestant religion. Likewise one of the European areas where immigration recruiters worked was the Bohemian and Moravian areas of what is today the Czech Republic. From this area came the religious group the Brethren or Moravians as they were sometimes known.
One of the best known histories of the Brethren or Moravian Church is that of Joseph Edmund Hutton which may be found online waiting to be read at http://www.everydaycounselor.com/hutton/fn.htm .
Most of the Moravians who settled in the American colonies along the East Coast did so in Pennsylvania and the backcountry of Virginia and the Carolinas. In contrast a majority of those Czechs coming to Texas did so mainly after 1850, were Catholic and either entered Texas at Galveston or other Gulf Coast seaports or came to Texas by rail from ports of entry along the Atlantic Coast.
MORAVIAN FOLK MUSIC AVAILABLE ONLINE
Readers who enjoy listening to or learning about traditional Moravian folk music should visit the GNOSIS BRNO website at http://mujweb.atlas.cz/www/gnosis_brno/Eng/frame1en.htm.
Known for it’s strong vocalization and rich harmonization Moravian folk music has an Eastern European flavor. Among other areas the website features the regional dances, songs and instrumental tunes of the Hor¥nácko, Dol¥nácko, Podlu¥í, and Valašsko regions. Several collections on the website are recordings of historical gatherings from the early 1900’s.
GETTING PHOTOS OF YOUR EUROPEAN VILLAGE
Jim Derheim of European Focus, http://www.eurofocus.com , spends several months each year in Europe taking photographs of ancestral villages of Americans who are unable to travel to Europe for one reason or another. On his website at http://www.heritagequest.com/genealogy/europe/html/gallery.html Derheim has a number of photographs of villages he has visited.
For those who would like to physically visit their European ancestral village and take their own photographs Derheim will make all the arrangements and act as one’s private tour guide. It is up to the client to know the name of the village. Derheim is a great photographer and guide but does not have time to conduct the research necessary to locate unnamed ancestral villages.
