A quick update to this post: I am not sure how new this news is, but I just noticed that Mapy.cz now has street view imaging built right into their own interface!
It also appears that they are using their own imaging, as opposed to the Google Maps street view, since there is a “Panorama Beta” watermark at the bottom of the screen. Also, when I compared the two street views of the house of my 2nd great-grandparents in Defurovy Lažany, the current resident had put out the trash in Google’s image and not in Mapy.cz.
I’ll leave this post as is, since the technique can still be useful – there may be locations that are not full imaged in one service and not the other, for example. Happy Hledání!
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Last summer in my blog post Then and Now: Simanek Family Home I described a nice find when I looked up my grandmother’s home in the Czech Republic using Google Street View and then found a matching photo in our family albums.
Aaand, we’re back in The Republic again!
First, thanks to a distant cousin, Pavel Vanac who sends me all sorts of links and information on our shared Vanac lines. He has been looking for all the Vanacs and descendants and is hoping to have a reunion one day in Prague and I really hope I can attend.
For this year he has scaled back the idea to an online reunion – which may be difficult since I have only a tiny bit of the Czech language in my brain. (We normally communicate using Google Translate between us – which has sparked some fun confusion on both sides.) But I am still looking forward to that!
Back to the story here – Pavel sent me a small photo over the weekend with the message:
“Novinka – Anna Rumplíková (Vaňačová) – Zámlyní – 1889 – 1971 : rodiče Václav a Antonie Vaňačovi” Or, summarized:
“News: Anna Rumplíková (maiden name Vaňačová) born in the town of Zámlyní and lived 1889-1971. Parents Václav a Antonie Vaňačovi”
That information is a perfect match to be my grandfather’s sister. I looked at the photo of the older woman and immediately compared it to one I have of her and her young family, as you see at right. That looks like a very good photo match to me as well.
Pavel let me know that he found the photo and info on a MyHeritage Tree, so I took a look over there. The tree and profile was quite easy to find. It includes a birth document for Anna that has my known familial Vanac home address in Zamlyni on it, a few other photos, and a printed obituary for Anna (Vanacova) Rumplikova with a residence address of #12 Drahenický, Málkov, Czech Republic.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a Premium MyHeritage account so can’t contact the cousin who owns the tree – not sure it is worth my paying $75 to send a message, so I’ll have to figure out another way to say hello!
View Larger Map |
I looked up the town on Google Maps – which is nice, but doesn’t help me find #12 in this particular town. So I pulled another mapping site from my bag of tricks: Mapy.cz is a terrific resource that has a nice clean look, similar to Google Maps – AND provides house numbers for all of your ancestral Czech home hunting needs. |
The interface is in Czech (of course), but if you play around with it a bit the site is not too difficult to navigate.
At right is the Mapy.cz version of the town – and you can see that House #12 is peeking out at the top there.I don’t believe that Mapy.cz has a street view tool (or I haven’t found it yet) – so I hopped right back over to The Google Maps and dragged the little man icon over to the house I now know is #12. |
…and what do you know? After many hours of scanning and looking through our family photo albums, that house on Street View looks familiar!
Extra Credit
If you want to get the html code for embedding a Mapy.cz map in your own posting, as I did above with the house numbers map, here is the part of the Czech interface you’ll need to work with:
At the top of the Mapy.cz interface, click on the “Sdeilet mapu” link to open a popup window with the embed code.
Then, choose the last selection: “Vložit odkaz na mapu do vlastních stránek” and right under that line click the word “Mapu”.
You should then see an image of the map you want to embed and the code to do so. If you want to change the size of the embedded map, click the “Upravit…” link all the way at the bottom of the popup window.
That will open a new browser window where you can change select from 4 sizes – Malá = Small
Střední = Medium
Velká = Large
Vlastní = Extra Large
Once you select the size you want, copy the embed text in the window at bottom (it starts with “<iframe “) and then paste it in the blog post or web page you want it to appear.