Cetoraz History - email from Pavel Jareš

I´m saying hello to you from Cetoraz and I would like to give you more information about our village.  Cetoraz was founded in the 13th century. There were established many villages after Czech kingdom formation at that time. Czech peers built a service yard here in free space and peasants´ houses grown gradually around.

 

The very first written and provable remark relating to our village was made in 1307, although Cetoraz was here before the date - according to the Chronicle it was market village at first.  There was built St. Wencelaus church in 1350, which was mentioned as parish church in 1385 already. At that time Cetoraz was in possesion of the dynasty of  Rosenberg, which controlled whole South Bohemia.
 

 It isn´t  known how was the unusual name of our village created exactly. If it´s from Latin word Cyetoras it would be something like feudal-bushy-landscape.   At the beginning of 15th century our village was sold to the noble family Malovec from Pacov. This ownership ended in 1848, when there arose a separate council.

That was a little from the history of our village.
 

Cetoraz is 580 meters (634 yards) above sea level. Temperature can be 30 C (86F) in summer and minus 20 C (-4 F) in winter.  In 1920 there was population of 600 inhabitants, in 1965 still 450 people and in these day just 280. The people have mostly moved to the towns.
 

People here work as farmers. In 1953 were all farmers associated in collective farm and it has still been here. Some people work in Pacov where leather production and engineering company are. All people are employed which is great.
We have two sights here as well. There are already mentioned St. Wenceslaus church (beside was built a war memorial) and classical tomb of Count Deym from Vodice in our graveyard. The tomb was built in 1821.Several people have gone from Cetoraz to you to "New world" before. For example Alois (Louis) Berka went to Nebraska in 1862 and he bacame American senator later.
 

By Czech standards there were born a couple of quite important people in here -professor Leandr Čech (literary critic, historian and a great patriot), Jiří Němec (a captain of the Czech soccer team), Jindřich Kazda (professor of University).
Cetoraz is known localy by a longevity of its inhabitants. Three people have
lived to a hundred only in my life. One man had experienced even three centuries here, he was born in 1559 and died 1702. The oldest man will be 103 years old this year.
Our local council takes care about our village well. There is enough of very
good quality drinking water, gasification has been made and a new central sewer with a wastewater treatment plant has been finished.
 

People spend some free time in interest groups like fishermen, hunters, a
voluntary fire brigade, union of women and sport club SOKOL - members play
skittle (bowling) championship competition. I’m a voluntary president of SOKOL but I think we will have to stop soon because of a bad condition of bowling itself. It’s very old and faulty, it needs complete rebuilding of all machinery.  What a pity.  Sokol has tradition since 1935. 

Vacek family has come from one house no. 24. My ancestor Josef was Jan Vacek´s brother. It means that we are great-grand cousins.  I have spoken to Mr. Jan Plášil and he told me you got your family tree in Czech archive. My family line has stayed here in Cetoraz. There isn’t name Vacek here any more, the last Vacek was my grandfather Antonín, he died in 1945. My mother Marie Jareš nee Vacek died in 1992.  I’m sending you pictures from Cetoraz later little by little. I would like to get some news about North Carolina too. We missed informations from USA in the past. We could get just bad ones because of the cold war.