South Bohemia Kristufek Surname Origins

The earliest known and confirmed direct ancestral line in South Bohemia of the surname Kristufek begins with the 1717 Protivin Census. In this digitized record, we see the arrival of Vit and Katarina Krystufek and their infant daughter Anna to the town of Talin, South Bohemia.

All subsequent Kristufek descendants documented through Talin and Smrkovice in South Bohemia as well as the Chicago Kristufeks who arrived in the US in the mid 1800s can trace their lineage directly back to Vit and Katarina Krystufek and their arrival in Talin, South Bohemia around 1717.

However, records indicate that the origin of the Kristufek/Krystufek line can be traced to the neighboring town of Selibov. In the 1687 Protivin Estate Record, the record lists children from "Haus dem Gottfried Christoff" or the "House of Bohumil Christoff. This is likely the earliest known Kristufek ancestor.

The 1687 Record lists Mattes and Eva Christoff and their daughter Veronika a few pages earlier and seem to indicate, based on how these estate records were laid out, that Mattes Christoff is the eldest son of Gottfried and Eva Christoff and the inheritor of his land. Later records indicate that Mattes was born around 1662 which would make him slightly older than the other children of Gottfried listed including Alzbeta (1663), Marianna (1668), Catharine (1671), Anna (1675) and Vit (1676).

The Selibov records for the Christoff family are consistent there from the 1693 record through the 1702 record and then don't recur in the next available record, the 1708 census when the Krystufeks appear for the first time in the Talin record. However, the Vit Krystufek, who arrives in Talin in 1717 and would have been a child during this time period, is not listed in the Selibov census records.

Beginning in 1708, a Mattes and Eva Krystufek and their daughters had been the only people with the Krystufek surname in Talin and the 1717 record shows Mattes and his family crossed out and replaced by Vit Krystufek and his family.

Records this old are often incomplete and occasionally inconsistent, and there is another example of someone (Jan Kristufek 1824-1913) from this family line who had birth and marriage records that clearly put them in the family line while never making an appearance in the census records as a child. However, the inability to make a direct connection in the record is troubling. So for the purposes of this work, the South Bohemian Kristufek line begins definitively with Vit and Katarina Krystufek though all indications are that Vit Krystufek is the son of Mattes Christoff/Krystufek and the grandon of Gottfried Christoff of Selibov.

The next earliest record before 1687 is 1652 and no Christoff or Krystufek names seem to appear. The Kristoff/Krystufek surname most likely had his origin in some locality not far from Selibov. Close by in the Strakonice area there are several Kristof families in Steken, Slanik and Rovna, all about 19 km away (roughly 12 miles). There are also other contemporary Kristoff families in the Podhradi area of Ceske Budejovice, about 41 km away (roughly 25 miles), which was a thriving central hub. However, subsequent marriages within the Krystufek family that involved neighboring towns tended to be in the area between Strakonice and Selibov in places like Putim, Kloub, Stetice and Skaly, which makes the area around Strakonice the most likely source of the family before 1700.