Prague, Summer 2021 - Unexpected New Developments.
Just a few days after my arrival to Prague in May, my cousin Vítek died quite suddenly. He fell at home, the very same day that I telephoned him and that was the last time I talked with him ever... The next day he was taken to a hospital, diagnosed with a broken neck verterbra and a couple of days later, on the 28th, he expired in his sleep before I was able to visit him. In July, he would have celebrated his 79th birthday. The burial was planned for June, while I was still there, as his wife Daniela has no close relatives. But due to a tangle about the legal rights to the Pešina´s family grave at Vyšehrad, it had to be postponed till the Autumn.
He was the last male bearer of the name Pešina in the long line of our ancestors.
Or so I thought; by a strange coincidence, just before I left for Prague, I had received a mail from - a Pešina (Emanuel), with a long genalogical list of his Pešina ancestors attached, in which, at the end of one branch (8th generation from his point of view) I found the name of my own grandfather, Jan Bedřich Pešina! Our common ancestor is to be found in the 6th generation - in Augustýn Pešina (born 1782 and a butcher in Třeboň!) the grandfather of Jan Bedřich and father of his father Matěj (born 1811, likewise a butcher in Třeboň), by his first wife ( a 3rd of 10 children). So it seems we, my cousins and I, and this Mr. Emanuel Pešina (born 1954) have a common great-great grandfather not such a distant relationship, all things considered. Also, we have two new-found "cousins", his sons Jiří and Tomáš, and four "nephews" , their sons. I have not checked it yet against the family tree my father had put together.
I followed this up by a telephone conversation with Emanuel, who told me he had come across my blog in his search for ancestors and relatives. His son Jiří also got in touch, we met in Prague and he gave me a copy of their far reaching genealogy research, connecting us tentatively to this famous Pešina of Čechorod - my own father´s dream... Not really by blood, though. If you ever want to get in touch with them, this is the e-mail address of your new found "cousin", several times removed:
jiri.pesina@outlook.com he is about your age...
They are quite absorbed in their research and maintain, that the Pešinas (spelled Pessina) had come to Třeboň or whereabouts from Italy as traders. In any case, there is an Italian footballer, Mateo /(Matěj) Pessina - Thomas told me he had scored a goal in the recent EC! Also, when I told Daniela about it, she showed me a shopping bag from a shop Via Pessina in Lucerne..., Well, what do you know :-)
Last additions, May 2022, my great grandmothers and me (in Prague)
