We are Dieter Perny and Gerlinde Silvestri-Perny from Vienna and we started with our researches 2002.
In most cases, we can search together and help us mutually.

Reading old or even foreign-languages church records and documents requires some practice, but as a couple it's easier.
What´s so fascinating about our hobby is that the history is simply our ancestors life. During our visits to various archives and parishes in Austria, the Czech Republic and in Italy, we had the opportunity to see the old parish books for ourselves and study them. Unfortunately, we have found out that many of these old books have suffered a lot due to the passage of time. Many archives now have started to digitize these valuable documents and post them on their websites. So it gives us the possibility to study them at home, but of course it´s even fine to hold a real book in our hands though.

Also we have a lot of fun with our travels across Europe (Austria, Czech Republic, Italy and France).
It is very interesting to visit the sites of our ancestors, and we have already explored many beautiful and unusual places.
To view the images of these investigations, you can click the link gazetteer.

Through reading and studying relevant literature, we gained new knowledge of historical details which helped us finding new information about their life of people in former times.