When I first began searching for my family's past, I very quickly realised that I was, compared to most people, in an exceptionally fortunate position. Not because I'm anything special, but because my grandfather Ivan Šenšel came from a long line of Evangelical patriots for whom respect for ancestors, and the keeping of their stories, was simply part of who the family was. Each generation carefully tended to these stories and carried them forward, and thanks to this I was handed, as a novice researcher, something truly precious: documented history, not just scattered fragments of memory. I am immensely grateful for that.

The first and perhaps most precious source was my grandfather's autobiography, which he compiled and had privately printed in 2010 in a very limited edition of just a few copies. In it he describes not only his memories of a childhood spent at an Evangelical rectory, but also the later war years and the horrors of captivity in a German prisoner-of-war camp. He also traces the lives of the wider family, and it was through this that I was able to learn more about my great-aunt Anna Šenšelová. I came to know her from a rather different angle than I expected: not just as a public figure associated with embroidery and Lipa, but also as a warm and quietly humble auntie that everyone would be lucky to have.

Beyond the autobiography, my grandfather also compiled in the 1990s a family history entitled Šenšelovský rod (The Šenšel Lineage). It contains the family tree on both the paternal and maternal sides, historical family photographs, and a copy of the original genealogical chart of Michal Miloslav Hodža, drawn up by Matica slovenská, whose final branches extend all the way to us. Working through this publication, page by page, felt like opening one door after another.

The life of my great-great-grandfather Ľudovít Šenšel is in turn thoroughly documented in the book Pevný buď (Be Steadfast) (Ivan Šenšel, Tranoscius, 1998), drawing on his own account of his life. After reading all three, my hunger to know more only deepened, but I had exhausted what I had at home. So I turned to the internet.

While searching online for Anna Šenšelová, I stumbled upon a recorded radio programme called Robinsonka on Radio_FM, prepared by Monika Kapráliková. It was she who pointed me towards the Digital Library and Digital Archive of the Slovak National Library, dikda.sk. This site opened up a whole new world for me. I found rare period publications here that I would otherwise have had very little chance of getting my hands on. Most older works are freely accessible after registering, so it really is remarkably easy to reach information that would otherwise be quietly gathering dust. The search is intuitive, the content rich. And if a book shows as not publicly available, that needn't be the end. Simply put in a request through your local library's interlibrary loan service.

For me personally, reading period journals was another enormous gift, in my case Živena. There I found a far better sense of what our ancestors were actually living through in their time: how they wrestled with their problems, what they valued, what they fought for and what they fought against, what life put in their way. From the weighty topics one slipped easily to lighter ones: instructions for exercises, tips on laundry and housekeeping, recipes, fashion notes. I read it all through the eyes of my own family, and individual pieces suddenly opened up into something much larger.

"Period journals gave me something books alone cannot: the feeling that those people truly existed, breathed, and worried about everyday things just as we do."

Another significant step in my search was reaching out to more distant relatives I hadn't previously known, but who I suspected might still carry childhood memories of the older generation. Through their stories I kept discovering more and more, and my picture of the wider family kept filling in. I'm not naturally an extrovert, but when I had a clear goal ahead of me, reaching out came surprisingly naturally. And I met with nothing but openness and a genuine joy in sharing.

Online, a fairly interesting source is also church register records: baptism books, marriage records, death records, in which data from several centuries ago can be traced. In Slovakia, digitised records for many villages go back to the 17th and 18th centuries. Several sites worth checking:

Through these records you may also find distant relatives, and if you can bring yourself to reach out, I think in most cases they will be more than willing to share what they know. After all, you are bound together by the most precious thing there is: family.

As my search spread naturally into the world of embroideries and Lipa, I began reaching out to folklore enthusiasts, museums and organisations, and from most of them I received warm and helpful responses that moved me forward. People who pour their heart into this field are usually just as delighted when someone else shows genuine interest, and they are glad to share. All you need to do is ask.

So if you're just starting out and don't know where to begin, begin at home. Old photographs, letters, books with handwritten dedications, notebooks. Then parents, grandparents, distant relatives. And then the internet, knowing full well that the more you find, the more you will want to find. I warned you.

I hope this list makes starting out a little easier, or brings to light some source you hadn't come across before. And I hope that through this website I am, in my own small way, contributing something to your search as well. In the Map of Memories you can browse shared stories by surname or region, and I find myself genuinely curious whether some threads will connect through it, and whether anyone might find a distant relative they never knew about. If that ever happens, I would be over the moon to hear about it. It would mean that all of this had that kind of meaning too.