Getting copies of originals when it comes to census is pretty important. The Tax Rolls of 1654 - one of the first census after the end of the 30 years war are indexed and the indexed data was published in 2002. There are problems using this very old census as a first search. First, the index has mistakes and omissions. In addition the 1654 tax rolls name ONLY the people with enough property to pay taxes. If a name is missing it does not mean the name was not found in Bohemia in 1654 - it may mean only that the surname belonged to someone who was still trying to develop his property under the "no tax" incentives offered new settlers. If you use the index available via interlibrary loan in the US to try to find an ancestral birthplace it may be very helpful. It is alphabetized by surname. The problem is that many of the German surnames have a Czech spelling that might change a first letter "G" to a "K" or even something else. Many that are in German have old spellings that may only have one or two letters and the overall sound of the name in common with the present name (my modern Grosams were called Grausamb in 1654). Czech names may also have older Czech spellings that make them hard to recognize except by sound (I am not very well informed about Czech surnames). If you use the index to the 1654 tax rolls and find a number of villages with surnames that resemble your ancestral names close enough to be a good guess, try to find the villages on a map or get their latitude and longitude from Shtetl Seeker on line. (Remember the villages may also have alterned spellings of their names.) The locate them on a map. If your ancestors were German concetrate on the villages in majority German areas. If they were Czeh concentrate on places in the fringes of German areas or in the mostly-Czech interior of Bohemia. Select the places in your order of preference. One way to do that may be to look for more than one surname that you believe were probably from the same place. If you find a place with both those names in 1654 that makes it a good guess. If you find a place quite close to another place and one of the names is found in each, that makes both of them a good guess. The new settlers were there because the 30 years war and the expulsions of protestants who were unwilling to convert at the wars end left Bohemia / Moravia with a population of less thaqn 1, 000,000. Count von Lutzow (Czech historian) says in his book "Bohemia, an Historical Sketch" that the population before the war was 3,000,.000 and after it ended only 800.000. A large number of new settlers were from Germany (various German dominons) although many parts of Germany were also devastated by the war and had little population to spare. Some may have come from Saxony or Silesia, too. ( I have only studied the Germans who settled in some small sections of western Bohemia during that period.) The originals of the tax rolls of 1654 are in the various archives of the CR. If the Czech Census Searchers can get them and you know a place or places you would like them to search, ask them to see if your surname(s) are on that census. If you have used the index published in 2002, tell them whether you found anything there and on what page. If you did not find the surname(s)