The Slovak Yankee

Slovak Emigration to the U.S.

"The 1870s saw massive emigration to the United States and Canada due not only to the boom in these countries but also to the slow pace and alienating conditions of industrial development and employment in Hungary. On average, for the the half century preceding the Great War, some 30,000 people emigrated annually.  Often the departure was short-term to make money in order to purchase property back home later, and a third of the emigrants throughout this period are deemed to have returned."  Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival, 2nd edition, p. 152.

50 years (1864-1914) x 30,000 = 1,500,000 of whom 1/3 returned, or ca. 500,000 returned, leaving 1,000,000 or so Slovaks who came to this country and Canada.

"Population statistics show that in 1869, there were 1,818,228 Slovaks in Hungary (in Slovakia around 1,570,000).  In 1900, that number rose to 2,008,744 (1,684,681 in Slovakia).  [Ibid, p. 153]

By the year 1900, there were roughly 2,000,000 Slovaks in the Hungarian kingdom.  But we know that beginning in 1864 (or so), 30,000 a year on average were leaving, with 1/3 returning (on average).  So by 1900, 720,000 Slovaks had left permanently.  That would be 26.5% of the entire population that left.  So, that's 1 out of every four persons.  Put another way, 77 million Americans would have to up and leave this country within the next 36 years for a comparable exodus.  

Slovak History Bleg

A fellow Slovak researcher whose roots are in the village of Tura Luka, whence my great-grandfather Holic (sic) came, emailed me the other day.  She very smartly learned from my error, and had all the Tura Luka parish registers on microfilm at once with the 1869 Hungarian census for the village.  She had it on extended loan--so there's lesson one.  Spend the money and get the whole kit and kaboodle.  I found it frustrating to just use two reels at a time.

In any case, she found her ancestor and true to family lore, she was born in Vienna, a Roman Catholic and living with a protestant family there in Tura Luka.  In my own great-grandfather's household was also a 7 year old child named Carol Lehman who was Roman Catholic, although the rest of the household (all Holics) were protestant.  My friend asked me if I knew what was up with that.  I don't.  Does anyone know if there is something in the history of Vienna and Slovakia that in the late 1860s, children were farmed out to villages?  It's also odd that the children are of a different religious upbringing.

Tura Luka may seem remote to Vienna, but it is next door to Myjava, where the Slovak National Congress made its dramatic call for Slovak independence in 1848.  [And we all know how well that turned out!]  Vienna is only about 60 miles away from Myjava.   It may be just a simple explanation, but I'm sure my researcher friend would greatly appreciate any insight you can provide.

 

Old Group Photos and a Mystery

I posted this photo on Tuesday:

In the same collection is this picture:

The second picture is the mystery.  Clearly two of the people are the same.  They are my great-great-aunt Kristina with her husband Andrew Barbieri.  But who are the others?  Notice first that the picture of the child on the wall is the same.  However, the walls are different, so the rooms or houses are different.  The curtains are the same too.  So, is the second photo a later photo?  I can't be sure but the woman standing in the center in the first photo, whom I know to be my great-great-grandmother seems to be the same woman seated in the center of the second photograph.  She's older (by say ten years).  If that is so, then the man seated next to her must be her husband, and therefore I have a photo of my great-great-grandfather.  But this photo is not labelled.  And all the people who could corroborate it are now dead.  The irony is that their deaths brought the photo into my possession in the first place.  My fear is that the older couple is Andrew Barbieri's parents.  Is there a resemblance between the two men in the second photo?

My great-aunt Bette at my grandmother's funeral at which I sang, told me that my great-great-grandfather, whom she knew had the same type of voice, a big one that could fill a room easily.  He had thick hair and a mustache according to her description.  Is that this man?

Writing on Photographs

I already posted this picture before.  It is the only picture I have I can verify of any of my Slovak great-great-grandparents.  As you can see, someone wrote all the names of the persons in the photo, but one--the child seated in the center.

The word baba is Slovak for grandma.  So it means that the writer is that woman's great-grandchild, or someone from my father's generation.  However, that makes no sense.  I do believe I recognize the handwriting as my own grandmother.  Perhaps she was calling her own mother Baba in the sense of how one talks of someone to her own children.  In any case, in my trove of pictures from my great-great aunt, the same photo exists without the writing:

So thanks to the first picture I know everyone in the photo but one.  It is my great-great-grandmother with two of her children and their spouses.  However, this bottom photo is part of a mystery I'll post about next. 

Coal Miner's Great-Grandson, Part II

In July I wrote about Slovak coal miners and provided a link to site that had historical photographs.  And then I discovered this photo in my own collection:

 
Obviously this is my great-grandfather on May 31, 1929 coming home from the mines.  I love the lunch pail and the miner's hat.  I believe the words at the top are Slovak for "Dad home from work."  My great-aunt Bette (this man's daughter) had an album with that old black paper and she pasted her pictures in the album and wrote on them.  I don't appreciate that she wrote on the actual photos, but thank goodness she told me who and when.  I cut the photos out with the black paper still on them.

In any case, I wonder how many historic photographs we genealogists have in our collections?  Now that we have digital capabilities, do we have a responsibility to send theses images to the proper archives?  And if so, how do we find out what those depositories are?  You can do a default choice by geography--such as the blah blah County Historical Society.  However, isn't a subject-oriented society better, such as the Slovak Coal Miners Historical Society (if there were such a thing?)?  Decisions, decisions.  And of course, I've just added another item on the never ending "to do" list of each genealogist.

Slovak History and the Baláž Family

I'm presently reading A History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival by Stanislav J. Kirschbaum (it's hard not to chuckle at the thought of Prof. Cherry Tree).  Get the 2nd edition (2005).  It's the best English-language history of Slovakia you can get.  It is a bit of a slog to get through.  It certainly falls in the category of great books that are hard to read.

However, I was quite interested to read "The Protestant faith spread from the mining centers to the landed gentry through the efforts of such people as the brother Peter and Nicholas Kostka, Francis Revay, and the Turzo, Radvansky, and Balas families." (p. 67)  My great-great-grandmother was Zuzana Baláž.  Her paternal grandparents were Juraj Baláž and Elisabetha Siska according to their sons' baptismal and marriage records.  However, I can't find their marriage nor baptisms.  In any case the similarity of Baláž and Balas is striking and since my ancestors were all Slovak Lutherans, I am now interested to find a genealogy of that particular family.

My great-aunt (a bit loony) thought Baláž (pronounced Balajz) was French and related to the writer Balzac.  That's one family story I can definitely refute.  I often wonder if I should get rid of that letter of hers that mentions it?  Why not snuff out misinformation?  And yet, it is a letter in her handwriting . . . .

Ellis Island Name Changes

I went huh? a couple times this weekend over the same post.   Not actually the post itself, but the description of the post. On one weekly genealogy blog roundup I read "Schelly Talalay Dardashti at Tracing the Tribe catches the New York Times perpetuating the myth of names being changed at Ellis Island, and wonders when this myth will finally be put to rest." On another it said, " Ellis Island: A rose by any other name... by Schelly Talalay Dardashti on the Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog. This is an important post for everyone working with immigration records - Schelly takes the New York Times to task for publicizing the myth that names were transliterated at Ellis Island." The post about which they are speaking is here.

My great-grandfather went through a name change as an immigrant.  So, the myth is that the officials at Ellis Island (or any other official) changed the name for immigrants.  However, many immigrants changed their own names. That wasn't clear from the descriptions.  I still have the original birth certificate (now falling apart) of that great-grandfather on which his name is clearly given as: Pavel Chodur anovy oh Dolinsky.  This is the classic Slovak double name.  Pavel's mother had one too.  She was Anna Valuch-Malarik.  

The question is who made the decision and when to shorten his name to Pavel Dolinsky (the descriptor) from Pavel Chodur (the actual surname).  It was Pavel's great-grandfather who adopted the double name as Jan Chodur-Dolinsky (born in 1799).  His father was Adam Chodur b. 1770, son of another Pavel.  Luckily I always knew this, because Pavel daughter, my grandmother, often told me that Dolinsky wasn't even their real name.  So this is a nuanced myth-busting.  Immigrants changed their names on their own, officials didn't do it for them.  Got it.  However, how many immigrants were cajoled into changing their names by the derision or ignorance of same said officials?  Harder question to answer.  Suffice it to say that non-Anglo immigrants have found it easier to change their names.  Although my great-grandfather probably consented to the name change after a while, he couldn't have instituted it because he would have chosen Chodur over Dolinsky.  (that is, the surname over the descriptor of the surname).  Dolinsky happened because it came last in the name.  

I've never looked for it, but now I would like to see his citizenship papers.  I remember my grandmother telling me that she and her siblings helped him study for it.  I can see by the U.S. censuses that it happened between 1920 and 1930.  I'd like to see how he handled his name.  Starting in 1910, the name on the census is always a variant of Dolinsky.  He called himself Dolinsky in his 1903 marriage license in Pennsylvania.  However, in the 1900 census he is clearly Paul Hodur.  I don't wish to disagree with the poster, but how much of that is myth or not, I still question.

Follow Friday: LiveMocha

There are many places on the Internet to find genealogical terms in foreign languages.  There are probably few Americans who won't at some point in their research, need to work in a language other than English.  However, if you want to kick up a notch and not just memorize a few words like baptism, death, and widow, there is a place to learn a foreign language for free on the Internet.

LiveMocha offers courses of all the major languages I can think of.  I was impressed that they had Slovak, an often forgotten language among the European languages.  [No Rosetta Stone for Slovak for instance.] I'm in the middle of my first lesson.  Here's a New York Times article about it.  The web does have some real advantages insofar as the sound capabilities that now the Internet has.  You click on a word and you hear it pronounced properly.  I had a few false starts in lesson one trying to figure out what word was meant by the picture given (no English translation is provided), but I got the hang of it.  

So, if you are planning a trip to the homeland of some ancestor and want to learn some of the language spoken there, I think this is certainly one affordable way to do so.

Transcription Monday (Amanuensis): Obituary of Susan (Dolinsky) Hollick

Undated newspaper clipping from unknown newspaper:

SUSAN DOLINSKY HOLLICK, 85, Wall Township, died yesterday at Monmouth Medical Center, Long Branch.  She was a nurse's aide at Neptune Conva Center for 10 years, retiring in 1991.  Prior to that, she was a nurse's aide in Jersey City for many years.  She was a member of the Memorial United Methodist Church, Neptune City.  Mrs. Hollick was born in Nesquehoning, Pa., and lived in Jersey City most of her life before moving to Wall in 1984.

Surviving are a son, Paul J., Pompton Plains; a daughter Betty Lamonea, Wall; a brother, Martin Dolinsky, Toms River; two sisters, Bette Dolinsky, Allentown, Pa., and Christine Miranda, Nesquehoning, Pa; and five grandchildren.  Johnson Funeral Home, Wall Township, is in charge of arrangements.  

Notes: She was the daughter of last's week's transcription.  Gravestone here.  Picture here.

Transcription Monday (Amanuensis): Obituary of Anna (Kristofik) Dolinsky

1. [undated clipping from an unknown newspaper]

Mrs. Anna Dolinsky

Mrs. Anna Dolinsky, 75, of 102 West Columbus Avenue, Nesquehoning, died this morning at 4:15 o'clock in the Gnaden Huetten Memorial Hospital, Lehighton.  She had been hospitalized one week.

Born in Czechoslovakia, she came to this country 62 years ago.  She was a member of St. John's Slovak Lutheran church, Lansford.

Her husband, Paul Dolinsky, died in 1937.

Surviving are the following children: John, at home; Mrs. Christine Miranda of Nesquehoning; Miss Alzbeth Dolinsky of Allentown; Mrs. Susan Hollick and Martin of Jersey City, N.J., and Paul of Astoria, Long Island; 12 grandchildren.

2. [undated clipping from an unknown newspaper]

Death Notice

DOLINSKY--Mrs. Anna of 102 West Columbus Avenue, Nesquehoning, in the Gnaden Huetten Memorial Hospital, Lehighton, Tuesday, March 31, 1959.  Funeral at 1:30 p.m. with further services in St. John's Slovak Lutheran Church Lansford with the Rev. John Kovacik, pastor, officiating.  Internment in Slovak Lutheran cemetery, Nesquehoning. Friends may call Wednesday 4 p.m. until time of funeral.  JOseph E. Sniscak, funeral director.

Note:  The above details are all correct except that she arrived in the U.S. in 1899 not 1897.  As a child, my great-uncle John still owned that house and I was in it several times.