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.
I'm researching (for clients) in another part of the country, and finding that inter-marriage was not uncommon. (My own family comes from villages with only Catholic churches, so no real opportunities for inter-marriage.) So my first question is, does Tura Luka and environs support more than one denomination at that time? Never mind... I pulled out VSOS and looked it up... RK church built 1610 and Ev built 1792-3. So maybe not so odd to have a child of another religious background in the home. Might even be a relative??
Posted by: Julie Michutka | 11/05/2010 at 09:05 PM
Its possible. Remember that the Ev. church wasnt allowed at certain points in time. It flourished from Martin Luther to the counterreformation, was outlawed in 1710 and not allowed again until 1792. However, I can safely say that the person in my ancestors house was not a relative. We were thinking some type of disaster or disease of some kind.
Posted by: Martin Hollick | 11/05/2010 at 09:54 PM
I probably should have added that this was widespread in the town. Here's part of the email: " I also received the 1869 Census for Tura Luka. It's pretty easy to understand except for one thing. Many of the Lutheran families' listings also include 1 or 2 Roman Catholic infants in the household. It's as if they were maybe foster parents? Actually I have discovered that my great grandmother was one of these children. She ended up marrying a man who was born and raised in Tura Luka. All of these children appear to be from Vienna, Austria. I skimmed the Roman Catholic Church records again and realize that many of the deaths recorded in the record were for infants born in Vienna. This trend continues into the 1890's. If I followed your genealogy correctly, I think you had a Kristina Holics that appeared as a widow in that census with her children living with her. She also had one of these Roman Catholic children (he was 7 in 1869) living with her."
Posted by: Martin | 11/06/2010 at 08:31 AM
Thanks for the follow-up comment; very interesting!
Posted by: Julie Michutka | 11/06/2010 at 02:30 PM
A very close look shows that most of these infants were being raised in households where there was another child that had been born to the family in the same year. Is it possible that the young mothers were wet nurses for these infants? Without a later census I can't tell if these same children remained with the family as they aged. But they at least some did stay in Tura Luka into adulthood as shown by mt great-grandmother's history.
Posted by: Janet Zavoral | 11/09/2010 at 06:22 PM
That seems like a possibility except why did the children stay so long? The one in the Holic household is 7 and well past breast feeding. Its times like these I wish I spoke Slovak and could contact some local Slovak history center.
Posted by: Martin Hollick | 11/09/2010 at 07:39 PM