The Slovak Yankee

The parents of Pavel Chodur Dolinsky 1817-1891 of Vrbovce

I have just completed abstracting the Vrbovce protestant church records from 1783-1815 for all baptisms, marriages, and deaths for the surnames Chodur, Valuch, Tomecek, and Balaz.  It was an overly ambitious project that took months.  The records are in Latin which is easy, but the handwriting changes over time from scribe to scribe.

I know my great-great-great-grandfather Paul Chodur Dolinsky died 26 April 1891 aged 74 and 1/4 according to his death record.  That aligns beautifully with a Paul Chodur baptized on 9 January 1817 son of Jan Chodur and Anna Chodur.  Jan and Anna are the two most common given names in Vrbovce and trying to distinguish them from others is difficult. 

They certainly seem to be the couple who married 21 November 1803.  They had the following children:

1. Elisabeth bapt. 10 August 1806
2. Jan bapt. 21 October 1810 died 11 April 1814
3. Pavel bapt. 23 December 1813 died 4 June 1814
4. Pavel bapt. 9 January 1817 above
5. Catherina bapt. 25 November 1818

However, I continued abstracting death records from 1816 on and to my dismay the Paul Chodur baptized in January 1817 dies that same month.  He can't be my great-great-great-grandfather and this identification is wrong.

I looked around and found another candidate.  This Paul Chodur is baptized in December 1817 to Jan Chodur Janowych and Catherina Ondris.  This couple marries on 16 November 1795 and has eight children and Paul is the youngest.  Paul uses the dual name Chodur Janowych when he baptizes his own children.  This seems like a likely match.  Fortuitously I found Catherina Ondris's death record in 1842 and can put  her with her parents Jan and Catherine Ondris.  Identifying Jan Chodur Janowych will be more difficult.

 

 

Slovak Ancestor Collapse

I've shown on this blog that I descend from several New England families more than once such as the Coffin, Hayes, Hull, Heard, Hall, Clough, and Burnham families.  We all descend from the same people multiple times thanks to the theory of ancestor collapse.  Ancestor collapse posits that at some point back in time, the amount of people you need to descend from will be more than the world's population.  King Charles II descends from Queen Victoria twice, once from his mother and once from his father.  He is the poster boy for ancestor collapse.  By the time he has 1,o24 ancestors there are only 500 different people filling the 1,024 slots.

My Slovak ancestors work the same way except that the records don't go back far enough for me to prove double descents.  I have two Chodur lines that marry each other and likewise two Valuch lines that marry each other.  I have two Szowiss lines that would make my great-great-grandparents cousins and two Zabka lines that would make my grandparents distant cousins.  Other double families include the Krc, Holic, Witek, and Valassek families.  This is not surprising.  I have four Slovak great-grandparents that came from four adjoining villages.  My Sobotiste ancestors have Vrbovce roots and my Tura Luka ancestors have Myjava roots.  People were marrying from the neighboring village.

I would like to connect one of those families to show double descents but the records just aren't there.  My Chodurs could be first cousins or fifth cousins.  No way to know.

 

 

Left Hanging in History

The emergence of a German line behind my Slovak ancestry has changed the way I have always viewed my father's ancestry, which was 100% Slovak.  My mother had some diversity but not my father.  I can see that has changed.

I've done further work on my German line and have pushed it back to this couple:

Jacob  Shultz born c. 1706 and died 25 November 1769 at Verbovce, Slovakia (which was then the Austrian Empire).  He was married to Anna Belany born c. 1713 and died 21 September 1783.  I have both death records.  Their daughter Susanna married under the name Sulc to Jan Witek. I've posted the line in a previous posting.

But I can't go further back.  The church records don't exist.  I'm left hanging wondering how this man with a German name came to live in a village in  Slovakia.  He was Protestant and certainly that might be the main reason we find him in a predominantly Protestant village.  Perhaps his grandfather moved there after the 30 years war in 1648 when Europe divided between Protestant and Catholic.

Sadly Shultz is too common a surname to investigate further.  But now I can wonder if records were as rich in Slovakia as they are in New England, if I couldn't go back further and find other ethnicities behind my father.

 

Three Marriages

My ancestor Pavel Chodur was born in 1817 in Vrbovce, Slovakia to Jan Chodur and Anna Chodur (her maiden name).  I have now abstracted the marriage records from Vrbovce from 1783 to 1816.  It yields three possible couples:

 

1.  Jan Chodur of Sobotiste married Anna Chodur of Vrbovce 22 October 1792
   
   2. Jan Chodur and Anna Chodur 23 January 1797
   
   3.  Jan Chodur and Anna Chodur 21 November 1803

 

I think the 1803 marriage is the right one.  But just imagine in one small village the overuse of Jan and Anna can lead to three marriages.

Valuch Family

I have been abstracting the Vrbovce church records from 1783 to 1815.  During the beginning of that time all names pronounced "v" were written with a "w" and hence I was abstracting Waluch each and every time.

In 1804, the scribe makes the shift and suddenly the name is Valuch:

Thomas s. Jan Valuch and Elizabeth Brkala godparents Martin Nochta and Maria ? 17 November 1804

I have two Valuch lines to research.  They join in the wedding of Jan  Valuch-Malarik and Elizabetha Valuch on 31 January 1848 in Vrbovce.  Thus far I can't connect them.

 

Catherine Chodur

From the Vrbovce church records of 1799:

 

Catharina d. Paul Chodur and Anna Walek godparents Joannes Maracek and his wife Catharina Matula 31 May 1799

Catharina d. Paul Chodur and Catharina Kadlicek, godparents George Hiza Szab. and his wife Anna Macek 19 June 1799

Catharina d. Joannes Chodur and Catherina Ondryska godparents Joannes Kutalek and his wife Elizabeth Czernekova 21 July 1799

 

Good luck untangling that.  Didn't they know each other?  Why name a girl the same name as two others?

Slovaks as early Feminists

By studying the church records of Vrbovce, Slovakia, it is clear that women kept their birth names throughout their life.  In all records they are referred to by their birth name and then a further description of being the daughter of or wife of or widow of a man.

Elisabeth d. Joannes Waluch and Elizabetha Brkala, godparents Joannes Klinek and his wife Maria Puca, 5 November 1785

Note is this example that the mother is given her maiden name and the godmother as well.

In death records this is also done:

Anna Chalupa, widow of Johannes Valuch.

This practice is going on in the 18th century in this protestant church.  I only wish English records kept a woman's maiden name going throughout her life.

 

Vrbovce Records

I think Vrbovce genealogy is much trickier than I earlier assumed.  Using just birth, marriage, and death records does not give enough information to distinguish one person of the same name with another.  I may have wrong branches in my tree.  I am investigating that now.

I am abstracting the protestant church records of Vrbovce from 1783-1815 for any Chodurs, Waluch's, Tomeceks, and Balaz's.  I have two Chodur lines and two Waluch/Valuch lines.

Right away I noticed the trouble.  In 1784 there are two Martin Tomeceks having children.  on 27 January 1784 he has son Martin with wife Anna Marecek.  On 13 February 1784 another Martin had son Jan with wife Susanna Sifel.  Obviously these men are cousins.  But they need to be delineated.

Likewise in 1785 two Elisabeth Chodurs are baptized one on 31 March with father Jan and another on 25 May with father Paul.

Luckily I discovered the death record of my ancestor Anna (Chalupa) Valuch on 11 December 1860.  She died as Anna Chalupa widow of Jan Valuch aged 67.  That gives a birth year of 1793 and lo and behold there is an Anna Chalupa baptized 26 March 1793 daughter of Martin Chalupa and Elisabeth Valassek.  This gives me a second Valassek line.

So progress is being made.

Soundex at Familysearch.org

I can't find out but I assume that the search engine at Familysearch.org uses Soundex.  That is a system of finding names that are spelled differently with the same code.  So something like Stewart and Stuart are equal and appear in the same retrieved list.

But does that work for non-English language names?  I don't think so.  I've been researching the name Krc.  That is K620 in Soundex.  But variants of the name are Krcs (K622) and Krts (K632).  You have to search those names separately.

The names Szowiss is S222 but Szoviss is S212.  Soviss is S120 and Sowiss is S220. In German and Slovak V and W are the same but in Soundex V is not the same as W.

Tomecek seemed to yield all variants of T522.  Tomeczek or Tomezek.

It's interesting because they have the first names programmed.  A search for Jan (Slovak) yields Janos (Hungarian) or Johannes (Latin). 

And names like Waluch/Valuch or Walek/Valek are completely different.  Plus you run into the fact that the transcribers got their M's and W's mixed up.

The only safe way to travel is to read the church records on browse and not use the search engine.  A search for Pavel Holic in Myjava in 1860 failed to bring up his baptism record,  It got both his marriages and several children.  I really don't know what to say.

 

Possible German Line

I've been pursuing a possible German ancestor behind my Slovak ancestors.  Wouldn't that be exciting?  It seems Shultz a German name is rendered Sulc in Slovak.  So the line would be:

1. Jacob Shultz/Sulc b.c. 1715
2. Susanna Shultz/Sulc m. Jan Witek
3. Jan Witek m. Katherina Witek
4. Elisabeth Witek m. Martin Kristofik
5. Paul Kristofik m. Anna Plessa
6. Paul Kristofik m. Susana Balaz
7. Anna Kristofik 1883-1959 who immigrated to the U.S. and was my great-grandmother.