The Slovak Yankee

Juraj Balaz b. 1828, died after 1869

Juraj (or George in English or Georgius in Latin) Balaz is the name of my great-great-great-grandfather.  I was working out his ancestry and as I am wont to do, I googled his name to see who might be working on him.  This has never worked for my Slovak genealogy but I keep trying.  Well, I can't google Juraj Balaz for genealogy because someone of that name in Slovakia is a famous footballer.  All the hits are for him.  Is he a cousin perhaps?  Who knows.

This Juraj Balaz is the son of another Juraj Balaz and Elisabetha Siska.  He may be the grandson of another Juraj Balaz and Catherina Babrak of Vrbovce.  I still need to explore the Vrbovce and Sobotiste church records for these people.

 

Further Thoughts on Slovak Genealogy

We all descend from the same people over and over.  This is especially so when your families come from small villages that are contiguous as mine do in Slovakia. So it's not surprising that I have two Holic lines and two Szowiss lines neither of which I can connect to a single ancestor.  You see all my Slovak genealogy is original research.  I did the research myself.  Whereas in my New England genealogy, two of my great-great-grandparents appear in books.  It's too bad that I can't simply go to a Slovak genealogical library and look up some of my families in books and get lines that way.  But Europeans seldom do genealogy like Americans do.  We are all from some place else (except Native Americans).  Whereas Slovaks have been Slovaks for 1,000 years.  Britain does genealogy a lot because they are so class conscious.  But except for nobility, Europeans are not so concerned with genealogy.

I'd love to push my Slovak lines back into the 1600s.  But the original records just don't exist.  So I'm left with my great-grandmother Kristina have two great-grandmothers surnamed Szowiss, each fathered by a different man, Jan and Juraj (George).  Those men may be brothers both born about 1760.  That would make my great-great-grandparents, 3rd cousins.  Very possible.  Also, my great-grandfather Holic had two grandparents also named Holic.  I can't connect them either.  They peter out in the 1730s.  So disappointing.

I also may have pushed another Slovak line back a generation noting that they come from the neighboring village.  That would be interesting.  Again, a book on these people would be great.

 

Some Thoughts on Slovak Genealogy

Slovak genealogy represents half of my ancestry.  I've done a good job on it.  My father born in 1937 has ancestors in all lines back to 1750 in most cases.  How was this accomplished?  By knowing the four villages from which my great-grandparents emigrated and using the church records there to go back generation after generation.  I also used the 1869 Hungarian census.  That census provides the entire household, the name of the father, the relationships of everyone in the household to the father, religion and occupation.  It also provides the address (House number) for the village which is then used in church records.  There is an 1857 census as well but it does not cover the counties in which my ancestors lived.  I can only go back to about 1750 since my ancestors were protestants and the church records only start in the 1770s.  Before that they could be in the Catholic church records, but I have not checked.  Be it known that church records vary in language from Latin (oldest) to Hungarian to Slovak.

I killed off (i.e. found death records for) my eight great-great-grandparents.  There are one or two great-great-great-grandparents I've yet to kill off and with time, I could now do that online if I wish.  I wish there were more resources for biographical information for my Slovak ancestors such as military records.  After all, the Austrian empire was at war with Napoleon.  There was also the war of the Austrian succession. 

Mostly what the 1869 census tells me is that my ancestors were peasant farmers (plus one blacksmith).  So, any records of property won't help since they didn't own any.  This is not a big revelation, after if that had resources in Slovakia why did they emigrate to America?

I think I've done all I can do with that part of my ancestry.  It was interesting but not as fulfilling as my mother's side with all the biographical information I could obtain in English.

Tura Luka, Slovakia

I almost didn't get here.  It took me three tries.  In 1983 I came to what was then Czechoslovakia, but only saw Prague.  I had no idea where my ancestral home town was at that time.  In 2017 I had planned to visit Tura Luka as part of a five city tour of Central Europe.  But in Vienna, a bicyclist ran down Michael and gave him a compound fracture of the arm.  We spent a week in hospital during which time, and this is no joke, my father died.  So we returned to America on the next flight.

This time, 2019, was the charm.  We completed that ill-fated trip by finishing with the three cities that remained, Prague, Bratislava, and Krakow.  In Bratislava we rented a car and drove 1 1/2 hours to the countryside to see the four villages my paternal great-grandparents came from: Tura Luka (Holic), Myjava (Michaelez), Sobotiste (Kristofik), and Vrbovce (Chodur Dolinsky).  Now I knew three of the four villages from my grandmother, but not Tura Luka.  Today if I were researching it would take me a hour or less to discover the place.  It took several years before the advent of computers.  I remember having to wait for the 1920 census to be released to find my grandfather on it.  With the name of the town, I searched the unindexed 1910 U.S. Census for the Hollicks.  I found them spelled Hollitsch and my great-grandfather saying he had been in the country for ten years.  I then searched the shipping records for Ellis Island for all of 1900.  I started in January and almost gave up before finding the ship on 22 December 1900.  That record had the place of origin as Tura Luka.  Luckily my great-grandparents married in Slovakia, so it was easy to find that marriage record in Tura Luka and confirm that these were indeed my people.   But it was a lot of searching through microfilm at that time.

Tura Luka is now a suburb of larger Myjava.  We found the old Catholic church but not the Lutheran church.  It didn't seem poor but solidly middle class.  All the homes were modern and none looked to be over 100 years old, so certainly none that my great-grandfather lived in.  It was odd to think that if my great-grandfather didn't make the decision to come over, I might have been born there.  And for me into a communist system.

The rolling hills of Slovakia are beautiful.  This is an area, very close to to the border of Czechia.  It was very green and full of farms.  I'm glad I went.

Svatopluk, Charlemagne and the 1,000 year rule

A few months ago, the Youtuber Useful Charts did a video on how anyone with Western European ancestry is probably a descendant of Charlemagne (742-814).  You can see it here.  His reasoning is that due to ancestor collapse, you are probably descended from anyone who left descendants and lived over 1,000 years ago.  I can see this logic and it does give some solace for people interested in genealogy who can't connect to a real royal line.

At Bratislava Castle, there is a statue to Svatopluk (c. 840-894).  The poor Slovaks are so put upon to find heroes, they had to go back 1200 years to a King of Greater Moravia.  Svatopluk had two sons.  So according to the same logic as above, since I am half Slovak, it very likely I am a descendant of Svatopluk since he lived 1,000 years ago and left descendants. 

But why can I trace myself in 44 generations from Charlemagne to me and not do the same for Svatopluk?  Certainly the first several hundred years of genealogy are done by chronicles.  This gets me from Charlemagne to Edward III and further.  Certainly there must be Slavic chronicles that detail the aristocrats of Moravia and Slovakia?  Or did the Hungarians come too soon and there really aren't any Slovak aristocrats?

Certainly the beginning of English parish records in the early 1500s helps my cause.  Those records lead to colonial American records that start in 1620 in Massachusetts.  From there it a simple step by step to get to me following a paper trail that exists.  I can't do the same in Slovakia.  My ancestors were Lutherans and until  Emperor Joseph signs the Tolerance Act, those churches were underground.  I can go back to about 1750 in all my Slovak lines but that is where the records disappear.  I can't bridge the gap to the chronicles in Slovakia like I can in England.

And in England, as I have stated before, there was considerable downward mobility due to primogeniture.  Kings begat princes who begat lords who begat the gentry who begat the tradesmen and so forth down to me.  Eastern Europe did not allow for such mobility. 

But it does lead me to feel that colonial American/English genealogy is simply the best because you can go back so far so easily.  My Scottish lines run out at 1750 and my Irish lines run out at 1820.  I believe German lines can go back to the 17th century but then you have the destruction in the 30 years war 1618-1648.  In any case, the vagaries of genealogy are such that I can easily so myself a 44th generational descendant of Charlemagne, but can't do the same for Svatopluk, although, he too must be my ancestor.

 

I missed the Golden Age of Prague

I just returned from Prague having visited it for the  second time.  The first was in 1983 when it was still a communist country.  I remember vividly how dirty the buildings were from the coal being burnt for heat.  I remember how few people there were in the city during December.  I remember a man saying to me that i could have been in London or Paris for New Year's Eve, why was I in Prague.  Well, I wanted to see the homeland.  My father's entire ancestry was Slovak and I wanted to see that country.  We had distant cousins there but I was told not to contact them, since it would be bad for them to be seen with Americans.  So, I saw the sights and took a train to Budapest bypassing Bratislava.

Fast forward 36 years and today's Prague is a tourist haven.  The streets are crowded with visitors from all over the E.U.  There are now Thai massages on the main drag.  A dixieland band plays jazz on the  Charles Bridge.  A fireater stupifies crowds at the Old Town Square.  It is clean, sleek and completely modern now.  They've been free for over 25 years.  The don't use the Euro yet, but have a vital economy.  The Prague Castle still stands over the city and St. Vitus is still there in all her Gothic beauty.  But, it is a tourist swamp.  You can't walk over the Charles Bridge.  You tiptoe in a great crowd over the bridge.  People are taking selfies with saints and people are selling refrigerator magnets and charicatures. 

So in between say 2000-2005, the golden age of Prague happened.  It was the undiscovered gem of Eastern Europe.  Free at last with a good infrastructure, you got alot for your dollar there.  Backpackers put it on the map.  Unfortunately, now everyone knows it.  Beer is cheaper than bottled water.  And it's good beer.  And it makes for a ton of drunk tourists.  Bachelor and Bachelorette parties are regularly held in Prague from all over the E.U.  There are some moments where Prague is still OK.  It is quiet by the Lennon Wall and the Old Jewish Quarter.   But if you want that Central European charm without all the tourists, you'd better go to Krakow or Bratislava.  And even Bratislava is changing since it is on the Danube and the river cruise industry is booming.

I'll probably never get to Prague again.  I saw it at its lowest and now at its highest.  I wish I had seen the middle ground in between.

Slovak Genealogy is Getting Easier and Easier

When I started pursuing my Slovak roots, oh so many years ago, there was the communist country of Czechoslovakia and dealing with them was difficult by mail.  That was 1979.  Twenty years and one velvet revolution later, the way to do Slovak genealogy was board a plane and get to Bratislava and go to the Archives.  There were all the parish records from Slovakia.  At that time some of the books were indexed some were not.  Mostly the baptisms and marriages were indexed and deaths were not.

Then came the next leap.  The Mormons microfilmed all the parish records.  Suddenly you only needed to go to Salt Lake City to use these records.  What's more they microfilmed the 1869 census as well.  This led to many trips to Salt Lake City to use these records.  I was the first to use them (and how do I know this?  Because I had to recall each film from the vault which was off-site).  It took me three separate trips to get all I needed.

But technology advanced again.  These microfilmed records were placed on the Internet at www.familysearch.org/.  So, now you could browse these records from your own home and save on the air fare to Bratislava (which I sadly paid in the 1990s). 

Most recently I was on that site and noticed that they had begun indexing the records into a searchable database.  From my many searches, I could see that baptisms have been indexed but not yet marriages or deaths.  Of course, there's no control page to let you know what's going on.  It's totally flying blind.  I found that you had to search by surname alone since Slovak parish records are in multiple languages.  George is listed in Latin as Georgius, in German as Georg and in Slovak as Juraj.  And when you search, of course, they do a wide search and you retrieve thousands of hits.  Your town may be first, but other towns follow.  I tried to do an exact search and came up with nothing.

However, since I was pressed for time when I was doing my genealogy I only did my direct lines.  Now I can search and retrieve all the siblings of my direct ancestors and see their families as well.  It should make for a fuller tree in the end.  It will be nice when all the records are indexed (and there is an obvious sign saying so).

But, for now, Slovak genealogy is taking another leap forward in convenience.  You can search the parish records from home.  Some are even now indexed.

The Vitek Family of Vrbovce, Slovakia

1. Stefan Vitek was born say 1715 and was the father of:

2. Jan Vitek was born about 1740.  He married on 1 February 1761 at Vrbovce, Slovakia, Susanna Sule, born say 1740, daughter of Jacob Sule.  They were the parents of:

3. Jan Vitek (Jr.) was baptized 5 June 1770 at Vrbovce, Slovakia.  He married Katharina Vitek (or Witek).  They were the parents of:

4. Elisabetha Vitek was born 15 December 1791 at Vrbovce, Slovakia.  She married on 2 November 1812 at Sobotiste, Slovakia, Martin Kristofik, born 10 November 1794 at Sobotiste, died there 15 December 1842, son of George and Elisabetha (Malany) Kristofik.  They had at least one child: Pavel.

Sources:

Slovak Lutheran (Evangelium) Church records of Sobotiste and Vrbovce available on microfilm at the LDS Library and digitized by them on their site, www.familysearch.org. 

Umrtia (Deaths) 1817-1850, p. 438, FHL Film #2420737.

 

The Valuch Family of Vrbovce, Slovakia

This is another case of the Slovak double name.  It is also from the village of Vrbovce which is the only village that I've noticed the double name use.  I'm sure these lines connect somehow but the records don't go back far enough to connect them.

Line #1

1. Jan Valuch alias Benovsky was born about 1765.  He married Alzbeta Brnal.  They were the parents of:

2. Jan Valuch born about 1790 at Vrbovce.  He married on 29 June 1818 at Vrbovce, Anna Chalupka, born about 1800.  They were the parents of:

3. Jan Valuch-Malarik born 26 December 1822 at Vrbovce, died there 12 June 1881.  He married on 31 January 1848 at Vrbovce, Alzbeta Valuch, born 9 November 1831, and died after 1895, daughter of Jan and Anna (Skok) Valuch (see below).  They were living at house #578 at Vrbovce in the 1869 census.  Jan and Alzbeta had five children: Anna, Alzbeta, Zuzana, Jan, and Barbara.

4. Anna Valuch-Malarik was born 22 January 1849 at Vrbovce and died there 16 April 1921.  She married at Vrbovce on 22 November 1869, Jan Chodur-Janovych Dolinsky, born 22 September 1838 at Vrbovce and died there 15 September 1915, son of Pavel Chodur-Dolinsky and Alzbeta Tomecek.  They had four children: John (Jan), Pavel, Anna, and Martin.

Line #2

1. Pavel  Valuch born about 1720.  He was the father of:

2. Martin Valuch born about 1750.  He married at Vrbovce on 25 November 1770, Katharina Malarik, daughter of  Pavel Malarik.  They were the parents of:

3. Jan Valuch baptized 30 June 1781 at Vrbovce.  He married there on 10 February 1800, Katharina Sussak, baptized 27 August 1777, daughter of Martin and Katharina (Nessak) Sussak.  They were the parents of:

4. Jan Valuch (Jr.), born 24 May 1805 at Vrbovce.  He married at Vrbovce on 17 November 1823, Anna Skok, born 23 September 1807, daughter of Jan and Katharina (Valassek) Skok.  They had two children: Jan and Alzbeta.

5. Alzbeta Valuch married Jan Valuch-Malarik, see above in line #1.

Sources:

Slovak Lutheran (Evangelium) Church records of Vrbvoce available on microfilm at the LDS Library and digitized by them on their site, www.familysearch.org.  Death certificates from the Slovak Archives.

1869 census, house #578 LDS Film #2192677.

Baptisms 1822-1846, FHL Film #2435337, entry #26.

Deaths 1881-1895, FHL Film #2435373, Entry #58.

Baptisms 1822-1846, FHL Film #2435337, p. 141.

Marriages 1816-1822, FHL #2435336-2435337, p. 325.

Baptisms 1783-1815, FHL Film #2435336, Entry #107.

Baptisms 1783-1815, FHL Film #2435336, Entry #150.

 

Katharina Valassek 1791- of Vrbovce, Slovakia

1. Martin Valassek was born about 1740.  He married about 1763, Katharina (---).  They were the parents of:

2. Michael Valassek was baptized 14 July 1764 at Vrbovce, Slovakia.  He married at Vrbovce on 11 November 1783, Elisabetha Mareczek, baptized 12 March 1766 at Vrbovce, daughter of Jan and Katharina (---) Mareczek.  They were the parents of:

3. Katharina Valassek was baptized 13 April 1791 at Vrbovce.  She married at Vrbovce on 3 November 1806, Jan Skok baptized at Vrbovce on 19 August 1787, son of Martin and Anna (Nevocny) Skok.    They had at least one child: Anna.

Sources:

Slovak Lutheran (Evangelium) Church records of Vrbovce available on microfilm at the LDS Library and digitized by them on their site, www.familysearch.org.