Looking for ideas on how to find the origins of my Bohemian great-grandmother
Hello all! Sorry for the fairly long first post, but as this is a problem I've been working on for a number of years, there's been a lot done in terms of past research and I want to be as thorough as possible up front!
I’ve been working on a fairly-impenetrable brick wall for the last 25 years relating to my maternal great-grandmother. Her name was Mary MARSIK. She was born sometime in 1862, according to all my records, and she died very young at age 32, in 1894. I don’t know exactly when she came into the United States, but it was likely around 1879-1880. The earliest date I can confirm she was here was 1883, when she suddenly appears in the St. Paul City Directory working as a “domestic.” I haven’t been able to locate her in the 1880 census, at least to the point that I know this is "her."
The Bohemian/Czech research that predates mine comes from two second cousins who employed professional researchers in the Czech Republic do the work of finding my great-grandfather’s people. My great-grandfather’s surname was TRUHLAR, and I have a lot of information about his side. They were mostly from eastern Bohemia, near the Usti nad Orlici region.
Mary Marsik married my great-grandfather, Anton Truhlar, in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1883. They were married in Ramsey County civil court by a judge. The cousins that ordered this research are now deceased, so I cannot ask them questions about it and none of it includes any references to my great-grandmother other than her name.
I have a possible passenger record obtained from one of Leo Baca’s books, from the ship Leipzig in 1879, which lists a Bohemian passenger, Maria Marsik, departing from Bremen to Baltimore, but the stated date age of 21 would put her birth year about 1858. Of course, she may have lied about her age, saying she was 21 when she was only in fact around 17, so she could find work in the US. There are no other Marsiks on this passenger list (although there are other Bohemians), so I suspect Mary Marsik came to the U.S. alone.
Mary and Anton's first child appears to have been born in 1884. I found a reference to them on the Minnesota state census of 1885, and at that time, they had an infant daughter (also named Mary) and were living in New Prague, Minnesota. I cannot find any other references to this daughter in later research, so I assume she probably passed away as an infant/toddler.
None of Mary and Anton’s children were baptized as infants. I have thoroughly searched church records of our local archdiocese and there are no records for anyone in this family related to birth, baptism, confirmations, or funerals. Anton and Mary were irreligious free-thinkers and belonged to the CSPS in St. Paul. My mother (who is also long deceased) corroborated this, saying her mother’s family “had nothing to do with religion.”
I already pulled all the birth and death certificates for Anton and Mary’s children (those I could find) and none listed their mother’s birthplace other than “Bohemia.”
Mary died in 1894 at age 32 of heart disease and pneumonia – 32 is young to die of heart disease and given the cause was listed as “mitral insufficiency,” I have to wonder if it was the result of a previous bout of something like measles or scarlet fever? No way of knowing that for sure. I have a copy of her death certificate from the hospital she died at, but it only lists “Bohemia” as her birthplace. She was buried in a non-denominational cemetery near me. Anton is buried in a local Catholic cemetery next to his second wife.
My grandmother Antonette was only 9 when her mother passed away – her father remarried shortly after Mary’s death and they had more children. I doubt my grandmother knew anything about her mother’s birthplace, and even if she did, my grandmother passed away in 1953, years before I was born so I can't ask her.
All my relatives on that side of the family have long passed away, so there is no one left to ask details of.
My goal is to find out the village my great-grandmother came from, when she came to the US (or confirmation that the ship record I have is actually her!), and her exact date of birth. I have poked around in a couple of Czech archives (Trebon, Zamrsk) and I’ve contacted four different genealogists located in the Czech Republic, but none of them were willing to take on the search for my great-grandmother’s village of origin, given the lack of informative records in my possession.
If you read this far, thank you so much in advance and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on where to turn next.
Comments
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I see this and I would be glad to take a look at this. My great-grandparents came from this area too. I have something going on today, so give me a couple of days, please.
Betseylee
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Thank you so much for the offer, Betseylee! Let me know if you need any documentation for her. I have plenty of records on Mary Marsik after she got to the US.
Sincerely,
Jackie
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I found her on FamilySearch. I must congratulate you on the thorough job you have done in searching for Maria. Since you have covered most of her sources, the fact that they were not churchgoer and her early death, I think we need to expand the search. This will be hard, but I see no other options.
Here are my suggestions:
- Contact all of Mary's descendants to see if anyone has any passed-down paperwork. This might take a little research, but hopefully, you know who they are.
- Contact the cemetery where Mary is buried to see if they have any additional sexton's records.
- See if any newspapers existed (English and Bohemian) at the time she was in the US and search them.
- Maybe when Mary came to the US, she was religious and attended church before her marriage.
- Find obituaries for all of the children.
- Find mortuary records for the children.
- Check the sexton's records for the children.
- If any of the children joined a church in later life, look for records. Search for baptism, marriage, and death.
- Research any Marsiks that appear in any place that she lived.
- Usually, women did not migrate alone. She might have known someone else on the passenger list.
I hope this helps. I am still mulling this around in my head.
Don't give up!
Sincerely,
Betseylee Browning
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Hi Betsylee,
Thank you! I'll address some of your suggestions as I've already done many of these things:
1. Contact all of Mary's descendants to see if anyone has any passed-down paperwork. This might take a little research, but hopefully, you know who they are.
I’ve contacted anyone I know who may have information on Mary, including one of my cousins (who kind of got me started on this quest and gave me everything he has) as well as several other, more distant cousins, none of whom had any information of their own. Mary has been deceased for so long that anyone who knew her and her children are deceased. I have reached out to anyone who has her in their Ancestry tree (very few people do) and got no further information.
2. Contact the cemetery where Mary is buried to see if they have any additional sexton's records.
I have records from the cemetery office where Mary is buried. There isn’t much to be had. She is buried just about 10 miles from where I live. She was one of the earliest burials in that cemetery. I had the cemetery unbury her stone a few years back as it had sunk beneath the ground level. They were so nice to work with. The cemetery office had a small amount of information, i.e. the funeral home who undertook her burial, but it’s long out of business and no one seems to know if their records were turned over to another funeral home. I had a long discussion about local funeral homes on Facebook with someone who knows a lot of local history, but he wasn’t able to tell me what happened to that funeral home.
3. See if any newspapers existed (English and Bohemian) at the time she was in the US and search them.
The only thing I was able to find in the city newspapers on Mary was her death notice. I found a couple articles in a local Bohemian language paper of that time, but the only thing they told me was that Mary and her husband were members of the local CSPS lodge. I contacted the local CSPS lodge and they said any records they had from that long ago would no longer exist, or have been turned over to the state archives. I contacted the Czech history museum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and they had some records going back that far. They were able to tell me that Mary and Anton were members of the CSPS and Anton had a life insurance policy through CSPS, but they didn’t have any hard backup records that would give any more information. I joined the CGSI (Czech genealogical society) a few years back but unfortunately no one I talked with was able to help.
4. Maybe when Mary came to the US, she was religious and attended church before her marriage.
Hard to say, but I wasn’t able to locate anything at all in terms of church membership for the Catholic churches in the areas she settled in (St. Wenceslaus in New Prague; St. Stanislaus Kostka in St. Paul) and the church offices of the Archdiocese, which covers all the churches in southern Minnesota, had zilch.
5. Find obituaries for all of the children.
I have obits for most of her children but nothing mentioning Mary. Most of the children were raised by their stepmother as Mary had died so young. My grandmother was the oldest and she was only 9 when Mary passed away.
6. Find mortuary records for the children.
All information I’ve been able to find for her kids in terms of death/burial records lists nothing for Mary.
7. Check the sexton's records for the children.
Cemetery office records I’ve checked have nothing for Mary’s children in terms of information on Mary.
8. If any of the children joined a church in later life, look for records. Search for baptism, marriage, and death.
Interestingly enough, I was only able to find church records for one of her children, her youngest child, but nothing mentioned Mary. Apparently, her other children were also non-religious, as I haven’t located any church records for any of them.
9. Research any Marsiks that appear in any place that she lived.
Funny thing – this was easy, as there were none! None in the New Prague area, none in St. Paul. It’s an unusual name around here.
10. Usually, women did not migrate alone. She might have known someone else on the passenger list.
I don’t recognize any of the other names on the passenger list, but it’s possible she knew someone and came with them. However, I get a sneaking suspicion that part of the reason she lied about her age is so she could travel alone. I don’t know that for sure though.
Thanks for all your suggestions! I hope to be able to find a close DNA match that might know more than I do. Unrelated to this inquiry, but last month I broke down another 25-year long brick wall for another of my great-grandparents and it was due to a close DNA match suddenly appearing on Family Tree DNA.
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Unfortunately, it looks like a brick wall even from the Czech/Bohemian side, since neither the year nor the approximate place of birth is known. You can try to look for a Marie Maršík (or Maršíková) born around 1860 in Czech birth records, but even if you find one, it is not certain that it is the Mary who emigrated. According to the Czech surname database, the Maršík surname (see https://www.kdejsme.cz/prijmeni/Mar%C5%A1%C3%ADk/hustota/) is now most common around Humpolec, also common around Náchod, which is not far from Ústí nad Orlicí, Antonín's birthplace.
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Hi Josef, most of the records I have for Mary list 1862 as her birth year. Her death record, grave marker, and census records all say 1862. It does seem like Humpolec and Nachod are where most of the Marsik surname is found. I have researched the Trebon archives and have indeed found some Maria Marsiks born in 1862 in southern Bohemia, but it is not possible for me to know if any of them are my ancestor. Probably one of them is her, but without more information, it would only be a guess to pick one! I will cross my fingers that a close DNA will arrive that will help me with this mystery. Thank you!
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