Trying to find a couple locations.
Hello. I am helping a friend find an ancestor's location. The ancestor was born in 1875 and immigrated to the US in 1912. It says her birth location and departure location was Aszivacz. We can't seem to find this place anywhere. We've also found another location which looks like Ocewas, Hungary. Can someone help me figure out where these places are? Thank you so much.
Answers
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At a guess, without looking at the images, it's Ószivácz, Bács-Bodrog county, Hungary, which is now the Stari Sivac part of Sivac, Vojvodina, Serbia. (Ó- and Stari both mean "old", to differentiate from next-door Újszivácz/Novi Sivac "new S.")
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Hi. Thank you so much! I do have another location that is hard to determine. Can you tell me the actual name of this place?
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I think that one's also trying to be Ószivácz.
The Vojvodina Archives have scanned their copies of the church books and put them online (https://maticneknjige.org.rs/grad-knjiga/sivac/). Registration is required, and it all only works in Serbian Cyrillic, but it's free. They have records for Ószivácz's RC, Greek Orthodox, and Protestant (Reformed = Calvinist) churches, along with Újszivácz's Protestant (also Reformed, but labeled Evangelical = Lutheran for some reason) church.
(If you give me a name and a religion, I'm willing to do some digging, just to prove myself right or wrong about the placename... <grin>)
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Hi again. Here is the passenger listing showing the place called Aszivacz.
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thank you again. the passenger listing is for
Julianna Fontain and her kids - Josef, Kalman, and what looks like Marieka or Mariska. they changed their name later to Fontanyi. sailed from Cuxhaven to New York on the SS Cleveland arriving July 6 or 16, 1912.
The declaration of intention showing Ocewas ? was for Frank Fontanyi, the husband to Julianna.
i'm not sure their religion. They are always listed as Maygar.
Frank born june 15, 1869. julianna born nov 2, 1876. marieka born march 10, 1903, kalman (charles) born dec 17, 1900, and josef born june 23, 1905.
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That passenger manifest definitely says Ószivácz -- twice, even -- but I'm not finding either Frank or Julianna under those dates in any of the available registers. Granted, the Greek Orthodox ones are in Cyrillic, and the Protestant ones are in German, which means That Dratted Handwriting... I don't actually know the one alphabet, and the other one is only nominally the alphabet I know, but I can at least figure out the dates in both, and I can't find anything entered in any of the baptismal registers on June 15, 1869 or Nov. 2, 1876.
Do you know anything about what church their descendants attended? I know from personal experience that people could and did essentially change their denomination in favor of a familiar language, depending on what was available in their new home, but I also know that all things being equal, Catholics tended to stay Catholic.
Unfortunately, the archive in Serbia only has the pre-civil-registration church register copies, so none of the children's birth/baptism records are available. (Civil registration began in Hungary on Oct. 1, 1895.)
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The Roman Catholic register for Ószivácz is on FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/3514), and indexed, even -- but the year 1876 is missing from the baptisms, without explanation.
And I figured out why I was having so much trouble with the 1876 Protestant baptisms on the Serbian site: they have another copy of the death register labeled as the baptisms.
Drat. This was supposed to be relatively easy!
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Oh, I forgot to mention: the daughter is Mariska. It's a nickname for Mária (Mary). It was common practice to record nicknames/diminutives for young children in things like funeral notices or similar places where family members were listed; the endearment signalled their youth, and helped to differentiate from same-named older family members.
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I think I found Julianna's birth/baptism, in Monostorszeg (now Bački Monoštor, Serbia) on Nov. 8, 1874: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939Z-1F91-Z6?cc=1743180 (last entry on page).
The reason I think it's her is that I found the arrival manifest (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9TC-Z9NV-4?i=525&cc=1368704) and checked the second page's last columns ("Place of Birth"), and it says Ószivácz for the children, but for their mother, it has something starting with M or N and ending with a letter with a descender.
Also, the same parents had a son named Adam in 1877 (entry 43: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939Z-1F9Y-9N?cc=1743180), which matches the manifest's departure contact ("brother: Adam Strikovics").
No luck so far on Frank Fontain. There's one Fontányi baptism indexed from the Ószivácz RC register, in 1863 (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XKYB-TBS); I can find no indication of why those parents never appear in the index again. (I also tried looking for any baptism of a Franciscus or Ferencz [since FS annoyingly doesn't realize that those are Exactly The Same Thing], but didn't see any likely candidates.)
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Dear Ms. Szent-Györgyi, Thank you so much for all this info. This was much more than I had ever expected. My friend is so appreciative also. She had been searching for her grandmother's (Marie) immigration for years. We found it the other day when we tracked down Marie's brother Josef. She was very excited. Through alot of help from my husband's swedish cousin, we learned that the name Broberg was passed down from the maternal side so we had to figure out where that name came from. I have been doing swedish research for 30 years and just now getting into hungarian research. I am also helping another friend with her hungarian research, so I may be calling on you again. Thank you ever so much for all your help. Best wishes.
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Hi again. I just learned that Mariska was Catholic.
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