How to find village of origin with so little information?
I've been working on a brick wall for 20+ years, trying to find out the village or town of origin of my great-grandmother, Mary MARSIK. The only thing I know of her origins is that she was born in Bohemia in 1862. However, I have no idea where she was from in Bohemia or when she came to the United States. I know she was here in the early 1880s because she married my great-grandfather in Minnesota in 1883. They were married at the courthouse by a judge (they were not religious people) but the marriage record does not list her place of origin, other than "Bohemia." I believe she came to the US alone; I have not found any immigration or naturalization records for her. I found no info on parents or siblings coming with her or after her.
She had 5 children, all born in Minnesota, USA. The family did not go to church - they were freethinkers and none of their children were baptized. Mary died very young at age 32 of heart problems. She did not have a funeral and was buried the same day she passed away. She was buried alone and none of her children were buried in this cemetery. My great-grandfather remarried a couple of years later.
I have checked her childrens' death records for their mother's birthplace, but they only mention either "Bohemia" or "Austria." I know that in order to find records in the Czech Republic, you need to find the village or town of origin, but I have not been able to after many years. I have extensive records of all the various documents and places I've searched and even researchers in the Czech Republic were not able to help me with so little info to go on. All of my relatives on that side are long gone with no one left to ask. This has been a frustrating journey but I'm still hoping that I (or someone) will eventually uncover some piece of information that will break the brick wall down. Thanks for any insight you can give. She does have a FamilySearch ID: M3BX-W75.
Thank you!
Answers
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I can identify because I have been through this many times. You do not mention checking the newspapers around the time of her death. Have you completed this?
This is most likely her immigration: https://tinyurl.com/y23n3e3w
Baltimore, Passenger Lists, 1820-1964
Name
Maria Marsik
Gender
Female
Race
Bohemian
Birthdate
1858
Age
21
Arrival Date
21 Jul 1879
Port of Departure
Bremen, Germany
Ship Name
Leipzig
Port of Arrival
New York, New York and Baltimore, Maryland
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Looks like you’ve done a good thorough job of searching many records that might possibly give a hint for her hometown. It’s too bad her kids weren’t baptized, because the US church records are a good place to check for those kinds of details. Have you done a thorough census search and found her every year that she was alive during the US Federal (and any state) censuses? This may be a good way to get more details about when she came to the US and whether she was naturalized or not (depending on the census year). I was able to find immigration years for my Bohemians on various US census records.
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She should appear on the 1880 census somewhere as she came in 1879.
There is a public member tree on Ancestry called the Jimmie Truhlar Family. You should join forces. https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/106014845/person/330198785077/facts
Betseylee Browning
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Try using the FAN method. Using Friends, Neighbors and Associates find out where they are from. Start with the passenger list as she probably came over with someone she knew. Research all FAN and find out where they are from and then check for yours in the same place.
Betseylee
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I know Jimmie and we've been in touch. He doesn't have any more info about her than I do. My other cousin possibly found a census entry for her in St. Paul in 1880 under Mary "MURSKY," right place and time, but if her then the last name is very badly butchered. Also, no one else with her under that name so I can't rely on this being her.
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I have a death notice for her in newspapers. I have checked many newspapers for her under her maiden name and married name but other than one other mention of her and her husband being members of CSPS, there is nothing else for her. I have subscriptions to GenealogyBank and Newspapers.com and have searched in other papers that aren't online. Nothing more.
I have that ship record, but I can't say for sure if this is my ancestor given the discrepancy in the age. If it was my great-grandmother, then she lied about her age, which is definitely a possibility since she would've actually only been 17 when she left. However, the record does not give any indication of where in Bohemia she was from nor where she was going to.
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Yes I have. She is in the 1885 state census but nothing more detailed than "Bohemia" for her birthplace. I may have found her in the 1880 census but her last name was so misspelled I can't say for sure. We all know what happened to the 1890 census... argh.
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Do you have a link to the 1880 census you could post here? What is CSPS?
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I've been working the FAN method for years since I have so little info about her, but I have no idea who their friends were. I tried looking at the neighbors at one of the places they lived in St. Paul for the longest time, but it seemed like a very transitory neighborhood and as if no one stayed around for very long. I tried tracking the witnesses to their marriage but was not able to find any details as to how they knew my great-grandparents. It doesn't help that they had one of the most common Bohemian surnames in that area at that time (Picha), and none of the other people working on this tree knows who the witnesses were either.
I tracked down tax lists for the marriage witnesses but again, not sure if it was them on those lists. The marriage certificate doesn't say their address, and there were so many Pichas in the area. There were some shopkeepers that I was able to track but I wasn't able to spot any particular connection. Newspapers had ads for local Picha shopkeepers, but again -- how to associate them with my g-grands?
I have not specifically worked on the passenger list because it does not say where any of the other Bohemians were going, and I don't have proof it is her on this list. I may try that but don't really know where or how to start with that list.
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CSPS was the Czech-Slovak Protective Society, an organization dedicated to the cultural preservation of Czech and Slovak immigrants in the United States. There was, and still is a very large hall in St. Paul that they were based in, now housing Minnesota Sokol. I know they were members; I was able to locate records for the organization from the University of Minnesota Immigration Center. Here is more about the hall itself: https://www.sokolmn.org/at-our-hall/
As for the census, here is the link: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GYBJ-9GZ8?i=1&cc=1417683&personaUrl=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AMZ92-DSX
I've checked on the Fabers but I wasn't able to establish how they related to the others in the household; I assume from the ages and single status of the others at this address that it was likely a boarding situation. I have not linked this record to Mary Marsik on FS or Ancestry (I keep my main tree on Ancestry) because I don't know if it's her or not.
A cousin of mine who has been researching Mary Marsik for as long as I have found this possible link way back in 2004. Another interesting thing he found was locating my g-grands' marriage witnesses, John and Mary Picha on 4th St. W, just a block away from this Mary "Mursky" at 1880. There are no Murskys in the birth or death records on the Minnesota Historical Society's databases. I also checked against mother maiden name. He checked the 1880/1881/1882 St. Paul city directories. No Mursky there either. The name doesn't appear to exist in Minnesota. It HIGHLY suggests a typographical or pronunciation error.
But, I cannot say with certainty, that this is my great-grandmother!
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What do you know about Johan and Mary Picha?
Betseylee
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This Mary was a servant to this family and her place of origin is Austria which fits. You didn't find the Mursky's in any other census record?
Betseylee
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Not much, other than they were named as witnesses to my g-grands' marriage. There were several Picha families in the 1880 census, but this family lived closest to them: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GYBJ-9G4X?i=15&cc=1417683&personaUrl=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AMZ92-FFQ
I think this may be the record of John Picha's marriage to Mary: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9BG-CQK3-B?cc=1803974&personaUrl=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AQ2Z5-9WZY . Happened in the same courthouse as my great-grands' marriage, and was also performed by a justice of the peace.
Via my newspaper subscriptions, I found numerous instances of someone named John Picha purchasing real estate in the area - no idea if it was the same guy that witnessed their marriage.
Otherwise, I have nothing. No records of how they knew my g-grands, no stories of friendships, no other Picha names in their children's lineage. I don't know how they knew my great-grandparents or why they were the marriage witnesses. I do know there was a great deal of new Bohemian settlement around this area in the mid-late 1800s. The Catholics had a parish called St. Stanislaus Kostka which is still in this same area. The neighborhood is now known as Little Bohemia, and it's just south of downtown St. Paul. However there were numerous freethinkers who eschewed religion altogether. My great-grandparents were among them. I remember asking my mother why she never went to church. She said her mother's parents did not go to church so her mother didn't either, but her father - a Danish immigrant - insisted their daughters have exposure to religion, so my mom's mother grudgingly agreed to have them educated and later confirmed in the Lutheran church.
For more background, I never knew my maternal grandmother. She died ten years before I was born. Her mother - Mary Marsik Truhlar - died when my grandmother was only 9 (grandma was the oldest). She and her younger siblings were raised by their stepmother, who died in the 1930s. My mother was not quite 30 when her mother died, and my mother died almost 30 years ago. There is no one left nearby that knows any stories from that long ago, and my cousins who are also researching this line know less than I do.
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I would try to check out the immigration record that I sent and check out the surrounding people. Usually they travel with someone that they know.
Betseylee Browning
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Nope.
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I've had that same record for years - I got it from the Leo Baca passenger lists. I've had several of my cousins look at it but none of them were able to place any of the other passenger names anywhere within our trees... not that that means this list was worked up thoroughly.
The stated birth year for Marie Marsik on that record (1858) is not the same as any other record I have concerning my great-grandmother. All other records I have state her birth year as 1862. However, I can understand why she would had fibbed if she wanted to emigrate by herself (saying she was 21 when she was only 17) but that's a fairly large assumption and so I'm still not sure this is my ancestor.
Also, this brings up a question I've not yet able to answer - why would a 17-year-old Bohemian girl want to emigrate by herself to the United States? Even if there were a lot of other of her fellow Bohemians leaving for the US at that time, it seems to me there would’ve likely been a narrow set of circumstances which would've led to her going to a strange country by herself.
Some of the scenarios I’ve thought of: maybe someone in the US was looking for a bride and she said, okay, ship me over there? Or maybe she saw some newspaper ads to that effect, had some money saved up, and just went for it? Maybe there was already a relative here in MN and she was told to come - if so, who? Maybe she was offered a job as a servant or thought she could get one right off the boat - there were many ads in the papers compelling immigrants to come to America for jobs in those days! Maybe she was recently orphaned, or one of her parents had died and the other could not support her - or maybe they were still alive, but just extremely poor, so she went for broke - but in that case, how would an impoverished 17-year-old find the money for passage to the US? I lean towards her already having a relative or someone her family knew here in the US as being the reason for her emigration, but I still haven’t been able to find any other family members with her surname in the area she settled, married, raised a family, and is buried.
If this were you – how would you work up this passenger list? Where would you start?
Thank you for all your suggestions and thoughts so far. I super appreciate it!
Thanks!
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Have you tried looking in ethnic newspapers? My Bohemian ancestors obituaries were in Czech and more often German newspapers and sometimes the village was listed in the obituary. These newspapers are usually not online and you need to look at Chronicling America https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/titles/ to locate where they are. Once you get a title you can also check for them at Worldcat.org or you can do a subject search like Czechs Minnesota Newspapers to find a newspaper and get its location. See if the microfilm can then be sent by interlibrary loan to a nearby library that has microfilm readers.
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I've looked at a couple publications and found a few references to my great-grandfather, but nothing written about my great-grandmother. The ones I've searched are Minnesotsky Noviny (found some refs), and Denni Hlasatel (sp?)(found nothing). The one I still need to search is Obzor, it was only in publication for a couple of years (1891-1893) and this places it at the right time for my great-grandmother. It is available through the Minnesota Historical Society on microfilm and they are currently closed right now but I've made a note to get down there and look as soon as I can.
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You might try college or university libraries to see if they might have access to the newspapers too.
I wonder if there are any societies that might be specific to Bohemian research in this area?
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There is the CGSI, which I joined for a year. They have a library section at the Minnesota Genealogy Society library but no newspapers. I checked the U of M library systems and they do not have any Czech newspapers.
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It sounds like you've been very thorough in your research, so you've probably already covered this, but I thought I'd mention just in case. Do you know whether she spoke German or Czech? I just thought of that when you mentioned Czech newspapers, but have you also been searching German newspapers and local societies? One of my Bohemian ancestors who moved to Cincinnati was not from Germany (nor was his family - at least not for many generations, they had been in Bohemia at least as far back as the existing church records go). But I found him in a periodical titled ‘Der Deutsche Pionier’ that was all about German immigrants to the United States. I believe that he was included because he spoke German, even though he had no connection to Germany. So you've probably already thought of this, but just wanted to make sure you're checking out German resources too. (Unless you've already found that she and her husband both definitely spoke Czech and not German).
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They definitely spoke Czech. My mother confirmed this. However I have searched all the German language newspapers that are online via LOC and could not find any mention of her surname.
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I said the same thing. I've found more of my Czech obituaries in German newspapers than I did in the Czech newspapers, probably because at certain times there were no Czech newspapers available. Try checking German newspapers in that area but also try to find out what German regional newspaper are available. Also, is there a farmer's insurance company in existence when she died. My Czech family was one of the founding members of the S.P.J.S.T, a Czech insurance company and they had lodges all over Texas. Is there something like that in Minnesota? If it is not in existence anymore, maybe the records are in a Historical Society.
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I had to check out the CGSI. (Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International promoting genealogical research and creating an interest in ancestry and heritage among descendants of ethnic groups who comprised the former nation of Czechoslovakia, including Bohemian (Czech), German-Bohemian (Bohmisch), Hungarian, Moravian, Ruthenian (Rusyn), Silesian, Slovakian, and those of Jewish ancestry.)
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That's them. I had a few discussions with some of their members and a couple of them are in the Czech Republic. One gentlemen who lives in the CR did some research for me and turned up some possible birth record leads in the Trebon archives (he chose that archive because her surname is most common in south Bohemia). He found several birth records of a Marie Marsik/Marsikova born in 1862. Any one of those could be her, but it's hard to say since I don't know her parents' names or any other details. Or even none of them might be her if she was born outside the area the Trebon archives covers.
The CGSI had some helpful databases for members but unfortunately little info turned up except for the passenger record on the Leo Baca database. I also got access to their section at the Minnesota Genealogical Society library, which had some nice reference materials. I have no doubt that, if I could only find her town or village or parents' names, I would have the ability to find lots more info, having gone through so many resources already.
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I have a friend that belongs to the German-Bohemian Heritage Society in Minnesota. He is going to do some research using their resources when he gets some free time. However, her surname was definitely Czech, and my mother said her grandparents spoke Czech. Interestingly - though maybe not surprisingly - her own mother did not speak Czech even though both her parents were from there. Grandma said she was an American so she spoke English, and once her dad got to the US (he was a teenager) he was told to speak only English. My grandmother apparently was a great cook and passed down some great recipes to my mother - Mom made a mean kolache!
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It is interesting the different ways that people reacted to being an American. Some held on to the old traditions and some were quick to give them up. I think they say it only takes a couple of generations for most families to lose their native tongue. I think that is really sad.
Kolache sounds delicious. Would you share her recipe?
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I think times were really different back then too. Lots of immigration from Europe and with so many fleeing wars, conscription, poverty, etc. I think they were more willing to leave their national identity all behind once they got here.
As for kolaches... I wish I had her recipe. She never used a written recipe for them and I can't bake to save my life. 😞 However there are a couple of bakeries in SE Minnesota - Lau's in New Prague and Franke's in Montgomery - that have great kolaches! Especially love raspberry and poppyseed.
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If I was only in Minnesota.....
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Darn! If there is a Czech bakery near you it's worth a drive. 😀
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