Slovak Birth record help
Hello,
I'm trying to find more information on my Slovakian ancestor. I have his marriage and death certificate and his immigration record through Ellis Island. I believe I found his baptism record on microfilm through this website and the father's name matches what it says on his death certificate. I know what town he came from, Rabcice. How do I find what specific church he was baptized at or any further information about his birth record or parents?
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Start with a gazetteer. Dvorzsák's (1877) indicates that Rabcsicze, Árva county, Hungary had about 1100 residents, who were nearly all Roman Catholic (he says there were 4 Jewish residents), and they had a church locally. The 1913 gazetteer (downloadable as a PDF from the Central Statistics Office) indicates that the residents primarily spoke Slovak, and that the civil registry office was in Rabcsa.
Next, check the Catalog on FamilySearch. It indicates that FS has browsable images online of the Rabcsicze Roman Catholic church registers containing baptisms up to 1896, marriages up to 1895, and burials up to 1905, and that some part of each film has been indexed. (Likely just the baptisms.)
Civil registration began in the Kingdom of Hungary on October 1, 1895. Prior to that date, vital records were the responsibility of churches. In both civil and church vital registers, the primary record is an entry in the registry-book. If people needed "portable" proof of an event, they could request an extract from the register-book. These extracts are somewhat like what you think of as a "birth/marriage/death certificate", but you have to keep in mind that they're secondary records: finding an image of the register-page is far preferable to tracking down a certificate (which may never have been issued).
Browsing through the Rabcsicze registers, it looks like they're all in Latin except for a patriotic half decade (1844-1849) when they're in Hungarian.
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Julia,
Thank you for your response. I have found the baptism record for my family member here: Slovakia church and synagogue books : COLLECTION RECORD, 1592-1935 / Štátny oblastný archív v Prešove. It does not list what the name of the church was though. I'm thinking it must be the Roman Catholic church that is located in Current Rabcice, Slovakia. I don't think in 1885 they would have been able to travel very far. I'm visiting Poland this summer and would like to drive to Rabcice and go to the church if I can figure out which one it was.
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If the register is from Rabcsicze, then it's from the Roman Catholic church of Rabcsicze. There was no other church there.
(The link you gave is to the catalog collection record for all of the Slovakia Church Books. That rather doesn't identify anything much. :-)
If you can give the link (or name and date) for the baptism, I'd be happy to check whether it says anything interesting. (They mostly don't, but you never know.)
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The name is Josephus Tropek. I believe the date was November 8, 1885. Parents are Alexander Tropek and Veronica Pitak. I know Josephus came from Rabcsicze because that's what his Ellis Island immigration log stated as well as his marriage and death certificate. Here's the link to the baptism record: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KSYZ-HHC
His death certificate listed Alexander as his father's name. Based on a google search I'm thinking the Catholic church in Rabcsicze in 1885 would have been Kostal Vsetkych Svatych.
Thanks for the help! I'm rather new to this family history stuff.
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From what the Internet tells me, Rapcsicze still only has the one church.
(Nobody keeps track of what a church is called or which saint it's dedicated to: only the largest cities ever had or have more than one church of the same denomination. We're talking Vienna and Budapest-size cities, with populations in the millions; having more than one church of a denomination in any place smaller than that was so unusual that Pécs, a city in southwestern Hungary with five Catholic churches, had "five churches" as its Latin and German names [Quinque Ecclesiae, Fünfkirchen].)
The marriage of Veronica and Alexander was in Rabcsa on 4 Nov 1880 (line 32): https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GRQF-R5F?i=554&wc=9P3L-ZNL%3A107654301%2C141048201%2C141143701%2C141143702&cc=1554443
Veronica's surname is Pitak in the marriage register and for the baptisms of half her children, and Mokos for the other half. (The godparents and house-numbers agree on all the baptisms, so it has to be the same person; she just had two different names for some reason.) The Veronica born on the 12th and baptized on the 15th of December 1861 in Rabcsa is probably her (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KSYC-MGY); I would read her father's surname as Pittak.
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Wow! Thank you so much for discovering that information for me! I also noticed that some of the children's baptisms list her name as Mokos versus Pitak. I wonder if there's any way to figure out where the house existed based on the house number. Would those houses still exist today?
So Veronica nd Alexander's wedding took place at a catholic church in Rabcsa? Can you tell that based on that record you sent? Is there a way to translate those records to understand what it says? I think their marriage record was in Hungarian?
I think I found Alexander's baptism record. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KSYC-V4H
The age it has him listed on his marriage would match, give or take a few months.
It seems like they had a couple daughters but my great grandpa always said he only had a brother. I think all the girls died under the age of 6. That could be why he said he never had sisters.
There were a few other Tropek's that immigrated to Federal, PA, USA/ Sturgeon, PA, USA. According to my family, my great grandparent's always insisted that they were the "other" Tropek's and not related. They came from the same small town in Slovakia so I am not convinced they weren't related. They could have been cousin's or something.
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No idea if the houses still exist; I suppose it depends on what the usual local building material was and whether the place was subject to floods or windstorms or whatnot. (Adobe and thatch wouldn't last this long, but stone and tile could.) There's also the matter of finding where a particular number was: villages with a growing population could renumber the houses every few years, and even if they didn't, almost every place started using named streets in the 20th century, so the old numberings are long forgotten.
Rabcsa also had just the one church, so specifying the village automatically specifies the denomination (yes, Roman Catholic). The marriage register is printed in Hungarian but filled out in Latin with no attention to the Hungarian headers.
1880
32. Novb. 4.
Groom: Alexander Tropek, birthplace Rabcsicza, Roman Catholic, age 23, single
Bride: Veronica Pitak, birthplace Rabcsa, Roman Catholic, age 18, single
Witnesses: Ignatius Slovik, Andreas Brenka
Officiant: assistant parson
Announcements: announced thrice
The house-number looks right on that Alexander Tropek baptism. Did you notice that it says he died on 31 Oct 1926? Does this fit what you know about him?
Of course, when the marriage register omits the names of the parents like this, the further generations become a bit of a guessing game.
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There are 16 baptisms in Rabcsicze house 170 with parents Stephanus Tropek and Theresia Gluch, over a spread of 24 years, with basically two sets of godparents except for the emergency baptisms by the midwife.
Godparents (A): Martinus Banass and his wife Maria
Godparents (B): Joannes Gluch and his wife Illona
Mária 1848 (A)
Teréz 1849 (A)
Johanna 1850 (A)
Stephanus 1852 midwife
Stephanus 1853 midwife
Stephanus 1855 (A) +31 Oct 1926
Alexander 1858 (B) +31 Oct 1926
Johanna 1859 (B) +8 Jun 1930
Joannes 1861 midwife, lived one hour
Anna 1862 (B)
Josephus 1863 (A) +11 Dec 1949
Carolus 1866 (A)
Adamus 1869 midwife, lived one hour
Stephanus 1870 twin, 170, Ignatius & Theres. Szlovik, lived two hours
Josephus 1870 twin, 170, Ignatius Szlovik, Johanna Gluch, lived two hours
Johanna 1872 (A)
The death date entered on the 1859 Johanna likely belongs on the 1872 one, although 58 versus 71 years old does seem a bit drastic -- and there's no explaining the 1870 twin named Stephanus if the death date on the 1855 one is correct. But the 1855 Stephanus's death date exactly matches what's written for Alexander, so unless there was some sort of family tragedy on that date, maybe the notation on Stephanus is completely wrong? (Maybe the registrar got confused between Sándor=Alexander and István=Stephanus?)
If this is the right Alexander, though, then he definitely had at least one sister who lived to adulthood.
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I didn’t realize the death date for Alexander was listed. I don’t know anything about him besides his name was listed as the father on the death certificate for Josephus Tropek. That death certificate was from the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. He changed the spelling of his last name after immigrating; Tropek became Tropeck. That’s how my mom spells her maiden name. He also went by Joseph in the U.S. and not Josephus.
https://www.familysearch.org/photos/artifacts/143180666
I noticed for all of the baptisms for Stephanus Tropek and Thersia Gluch there’s a lot that have the same name such as Stephanus, Johanna, Josephus. Could this be because they didn’t survive past birth or early childhood? I wonder if it was common to name children with the same name back then.
Is there an easier way to find all these baptisms besides searching page by page through the Slovakia Church books?
Here is a record for a women named Helena Mordel. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9RQ8-3DY?i=238&cc=1554443&personaUrl=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AKSYZ-761
think under the observations it says she married Carolus Tropek on 1912.
Here is the baptism record for Carolus Tropek, the observation also lists him being married to Helena Mordel on June 25, 192. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GRQZ-9H8S?i=211&cc=1554443&personaUrl=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AKSYC-YBNI
Some of the “other” Tropek’s that settled near Sturgeon, PA, USA that lived near my family I believe are them.
As a kid, my mother remembers being in PA with her family and there was another Tropek family they associated with that included a Charles Tropeck, Carl/Charles Tropeck, and Helena Tropeck. I researched possible American name changes for Karol and Carolus and discovered other possibilities to be Charles and Carl.
Here’s the 1930 Pennsylvania census record for the three of them. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XCHY-KM4?from=lynx1UIV8&treeref=G95D-5P9
Through Ellis island’s search, I found immigration record for Charles born 1882 from 1913. It listed him as married but he didn’t immigrate with his wife or child. Helena and Karl immigrated later are 1927.
His grave stone in PA, USA lists his name as Karol Tropeck born 1882: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVL2-Z2N5?from=lynx1UIV8&treeref=G95D-DWD
This is the marriage record for Helena and Charles (carolus) son. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VFQ6-NQ6
The parents listed for Carolus Tropek born 1882 is Joannes Tropek and Anna Odumorek. I’m wondering there was son relation between Joannes Tropek and my family that included Alexander Tropek.
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(Whoah, moment of weirdness: my dad was Joseph C. No, he wasn't Tropeck, and I'm pretty sure your Joseph's "C" stood for something other than Csaba, but still. ;-)
Nobody went by Josephus. That's the Latin form of the name, so it's only ever found in church registers. Ditto for Carolus. What they actually went by depends on what language they used; in Slovak, they'd have been Jozef and Karol. (Hungarian is József and Károly, English is Joseph and Charles, German is Josef and Carl/Karl.)
You mentioned a marriage certificate, but I don't see it attached to his FS tree profile (https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/sources/GMNH-G3Y). Does it actually say Rabcsicze?
I think I found the Ellis Island arrival that you believe is him (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-8161-9D6D?i=179), but it puts his birth around 1887. It says he's single. (Indexed arrival: https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JF3V-NML. It's connected to the wrong image -- the entire shipful appears to have gotten the roll number off by one.)
There's another Josef Tropek (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JNS8-3MN), a bit older, arriving the previous November, with the same person in Federal, PA as his destination contact. He's indicated to be married, but if the age given is right, he's too young to be the younger Josef's father.
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It was common to re-use the names of babies who died. (The explanation I've heard is that they felt that this way, the child lived on in a sense, i.e. it was a practical way to deal with their grief.) But this is why the 16 baptisms present a puzzle: the death dates as entered don't work with all of the name repeats. (I'm assuming that all of the midwife-baptized babies died; for some of them, it says so in the baptismal register.)
The baptisms are indexed, i.e. you can search for them by name. The placename fields are too messed up on FS for me to bother with them; I use the film number(s) instead. Of course, the names can be rather creatively misindexed, too; this is why I tend to use given names more than surnames, and why I use lots of wildcards. (Asterisk for any number of characters, including zero, and question mark for exactly one character.)
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Wow that is weird! His middle name was Charles, so Joseph Charles Tropek. That’s very interesting about the varied names based on language. So the Church would record the names in Latin regardless of what the parents called the baby? That makes sense, Joseph came through Hamburg, Germany so on the Ellis Island record it states his first name as Josef.
I have a physical copy of the marriage certificate between Joseph Tropek and Mary Palenik. I requested it from the state of Pennsylvania a few months ago. I’ll have to upload it to my source box. It lists Austria of his place of birth but his birthday is listed as November 15, 1885. Funny story, his wife’s birth date is off by a few years on their marriage certificate. It got me wondering so I researched the marriage rules in Pennsylvania in 1910. Apparently you had to be 21 years old or you needed written, parental consent. She was only 18/19 and her parents were back in Slovakia as were his so they had no way of getting parental consent so they just lied about her age haha!
I can’t explain the discrepancy between the baptism birth date and the Ellis Island record. My only thought is that he didn’t speak english at the time of arrival and it was probably difficult for the person recording the information to understand what was being told. So he was likely 19 going on 20 in 1905 and they recorded it as 18? His death certificate lists his birthday as Nov 15, 1885 and his father as Alexander Tropek.
Re-using names does make things confusing. In the church records, what’s the Latin name for died/death? Would that be listed under the observation column if the baby had died? Doesn’t seem like each of their babies listed when they died.
There were only 3 Josef Tropek's that immigrated through Ellis Island including the other one you found. I created a login and was able to search records directly through Ellis Island.
The “other” Tropek’s in Pennsylvania:
The other Josef Tropek record you found on Ellis Island is one of the “other” Tropek's. There were 2 other Tropek families in the same town that my family settled at in Pennsylvania, Josef and Charles. For some reason my family insisted that we weren’t related but it doesn’t make sense to me if they came from the same small town in Slovakia/austro-hungarian empire. I recently connected with a cousin in PA who is the great-granddaughter of Joseph C Tropek's daughter. She also said her family insists we're not related to the "other" Tropek's but it doesn't make sense to us. I've been pestering my grandma a lot about family history stuff. She's 93 but is very with it and remembers dates for everything pretty accurately. Her and my grandpa had a conversation with Joseph C Tropek about the "other" Tropek's. She said that the explanation was very confusing so they basically gave up asking him about it and the only thing they could get out of it was they were maybe cousins.
You mentioned that the Ellis Island record for both Josef’s said they were going to meet the same person in Federal, Pa, USA? I can’t quite make out the name but it looks like Ign Mordoff? Maybe it was a mutual friend.
The death certificate for Charles Tropek (carolus Tropek) lists his birthday as October 24, 182 and his parents as Joannes Tropek and Annie Tropek. It doesn’t seem like anyone kept consistent records back in the day. This could be the same person’s record: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KSYC-YBN
Hopefully you can view this but I just uploaded a picture of Charles death certificate: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/sources/viewedit/3P8J-XV4
Here is Joseph C Tropek’s death certificate: https://www.familysearch.org/photos/artifacts/143180666
Here’s the death certificate for Joseph C Tropek’s wife Mary:
https://www.familysearch.org/photos/artifacts/143180533
I can’t seem to find what document her hometown was listed on but it was Jablonka, Slovakia. Do you know where that is today? I think it’s closer to the Austrian border.
Their house in Pennsylvania suffered a fire a long time ago so all of their pictures and documents were lost. I only have 1 picture of them.
Here’s Joseph and Mary’s marriage certificate: https://www.familysearch.org/photos/artifacts/153848782
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I forgot to add, Joseph C Tropeck's gravestone in PA states his birth year of 1885. https://billiongraves.com/grave/Joseph-Tropeck/5370207
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2HXL-T4R?from=lynx1UIV8&treeref=GMNH-G3Y
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The destination contact that the two Josef Tropeks had in common was a friend Josef Brenkus, at Federal, PA, Box 5. (The friend "Ign. Mesdeff" or thereabouts is for lines 20 and 21, a Josef Revaj and a Josef Sroka heading to Batavia, New Jersey. All three Josefs were from Rabcsicze, though.)
I believe the arrival manifests were filled out based on travel documents, not oral report, but that introduces its own sources of error, such as stale data and misreading.
I found a WWI draft registration (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-L1N1-8H9?i=2708) for a Joseph Tropek in Allegheny county, PA, but it has a different birthdate (18 November 1887), and it says he had a wife and two children, while "your" Joseph had four children by June 1917. The draft registration gives a birthplace of "Rapczice", which makes me worried: were there two different Joseph Tropeks in Allegheny county, two years apart in age, and the arrival manifest and the birthplace it points to are for the wrong guy?
If the draft card can be shown to be the right person, that would fill the current hole in the documentation: none of the currently-attached Pennsylvania sources name his birthplace, so connecting him to the passenger manifest is a leap of faith.
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The Josef Tropek that you found that immigrated the previous November whose married I think was the second “other” Tropek family that settled in Pennsylvania in the same town/area as my family. I think he ended up going by James in the US. His wife was Sophie or Sophia Pilarcyzk (not sure on spelling) and I believe she was born in Slovakia. They may have been married in Slovakia before immigrating. I didn’t realize the other Josef’s destination friend was also Josef Brenkus.
My family member Josef’s baptism record lists his God parents as Paulus Brenkus and Anna something. Josef Brenkus could possibly be their son or related to them as a family friend?
To add to your thought on were there two Josef Tropek’s in Allegheny County two years apart? I believe so. I think the other one went by James and was married to Sophie. I think they died the same year as well. If you scrool down to page 78 you can see there was a James and Joseph Tropeck that died in 1961. Joseph C is my family member.
http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/bah/dam/rg/di/r11_090_DeathIndexes/Death_1961/D-61%20SUM-T.pdf
I think this is James/Joseph gravestone in Allegheny County. He is buried at the same Cemetery as my great grandparents.
Do you think that my family member maybe wasn’t from Rabcice? Here is the naturalization paperwork to become a US citizen for my family member and it lists his birth place as Rabcice. It lists his wife’s birth place as Jablonka, Czechoslovakia. It also lists that he came through Hamburg, Germany which is listed on the ship manifest. The date is off by 1 day and a couple years but I think that could have been a typewriter mistake. https://www.familysearch.org/photos/artifacts/153849371
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/97658342/james-tropeck
My grandma remembers my grandpa’s sister being friends with Sophie Tropeck.
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Does this record for Josephus Brenkus say he died feb 21, 1877?
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Yes, that record says that that Joseph Brenkus died ("mortuus"). (Drat.)
OK, that naturalization fills the gap nicely, although I'm still not sure that the arrival is really him, since it's four years off from what he reported at naturalization. But it's the typed copy, and 5 versus 9 could be a misreading from the typist. (Sometimes one can find both a handwritten and a typed declaration, and it can be interesting to see what errors were introduced.)
Found possibly the other Josef Tropek's arrival (maybe the one whose draft registration I found?). It's indexed as "Tro.ek". Line 11: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9T3-1GF9?i=692&cc=1368704
The arrival date (Dec. 1909) is a better match to what's on the naturalization (Feb. 1909), but the departure contact is "father: Josef Tropek" in Rabcsicze, so it doesn't match the marriage records, and most people misremember dates a lot more often than names (especially of their own parents).
The destination contact (next image) is a Janos Tropek in Bru??ton PA; the relationship was originally written as "brother" but has (I think) "cousin" written on top of it.
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According to the 1913 gazetteer, Jablonka was a primarily Polish village in Árva county with an RC church locally, but unfortunately, it looks like FS doesn't have its records. (Probably because it's now Jabłonka, Poland: I don't know who has Polish RC records, but it's not FS. Just our luck that it's one of the 12 villages in the entire Kingdom of Hungary that were given to Poland.)
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So we've got arrivals for three different men named Josef Tropek from Rabcsicze: a married man in Nov. 1904, age 36; a single man in Mar. 1905, age 18; and a single man in Dec. 1909, age 21. They were all headed to Pennsylvania, and the first two both had Josef Brenkus as their arrival contact. Your ancestor has to be the 1905 arrival, because the relationships are wrong on the other two. Unless there's yet a fourth guy that we haven't turned up.... (I notice that the naturalization says April 1 1909, while the arrival we found is filed as March 31 1905. Those are one day and one typo/misreading apart.)
I looked through the marriages in Rabcsicze, and while I found a couple of Josef Tropeks born in the 1860s getting married (both in Feb. 1887), neither of their brides were named Sophie. In fact, I couldn't find a bride with that name between 1875 and 1895. (There were several Gertrudes, though.) Drat. I guess that would've been too easy.
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I think that it could have been a typo.
Do you happen to know what the Latin, Slovak, German names for James would have been? That was one of the names of the other Tropeck’s in PA.
I did a searchon google maps and there seems to be a Jablonka, Slovakia as well as Jablonka, Poland. I’m not sure how to figure out which one my Great Grandma came from. All I know is that when she was alive she told my Grandma that she used to go shopping in Austria. Some that makes me wonder if it was the one in Slovakia since it’s closer to Austria. Although, back then, it wasn’t Austria, it was the Austro-Hungarian empire. Not sure how the borders worked back then.
I’ll be in Krakow, Poland next month and we’re driving to Slovakia and Jablonka, Poland is on the way so I might check it out just in case she happened to be from there instead of the one in Slovakia.
Hmm that’s too bad that you didn’t find any brides names Sophie. Maybe his name wasn’t Josef and it was whatever the equivalent of James would be?
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James = Jacob, so Jacobus in Latin, Jakab in Hungarian, and Jakub in Slovak and Polish.
The Jablonka that's in Slovakia doesn't appear to have existed before the 1950s, or certainly not with that name. It's about halfway between Miava (now Myjava) and Krajna (later Karaj, now Krajné), which were both in Nyitra county, and the only Jab- place in that county listed in the gazetteers (or shown on maps) is Jabláncz, which is now Jablonica, a ways south and west of Jablonka. (Apparently, both of those placenames are diminutives of the word for "apple tree".)
(There is also a Vyšná Jablonka "Upper Jablonka" in Slovakia, but it's waaay east, in what used to be Zemplén county, so it's highly unlikely to be what your great-grandma meant.)
As the crow flies, the Jablonka that's now in southern Poland was about 5 miles from the border with Galicia, the Austrian Crown Land that's numbered 6 on this map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisleithania#/media/File:Austria-Hungary_map.svg
(That map is a pretty good illustration of Austria-Hungary: a conglomerate of administrations held together by the identity of the guy wearing the crown. It wasn't even a single crown: the areas numbered 16 [Hungary] and 17 [Croatia] looked to a king wearing St. Stephen's crown [also known as "the holy crown"], while numbers 1 to 15 looked to an emperor wearing the Austrian imperial crown. I'm skipping 18 [Bosnia-Herzegovina], because it was a very late addition and I think I'm not alone in not being able to figure out how to categorize it.)
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Oh: for genealogical records in Poland, someone on WikiTree's forum recommended the website https://geneteka.genealodzy.pl/index.php?op=se&lang=eng. I haven't figured out how to get it to tell me whether the records I need are included in its database or not.
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I finally found the record that states where Joseph Tropeck's wife was from, Jablonka. Here it is: https://www.familysearch.org/photos/artifacts/155325000
I'll have to check out that website for records in Poland. That would make sense why I couldn't find any birth records in Slovakia. All I know is she had a brother names Joseph Palenik (unsure of true spelling, it's been spelled various ways on different documents) and her father's name was Joseph too. Her brother went to Illinois and eventually moved to Michigan and lived there with his wife until he was hit by a train and died.
Since the other Tropeck in PA's grave says his name is James then maybe his birthname was Jacob and not joseph.
Wow! You sure know a lot about that geographical area. It's interesting how it all worked. Now I'm serious to figure out where she came from. I know they were both very specific about being Slovak, not Czechoslovakian or anything else. I wonder if she would have felt that way if she was from what's now Jablonka, Poland.
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On that map you sent of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which numbered section is where present day Jablonka, Poland is located?
And are you saying the number 6 is about 5 miles from the border with Galicia, the Austrian Crown Land ?
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Jablonka was in Hungary before the Treaty of Versailles. On that map of the Empire, Hungary is the big green thing in the middle (numbered 16).
If you look at that map (or any map of the Kingdom of Hungary, pre-dismemberment), you'll notice that there's a dip in the middle of the country's northern border. Jablonka was near the left-hand edge of that dip, most of the way up, meaning that you could end up in Galicia in less than ten miles by travelling either east or north.
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Wow, that is interesting! That Jablonka would make more sense than the one that didn't exist until the 1950's. I'll be in Poland next week and we're driving to Rabcice, Slovakia and the route it says to take has us drive right through Jablonka, Poland. I'll have to make a stop and check it out. So the Joseph Tropeck that was baptized in rabcice in November of 1885 to the parents Alexander and Veronica I'm 99% certain is my great grandfather. I spoke to my grandma today and she remembers Joseph talking about two sisters and a brother. When I mentioned the names she recognized Florian. According to the church records Alexander and Veronica had 5 children:
Joseph
Carolina
Angela
Carolus
Florian
I think Carolus died as a baby and I'm not sure about Florian.
My grandma remembers Joseph mailing clothes and various items back to Slovakia to his sisters and they would write him letters. One of the letters they asked for a wrist watch but Joseph didn't want to spend the money on one. Unfortunately their house was burnt down so all the letters and pictures were lost.
Also, one of the other Tropek family in PA with James and Sophie who were also from Rabcice. My Grandma remembers being at their house once and Sophie was my grandfathers godmother. So there is no way they had the same last name, from the same small village, and weren't related somehow.
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Does the record for Carolina Tropek say she got married to someone with the surname Subjak on September 9, 1908, I can't read the first name? Does it also list her death date? It's difficult to make out.
For Angela Tropek, does it say she died on April 15, 1897? Slovakia Church and Synagogue Books, 1592-1935; https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GRQ8-3D8?cc=1554443&wc=9P32-GPJ%3A107654301%2C141048201%2C141158601%2C141158602 — FamilySearch.org
Does Johanna Tropek record say she died 1894? I'm not sure what the rest of the date says. Slovakia Church and Synagogue Books, 1592-1935; https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GRQZ-9H4J?cc=1554443&wc=9P32-GPJ%3A107654301%2C141048201%2C141158601%2C141158602
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32. Born 8 October 1881, baptized 9 October 1881
Carolina, female, legitimate
Parents: Alexander Tropek of Rabcsicza, Veronica Piták of Ó-Rabcsa, farmer(s), RC
Residence: Rabcsicza number 188
Godparents: Paulus Brenkusz with Anna his wife, of Rabcsicza, farmers, RC
Officiant: the same (Josephus Murdzsák local parson)
Observations: married Josephus Subják in Rabcsicza on 10 Sept. 1908.
Died 5th June 1931(?)
18. Born 7 May 1896, baptized 8 May 1896
Angela, female, legitimate
Parents: Alexander Tropek, Veronica Mokos, of Rabcsicza, farmer, RC
Residence: Rabcsicza number 171
Godparents: Paulus Brenkusz with Anna his wife, of Rabcsicza, farmer, RC
Officiant: the same (Josephus Murdzsák deacon, local parson)
Observations: died 15th day of April 1897
44. Born 17 October 1888, baptized 18 October 1888
Johanna, female, legitimate
Parents: Alexander Tropek, Veronica Mokos, of Rabcsicza, farmer, RC
Residence: Rabcsicza number 171
Godparents: Paulus Brenkusz with Anna his wife, of Rabcsicza, farmer, RC
Officiant: the same (Josephus Murdzsák deacon, local parson)
Observations: died 23rd day of March 1894
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Johanna's death: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9RQ8-7TM?i=7&cc=1554443
15. 23 March 1894
Johanna, daughter of Alexander Tropek farmer
Residence: Racsicza number 171
female, age 6 years
cause: weakness
Burial: local cemetery, 20 March
Angela's death: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9RQ8-7TN?i=12
11. 15 April 1897
Angela, daughter of Alexander Tropek farmer
Residence: Rabcsicza number 171
female, age 1 year
Cause: atrophy
Burial: local cemetery, 17 April
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Oh wow! You found the death records fast! Thank you. So remember the confusion with the two different Joseph Tropeck's in PA? My grandma remembers there being another one. So that explains why there was a different Joseph that immigrated a year prior.
Also, thank you so much for helping me with my family heritage. I actually was able to meet a distant cousin in Slovakia last week!
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