Lipnica Wielka

mpaiste

I am new to this group and I hope this question is appropriate. I am researching a Slovak family from the current community of Lipnica Wielka which is currently in Poland. I have ships' manifests for various family members. Countries of birth are listed as Slovakland, Poland, Germany, Austria and Hungary for people from Lipnica Wielka. I have official documents starting around 1848, in various languages.

I would like to know what countries owned Lipnica Weilka and when. Can someone suggest specific sources to find out?

Thanks

Marsha

Julia Szent-Györgyi

It's actually pretty simple: before the Treaty of Versailles, Alsó-Lipnicza was in Árva county, Hungary. Since then, Lipnica Wielka has been in Poland.

"Slovakland" and "Germany" (and any pre-1920 instances of"Poland") are probably the result of the usual confusion between language, ethnicity, and nationality. "Austria" is the ubiquitous error of taking a dash or hyphen as an excuse to truncate things. (You can see from my name why I feel ...rather strongly about this.) A post-1920 "Hungary" could result from lack of clarity in a question: was it asking for the country at the time of birth, or the current country for the location of the birth?

As for how to find this out, you can check maps, gazetteers, or even FamilySearch's Places database/tool. For maps of Austria-Hungary, Mapire (now maps.arcanum.com) is an excellent site. For gazetteers, the Wayback Machine has RadixHub's tabular English version of Dvorzsák and the linked 1913 annotated with modern jurisdictions, and Hungary's Central Statistics Office has the official ones.

mpaiste

Thank you.