Antolic and Kasanak families
My wife's maternal grandparents immigrated from the Austria-Hungarian Empire to Pittsburgh, PA in the early 1900s. Trying to follow their lines back any further has proven to be difficult at best. Does anyone have any idea how to get more information?
Comentários
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Hi,
Could you give a little more information about the grandparents? It will be easier to search with their first names or the names of their parents.
Kind regards
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Austria-Hungary in the early 1900s means basically half of mainland Europe, so it is completely insufficient information to work with. You'll need to do more research in U.S. records.
Have you found their arrival? Draft registrations? Did they naturalize? Are there any birth/marriage/death records for them or their children that identify a specific location of origin?
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Perhaps this is the family:https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/family/K8XV-WW4
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Christopher's find has edits by the person posting this question, so I think that's the family.
The birthdate on Andrew Antolic's profile (22 Mar 1885) doesn't match the one on the WWI draft registration that's attached (27 Jan 1885); I think it came from an index-only baptism entry from Regete-Ruszka (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KHC2-41S). However, neither one matches the 27 April 1885 date from the WWII draft registration that I think is also him (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DZHW-96?i=46), based on the very similar signature, so I don't think we can use this guy's birthdate as identification. I don't think he knew it himself, and made guesses when asked for it.
I just noticed that the attached 1940 census says Yugoslavia, meaning that the Regete-Ruszka birth is definitely not him. His birthdate should probably be changed to 27 January (if you're confident that the WWI draft registration is his).
The registers from places that were Yugoslavia in 1940 are only spottily online at all, never mind in a searchable form, but it may be possible to find something with a precise place. An arrival record (ship manifest) would be the most likely to provide that, but the 1910 arrival of a guy with the right name and age is such awful handwriting that I'm not even sure of what it says for his occupation (line 24: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9T3-RCTT?i=569&cc=1368704). I'm pretty sure it says Slovak for his "race or people", but there were some towns in southern Hungary that were settled by Slovaks…. (Don't know if any of them ended up in Yugoslavia or not.)
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi
This could possibly be the Andras Antolik from the passenger list. I thought the place on the passenger list could be "Kemence Nagy", which would be "Kamenica nad Cirochou" in Slovakia today. Ofcourse the entry's information does not really fit with the Andrew Antolic profile.
There is a commentary in the birth record which I can't read.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6NM6-S3T12 -
The note says the father (who is correctly János Antolik, not Andrik as indexed) is in America; his absence apparently caused some confusion about the child's legitimacy. I agree that this baptism is a very likely match to the 1910 passenger: the latter's destination contact appears to be a brother named Johann Antolik (possibly in Plainfield, NY?), and his departure contact looks like his mother Maria Antolik. ("Appears" and "looks like" because that handwriting barely qualifies as writing rather than scribbling.)
If we're reading all that correctly, then the 1888 baptism and 1910 passenger list do not match the 1940 census, as Yugoslavia and Slovakia are opposite sides of the country, and I doubt that anyone could or would get "Czechoslovakia" and "Yugoslavia" confused.
How certain is the match to that 1940 census? Can anyone get the search to cough up a 1950 census? (I failed.) A 1955 death in Pennsylvania should be online somewhere, right? My only experience with that is failing to find my stepmother-in-law's father's death record….
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I think this is the family in the 1950 census:https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6X13-JQKF
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Thanks, Christopher!
(In the meantime, the hinting system also came up with it.)
The address (2904 White St, Pittsburgh) exactly matches the WWII draft registration, and both of them give "Austria" as his birthplace, so I'm not sure what's going on with that "Yugoslavia" in 1940. I suppose it is theoretically possible that they're different people…. (In fact, there were two similar-age Andrew Antolics in Pennsylvania in the first half of the 1900s — but, near as I can tell, the other guy was in Lehigh county and married to a Mary, not Elizabeth.)
Found a PA death certificate with the same Pittsburgh address; I've added it to the profile as a source. It includes a Social Security number. His SS-5 would not be free of charge, but it may provide a mother's name. (The death certificate says John for his father and "unknown" for his mother.)
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Andrew's death certificate says he's a US citizen, so there should be a naturalization record.
It's interesting(confusing) that the 1920 census gives his birthplace as Italy and mother tongue as Italian. Mistake on census-takers part or is Andrew Slovenian?
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Given that all of the censuses agree that he's not naturalized, including the 1950, I'm thinking the death certificate might simply be wrong about his citizenship. (The 1940 does say "PA", which I believe means he's filed a declaration of intention …?)
I don't think there exists a place that was in Italy in 1920, Austria in 1930, Yugoslavia in 1940, and Austria again in 1950, so one or more of those censuses has to be wrong — but the grouping does certainly suggest Slovenia.
The 1930 census, for language spoken in home before emigration, has "Slavish" crossed out and replaced with "unknown" for both Andrew and Elizabeth. The 1940 census has Andrew's parents both born in Yugoslavia and the language spoken in his home in earliest childhood as "Austrian". I get the feeling that they honestly didn't know a label for their native tongue, other than "not English".
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