Introduction
I am an American of Slovak descent. My search for
my roots began with a handwritten copy of the only words written in my
maternal grandparents' Bible: Joseph Oravetz rodil sa v Europe v Ceskoslovensku
Opakey v Zupe Cily, Stolicy Abaujsky. Maria Oravetz rodila sa v Europe
na Perecesu v stolicy Borsodskej. Loosely translated, the passage
says that my grandfather, Joseph Oravetz, was born in Europe in the Czechoslovakian
village of Opaka in Abov County, and my grandmother, Mary Oravetz, was
born in Europe in the village of Pereces in Borsod County. At the time
of their births, Slovakia was the northernmost portion of Hungary and
was divided into Zupy (singular: Zupa), of which Abov and Borsod were
two, the latter being in present-day Hungary. The counties were also referred
to by the term Stolica. This information gave me the names of the villages
and the counties, but to this day I do not know the significance of the
word 'Cila' (in the phrase 'v Zupe Cily'), because there was no such county,
but it may be something entirely different in the original passage, which
I have not seen.
I knew very little more than the above until I took
a basic genealogy adult education class in the Autumn of 1983. In the
class, I learned of various genealogy working aids from Everton Press
in Utah that would help me with Eastern European genealogical research.
A woman in the class was able to get me a map of Hungary from a bookstore
in Washington, D.C., and at about the same time I purchased a map of Slovakia;
neither map was very detailed because of communist paranoia about such
matters, but they contained a wealth of information for my research. We
also took a field trip to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., where
I learned of the treasures to be found in the ship records and in the
census records.
Thanks to the genealogy class, and its instructor,
Connie Catania, I was able to get copies of several important documents:
a copy of my maternal grandmother's ship record at the National Archives;
the Declaration of Intention papers from the Cambria County courthouse
in Pennsylvania for both my maternal grandparents; and copies of my paternal
grandparents' death certificates from the Pennsylvania vital records archives.
Knowing where to search is the key to success in genealogical research.
A serendipitous event in about 1986 changed the course
of my research. Even though I knew my maternal grandfather's place of
birth, Opaka, I did not know precisely where it was. At the 1986 family
reunion, Flo Oravec, Alex's wife, handed me a copy of Alex Oravec Sr.'s
birth certificate, and said something like, "I don't know if this
will help you any." Well, it was the nugget I was searching for.
Alex Sr. was my grandfather's brother, and there in black and white was
the place of birth: Opátka, Kosice Diocese, Kosice District. Subsequent
research revealed that Opáka (with the accent mark on the first 'a') is
the Hungarian name for the town of Opátka.
Tracking down the precise location of Pereces (alternate
spelling: Pereczes) in Borsod County, Hungary, turned out to be relatively
easy, but it took some analysis to piece it together. The first clue was
on Mary Lelak's ship record (remember, she and Joseph Oravetz were not
yet married), which listed the nearest relative in the country of origin
as her father, Matyas Lelak, in Diosgyor, Pereczes, Hungary. From a genealogical
handbook on Hungary, I found out that Borsod County existed pre-1920 in
northeast Hungary, and was incorporated into present-day Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén
County, of which Miskolc is the county seat. The real breakthrough came
from the map of Hungary that my classmate had bought for me; it contains
an enlargement of Miskolc that shows a suburb named Diósgyör, and nearby
the village of Pereces. Spelling and diacritical differences aside, I
knew I had the place. I also soon discovered that the Church of the Latter
Day Saints (Mormons) had microfilmed Hungarian parish records in the 1960s,
and I was able to make copies of the birth certificates of my grandmother
and one of her sisters. I also discovered that an older sister died of
scarlet fever at the age of three.
From the Hungarian parish records, I also learned
that my maternal great-grandparents were both born in Slovakia (Mátyás
Lelák in Zakarovce (Hungarian: Zsakarócz), Spis County; and Jozefin/Jozéfa
Mihalik in Smolní k (Hungarian: Szomolnok), Abov County). They somehow
both ended up in Pereczes, a medium-sized mining town just to the west
of Miskolc, Hungary. Judging from parish records, I would suspect there
was a mass migration to this region of Hungary sometime in the mid- to
late-19th century. When I went through the birth and death records for
the Roman Catholic Parish of Diósgyör, I noticed that hundreds of the
parishioners had immigrated from Abov County, and all the men were either
ore miners or ironworkers.
The answer to the final mystery, how I discovered
where the Rebar ancestral village is located, will be forever lost in
the mists of time. The sad fact is that I do not remember. The only thing
I can recall is my father pointing to a spot on the map and explaining
that there were two villages side-by-side with the same name, except that
one was the upper town and one was the lower, or something like that.
And somehow I also knew that Joseph Herpak, Dad's cousin, came from one
of the villages, and the one he came from was the 'other' one. I have
a copy of a document that says Herpak came from Felsö Mislye, and a copy
of Maria Kozak's birth certificate that gives her birth place as Alsó
Mislye. At the time, I did not know who Maria Kozak was, but I knew she
was related (she was my dad's aunt, and also Joseph Herpak's). Somehow,
some way, I found out that these town names are the Hungarian renditions
of present-day Vysná Mysl'a and Nizná Mysl'a, respectively. Whether by
luck or intuition, I finally could say with some certainty that the Rebars
came from Nizná Mysl'a, and U.S. census records gave me fairly accurate
dates of birth.
By the end of 1991, I had reached a stone wall in
my genealogical research, because any further information would have to
come from Eastern Europe. However, for many reasons, it did not look likely
that I would ever be able to travel there to conduct the research myself.
One day, while leafing through Nase Rodina, the newsletter of
the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International, I learned that Dr.
Duncan Gardiner, a certified genealogist from Ohio, was to embark on another
of his research trips in the summer of 1992, and I wrote to him for help
in getting critical documents. I did not know at the time exactly how
helpful he would turn out to be.
All that I was able to provide to Dr. Gardiner was
the meager assortment of documents I had collected up to that time, and
since nearly all of them were ship and census records, they were, by their
very nature, subjective and often contradictory. The details were very
skimpy, as nearly all of our important family documents had been lost,
largely through indifference and neglect.
Dr. Gardiner's findings exceeded my wildest expectations.
He was able to trace three entire lines (Ribár, Kozák, and Oravec) back
to the late 1700s. Since then, I have been able to do the same for the
Mihalik, Majdik, and Lovasz families. All of these newly-found hundreds
of relatives are very real to me, whereas only a few short years ago,
their names were completely unknown to me.
So, what did all this research get me in the end?
First of all, a sense of continuity with the past. Until these people
and places became known to me, that whole geographic area where they originated
was just the 'Old Country,' and I couldn't accept the finality of that
phrase. For future generations, there is now a real past
that pre-dates 1890. But, most important of all, are the facts written
below, from which all of my research can be reconstructed should all my
papers get lost or thrown away.
Here, then, is the distillation of my research:
My paternal grandfather, Andrew Rebar, was born Andreas
Ribár on July 6, 1866, in Nizná Mysl'a, Slovakia, and Katherine (Kozak)
Rebar was born Katalin Kozák on January 26, 1872, in the same town. Very
little anecdotal information exists on either of them, because they both
died in 1921, and anyone who would have known them is long gone from this
Earth. There is factual information, such as the fact that they married
in November 1891 in Nizná Mysl'a, and Andrew emigrated to the United States
very shortly after that, arriving early in 1892. He saved his money and
sent for Katherine around 1896. Since I do not have specific dates that
either arrived in this country, I have no ship records for either of them.
My maternal grandfather, Joseph Oravetz, was born
Jozsef Oravecz on January 7, 1881, in Opátka, Slovakia, a small town in
the northwestern section of present-day Kosice-Vidiek County, about 15
miles northwest of Kosice itself. He left Opátka near the turn of the
century and went to Pereces, a village outside Miskolc in Borsod County
(present-day Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, Hungary), to work, probably staying
with his brother, János Oravecz, and the latter's wife, Etel (Soltész).
My maternal grandmother, Mary (Lelak) Oravetz, an ethnic Slovak, was born
Mária Lelák on February 13, 1888, in Pereces, the same village where Joseph
Oravetz went to work. At the time, there was no separate country of Slovakia,
so neitherMary nor Joseph technically were not 'outside' their native
country, just living in a different part of it. Evidently, they became
engaged to be married while living in Pereces, but the decision was made
to emigrate before the marriage took place. Joseph then emigrated to the
United States in 1907, staying with his brother, Alex. He sent for Mary
in late-1908. They married in March 1909 in Barnesboro, Pennsylvania.
James M. Rebar
Napoleon, Ohio USA
August 10, 2002 |
