Michael Tusick and Anna Dupilka immigrated separately to the United States and met for the first time in Passaic, New Jersey, yet they were almost neighbors in their native land. Grandpa was from Trhoviste, a town in far-eastern Slovakia, about 25 miles from the Ukraine border. Grandma was born less than 10 miles away in a small town named Trnava pri Laborci.
Grandpa, born in 1875, had been a soldier in Emperor Franz Josef's Hungarian army before he immigrated to the United States in the late 1890s (the details of which are still unclear). Grandma was born in 1882 and was still a teenager when she and her two sisters left the family farm for America.
Today we know them as Slovaks, but when they left their homeland they were Hungarians by nationality, if not ethnicity. Present-day Slovakia was then called Upper Hungary -- a political subdivision of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire -- and after World War I it was a part of Czechoslovakia. It wasn't until the "Velvet Divorce" of 1993 that Slovaks were able to claim a free and independent homeland.
Because the ethnic Slovaks of Grandma and Grandpa's generation were ruled by Hungarians (Magyars), their towns and villages had Hungarian names. Thus, Grandpa's home town of Trhoviste was known as Vasarhely in the official records of that era, and Grandma's home town of Trnava pri Laborci was known as Tarna.
Church records of baptisms, marriages and deaths were written in Hungarian and Latin, but never in Slovak, and this unsettled mix of languages may explain, in part, why family surnames have changed over the years. Century-old Roman Catholic church registers in Trhoviste, for example, consistently spell Grandpa's surname as "Toczik," yet family members living in that region today go by the name "Tocik." "Tusick" is an American variation of the name -- the last in a long string of alternative spellings (explained below).
Until very recently -- within the past year -- all that I knew of my grandparents came from stories told by my mother, Agnes Tusick Batteiger. Talking with other relatives added a few details, which eventually led a cousin, Lynn Vizdos, and I to regional libraries of the Mormon church, whose vast genealogical holdings are available on microfilm. Amazingly, these records include 150-year-old Roman Catholic church registers from present-day Slovakia, and after many hours of searching (and with the help of numerous foreign-language dictionaries) it's been possible to trace our family through several generations in the region, back to Grandpa Tusick's own grandparents: Gyorgy Toczik and Erzsebet Szopko.
How accurate is this research? I am entirely confident that we have, in fact, found Grandma and Grandpa's families in Slovakia. Grandpa's date of birth, July 23, 1875, is recorded on his death certificate and is a perfect match to the Slovak church register that records his birth there, with both documents identifying his parents as George and Elizabeth (one says "Tusick," of course, and the other says "Toczik"). Other family members have been confirmed by birth, marriage and/or death records, all of them residents of the same household or the same immediate neighborhood. (At least four generations of Tocziks lived at house No. 59 in Trhoviste, according to church and Hungarian census records.) As for the Dupilka side of the family, an early version of this Web site prompted an e-mail message from an excited Daniel Dupilka in Bratislava, Slovakia, who since then has patiently answered questions, provided photos and filled in gaps in our family history. The Internet is an amazing thing.
For the sake of consistency, I have changed all given names below to their English equivalents. Thus, the Hungarian "Gyorgy" and Latin "Georgius" are written as "George," the Hungarian "Mihaly" and Slovak "Michal" are written as Michael, and the Hungarian "Erzsebet" is "Elizabeth" and "Janos" is "John."
As for surnames, I am uncomfortable interpreting old records and have decided to identify the earliest generations of my grandfather's family as they were officially known -- as Tocziks, reserving "Tocik" for more recent generations and "Tusick" for those of us in the United States. The fact that Grandpa used all three spellings of the name (and many more) gives me a headache.
Grandpa was born July 23, 1875, in Trhoviste, a rural village of about 1,200 people (according to an 1869 census) located in the old Hungarian county of Zemplen. He was a son of George Toczik and Elizabeth Lyoch (also spelled Lyoh), and his father was identified on the birth register as a "zseller" -- Hungarian for tenant farmer, suggesting that the family didn't own land. The 1869 census noted that George Toczik could read Hungarian but couldn't write it, and that the family owned a single cow.
We've always known that Grandpa had a younger brother who also immigrated to the United States (my great-uncle John Tozik, the father of Ann Kohut from Ashtabula, Ohio), and others in the family have heard stories of an older brother, George, and a sister. Church records, however, indicate that the family was substantially larger -- that Grandpa was the sixth of seven children. Two of the children died as infants, but five survived to adulthood: The eldest was George, born in 1859 and given his father's (and grandfather's) name. Anna was born in 1863 and Elizabeth in 1870, followed by Michael (Grandpa) in 1875 and John in 1877.
Grandpa was only three years old when his father, George Toczik, died in 1879 at age 44. The cause wasn't listed in the death register, but at 44 he had reached the average life expectancy for men of his generation. Grandpa's mother lived a much longer life: Elizabeth Lyoch was born about 1837, and Aunt Margaret Rinzler remembers learning of her death at age 101 in the late 1930s.
I know very little about the eldest generation of Tocziks -- Grandpa's grandparents, George Toczik and Elizabeth Szopko -- except that they lived at No. 59 in Trhoviste (as did three generations after them), and that George Toczik was a farmer. He died sometime in the 1860s. Elizabeth Szopko died in 1882 at age 75.
Returning to Grandpa's generation, my mother remembers hearing that when he was a boy Grandpa was sent to live with (and work for) a Catholic priest so that he could get an education and, perhaps, enter the priesthood. He didn't become a priest, but he did get an education that seems unusual for men of his generation: I'm told Grandpa could converse in four or five Eastern European languages.
The circumstances surrounding Grandpa's service in the Hungarian army are interesting -- and vague. We're told he was an aide to a senior officer, but he didn't serve more than a few years before he deserted (a not-uncommon occurrence, from what I've read of Franz Josef's army). Soon afterward -- probably very soon afterward -- he left for the United States, although here again the facts are in short supply. My mother was told that Grandpa entered the United States illegally, through Canada, and that he may have been turned away a first time before successfully making his way across the border in a second attempt. The exact dates are not known, although he told census takers in 1910 and 1920 that he arrived in the United States in 1891. I'm skeptical of this date, however, in part because it would mean that he had entered and run away from the Hungarian army and then crossed the Atlantic Ocean (possibly twice) by age 16. Also, there's no guarantee that census information is correct. The 1910 census, for example, states that Grandma also came here in 1891, which is almost certainly incorrect, while the 1920 census says she arrived in 1902.
Did Grandpa leave his homeland to escape military service? Probably not, and in fact the reverse may be true: that he left the military in order to leave home and take advantage of unprecedented opportunities that beckoned men of his generation -- in America.
The United States saw an incredible wave of immigrants from Eastern Europe in the 1890s, with ethnic Slovaks constituting one of the largest groups of new arrivals. U.S. mine operators had been searching for new sources of cheap workers after years of violent labor disputes with Irish miners (the "Molly McGuires"), and I've read that the mine operators worked hand-in-hand with steamship companies to lure Eastern European men across the Atlantic Ocean with promises of a better life in America. For many, the choice was easy. Their farmland was overworked and economic conditions in the region were deteriorating, and so they came by the boatload, with tens of thousands of them settling in the coal fields of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Which is exactly what Grandpa did.
We don't know if Grandpa traveled alone or with his younger brother, John. We also don't know what became of his older brother, George. Aunt Margaret says she remembers hearing that George came to the United States and settled in Oregon. She says Grandpa was upset that George moved so far away, and apparently all contact was lost -- a mystery waiting to be solved.
As for Grandpa's two older sisters, Aunt Margaret remembers hearing stories of at least one of them, but she isn't sure if it was Anna or Elizabeth. An amazing discovery in a Slovak church register, however, confirms that Grandpa had a niece who followed a similar route from Trhoviste to Pennsylvania and then to West Virginia. Her name was Elizabeth Prokop, a daughter of Elizabeth Toczik (Grandpa's sister) and John Prokop.
Elizabeth Prokop's birth in 1890 is listed in the church register, which also carries an addendum, written years later, that tells of her marriage on August 29, 1908, to a Michael Varkonda in America -- in a town named Star Junction. Even in Hungarian the names are unmistakable, and they leap off the page to those in the family who recognize Star Junction, Pennsylvania, as the birthplace of Uncle Mike -- Grandpa's eldest son -- in 1905. I telephoned the registrar of vital statistics in the Pennsylvania county where Star Junction is located (Fayette County), and she confirmed that a marriage license for "Lizzie" Prokop and "Mike" Varkonda was indeed recorded in August 1908. Amazing stuff!
Aunt Margaret remembers trading letters with Prokop and Varkonda relatives over the years -- she says they lived in West Virginia, not far from the Ohio and Pennsylvania borders -- but there's been no contact recently. The fact that she and others in the family remember both Prokops and Varkondas, however, suggests that young Elizabeth Prokop had a brother who made the transatlantic trip, too.
Grandpa moved his family from Star Junction to Simpson, West Virginia, two years before Elizabeth Prokop's marriage in 1908, but it's an intriguing fact that both families had lived there -- almost certainly at the same time, if only for a year or two.
Northeast of Trhoviste, in what used to be the neighboring Hungarian county of Ung, the Laborec River flows near a small, rural community whose history has been traced back 750 years. Today it's known as Trnava pri Laborci, and Grandma was born there on April 12, 1882, the second child of John Dupilka and Mary Csorey (also spelled Csorej in some church records).
The eldest child was Elias, born in 1879 (the grandfather of our Slovak cousin Dan Dupilka), and after Grandma two more daughters were born: Mary in 1884 and Susan in 1890. Lynn Vizdos has looked at the church registers from Trnava pri Laborci and says they also list three other children born to John and Mary Dupilka, but we assume they died as children because neither Dan Dupilka nor any Tusick in the United States has heard any mention of them. (More information will become available as we make further progress reading the town's church registers. Translating these records is like mining gold: They hold great riches of information, but it's slow work.)
The Dupilka family was Greek Catholic (Byzantine Rite), and Dan Dupilka says Grandma's father, John Dupilka, was a son of John Dupilka and Anna Kovcunova. Church records list a Mary Csorej as the daughter of Andrew Csorej and Mary Pongyos at about the time Grandma's mother was born, but I'm not yet certain of the connection.
Grandma told her children that she was raised on a small farm, but we have few details. All we know for certain is that Elias remained in Trnava pri Laborci with his parents while his three sisters emigrated. Why did they leave? Again, explanations are in short supply, but we can assume that they hoped for a better life in America.
I've heard conflicting stories about whether Grandma crossed the ocean alone or with her sisters. And the year? If information from the 1920 census is to be believed, it was 1902. There's a photo on the Tusick Photo Album page that shows all three sisters together, almost certainly in America, and I assume it was taken before Grandma's marriage in October 1902. But the photo couldn't have been taken much earlier than 1902, either. Susan Dupilka was only 12 years old in 1902 -- a tender age that makes me even more amazed that the sisters would embark on such a bold adventure in an unknown land.
I'm told that Grandma worked in a textile factory in Passaic, New Jersey, when she met Grandpa. He was already working as a coal miner by then, and Aunt Margaret tells a story that he traveled to Passaic because he was told there was a young woman in the city who had grown up not far from his home in Hungary. This account may seem a bit far-fetched, but it's entirely plausible, too.
Michael Tocik and Anna Dupilka were married on October 2, 1902, in the Greek Catholic cathedral in Passaic, St. Michael the Archangel. Their marriage license is still on file in Passaic, and it holds a curious and previously unknown fact: that Grandpa's legal residence at the time of his marriage was in Simpson, West Virginia -- the same small town where he would move his family three years later.
One year after their marriage found Grandma and Grandpa in Minersville, a small town near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where presumably Grandpa worked in the coal mines. Their first child, Mary, was born there in October 1903, but by the time Michael was born, 15 months later, they had moved further west to another coal mining community, Star Junction.
I don't know the history of this region, located some 25 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, but it seems to have been quite a staging area for Slovak immigrants in the first years of this century. Perhaps new coal mines were being opened, or the presence of Slovak-language churches and communities served as a magnet to new arrivals back east (or both). Whatever the attraction, we know that the coal fields of southwest Pennsylvania brought together Tociks, Dupilkas, Prokops and Varkondas -- including Grandma's sisters. Susan Dupilka Mayernik settled less that 10 miles from Star Junction, in Donora, Pennsylvania, and Mary Dupilka Serbak made her home in nearby Turkey Hollow.
And then Grandma and Grandpa moved on. I don't know what prompted Grandpa to move his family back to Simpson, a small community in northern West Virginia, but the family was there by the summer of 1906, when their third child was born -- Stephen (Uncle Scotty), followed by Joseph in 1908 and Ann in 1910.
Located on a ridge along the Appalachian Mountains, Simpson was a coal mining town, and the mines attracted many immigrant families. In fact, the 1910 census reveals that the Tusicks (that's how the census taker spelled it) were one of four Slovak families living side by side on Gabes Fork Road. Listed in order of census enumeration were the Bustus/Bosely family, the Withers and the Bartletts, all native West Virginians, followed by the Tusick, Billy, Matis and Davis families from Slovakia. The census notes that Grandpa could read and write Hungarian, but that Grandma could not. It also notes that their farm was rented, and that a border lived with them -- 21-year-old Mike Thondusky, identified as a "Magyar" immigrant and, like Grandpa, a coal miner.
The family continued to grow, with Elizabeth (Aunt Betty) born in 1911, Sue in 1913, Ellen in 1915, John in 1917, Margaret in 1919, Agnes (my mother) in 1922 and a second Joseph in 1926. The older children attended school in a one-room schoolhouse, and Aunt Ann remembers the teacher's name as Miss Withers -- probably their neighbor of the same name. Aunt Betty told of riding a horse every day to take lunch to Grandpa in the mines.
The 1920 census does not say whether Grandma and Grandpa owned their farm by then, but I assume they did. My mother tells a story from Aunt Mary that Grandma received an inheritance of several hundred dollars when a relative in Slovakia died (perhaps her father?), and the money was used to buy their farm in Simpson.
Grandpa had worked 20 years in the coal mines at Simpson when tragedy struck. His third son, Joe, also worked in the mines and was 16 years old when, in July 1925, part of a mine shaft caved in, crushing him to death. I'm told that Grandpa tried to dig him out, and the ordeal affected him the rest of his life. Joseph was buried in a Catholic cemetery in nearby Clarksburg, and, following a custom well-established in the Toczik family, Grandma and Grandpa's next male child was given the same name -- the Uncle Joe that my generation knows.
Grandpa was 50 years old when his son was killed, and he was ill from a lifetime working in coal mines. It's no surprise, then, that in 1927 the family packed their belongings and moved away. They made a new home in Cleveland, Ohio, where several of the older children had already found work, and Grandma and Grandpa lived the rest of their lives there -- for many years in a rented house on Giddings Road and then, in their final years, with Aunt Betty in Cuyahoga Falls.
Grandma was 74 years old when she suffered a stroke and died on September 10, 1956. Grandpa lived almost two more years before he died of a heart attack on July 15, 1958. He was 82.
Along with a desire to understand my family's past, this exercise in genealogy was also fueled by my determination to find the original spelling of my mother's maiden name. With the help of family we've accomplished this, but another nagging question remains: How did the family end up, ultimately, with "Tusick?"
It's not uncommon for foreigners to have had their names "Americanized" by immigration officials, but it appears Grandpa made it to the United States with his name intact -- both European versions, in fact. The page from St. Michael's church register that records Grandma and Grandpa's marriage in Passaic in 1902 clearly identifies the groom as "Michael Toczik," and yet a certified copy of the marriage license on file in Passaic city hall identifies him as "Michael Tocik." Same person, same event, same day, but two different spellings -- a maddening situation that seems to have gotten worse before it got any better (see below).
Literacy and language must have played a part, of course. The "cz" in the family name is a relatively common combination in Hungarian but not in modern Slovak, and the Hungarian "cz" and Slovak "c" are both pronounced roughly like an English "s." The culture and politics of the time probably played a part, too, as ethnic Slovaks increasingly fought back against the "Magyarization" of their culture by the ruling Hungarians.
Perhaps Grandpa spelled his surname differently to meet the needs of different situations. The current pastor at St. Michael the Archangel in Passaic explained to me in a letter that the priest who married Grandma and Grandpa was Roman Catholic -- even though the ceremony was performed in a Greek Catholic church -- and "of Slavic descent." Perhaps the priest, trained in a church that upheld the devoutly Catholic Hungarian monarchy, merely adopted the conventions of the "official" language of the region: Hungarian. Or perhaps Grandpa felt it appropriate to use the more formal Hungarian when dealing with church officials.
Or whatever. I'm not a linguist and I can't say with any certainty why the family name has been jumbled for so long -- only that it has. It's clear, however, that older generations in present-day Slovakia identified themselves as Tocziks, whereas younger generations called themselves Tociks.
I have a prayer card that belonged to Grandpa, sent to him in 1947 from what was then Czechoslovakia. The card bears a stamped seal from the Salesians, a Roman Catholic order, from their mission in Michalovce, a city that sits almost directly between Trhoviste and Trnava pri Laborci. Of most interest is the name written on the card in frail, European-style handwriting: "Michal Tocik." Not "Michael," and not "Toczik" or "Tusick." Whoever addressed the card knew him as Michal Tocik.
Another argument for "Tocik" comes from present-day Slovakia. I recently received an e-mail message from a man named Pavol (Paul) Tocik who saw my Web page and believes we are related. He says his family was originally from Trhoviste but now lives in Kosice, a much larger city (the second-largest in Slovakia) about 50 miles to the west. I have not yet been able to confirm the link, but I agree that we must be related, if distantly. And he confirms that everyone in his family spells the name "Tocik."
(I'm not entirely sure of the family connection because Pavol Tocik traces his own family back to his grandfather, also named Pavol. My reading of Slovak church and census records tells me that Grandpa had an uncle named Pavol Toczik and also another relative with the same name, but I can't be more specific -- yet. I'm waiting to hear back from Pavol.)
But what about "Tusick?" The earliest example I've found of that spelling is in the 1910 U.S. census, but I don't know if that's how Grandpa spelled the name or if that's simply how the census taker interpreted it. In any event, the 1920 census spells the family name as "Tusic."
Other versions abound. My mother's baptismal certificate (1922) spells her surname "Toucek," and the cemetery where Grandma and Grandpa's third son was buried (in 1925) spells his name "Joseff Antonik Tovcik." Aunt Ann told my brother Jim that she remembers the family's parish priest in West Virginia admonishing Grandpa because he spelled the family name different with the birth of every child. And Grandpa's brother John in Ashtabula, Ohio, apparently spelled his surname as "Tozik."
It seems that the family finally settled on "Tusick" at about the time they moved to Cleveland. I've heard that Uncle Mike or Uncle Scotty convinced the family to use that spelling, although Lynn Vizdos advises that her grandmother Helen, Uncle Scotty's wife, insists that she picked the final spelling of the name.
As for me, I don't know and I guess I never will. Which is OK. It makes for a good story, though!
-- John Batteiger / batt@sfo.com
(Click HERE to return to the Tusick Family Album)
What? After all this you're still looking for more information? The Internet is a valuable resource that rewards those who spend time following sometimes-obscure links. Here are some good places to start your search:
> RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative: The best first place to look for a family name, Slovak or otherwise.
> Eastern Slovakia, Slovak and Carpatho-Rusyn Genealogy Research Page: This incredible Web site is the granddaddy of all Slovak genealogy sites. It has links to hundreds of other sites, including family histories, surname registries, Slovak history and tourism sites, genealogy how-tos, maps, foreign-language dictionaries, and cultural and religious sites.
> Searching in Slovakia: This site actually resides on the Web site listed above, but it offers a unique service. People can post information on their own families and search to see whether anyone else has information on ancestors of the same name.
> Slovniky: An online Slovak-English dictionary. Very cool.
> Slovak and Rusyn Roots: Getting Started: A good primer to read before you begin searching.
> U.S. Embassy of the Slovak Republic: Interesting "official" information on present-day Slovakia.
> Central Europe Online: News and information (in English) covering Slovakia and all the nations surrounding it.