Yesterday, I took a look at the Tidik family of Udol, Slovakia. Records in the first half of the 1800s are limited because the church registers for this village don’t begin until 1828.
From those records, I gleaned the likely progenitors of today’s Tidiks:
Michael, born about 1801, who married (1) before 1827 to Juda Drabasin, who was born about 1806. Michael was buried on 1 December 1871, after dying of head pains. Juda was buried on 26 November 1865. He married (2) Maria Dragan on 29 April 1866. She died on 6 August 1873 during one of the many cholera epidemics to strike there.
Michael and Juda Tidik had six known children:
Michael, baptized 2 September 1828; died about 1918 and married Maria Hrinya.
Anna, baptized 22 January 1832; no further records found
Maria, baptized 12 January 1835; no further records found
John, baptized 9 July 1837; no further records found, but he may be the John who married Anna Jurecsko and buried a son, John, 4 days old, on 3 February 1871.
Helena, baptized 25 February 1840; no further records found
Susanna, baptized 10 July 1842; no further records found
I’ve mentioned it before, but I will mention again, that I am not sure how on-the-ball the village priests were in Ujak/Udol in the 1800s. In spite of the records seeming to be quite complete and mostly fairly easy to read, I have been unable to find vital records that should be there. Ages are also more often wrong than right when compared against baptismal records when I do find them.
Could villagers have moved away or attended a Roman Catholic church? Probably not. First, these families were all Greek Catholic. The closest Roman Catholic parishes look to be about 40 miles away. Second, until the 1880’s when the villages emptied out and inhabitants moved to the mills and mines in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio, it is doubtful that many of the villagers ever traveled more than a few miles from their home village. Hajtovka is only about a mile from Udol and the two villages shared the same parish church, St. Dimitry.
Tidik records are somewhat scarce in the first half of the 1800’s, but in the second half of the century, the number of Michael Tidik records exploded.
We have:
Michael Tidik, born c1801, who married Juda Drabissin, before 1827
Michael Tidik, born 1828, who married Maria Hrinya, on 25 November 1850
Michael Daniel Tidik, born 1860, who married Helena Bisz, on 9 November 1884
These three Michaels were father, son and grandson. However, look at all the Michael Tidik families that popped up after 1850:
Michael Tidik & Anna Jurecsko, who had sons Michael and John born in 1861 and 1871. No marriage record has been found for them.
Michael Tidik & Anna Ksenyak, who married on 9 November 1873 and had two daughters, Veronica and Helen, born in 1875 and 1878
Michael Tidik & Anna Pruzinsky, who had three sons and two daughters born between 1864 and 1873. No marriage record has been found for them. Anna died on 18 May 1874, aged about 30 years old.
Michael Tidik & Anna Varholyak had one daughter, Maria, born in 1875. No marriage record has been found for them.
Michael Tidik & Anna Sendick had three sons, John, Stephen and Nicholas, born in 1877. 1879 and 1882.
Michael Tidik & Helena Bisz married on 9 November 1884 and had four children born between 1885 and 1896.
We also have two John Tidik sets of records:
John Tidik and Anna Leschissin had three children, Elias, John and Susanna, born in 1858, 1861 and 1864. No marriage record has been found for them.
John Tidik and Maria Szovik had Michael and Maria born in 1885 and 1888. No marriage record has been found for them.
Since I have only one John Tidik born in a time period to be the above John/s, and that would be John, born on 9 July 1837 to Michael and Juda Drabissin, I have to assume for now that at least John who married Anna Leschissin was their son.
It is very possible that John who married Maria Szovik was the same John, but it is also possible that John and Anna’s son, John, born in 1861 was this second John.
Not being able to find these records where I would expect them to be is annoying. I truly believe that these church books have some serious errors in them. There were a couple of stray records that I came across that I think support this idea.
I found one record for the birth of a Michael Tidik to Michael Tidik and Anna Dragan in 1869, which I think is a clear error for Maria Dragan. In the same year, 1869, there is a birth record for Stephen Tidik for Michael Tidik and Helena Hrinya, which I think is another clear error for Maria Hrinya.
Thus, I know there are errors of commission and suspect that there are also errors of omission, where the priest or assistant, if there was one, forgot to enter records.
Death and burial records seem to help sort these people out at least a little bit.
The wives of Michael born about 1801 are evident: (1) Juda Drabissin and (2) Maria Dragan. Juda died in late November 1865 and Michael married Maria Dragan in April 1866. He died of head pains in 1871. Maria Dragan, noted as the widow of Michael, died in 1873 during the cholera epidemic.
Next, we have Michael born in 1828. He married (1) Maria Hrinya on 25 November 1850, although I don’t find birth records for any children until 1858. Maria was another victim of the 1873 cholera episode, dying on 15 August. She was born about 1832.
I do not have a death certificate for this Michael, but according to family lore, he lived until about 1918. That might be true, but the Udol church books are recorded in a variety of languages and in that time period, records were kept using the Cyrillic alphabet in Russian, which I don’t read very well. He was definitely still alive in the 1890s unless his death and burial weren’t recorded.
I believe that Michael Tidik who married (2) Anna Ksenyak on 9 November 1873 was this Michael.
That still leaves two other mystery Michaels. It is not possible that the remaining two were either Michael born in 1801 or Michael born in 1828, as there are four Michael Tidiks and wives having children between 1861 and 1871 – Michael with Juda and Maria Dragan, Michael with Maria Hrinya and then Michael with Anna Jurecsko and Michael with Anna Pruzinski.
Later on, we have the solitary record of Michael Tidik and Anna Varholyak’s child born in 1875 (could this possibly be another recording error by the priest?) and, finally, we have Michael and Anna Sendick’s three children born between 1877 and 1882.
All are mysteries.
Michael who married Anna Sendick can’t be Michael married to Maria Hrinya and Anna Ksenyak because they have a child born in 1878, while Michael and Anna Sendick had a child born in 1877.
There is at least one more Michael Tidik running around Udol in this time period, the one who married Anna Pruzinski. Anna died in May 1874, aged about 30. Could this Michael have soon married Anna Varholyak, who perhaps died giving birth in 1875 and then he married a third Anna, Anna Sendick, about 1876? That scenario would fit the facts, but I have absolutely no idea whose son this Michael might have been. If he was about the same age as Anna Pruzinski, he would have been born in the early 1840s, but he could have been a lot older. We might also be dealing with more than one Michael here, but I tend to doubt that.
Marching on towards the 20th century, the records thin out. There are only two male Tidiks who appear in the vital records – John Tidik and Maria Szovik have a son, Michael, born in 1885 and a daughter, Maria, born in 1888. I don’t have any information on their son, Michael, past his birth record. There is no notation that he died very young.
Michael Daniel Tidik and Helena Bisz have daughter Michael, born 1885 and died in 1892, Helena, born in 1887, son John, born in 1889 and died in 1901, and son Stephen, born in 1896.
Stephen was the only remaining male Tidik to carry on the name from Michael and Helena’s branch of the family. He married Maria Scerbak, sister of my grandmother, Julia. The family settled in Passaic, but two boys were orphaned when Maria died in 1926 and Stephen followed in 1938. There are quite a few descendants of this couple today.
There are several miscellaneous Tidiks that I have found in records. John Mike Tidik settled in Ohio, but both his marriage and death records give his father’s name as Martin Tidik. It doesn’t look like he was part of the Udol Tidik family.
There is a Michael Tidik living in Passaic in 1900 (mis-indexed as Tivik) with wife, Julia and sons Michael born in 1896 and John born in 1898. Michael and Julia married about 1895, apparently in New Jersey. This Michael was born reportedly in April 1862 and I don’t know who he belongs to. However, the names on the census page in 1900 look just like the names in the Udol church books, so he seems to be related to this family.
There is also a Michael Tidik arriving at Ellis Island in 1896, aged 36. I can’t find the passenger manifest page since it is another one of the many mis-indexed pages on the new, improved totally messed up Ellis Island website. (Can you tell I don’t like their new website?) However, this seems to be Michael Daniel Tidik who married Helena Bisz and if I could find the passenger list, he was likely headed to Passaic, New Jersey.
There aren’t many surnames whose entire history can be covered in two blog posts, but Tidik is one of them. I even have two photos of Stephen Tidik:
Maria Scerbak, left, with husband
Stephen Tidik and friend, c1917
Stephen Tidik, left with unknown
man and Peter Scerbak, right, c1925
It seems strange to end a story with a photo, but since Stephen Tidik is the one who crossed into the 20th century, so it is.