November is rolling along and, once again, we’ve arrived at Saturday. Randy Seaver has issued a new challenge for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Write a 100-word life sketch of one of your 2X great grandparents.

I’ve chosen John Kucharik as the subject for my 100-word life sketch. He is one of my Rusyn ancestors and is the Y-DNA line down to my father. John also used the surname Tomko and his son, Stephen, my great grandfather went by Kucharik and Tomko in the village and then permanently adopted the surname Sabo while living in New Jersey.

Why he used the Tomko alias is not known.

By the way, his cause of death is recorded in the church book, but it’s in Hungarian and I can’t figure out how to spell the words to work in a translation program. The closest I can get with the first word is JOKE or JOKING and that certainly isn’t correct.

John Kucharik alias Tomko, baptized 28 November 1820, in the village of Okruzna, Slovakia, 8 miles from Presov, was the son of George Kucharik and Anna Miklus. John’s life was like his ancestors. He was a poor peasant who perhaps worked as a shepherd and small farmer, paid tax to his noble landlord and tithes to the Greek Catholic Church. John married Maria Repka, 11 August 1849. They had eight children: John, Anna, Stephen, John, Michael, Maria, Maria and John, of whom at least three died in infancy. John was buried on 9 February 1893 in Okruzna.

97 Words! Thanks, Randy, for this week’s challenge.