Thanksgiving is but a few days away and the holiday season will then be in full swing! However, today, it’s time for Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge.

Who is your earliest paternal ancestor?

That should be a simple, straightforward question, but when the only records available are church registers that begin in the 1820s, that leaves names with no birth, marriage or death years, as in parents named in an early marriage record.

In my case, my Rusyn ancestors can only be identified in these church books and I only have the names of a few of my 3X great grandparents, which is as far back as I will ever get unless someone finds stacks of early church books somewhere.

Based on the history of Slovak women rarely marrying before 21, I would estimate that Anna Fucsik (pronounced FOO-chick) was born c1803 and married John Kacsenyak on 8 December 1824. Her last child was born in 1845 and it’s reasonable to conclude that she was in her early 40s at that time.

The marriage record for John and Anna doesn’t name John’s father, which tells me he probably had already died, but Anna’s father is named as John Fucsik. Her mother is not recorded on the marriage list.

Slovak men were often 24 or 25 when they first married and I have no idea if Anna was the first born child, so I will assume that she was. If her father was, say 24, when he married and 25 when Anna was born, then he was likely born no later than 1776.

I have found no burial record for John Fucsik, but that means he might not have died in Nizna Sebastova, Slovakia, where Anna married.

As an aside, this is the branch of my paternal tree that was Roman Catholic, so more likely ethnic Slovak or Hungarian, rather than Rusyn.

Thank you, as always, Randy, for hosting Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.