Well, October is certainly flying by and it’s already time for a new Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge. Randy’s topic this week is similar to last week’s whereby we need to take a look at the family tree for those unknowns.
1) Sometimes we don’t know the full name of both of the parents of an ancestor. In our family tree, those ancestors with no-known-name parents are the end-of-the-line, at least as far as we know. [Some researchers call them “brick walls.”]
2) Tell us about several of your ancestors that have no known-name parents,
3) When was the last time you looked for these not known parents?
Well, this challenge hits 50% of my family tree – the paternal Rusyn ancestors. There is no taking a new look because there are no surviving church registers that extend earlier than the early 1820s so my ancestors have been lost to time.
Unfortunately, church burial records don’t usually include parents’ names of adults who died, only those for children who died.
My paternal grandfather’s line, all of whom are my 3X great grandparents:
George Kucharik, born c1780; married Anna Miklus, born c1798 (3rd wife)
Michael Repka, born c1791; buried 10 August 1835; married Maria Illyas, born c1792; buried 24 January 1840
John Kacsenyak, born c1798; buried 21 December 1849; married Anna Fucsik, born c1800; died before 1858
Andreas Haluska, born c1805; married Maria Hovance, born c1810
I don’t have the names of any of the parents of the above ancestors.
I know a few more parents’ names on my paternal grandmother’s line. Here again are my 3X great grandparents. Names in BOLD are those for whom I don’t have parents’ names:
Michael Scerbak, born c1795; married Helena Murcko, born c1798
John Patorai, born c1810; died 19 June 1885; married Anna Szurgent, born c1813; died 20 July 1873
John Murcko, born c1801; died 3 July 1847; married Anna Lisinska, born c1805
Andrew Szova, born c1810; died 8 March 1896; married Maria Fengya, born c1811; died 18 March 1879
All of my Rusyn ancestors were peasants -serfs working for others and struggling to survive. For some, I can’t even find burial records in the church registers. It’s possible they left one village and died in another that had its own church.
Those are my most recent ancestors for whom I have no parents’ names and likely never will.
Thanks, Randy, for another excellent challenge!
I feel your pain, as I have the same in Ireland and Poland. There are just no records.
Poland – groan! I totally understand this. The latest I can get back reliably is about 1818 or so…beyond that, there doesn’t seem to be much available and what’s there, doesn’t contain enough information to be reliable.
Yes – in so many places, it’s so difficult to find records that are both reliable and contain the key information we need.
If they were serfs, were they working on the land of a magnate who owned that land? Some of those magnates were from families that maintained their money for several generations, and some have family archives that survive to today. I know some people have found information about their families in magnate family archives. I don’t remember if I’ve suggested this to you previously?
I’ve checked, but records from that manor haven’t survived.