We’re half way through the month and since it’s Valentine’s Day weekend, we have a love story challenge this week for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver:

1)  It’s Valentine’s Day – a day for lovers! We all have hundreds of love stories in our ancestry.

2)  What was the great love story of the ancestors in your family Tree?  What wedding had a great story in it?  Choose one ancestral couple. Share how they met (if known), when and where they married. Note how long they were married. Highlight something that suggests affection or partnership.

I don’t know of many love stories in the family tree and, even though I never knew my paternal grandfather, I’ll have to say it is my paternal grandparents.

George Kucharik aka Sabo met Julia Scerbak while they were both living near today’s Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel Byzantine Catholic Church in the immigrant neighborhood in Passaic, Passaic, New Jersey.

I don’t know exactly when they met. The Kuchariks had left Mahanoy City, Schuylkill, Pennsylvania for Passaic in the 1890s. However, Nana’s family returned to Ujak, Slovakia about the same time and she didn’t move permanently back to Passaic until November 1910.

They married on 6 September 1915 at St. Michael’s Church, the same church where Nana was baptized in 1893 and the same church from which they were both buried.

I think they might have met by 1912 as my great grandfather, Michael Scerbak, had returned to Passaic for a while and I have to wonder if it is because he wanted to check out his prospective son-in-law.

They began married life renting in Passaic and Garfield near their friends and neighbors. By 1925, they had saved enough money to buy their first and only home together at 49 Summer Street in Passaic.

By all accounts, my grandfather was a well-loved family member and friend. My father was born in 1926 and he completed their family.

Unfortunately, tuberculosis was common due to working conditions in the mills, where all the immigrants first worked. Although my grandparents were able to get out of the mills and open their own butcher shop, they worked and socialized in the neighborhood around St. Michael’s and my grandfather caught TB.

I don’t know how long he had it, but he died on 27 November 1936, leaving Nana and my dad heartbroken.

I think Nana missed him every day for the rest of her life – and she survived him by 49 years! She never stopped wearing her wedding band and a large framed photo of them on their wedding day (image above) hung in her living room in Passaic when I was growing up.

I think they were definitely soulmates.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!