For some people, understanding their ethnicity or heritage is easy – They have Dutch or Italian, Portuguese or English ancestry.
For others, though, not only is America a melting pot, but the history of many of its citizens is a further mix of multiple heritages.
Looking at my own family tree, on my mother’s side, I am mostly descended from colonial New Englanders with one Danish great grandmother and a Dutch Loyalist. My father’s ancestors are Rusyns, also called Ruthenians, a Slavic people who have never had a homeland of their own in spite of a long history.
Exactly who were they and how are they identified? Here’s my story of how I learned about my Carpatho-Rusyn heritage:
It was a long time coming before I really understood my Carpatho-Rusyn family history, even though I grew up knowing many pieces of it.
I believe one event had a profound effect on my lack of knowledge. My paternal grandfather, George Sabo, died of tuberculosis when my dad was only ten years old. My grandmother, Julia (Helena) (Scerbak) Sabo was also Rusyn, but born in Passaic, New Jersey.
She never remarried and my dad, although aware of his roots in then Czechoslovakia, was American. When Dad and Mom, whose own family heritage was mostly colonial New England, with a bit of Scandinavian and Dutch thrown in, married, it was decided that their children would also be American and were not to learn Nana’s native language, nor apparently were Rusyn customs or foods to be found at home.
So, how exactly did I learn about the paternal side of my family tree? Answer: Little by little.
As I grew up, I was very aware that Nana had relatives in Czechoslovakia. When a letter showed up in the mailbox, I would excitedly take it upstairs and tell Nana that she had a letter from Europe.
I also often heard her speaking on the telephone to friends in a language that I assumed was Slovak after I was told that we were emphatically not Czech!
I was also aware that Nana had a couple of boxes of old photos that she kept in her closet. I was allowed to take them out and I would ask my grandmother who all the people were. – mostly family who lived very far away!
While neither of my parents was religious, Nana most definitely was – church life defined her days. She was an ardent supporter of St. Michael’s Greek Catholic Church in Passaic, but she also made visits to light candles or attend Mass or funerals of Roman Catholic friends. She visited most of the Catholic churches in Passaic and I was often taken along with her as she took care of me during the day while my parents were at work and school was not in session.
Nana never had the opportunity to attend much school. Her family left Passaic and moved back to Ujak when she was five years old. They left in September so I doubt she ever was enrolled in kindergarten in America. While Ujak gained its first school in the 1890s, generally speaking, Rusyn schools in the area only went up to about fourth grade. In the 1940 census, Nana reported she had finished sixth grade, which is possible.
However, I think her lack of education made it difficult for her to explain pieces of her life to me. For example, I asked her how she could be Catholic when St. Michael’s services were not in Latin or English and how the church could be “under the Pope, but not” as she tried to tell me. Along the same line, I knew what cousins were and I had some on my mom’s side. However, with my dad being an only child, I wasn’t quite sure how I had “cousins” in Czechoslovakia and Nana was only able to explain that we were all “family.”
Fast forward a few years. I was in my 20s and questioned Nana about Hungarian roots since I had learned that Sabo was a Hungarian surname meaning “Tailor.” She insisted that we were only “Slovak,” and I figured she probably didn’t realize that somewhere, back in time, a Hungarian ancestor had settled in Czechoslovakia.
That belief held until I wrote to New Jersey officials and St. Michael’s Church seeking copies of my grandparents’ marriage record. Nana said they married on 6 September 1915 at St. Michael’s. Was I surprised, not once, but twice, when the State of New Jersey said there was no record of marriage AND St. Michael’s said there was no record of marriage. I queried Nana again about the date, but she was absolutely certain that was the day when they married. I then asked why neither the state nor St. Michael’s said they had a record for George Sabo and Julia Scerbak. She said, “that’s because George’s name wasn’t Sabo, it was Kucharik!!!!”
So, I was 27 when I learned my family name was actually Kucharik. Apparently, my great grandfather, Stefan Kucharik, didn’t Americanize his name. Instead, he dropped Kucharik (Cook), a surname common in Slovakia, for a Hungarian name, Sabo. Why? She had no idea. It turns out that my grandfather’s family was also Greek Catholic, although not from Udol. They came from Okruzna, a village just east of Presov, Slovakia.
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place – Nana was right. We had no Hungarian ancestors.
I moved to California in 1979 and the first person I met was Kristy. She was also interested in her family and history and said her family was Ruthenian. That is the first time I had ever heard the word. She said her ancestors lived in Slovakia and they were Greek Catholic. That certainly rang a bell. She showed me her father’s baptismal record, which surprised me even more. He was baptized by Rev. I. Janitzky – the same priest who married my grandparents! I asked Nana about it. She said she and my grandfather really liked the priest, who was transferred to Brooklyn, New York not long before they were to marry. Father Janitzky promised he would come back to St. Michael’s to perform the wedding ceremony, which he did.
There it was – I was half Ruthenian, another description of the Rusyn people.
Nana never used either term to describe her family. She certainly knew it, but maybe with all my questions, she didn’t say anything because she didn’t know how to properly describe Carpatho-Rusyns within Czechoslovakia, so she just stuck to being Slovak.
Even though Nana lived in Ujak from the age of five until she came back to Passaic when she was seventeen, she never shared stories about growing up there. Life was hard and maybe she didn’t want to tell me that. Thankfully, she did take good care of all her old family photos, which I’ve inherited.
I feel very much at a loss not having grown up with anything but a general awareness that my father’s family was Eastern European and lived in Czechoslovakia. I joined the Carpatho-Rusyn Society specifically to learn more about my heritage – the history, the customs, the food, the culture, the ways of life and the language.
I’d love to hear stories about how you learned about your family’s ethnic and cultural histories. Please leave a comment.
