Ancestral certainties!

The second and third archive visits from yesterday and the day before shed more light on the mysteries described in Ancestral conspiracies! and Ancestral confirmations?. It turns out my whacky theory was almost completely right, with the exception of the mysterious sister having been Katrena Micik. The baby actually died at six months of age, preceded by her mother by about two months. Jan Micik remarried in 1889 and exactly 10 months later, like a good girl, Zuzana Harmaniakova gave birth to my great grandmother Maria. A slightly puzzling fact is that apart from Jan (*1877) she had another son, Ondrej (1881 – 1893) about whom we knew nothing and as far as we know, Jan’s father was unknown, as so was Ondrej’s. Nevertheless her marriage certificate says she was a widow of Adam Janci. Was he the father of the two boys? Would they have lived together without getting married? Or did she marry him after her two kids were born?

And there is still no sign of the mysterious aunt of my grandma! Could it have been the wife of Andrew’s brother John? I’d thought I had found John’s family in Illinois, but his wife’s name is supposed to be Elisabeth (Alzbeta), while according to the archive it should have been Zuzana. Then again, who knows with so many Jan Miciks. Maybe it will be clearer after June 26th and 27th, the next archive stop.

I have also started a 14 day free trial on Geni and merged my two trees, the Micik’s and ours.

I now have 43 ancestors in my family tree, going as far back as 1700’s (ok, it would be more like 1799 but that’s still 1700’s so shame!) and all the way to my fourth great grandparents. Maybe I should start working on my dad’s side of the family now and look for those elusive Jews!

History week…

I have randomly come across the information that there is a free search week on Ancestry (thanks Facebook), only because my family tree website Geni has restricted its viewing and editing options and I wanted to find out what the hell was going on (so thanks Geni too I guess but I still hate you)…

I have finally looked into what has been bugging me ever since I started building my family tree… ancestry found a mention of a certain Zuzanna Brasen on the New York passenger lists but they are normally only accessibly for a fee. I have indeed found the Zuzanna in question but she seemed to have been a generation younger than my great great grandmother.

The idea that followed was to try and discover the identities of the family members that have reportedly emigrated to the US and haven’t been heard from much since. My grandmother tells a story of a sister or half sister of her mothers who left chasing the American Dream and she also recalls the letters this aunt had been sending to her brother Harmaniak, my gran’s half brother. Apparently they contained ridiculously small amounts of money and silly gift, such as chewing gum. Not knowing whether this great great aunt was a Micik(ova) or a Harmaniak(ova) or even her first name, I started looking blindly for someone… anyone…
Eventually me search lead to a girl of about the right age (born in cca. 1887) called Zuzanna Micik, an 18 year old servant girl who took passage on Kronprinz Wilhelm from Bremen to New York where she landed on January 16th, 1906. What caught my interest was that she, one amongst numerous other Miciks, came from Parnica, a little village in Slovakia, then a part of Austrian-Hungarian Empire, which coincidentally is where my grandmother comes from and where I assume her mother came from before her…

Along with Zuzanna who reported to be going after her sister-in-law in Chicago, came Jan (cca. 1870) and Ondrej (cca. 1876) Harmaniak and Jan Suvada (cca. 1888), all from Parnica. There was also a certain Jan Chilka, whom I have never heard of before but a 51 year old widow Zuzanna Micik-Chylka from Parnica took passage to Boston, MA in 1921. I assume all these Parnica families are somehow related, if a few generations back.

Out of interest I tried to look up other people from Parnica and I came across Andrej (Andrew) Micik (born May 9th, 1877) who traveled to New York with $15 in cash to join his brother John Micik in Port Chester, NY in 1903/04 and became a naturalised American later on. His wife ‘Susan’ was also form Austro-Hungarian Empire and they had 6 children together (at the time of the issue of the naturalisation documents in 1924): Mildred (1907), Mary (1913), Katie (1915), Emil (1918), Adolph (1920) and William (1922). Once again thanks to facebook I have been able to track down their direct descendants. I have contacted one of them yesterday, hoping that she will be able to help fill in the gaps, but haven’t heard back yet. I have a strange feeling that we are related to this family, Andrej Micik from Parnica and my grandmother Maria Micikova were probably more than namesakes… cousins maybe? uncle and niece?

I am hoping to find out more from the archives of Parnica when I get a chance  —>  TO DO List!