Years ago - long before the internet or digitized records - my Aunt Rose would look through the phone book wherever she traveled in the US. If she found a Popp (her maiden name) or a Pereksta (her mother's maiden name) she would call them, introduce herself and ask if they might be related. She had no luck with Popps. It's a pretty common name. But Pereksta? There aren't many and she managed to collect information on many of the Perekstas in the US. Which she passed on to me. Along with a LOT of photographs, notes, papers of all kinds. And cookware.
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| Siblings Sue Pereksta Bolas, Mary Pereksta Zelenyak, John Pereksta, and Anna Pereksta Popp taken in Dec 1948. |
About the name. It's a very rare name. Very. I can count those in the US with the surname and all of those living in Europe have roots in far northeastern Slovakia where my Pereksta grandmother was born. Years ago, Rose was told that it was a surname that was made up and that our Perekstas were Jewish. DNA confirms the Jewish Ancestry. The name itself translates to "bridge" or "crossed over". Apparently a pretty recent ancestor (c. 1800) converted and adopted a new surname. Whether by choice or not is an open question.
I started truly working on our family history over 40 years ago. Still in the age of letters and phone calls. Through Rose, I connected with my known cousin George Pereksta in New Jersey who was also trying to figure out the relationships of the Perekstas in the US. And with Chuck Pereksta in Ohio. There are a lot of Perekstas in Ohio and New Jersey. And not many any place else. At least that was the case when we were all exchanging letters.
Slowly we figured out how Chuck's Ohio Perekstas connected with our New Jersey Perekstas. DNA testing confirmed our belief that the Ohio patriarch - George Pereksta (1875-1938) and my great-grandfather Ivan Pereksta (1857-1933) were nephew and uncle.
Eventually digitized records confirmed our stories. And expanded our knowledge. And left us with a few stray Perekstas that didn't fit into either family. I was flabbergasted to discover that my Baba was not the only Anna Pereksta in Binghamton, New York. I called Rose - my source and sounding board for all things Rusyn - and she blithely said, "Oh yeah. That was the tall Anna Pereksta. Mom was short Anna Pereksta." True. She was VERY short. But I'd have been interested in knowing about the other before I dug through hundreds of records!
Tall Anna Pereksta turned out to be from a nearby village, Starina. She had two brothers in the US and may well be related, but so far, we don't know how. Certainly, her life and my grandmother's life intersected often here in the US. They were members of the same church and shared many cousins.
There were other "stray" Perekstas showing up in various records, but the two I was most curious about were Mike Pereksta (the dead miner that Rose remembered hearing about as a child) and Frank Pereksta who lived in New Jersey.
Mike's parents and birthplace remain a mystery.
Frank was absolutely NOT my grandmother's brother, but she knew him and had a photograph of his first wife in her photo album. He was born in Prislop, the same village my family and the Ohio Perekstas came from. But he died when Rose and my father were babies and there was no further communication with the family. Chuck Pereksta remembered a story that his father, George had a brother in New Jersey, but nothing more. And no one from that family appears to have done DNA testing.
Recently I've pushed back into research, trying to define and source what I know about my Rusyn immigrants. DNA and the internet have been heaven sent. I've put together a family tree on Ancestry about the Perekstas called Perekstas in America. I've come up with enough information that, even without DNA testing, I am assigning Frank to the Ohio Pereksta clan. I had the picture of Frank's wife with Rose's note on the back that this was Julie Pereksta in New Jersey. I found an immigration record for a Julie Pereksta traveling to her husband, Ferenc (Hungarian for Frank) and naming her father-in-law, Gyorgy Pereksta, in Priszlop as her nearest relative in Europe.* Prislop/Priszlop was a small village of only a few hundred people. And George or Gyorgy Pereksta was a known figure there. He was the father of the Ohio George Pereksta and the documented brother of my great-grandfather, Ivan Pereksta. I reached out today to Chuck's brother (Chuck and George have both passed away) who is one of our treasured DNA matches. He and I both recall Chuck speaking of his grandfather having a brother in New Jersey. Frank fits perfectly.
That's what passes for meeting the Genetic Proof Standard with my Rusyns. Decades of communication on both sides of the Atlantic. A photograph. A few records here that refer back to family in Europe. Even fewer records there, but enough to confirm the relationships. Still hoping for a DNA match to Frank's family, but they've been hard to connect with.
I'm working on the strays. I would bet almost anything that the Starina Perekstas turn out to be related to our Prislop Perekstas. Not sure what to make of the other outliers, but I'll document what I know. And move on.
* "New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957," database with images, Ancestry (https://ancestry.com/search/collections/7488/ : 6 Dec 2025), search terms" "Tulia Pareksta" Birth Date "1886" arrival date "1907".
