Lives Entwined - A Friend of the Family

This picture of my grandmother Anna Pereksta Popp and her dear friend Ann Tanch, arms wrapped around one another, was taken in my aunt and uncle's back yard in Binghamton, NY. They had known one another for forty years and would remain friends until Baba died more than twenty years later.

Ann Tanch was far more than a friend with an infectious smile. She was also godmother to all three of Baba's children. As such she held an important place in the family and a name to match - Krstná (kres-na) or Godmother. She was at every holiday gathering, joining the family for every celebration and many, many other days.

The photo was taken when I was a young girl and is exactly how I remember Krstná - warm, outgoing and delighted to see us. And see her we did - every visit, every time. She was a vibrant and essential element of our time in Binghamton.

And yet, as I began to write about her, I realized how little I knew about Krstná. Her name. That she was a lifelong friend. That she never married. And I remembered that even though she was godmother to all the children, she did not attend Baba's church. She was Roman Catholic. 

I sent the photo to my father, aunt and uncle and started digging into online resources.  Krstná  was born Anna Tancak on 22 May 1901 and died as Anna Tanch on 31 Mar 1989. She appears in the 1910 census in Binghamton as a nine year old girl, Anna Tancak, born in New York. She lived with her parents George and Anna Tancak on Hanchett Avenue, just around the corner from Baba's Sedor cousins. The family was listed as Hun-Ruthenian with both parents born in Hungary. They had been married 25 years and buried 6 children. George worked in a stone yard. Krstná had a 20 year old brother John, born in Pennsylvania, and siblings Mary (16), George (12), Michael (5) and Helen (10 mos.), all born in New York. Two cousins, George and Andrew Macko (14 and 11) lived with the family. 

In October, 1915 her father died. He was buried on 29 October in St. Michael's Cemetery. Krstná's mother moved the family out of the city to a farm but by 1920, Krstná was living on Spring Forest Avenue in Binghamton and working at a shoe factory.

When my father called after speaking with his sister about Krstná, he told me she was born in the United States and was 5 or 6 years younger than Baba. He said she had a sister and four brothers and lived with her sister for many years. Her family had originally been part of their church, but when the church split in the 1940s her family left St. Michael's and joined Holy Spirit Byzantine Catholic Church. Daddy said there was never any tension between Baba and Krstná over the separate churches. He couldn't remember her ever not being part of the family. She worked at Dunn-McCarthy making women's shoes for her entire working life.

I asked him how Baba and Krstná had met, wondering if it had been when Baba first arrived in 1913 or if her parents had been from the same village in Europe. The age difference would have been significant then, Krstná being 12 to Baba's 18. Daddy said no to both. My aunt told him they met later, around 1920 when Baba was living with her sister and brother-in-law near Spring Forest Street where Krstná lived.

One day, when Baba was visiting a Mrs. Koast, a woman she'd known in Prislop, she was struck by some especially lovely needlework and asked Mrs. Koast if she would teach Baba how to make the pattern. Mrs. Koast answered that she hadn't done it; her cousin Anna Tanch had. Baba asked for an introduction and Mrs. Koast waved her arm and said, "Just walk over. She lives one block behind you." So she did. Baba knocked on Ann Tanch's door, introduced herself and asked her to please teach her how to make the needlework Baba had so admired.

Forty years later they posed for the photograph.

Written for Jasia's 116th Carnival of Genealogy and Women's History Month.

Sources

Social Security Administration, "Social Security Death Index, Master File," database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 Mar 2012), entry for Anna Tanch, 1989, SS no. 070-03-7051.

1910 U.S. census, population schedule, Binghamton, Ward 1, enumeration district (ED) 0005, p. 97, dwelling 15, family 152, George Tancak; digital images, Ancestry.com (www.Ancestry.com : accessed 8 Mar 2012); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T624, roll 925.

"Obituary George C. Tanch," Binghamton Press, 29 October 1915, Evening edition, p. 1?, col. 2; digital images, Old Fulton New York Post Cards (www.fultonhistory.com : accessed 6 Mar 2012).

1920 U.S. census, population schedule, Colesville, Broome, NY, enumeration district (ED) 69, p. 2A, family 29, Anna Tanch (indexed as Lauch); digital images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 Mar 2012); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T625, roll 1086.  

At Road's End, Catholics in the Northern Neck

Palmer Hall today.

Catholics living in remote parts of the United States in the early decades of the 19th century often went to great lengths to practice their faith. For my husband's Meredith and Palmer ancestors living in Lancaster and Northumberland Counties, maintaining their Catholic faith involved traveling to Maryland by steamer or arranging for a priest to come to them, as Thomas Meredith did in 1830. 

I am anxious to go to Baltimore this spring to make my Easter but if I go when Brother Thomas goes I shall not be able to stay so long and must give up the pleasure of his company and protection. Please be so kind as to tell me when would be the best time for me to come and make my Easter. (M. M. Palmer at Clifton to Thomas Meredith, Baltimore, 9 March 1949.)

Since it was far easier to travel by water to Baltimore or Norfolk than by road to Richmond they journeyed to Baltimore to celebrate religious holidays, marriages and christenings when they could. But from at least 1830 the family celebrated Mass at home whenever a priest was able to visit.

The Confession chair at Clifton

After the Civil War John A. Palmer took over the family home at Clifton and raised a large family. According to his family, priests would come from Baltimore or Fredericksburg and celebrate Mass in one of the large parlors. Confession would be heard with the priest sitting in one of the wing chairs. Though there were only a few Catholic families in the area, Palmer began lobbying for a church to be built in Kilmarnock. On August 1, 1885 Palmer and his wife deeded land near the town to Bishop Keane of Richmond for five dollars (Lancaster County (VA) Deed Book 45:473). A small frame church was built and the mission parish of Saint Francis de Sales was opened. Priests continued to travel by steamer, staying at Clifton, but celebrating Mass in the new church. No resident priest lived there until after 1915.

Copy of 1885 Deed

In 1956 a new church was constructed next door and the first building became a parish hall. Palmer Hall, as it is known today, was restored several years ago. St. Francis de Sales remains a small parish in numbers, but covering much of the land of the Northern Neck. It has established its own mission church, St. Pauls Catholic Church 35 miles away in Hague, VA.

My husband's family is enormously proud of their efforts to maintain and promote their faith at Clifton since 1840 despite the distances involved. His great-grandmother, John Palmer's sister, kept her copy of the deed with her most treasured family papers.


View Catholic Churchs c. 1840 in a larger map


Written for the 109th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy.


For further information see
St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church
The Catholic Church in Virginia (New River Notes)
The Museum of Virginia Catholic History and Diocesan Archives

Salad Oughtn't Wiggle

After Grandmother died in 1993 I spent several days in Morristown with my parents clearing out the house she lived in for more than fifty years. I found sunbonnets my mother and aunts had worn as girls, fabulous Christmas ornaments, books and seemingly endless boxes and bags of family papers (many of which have been or will be featured on this blog). I had an especially good time going through the kitchen.

 Some rights reserved by larry&flo

I'd always loved that kitchen. It was a huge, sunny room at the back of the house. There was a breakfast nook with benches and a table that was just like a restaurant or diner. Once you slid in you were trapped until the adult on the end would let you out (though very small children were known to slip down and crawl out under the table). The cupboards and drawers had all kinds of well-used gadgets and equipment I never saw in our kitchen at home.

But it was the 43 recipes for molded lime jello salads that were in her recipe box that really sparked the memories. Note that was just for lime jello salads. (Lest you doubt me, you need only google "lime jello salad" images to see the endless possibilities.) There were also the recipes for cherry jello salads, orange jello salads and uncounted recipes for aspics and other congealed foodstuffs. Grandmother, it seems, preferred her food structured and controlled. Wiggling allowed, but no running all over the place.

I'm not sure which I loathed more - the shredded carrot, pineapple, and raisins in lime jello or the chopped ham, horseradish, and peas in lime jello or the cottage cheese in lime jello pictured. Regardless, it seemed every supper or dinner included a version. Sometimes, she would even include the green beans that appeared at every meal (mandated by my grandfather who believed them the food of gods) in the salad du jour. Lettuce was a garnish. Every other fruit or vegetable was encased in something derived from boiling animal carcasses that had more in common with glue than anything I wanted to eat.

It's not that Grandmother was a bad cook. She made wonderful chicken salads (the uncongealed ones), cakes, biscuits and cornbreads. Margaret, who was her housekeeper for many, many years, made the best deep-dish peach pie I will ever eat. I still dream of it. But those jello salads had me squirming and wiggling in my seat so that I must have born more than a passing resemblance to the stuff.

I packed off one recipe and salad mold to each of my cousins in their box of souvenirs and took a couple home with me. Can I find either the recipes or molds today? Of course not. They surely lurk in the nightmare that is my basement, probably shaking a bit in their box with each step we make upstairs.


Written for the 108th edition of Carnival of Genealogy hosted by Jasia at Creative Gene.

Motor Frolics

I am not a car person and have no stories of adventures, shenanigans or derring-dos worthy (or fit) for Jasia's 104th Carnival of Genealogy topic of Cars As Stars of Our Family History II. But I do have my Sawyer aunts' photo albums to mine and mine I have! I leave it to those with more expertise than I to identify makes and models. The dates I have assigned are only guesses and could be very, very wrong.

Aunt Selma's album includes photographs that appear to be from around 1920. Many of the photographs include girls and young women in a uniform. Here some of the girls are on an outing. The tree appears to be bloom so it was probably early spring.

Schoolgirl Outing c. 1920. East Tennessee.

Aunt Mary Kathryn's album is something of a hodgepodge. It covers a wider time period and was assembled long after the photographs were taken. Mary Kathryn, an advocate of frolics at all times, kept photographs of family picnics, outings with friends and general horseplay. Her photographs include the requisite poses made iconic to my generation by Bonnie and Clyde though without the guns and cigars. Mary Kathryn's hemline seems quite short for the late '30s, but she looks older than she would have been during the flapper era. Perhaps fashion trends arrived late along the banks of the Nolichucky.

Winter Outing, c. 1935. East Tennessee

Mary Kathryn on a summer outing, c. 1938. East Tennessee.

This photograph is the easiest to date because my grandfather took it while living in Oregon from 1925 to 1928. He and some friends would drive into the mountains on their days off, hike and picnic. He sent photos of their outings home to his family in Tennessee. He shot this one looking back down the mountain to the car they left parked on the side of the road.

Oregon, c. 1926

This final is my favorite  - Mary Kathryn certainly knew the best use of a car! It was taken in Jefferson City, TN when she worked at Carson-Newman College. It may have been homecoming. Whatever the event, she and her hat rode in style. She reminds me a bit of the Queen Mother.

Mary Kathryn McKenzie, date unknown. Jefferson City, TN

Women's History - Anna's Story

Peasants from Wikimedia Commons

My entry for Jasia's 103rd Carnival of Genealogy is a composite of recent posts about my grandmother, Anna Pereksta (1895-1982). Her story is not uncommon. She was part of the wave of peasants who left Europe for the factories and mines of the United States. The photo is actually from Finland, but accurately depicts the life she left.

She lived all but eighteen years of her life in Binghamton, NY, but it is impossible to think of her as entirely American. She grew up a 19th century peasant on easternmost edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She died late in the 20th century, having seen men walk on the moon from her living room couch.

You can read her story on these pages.

• Anna's Story - The first years

• Anna's Story - Family life and later years

• Anna's Story - Memories and Reflections

 There are additional photographs of Anna here and here. And here ...

Genea-Resolutions for 2011

Jasia put the topic for January's 101st edition of the Carnival of Genealogy up for a vote and planning won. I am the world's worst at keeping New Year's resolutions, but I am highly motivated to continue the projects begun in 2010.

Postcard from 1908, via Wikimedia Commons

2010 was my year to begin organizing and sharing my genealogical research. I made some progress - this blog, a good start on a family history web site which WILL be online in 2011, and another failed attempt to organize the generations of papers I've inherited. Those papers are threatening to take over the entire house so tackling them is top of the list for my 2011 genea-resolutions.

Organizing Research goals -

• Design archives storage/filing system and IMPLEMENT! The first step must be to corral all the papers into one room. 
• Process at least one box per month of family papers. Remember, not everything must be kept. This will become my mantra. 
• Finish designing and publish the genealogy website (R O O T S T O C K). 
• Continue to update pedigree database with biographical sketches and blog post information. Review and standardize source listings. Do NOT attach any multimedia files.

Blog goals -

• One biographical sketch a month - starting with the grandparents.
• One brickwall post a month outlining the issue or research status, beginning with the Hamptons.
• Continue posting photographs and document transcriptions from the family "archives" (aka the boxes that ate my house).
• Blog reading and commenting - limit to 30 minutes each morning.  You may finish in the evening. No peeking in between! Much as I love reading what everyone else is writing it has eaten into my day. 

Research goals -

• Just say no! No more research until the website is up and running, until the streamlined pedigree database is complete, until the "archives" are organized. 
• Except... there are the road trips! Do organize research plans for the Family History Expo in July (Kansas City), the FGS conference in September (Springfield, IL), the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International conference in October (St. Louis, MO - not really a road trip) and ...
• The spring tour of Maryland, Virginia and D. C.  Plan research days at the Library of Virginia, The Mary Ball Washington Historical Society, the Maryland Historical Society and the National Archives. Research Catholic archives, especially in Baltimore, to see which might have additional records for Merediths, Palmers and Yerbys. 
• Examine and digitize the Maria Palmer Smith papers. Develop storage plan for papers. 

Whew! It's a lot to do, but there are some carrots in with the sticks - not the least of which is reclaiming our home.

Happy 2011 to Geneabloggers near and far!

Submitted to the 101st edition of the Carnival of Genealogy.

There's One in Every Family - Treasure of Treasures

Jasia's dedicated work with the Carnival of Genealogy and her fabulous 100th Edition celebration has inspired me. My first effort focused on a colorful ancestor, but I kept thinking of a newfound treasure. As a long-time family history researcher I've dreamed of THE find - a letter, Bible or family record hidden in a trunk or closet that unlocks the past.  I've had some successes, but none more exciting than when I learned recently that my husband's aunt has an 1832 family Bible.  Once I picked myself and my jaw off the floor I spent a few hours photographing and poring over Leonard Smith's Bible.

Leonard Smith is my husband's gg grandfather. He was born 29 March 1794 to John and Elizabeth Fenwick Smith and died 2 July 1849. Leonard married Eliza Jamison on 3 Oct 1815. Eliza was born 19 December 1795. While I've had these dates before, I have never been able to adequately document the information. I suspected the dates were from a family Bible, but had no idea which Bible or where it was. Now I know.

An aside - my husband is from a large extended family and our visits have often been group gatherings. This trip we had a chance to visit quietly with his aunt and it was then that she remembered the Bible and other documents she had stored. Moral of the story - find some quiet time to talk to the senior members of the family!

Leonard's Bible includes a family record of both his parents' children and his own children. But it also held a number of papers tucked in its pages that give a fuller picture of the family.  Included are a number of certificates of prayer intentions for the family, confirmation and first communion certificates, sheet music for a Confederate song, and a lace-trimmed prayer written in 1852 for Rev. Mother Delphina, who I quickly discovered was a Carmelite nun and Leonard's sister (born Elizabeth Smith).

An 1833 first communion certificate for Leonard's daughter at St. Joseph's may help locate the family in the 1830 census (though not as yet).  Inside the back cover are still to be analyzed pedigree charts for the family. It's a Smith family treasure trove of information that I will happily be working on for months to come. I could not be more grateful that this one is in the family!

Leonard Smith Bible (dated 1832), The Holy Bible, Translated from the Latin Vulgate... Clementine Edition of the Scriptures (Baltimore: Fielding Lucas, Jr.). Privately held. Digital Images.

Submitted to the 100th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy.

He weren't no saint...

When Jasia announced the 100^th Carnival of Genealogy I immediately knew my subject. My ancestor Philip Mulkey (b. 1732) was a powerfully charismatic backwoods Separate Baptist preacher in South Carolina when he ran afoul of his neighbors and church for reasons only recently made clear.

I was raised on stories (note the word) of Philip's religious fervor, patriotism and virtue. His church at Fairforest (founded in 1760) grew rapidly and fueled the Baptists' rapid expansion in South Carolina's backwoods to the frustration of the Anglican authorities. Charles Woodmason wrote of Mulkey after he toured the area in the 1760's attempting to win back the Baptist converts.

Would any Mortal three Years past have dreamd or imagin’d that such a Person as the infamous Mulchey [sic], who came here lately in Rags, hungry, and bare foot, can now, at his beck, or Nod, or Motion of his finger lead out four hundred Men into the Wilderness in a Moment   At his speaking the Word---Without asking any questions or making the least Enquiry for what or for why….[i]

Later the Welsh Baptist minister Morgan Edwards wrote

… neither is there anything extraordinary in his [Mulkey’s] natural endowments, except a very sweet voice, and a smiling aspect; that voice he manages in such a manner as to make soft impressions on the heart and fetch down tears from the eyes in a mechanical way… [Others] might learn from Mulkey to spin that sound and mix it with awe, distress, solicitude, or any other affection.[ii]

But there were also references to gross misconduct during his lifetime, excommunication in 1790 and evidence of Loyalist sympathies uncovered by 20th century Mulkey researchers.

My grandmother and her Mulkey cousins set great store by their descent from Philip. They included him in their D.A.R. applications, referring to his participation in Col. William Christian's Cherokee Expedition in 1776 (citing Summer's Annals of Southwest Virginia, 1769-1800). They defended him against the calumnies of what they perceived as jealous minds and bigots.[iii] Wonderful family historians and histories were damned should they even suggest Philip might have strayed from the paths of virtue and revolutionary fervor. I admit to some trepidation writing this even now, almost two decades after my grandmother's death. For she and her cousins were wrong.

Mulkey's political loyalties leading up to the Revolution were divided. He publicly avowed his loyalty to the Crown several times in 1775 as tensions rose. He was present in September when the backcountry loyalists signed the Treaty of Ninety-Six, agreeing not to actively support the British against South Carolina. He apparently left for Tennessee (where his son Jonathan had settled) soon after. He was not arrested in South Carolina, nor is there evidence that his lands were confiscated. Indeed, he returned there following the war and spent many more years preaching. His motives for supporting the Crown and then joining the Cherokee Expedition the next year are unknown, but Philip Mulkey Hunt suggests he may have been less interested in politics and more concerned about the results of the political confrontations on his church members. Thus he might side with the loyalists in South Carolina where many felt the colonial government had been more abusive than the King and fight with the Col. Christian the next year to protect his family and neighbors from the Cherokee raids.[iv]

Mulkey’s reputation suffered far more from the rumors of improper behavior than his political leanings. As early as 1772 Morgan Edwards suggested as much when he wrote “a thorn was put into his flesh about 4 years ago which will … teach his votaries that he is but a man.”[v] By 1790, Mulkey had been excommunicated by the Charleston (SC) Baptist Association and its members warned of his

enormous crimes; such as adultery, perfidy and falsehood, which have been attended with very aggravating circumstances, often repeated and continued in for years; and part of the time, united with his highest pretensions of zeal and piety.[vi]

These were no light charges and historians writing about Mulkey agree that he ended his days an outcast and wanderer. His apologists (sorry Grandmother) have suggested the charges were rooted in his political disputes in South Carolina and maintain no evidence existed to support these charges. Not so.

In June, 2009 Chris DeMarco posted a link to a 1767 letter in the Brown University archives on the Mulkey Family Genealogy Forum.  The letter, written by Oliver Hart, a Baptist minister, to James Manning, president of the newly founded Brown University makes it clear that Philip Mulkey (married since 1750) had recently had an illegitimate child.

The greatest appearance we have had, for some years pass, has been among the Separatists: and especially under one Mr. Philip Mulkey. But He, poor Man, has sadly fallen, having become the Father of a spurious Child by a widow woman, a member of his own church. On account of which religion has suffered much, especially in those parts; and among that People.[vii]

That’s as clear a piece of evidence as we are ever likely to find supporting Edward’s 1772 “thorn” reference and leads me to believe there were other transgressions over the years that had nothing to do with the American Revolution or politics. It seems the Charleston Baptists were simply stating the facts when they warned their members.

Philip Mulkey, though an extraordinarily gifted preacher, had far more in common with today’s fallen televangelists than any reputable minister. He’s the most colorful and interesting ancestor I’ve come across, and though proof of his perfidy may set Grandmother spinning, I suspect a few other members of my family are grinning. We needed a scoundrel to offset all those generations of virtue and propriety. 

---

[i]The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant, Richard J. Hooker, ed., ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953), p. 112.

[ii] John Sparks, The Roots of Appalachian Christianity: The Life and Legacy of Elder Shubal Stearns (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001), p. 83.

[iii] See Ella Mulkey Range’s pamphlet The Life of Reverend Philip Mulkey, His Ancestors and Descendants, 1650-1950 (n.p.).

[iv] Philip Mulkey Hunt, The Mulkeys of America (Portland, OR: n.p., 1983) pp. 56-60.

[v] Sparks, p. 83.

[vi] “1790 Minutes of the Charleston Baptist Association”, cited by Floyd Mulkey in The Strange Career of the Rev. Phlip Mulkey (Chicago: n.p., 1976).

[vii] “James Manning papers, 1761-1827,” Brown University, Brown Archival & Manuscript Collections Online (http://dl.lib.brown.edu/bamco/ : accessed 17 Nov 2010), letter, “Oliver Hart to James Manning, 23 Dec 1767,” p. 2.

Once upon a time or why Uncle Vasil firebombed the church

This is the first in an occasional series examining some family stories I’ve been told over the years. This is my favorite.

The setting is a Carpathian mountain village known today as Berezovo in the Ukraine. The time frame is in the early 20^th century, most likely shortly before World War I.

My great-uncle Vasil was the eldest of my great-grandparents’ eleven children and the father of ten himself. His mother, Maria Tegze, had the money in the family. She was tightfisted with her children, but generous to the priest in Berezovo.

Vasil was married with a growing family while his youngest brothers and sisters were still at home. He went to his mother and complained that his younger brother Mikula didn't even have shoes that fit and that his own children were growing rapidly. She was giving too much to the Church when her own family needed help.

When Maria sent him packing he went to the priest to complain. The priest, not surprisingly, felt his mother was perfectly entitled to give him money, and didn't seem too concerned about the shoes. Vasil came back later, firebombed the church, and the priest left town - quickly. No one knew whether the children got new shoes.

Where to begin? First, let me say that I believe the basic elements of the story are true. I didn’t always, but I do now.

The story was told to us with considerable relish in 1992 by Vasil’s grandchildren during a visit to Slovakia and the Ukraine. Four of his children were still alive. The story of Vasil and the church was part of their family lore.

It absolutely was not part of ours. My grandfather Stephen, one of Vasil's younger brothers, died more than a decade before I was born, so all I know of his family is filtered through the stories my father and aunt told me. According to my father, my great-grandfather Ivan was a carousing alcoholic ne’er-do-well. Stephen despised him and was determined to be nothing like him. He told his children the family was well off, owned land, but that everything came from his mother’s family and that she managed the farm. He had been sent off to school, the tuition paid by his maternal grandmother. His mother’s brother, Fr. Victor Thegze (Tegze) was a priest. He had come to America years earlier. 

The sense I had of Maria was a long-suffering, devout woman working hard to raise her children despite her husband and making sure her son had as many opportunities available to him as possible. While never said explicitly it seemed to me that my grandfather revered his mother.

Vasil’s family had another image of Ivan and Maria. They spoke of Vasil and Ivan going off together for days to visit other villages, of Maria as stingy and dour. They portrayed the men as carefree guys out for a good time and Maria as a killjoy. There was a glee in the idea that Vasil had routed the priest, a sense of him as the protector of his family.

I had trouble believing this was true. It seemed so foreign from the family I knew – and I use that word deliberately. I could imagine Maria supporting the church; I couldn’t imagine her letting her children go unshod. I couldn’t imagine my devout grandfather attacking his church. My own father flirted briefly with idea of becoming a priest; another cousin had. It seemed impossible that anyone in the family would do such a thing.

But as I thought about the trip, the people we had met, their lives and our lives, the stories made sense. My father’s family is the prototypical immigrant family. Ellis Island, hard work, education, better lives for the children and grandchildren – the whole shebang. The stories I heard about our family reflected that experience.

Our cousins in Europe had a very different 20^th century. Wars, Stalin and the domination of the Soviet Union took their toll. The stories they told emphasized family loyalty, cunning and a lack of respect for authority. Looked at from those perspectives the different family stories made complete sense.

Even so, my sympathies rested with my great-grandmother Maria Tegze. Boys being boys doesn’t cut it when there are fields to be tended and children to be reared. My grandfather’s view of his father rang true. I decided the story was interesting, but probably exaggerated.

Until I read this.

The wife of Géza Thegze, a priest in Vyshni Bystryi (Felsöbisztra), was attacked with a knife, and their house set on fire by unknown arsonists four times![1]

This was written in 1939 and refers to events before 1901 in a village a little more than thirty miles by road from Berezovo. (The book was translated and published in the United States in 1990.) The author was describing a time of increased economic distress and growing turmoil in the region. Suddenly the fish tale of Uncle Vasil firebombing the church seemed more plausible. If there were other episodes of anticlerical violence then Vasil's actions, though outrageous from my modern American standards, were not unique. He, used to wandering the region with his father, would have known of this other attack. I also had no evidence of my family exaggerating any other stories or information. Indeed, there were  instances of a public story and the more truthful, family version.

So I’ve set aside my sympathies and adopted the story as a way of expressing my family’s survival instincts. My squabbles with bureaucracies and life's petty annoyances do not compare in any way to my cousins' very real suffering at the hands of the Soviet Union. Still, Uncle Vasil has crossed my mind more than once when dealing with AT&T.  And it's just such a good story.

One more thing – one of Uncle Vasil’s sons, Stefan, became a well known scholar and priest.

---

[1] Alexander Bonkáló (The Rusyns. Fairview, N.J.: [Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center], 1990), p. 136.


Submitted to the 99th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy.

Commuting to America

Anna Pereksta's Hungarian
passport

My grandmother or Baba traveled to the United States from Prislop, her small village in today's eastern Slovakia, in 1913. She was 18 years old and traveling with her father, Ivan (or Janos) Pereksta. She left, as so many thousands of others did, hoping there would be greater opportunities for her in America. It was her first and only voyage across the ocean. Her father, however, all but commuted between Prislop and the U.S.

Ivan Pereksta was born 25 Jan 1857 in Prislop. He was the youngest of three children. His father died shortly before his birth and his mother remarried when he was a boy. In 1879 Ivan married Olena Sidor. They lived in Prislop and over the next twenty years had a large family, eight of whom survived to adulthood. Four of their children would eventually settle in the United States. Prislop was a very small, very poor village in the foothills of the Tatra mountains. The population in 1914 was 159. Their home was primitive, at best.

Ivan Pereksta

I don't know when Ivan first came to the United States or how many trips he made, but I have documented 4 entries from 1901 to 1925 when I believe he made his final trip. Ivan would come, work here for a few years while his wife and children worked their small farm. Some of his earnings were used to buy passage for his children. A few dollars went to buying dapper clothes. He was a sharp looking man and quite proud of his good looks. The rest he took home to Prislop. But he wouldn't stay. After a couple years he would start the cycle again.  I will be forever grateful that he made those journeys, but I am equally grateful for, and more than a little awed by Olena's maintaining the farm and family all those years.

The name Pereksta is quite rare and the all the Perekstas in the United States appear to be from the same area, if not the same village, that Ivan Pereksta came from. There was another Ivan Pereksta from a neighboring village and slightly younger than my great-grandfather, traveling back and forth at the same time. Sorting out the records has been confusing. These four records are clearly for my great-grandfather.

• Arrived 6 April 1901 in New York aboard the Pretoria (Hamburg) - Janos Pereksta (indexed as Jonos Pareksta), farmer, age 43, married, Hungarian from “Prisslop” going to brother-in-law Wasily Tipely (sp?) in Binghamton, NY. Also traveling from “Prisslop” and going to Binghamton was Peter Klescz (indexed as Klcecz), farmer, age 34, married, Hungarian traveling to his brother-in-law Metro Prizas.

• Arrived 3 Sept. 1909 in New York aboard the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria (Hamburg) - Janos Pereksta, farm laborer, aged 47, married, unable to read or write, Hungarian, ethnic Slovak from Kis Pereszlo (the Hungarian name for Prislop). He stated he was in Pittsburg, PA for 3 years in 1900 and was traveling to son Jan Perckesta in Berwick, PA. He was described as 5’6” tall with black hair and brown eyes. Also traveling and listed immediately before Ivan was Vaszily Maszur (indexed Vaszily MacZur), aged 29 from Dara (a nearby village). He was listed as going to his sister Kath. Maszur at 723 Clinton St., Binghamton, NY. 

• Arrived 16 June 1913 in New York aboard the Amerika (Hamburg) with his daughter Anna (my grandmother), aged 18 - Janos Pereksta (indexed Janos Percksta), farm laborer, 44 years old, married and able to read and write, Hungarian, ethnic Slovak from Prislup. He named his wife Ilona Pereksta of Prislup. He stated he had previously been in the United States between 1910/1912 in Pittsburgh, PA. He and Anna were going to his daughter, Zuza Pereksta in Binghamton, NY. He was described as 5’5” tall, fair skinned with black hair and grey eyes. Anna was described as 5’4” tall, fair skinned with black hair and brown eyes. They were detained until 17 June 1913, awaiting Susan (Zuza) who lived at 3 Hudson St., Binghamton, NY. 

• Arrived 22 Dec 1925 in New York aboard the Westphalia (Hamburg) - Jan Pereksta (indexed as Jam Percksta), farm laborer, age 68, married, ethnic Slovak, Czech. nationality, from Pristop. Names wife Olena Pereksta of Pristop and states he is traveling to Passaic, NJ. His visa (#367) was issued in Prague on 12/7/1925. Also traveling and listed near to Ivan was Juraj Hulinke, farm laborer, age 33, married, ethnic Slovak, Czech nationality, from Durcina, Czechoslovakia. His visa (#372) was also issued in Prague on 12/7/1925. He was going to Murray Hill, NJ. It is unknown what, if any relationship existed between the two. 

There may have been other trips. Ivan was living with his son John in Passaic, NJ when the 1920 census was taken. (He was indexed as John Perexto or Redondo, 60 years old and an alien having arrived in 1903, unable to read or write.) Family discussions indicated he did not stay more than five years at a time and he may have returned home sometime after the 1913 voyage. However WWI may have interrupted or altered this pattern. I believe the 1925 trip was his final voyage to the U.S. At 68, he was an old man for his time and unlikely to have returned - especially since jobs became far more difficult to find during the Depression.  Ivan died in Prislop in 1933.

Reunion, Binghamton, NY.  1977.

Though it took more than a generation the American and European Perekstas would meet again. After WWII and the Soviet control of eastern Europe it was not possible to travel freely between Prislop and the U.S. In 1977 one of Baba's nephews was able to get a visa to travel to the United States with his wife. Their two young daughters stayed behind to assure my cousin did not defect. Her sisters and brother had died, but Baba was still living and able to meet her youngest sister's son.  It was, as you can imagine, enormously exciting for all of us.  Baba is pictured standing on the left, her nephew on the right. Fifteen years later, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, we were able to visit him and most of the surviving family in Czechoslovakia.  

What does Freedom Mean to Me?

I am late for the COAAG 4th Edition and nothing has made me remotely interested in Twitter or Tweets until FreedomTweet 2010.  Still not going there - why use a few words when so many wonderful ones are available?

But in honor of Juneteenth, and in support of what I hope will be thousands of FreedomTweets, let me share...

Freedom is a legacy from my grandparents who left Europe so their children and grandchildren might have better lives.  I owe it to them to work towards ensuring that others have the same opportunities to come to this country they had.

I rejoice that the descendants of those who did not come freely to this nation, who were enslaved by my ancestors and many others, are today free to join in building a more perfect union.  I celebrate their voices and contributions.

Freedom is choice.  I am free to worship as I wish; free to live where I choose; free to choose my friends and communities; free to speak my mind; free to help where I see a need.  I am free to do all or none of these things as long as I leave others the same freedom.

I rejoice in each step toward healing the bitter rifts from slavery, ethnic and religious prejudices.  I celebrate every hand that reaches out through fear and anger, and every hand that accepts it.

Summer Frolics

One of my great-aunt's favorite words was frolic. I would ask her what they did before summer camp and movies and Girl Scouts and she would laughingly say, "Why we would frolic!" The word would roll off her tongue and dance about my head as she told stories of picnics and parties and car rides through the Tennessee countryside. She was the youngest of ten high-spirited children who grew into high-spirited adults.

I remember her voice as I look through the photo albums she and her sisters kept. They certainly did frolic during those long ago summers.  She remained ready for frolics and adventure well into her eighties, though the photographic evidence of those later frolics seems to have vanished. 

Frolic in the creek c. 1918.  Note the stylish newspaper hats.

Frolic with Ice Cream Cones, c. 1918

Baseball Frolic Gone Bad, c. 1925

Motor Frolic, c. 1930

Beach Frolic after WWII.

The next generation frolics at Myrtle Beach about 1948.

Orphaned and Widowed, Part II

Continuing the story of Margaret Meredith Palmer (abt. 1823-1889) who was born in Lancaster County, Virginia and lost her mother, father, step-mother, and the aunt who raised her, all before she was 16 years old.

It's not clear where Margaret lived after her aunt's death, but in 1842 she married James Palmer at her uncle Thomas Meredith's home in Baltimore.  She and her husband settled onto Clifton, a plantation just outside Kilmarnock, Virginia.  In 1847, only five years after her marriage, Margaret was widowed and left with a toddler daughter and infant son.  She was no more than 25 years old.  Once again she turned to her family for support.  Her brothers Thomas and William each moved in for periods of time over the next 3 years.   That she leaned heavily on them and her uncle is evident from a series of letters she wrote in 1848 and 1849.

Let me be clear about Margaret's life at Clifton.  She was not cooking or scrubbing or working the farm.  There were 28 slaves on the plantation when her husband died.  But neither was her life the social whirl of southern lore.  Her letters to her uncle included the most prosaic details of life - the children's sniffles, getting groceries shipped from Baltimore,  new seeds for the vegetable garden, the price she might fetch for her crop of corn, a request for a black wool hat.  She sent orders for molasses (her young son had a penchant for "beating away" on the jugs with a stick - with predictable and sticky results), a good corn broom and $1 worth of cranberries.

Of far more concern to the young widow were the complicated legal and financial matters resulting from her husband's death.  She agonized over whether she was capable of serving as legal guardian for the children, and who should serve if she could not.  She and the children now owned Clifton jointly and all decisions had to be justified as in the best financial interest of her young children.  Acting as guardian herself might force her to rent out their share of the farm and slaves for the highest income.  A guardian could forbid their Catholic education, which was far more expensive than local schooling, when they were older.  She struggled to raise the $8000 guardianship bond, applying to her brothers and uncle to act as security for portions of the bond.  She dreaded going to court, asking "(m)ust I do it (take an oath) and on a Protestant bible?"  Almost a year after her husband's death and very much at wit's end she wrote her uncle, "I know not what to do(.)  I have recommended it in my prayers and wish the will of God to be done.  Most gladly will I take any advice that your kindness will impart.  Do dear Uncle pray for me and my dear children."

Beyond the details of the farm, her legal and financial concerns, Margaret's letters to her uncle showed  deep faith and longing for greater access to the Catholic Church.  There were no Catholic churches in Lancaster or Northumberland counties.  She was "anxious to go to Baltimore this spring to make my Easter" and asked that he let her know what would be most convenient.  She wrote she "will be very glad to attend a retreat if it is the will of Almighty God and shall be glad if dear Aunty (her uncle's wife) will write if she hears" of one in time enough for Margaret to attend.  One letter written during Lent in 1849 closed with a request, "Pray for me kind Uncle and for him to whom you were so kind while living during this holy season of fasting and prayer."  

I've known the facts outlining Margaret's life for many years but had not considered the emotional toll of such loss.  Certainly she was not unique.   Disease was common, medical care primitive and death a constant.  Many of the letters refer to disease or deaths in the county.  But these letters, some of them almost two centuries old, have illuminated her life and the lives of her Meredith kin beyond the details.  They've brought her to life - more than a century after her death.

The years her children grew up were challenging.  Her uncle Thomas died in 1853,  her brother James in 1855 and brother Thomas in 1859.  Mr. Gresham was appointed guardian for the children and helped her manage Clifton.  Ultimately she did rent out the farm and many of the slaves, using the income to pay for the Catholic schools she so valued.  It's not clear where she lived while they were in school in Maryland.  The Palmer slaves were enumerated on her cousin's nearby plantation in 1860.  She and the children returned to Virginia during summers until the Civil War.  Following the war, her daughter settled in Frederick, Maryland and her son took over Clifton.  Each married, had  large families, and surely to her joy, were devout Catholics.  Her son donated the land for the first Catholic Church built in Lancaster or Northumberland counties in 1885.  Margaret spent time with both of them, but lived her last years with her daughter.  She never remarried.  She died on a visit to Northumberland County in 1889.

Sources:  Letters from M. M. Palmer to Thomas Meredith, 1848-49. The letters are part of the Thomas Meredith Papers (MS1795) at the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Maryland.  They are contained in Box 2, Folder 3.

Orphaned and Widowed, Part I

Margaret Meredith Palmer was my husband's great-great grandmother.   She was born around 1823 in Lancaster County, Virginia to Capt. John Meredith and Ann Currell Lee, married James A. Palmer on May 16, 1842 in Baltimore, Maryland and died in Northumberland County in 1889.

That skeletal outline of her life suggests many things.  She lived, as they say, in interesting times.  I have imagined a Tidewater version of Margaret Mitchell's Ellen O'Hara, the penultimate Southern Lady, without the wild Irish husband.  And there is a morsel of truth there.   She was born on one plantation, raised as a devout Catholic, and became mistress of another plantation upon her marriage.  Unlike Ellen O'Hara, she survived her husband and the Civil War.

My image of her changed when I sifted through papers belonging to her uncle, Thomas Meredith, a Baltimore merchant and, much to my delight, a hoarder.  He kept letters from his siblings, nephews and Margaret.  Much of my family history involves documents where ancestors scratched out an X.  It was a thrill to find first person accounts of their lives.   Far from glamorous, Margaret's first 40 years were filled with loss and struggle.

Her father, John Meredith was a cash strapped farmer and slave owner.  In 1822 he married Ann Lee Towill.  It was a second marriage for each.  He was a widower with a son, Thomas James, known as James.  She was a wealthier widow with four children.  Together they had Margaret and a son Thomas William, known as Thomas.  Margaret's mother died when she was a young child and her father married again in 1828 to another widow, her mother's cousin Ann Steptoe Brent.  They had a son William Vincent, known as, well, who cares at this point?

A brief digression - need I say how much I have regretted John's stunning lack of originality in choosing wives and naming his sons?  One of the great joys of those letters was that they clarified the tangled relationships and names.

Margaret's childhood seems to have been rather simple, and sweet.  Her father sent a note to his brother in Baltimore full of family news, money woes, gossip and closed with the note "Margaret & Tho sent you & sister a large potatoe each -- did you get them?" The potatoes were entrusted to a ship captain traveling back to Baltimore.  No word on whether Uncle Thomas got the spud.

Her life changed radically when she was about 12 years old.  Numerous letters refer to the ill health of her father and step-mother.  He died in February, 1834.  A year later her step-mother was dead.

From then on, Margaret's care and upbringing was shared amongst her tight-knit Meredith family.  Her brother James, a merchant in Richmond County, moved his three younger siblings to his home there, where they were cared for by their aunt, Caroline Meredith Shearman.  James and his aunt Caroline doted on the orphans.  Letters refer jokingly to young Willie's (alright, he was known as Willie) crush on a neighbors' daughter and concern that the children maintain ties to Lancaster County where Margaret and Thomas had inherited  property through their mother.  They were sent back to board for school at Col. Edmond's house where, her brother James wrote, "they have an excellent teacher there for the year - Mr. Emmanuel".   Her uncle in Baltimore assumed financial management of her affairs, arranged for her further schooling at St. Joseph's Academy in Emmitsburg, Maryland when she was older and served as her father figure for the rest of his life.  But in 1838, another anchor in her life, her aunt Caroline Shearman died.  James wrote his uncle in Baltimore that fall, "I hardly know what poor Margaret will do -- however she will not leave school till July, before only which time providence may make a provision".

To be continued.

Sources:  Letters from John Meredith, T.J. (James) Meredith, Joseph Meredith, Hannah Meredith Yerby,  Caroline Meredith Shearman (all of Virginia) and Sist. Margt Tre_st. of St. Joseph's Academy to Thomas Meredith. The letters are part of the Thomas Meredith Papers (MS1795) at the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Maryland.  All the letters, save an 1840 letter from Sister Margaret, are in Box 1 of the collection.  The letter from Sister Margaret is in Box 2, Folder 1.    

Coming Late to the Party

As a newbie blogger and poster of genealogical data I thought a carnival had rides and cotton candy.  I was fascinated to discover the blog versions were every bit as entertaining.  I was so moved by the Carnival of African-American Genealogy.  Unfortunately, I've missed the first theme, but look forward to others.

What motivated me about the Carnival was that it addresses one of the key reasons I've finally started sharing my research online.  It has been impossible to research my southern families without facing the role slavery and the Civil War played in their lives.

Things seemed clear when researching my husband's family.  Much loved, but clearly on the wrong side of history.  The wistfulness about the old Virginia homestead did not disguise the fact that slaves built the home, tilled the fields and crewed on the ships that carried their goods back and forth across the Chesapeake Bay. Did his family suffer greatly during the war? Yes.  But nothing like the losses suffered by those they enslaved for generations.  The right side won the war.

The stories we heard of my family, small farmers and tradespeople from East Tennessee, were of staunch Unionists with no hint of Confederate loyalties.  And there were Union soldiers, some who fought, died and came from slave owning families.  There were also those who fought and died for the Confederacy, wives and sisters who fled to the hills hoping to avoid the ravages and ravishing of the war, each side unspeakably cruel and vicious.  Any smugness I felt about my "pure" Union roots vanished as I read more about the Civil War in Tennessee and looked more closely at the census and land records.  The right side looked exactly like the wrong side.  

From this distance, I'm not sure sides matter any more.  What matters is that we look honestly at the past.  I want to know my family and those in their lives.  I have gathered information on their neighbors, kin and associates looking for those tiny details that illuminate their lives.  I know names, religions, occupations.  I know how they died, where they went as they migrated across the country.  And now I know who owned slaves.  I am making an effort to document the slaves, just as I do their neighbors and relations.  It's easier to do with the wealthier families who owned more slaves - more documentation.  But even my small town Tennessee family can provide clues.  The 1860 Washington County, TN census (Campbells district, p. 180, lines 34-35) lists a 24 year old black woman, Sarah and 3 year old Martha E. with the family of Thomas C. McAdams.  The enumerator then crossed their names out and added them to the slave census -  without names.