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TATRA AREA RESEARCH GROUP
_______________________________© TARG All rights reserved.
Newsletter for October 2002
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Hello and welcome to all of you TARG members, new and old alike! And a happy Thanksgiving Day weekend to all! The TARG website has been recently updated, so go have a look at: www.mytarg.net. Specifics of the additions to the site are listed below. In other news, the TARG surname database just passed the 24,000 mark, and the new digital camera was successfully sent to Lucjan Soltys in Jurgow, Poland. He has his first batch of photos to look at (all of the Spisz region) at: www.izoo.krakow.pl/~lsoltys/zdjecia with more to come.
-- Paul K. Bingham
TARG FounderWEBSITES TO CHECK OUT_____________
1) The new TARG website at: www.mytarg.net!
2) First batch of Spisz photos at: www.izoo.krakow.pl/~lsoltys/zdjecia.
3) Probably the most complete search engine to date on the internet (see
article below for more hints to help your search) at: www.google.com
4) Eastern European Historical Research site (URL supplied by member Marc Kuklinski): www.ku.edu/~ibetext/texts/cienciala2/
5) Bill Tarkulich shares a terrific guide called "A Guide to Interpreting Passenger List Annotations" at: www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/Manifests/
(All those notes scribbled in the margins are indexed and described!)
6) The LDS have the 1880 U.S. and 1881 Canadian Census data online at: FamilySearch.org. (Be patient -- since the announcement Oct. 23, the site is averaging 3 million hits per hour!)YOUR LETTERS______________________
Dear Paul, We have finally located Jan Majercak's baptismal village and record. It was in Lapsze Wyzne. Has anyone in the US filmed the records in Lapsze Wyzne? - Marc Kuklinski
***Hi Marc, I wanted to photograph the records in Lapsze Wyzne back in September of 1999 when I was first over there. In fact, Lucjan and I drove over there to do that, but the priest was away on vacation. So we ended up photographing the Lapsze Nizne records instead. Maybe next trip! - Paul
Hi Paul, Just read your current newsletter - would really appreciate if you would email the fellow with family from Velka Frankova, SK and ask him to write to me...could be a connection between us. I'm sure I mentioned to you about how small the village is. Thanks, Marion Monkvic
***Hi Marion, I will send Mr. Lawrence your e-mail address and let him contact you. - Paul
Hi Friends, I want to create our family tree but I miss quite all dates from the grandfather. He was a baby or a child when the family came down to Hungary. All that I know is his name was Karoly KUPCSIK (it's a Hungarian spelling, it can be Kupcik as well) and his father was Karoly KUPCSIK and mother Maria SZARNYAY from ALSOLIPNICA (= Lipnica Wielka). I don't know anything about the parents and relatives. I would be grateful If you could help me or show me how to go further. Many thanks, Eva Kupcsik, Hungary
***Hello Eva, Thank you for contacting us. I find 3 families named KUPCZYK in the polish phone book. The Roman Catholic records for former Also Lipnica or Velka Lipnica (now Lipnica Wielka, Poland) are to be found in the Roman Catholic archives in Spisska Kapitula, Slovakia and also in the parish church in Lipnica Wielka. - Paul
Hello Paul, I would like to register with your group and receive your newsletter. The surnames I'm searching for are: Satala (Szatala), Brija and Surma. All would have come from the area of Nowa Biala and Krempachy Poland. My grandparents (Satala) immigrated to the US right around 1900. Looking forward to contact with your group. - Joanie Krasneck
***Hello Joanie, I have put you on our mailing list to receive the monthly e-newsletter. You can also download any of the past four years worth of issues off of our website at www.mytarg.net. Thank you for sharing the surnames & villages information for ancestry within our TARG study area. I do recognize these names as being from that area! - Paul
Hi Paul, I am receiving your monthly Newsletter and really like it. My sister would like to be on your list to receive this Newsletter. Could you please add her e-mail address to your list? We recently ordered the microfilm from the Latter Day Saints for the Matiasovce church records, Spis County, Slovakia. Found our Grandparents birth records, and records of our Great Uncles, Aunts and Great Grandparents, too. It was just wonderful! Still cannot find my maternal Grandmother, Agnes Bolcar, coming over here in the years 1900-1903. Trying all sorts of spellings, with no luck. Thank you for the Newsletter. - Eleanor Kehoe
***Hi Eleanor, I'm so glad you wrote -- thank you for the nice comments -- and I'll be happy to add your sister to our e-mail list, too. As for the name BOLCAR, we also have the spellings of BOLCARZ and BOLZCAR in our growing database. There are likely even more than that out there. Just a hint, though: If you are not finding the ancestor in the records from the village you thought they were in, ALWAYS look in records from neighboring villages. In this case Matiasovce's neighbors are Spisske Hanusovce, Havka (or Hafka), Zalesie (once called Gibel), Spisske Stara Ves and Rel'ov. I think I can narrow it down a bit for you, again by looking at our growing TARG database. There are listings for BOLCAR (and its various different spellings) from Matiasovce, Spisske Stara Ves and Zalesie. Of the three, little Zalesie has the most BOLCARs...it is also very close to Matiasovce. I remember going to Zalesie in 1999...a cute little farming village kind of tucked back in the hills. I actually talked with a woman who was a BOLCAR and remember seeing many BOLCAR headstones in the cemetery at the little church there. So if I were you, I would give Zalesie's records a closer look. Your ancestor might have lived on the outskirts of Matiasovce, but all of their records might have been kept in Zalesie. I've seen confusion of this kind happen time and again...it has even happened in my own family lines! Good luck, and please let us know what you find. - Paul
Hi Paul, Maria Planietova of Trstena has contacted me after reading my piece in the TARG newsletter. She has been researching the history of Jews in Orawa, and we have begun swapping emails about what we each know. Just thought I'd let you know of a meeting of two with a common interest through your newsletter. Thanks. - Gary Luke, Australia
***Hello Gary, Wonderful news! Please share more with us as you discover it! - Paul
Hello Paul, I am looking forward to signing in on your Guest List when it is up and running. My grandfather's name was Stefan Monka and he came to the USA in 1892 from Kacwin. I also understand that there are Monkos living in Zdair. Perhaps your site will help me trace my roots. I have no living relatives that have any information. - John Monka
***Hello John, Thank you for writing. There are indeed MONKAs still living in the village of Kacwin -- I find three of them listed in the phonebook. Since the village became part of Poland in 1920, the spelling of the name is now in the Polish spelling, which is MAKA, with a little hook under the first "A" to give it the Polish nasel "ong" sound. There are also MAKAs in surrounding towns, and yes, in Zdiar as well. But if I were you, I would concentrate on the Kacwin lines first. - PaulSPECIAL TARG TRIP IN 2003____________
The Holidays is a great time to discuss plans for next Summer with
family members. Be sure you take time to discuss next August's Goral
Homecoming Trip to Slovakia & Poland with Helene B. Cincebeaux and lots of other TARG members! When: Tues, Aug. 5 thru Fri., Aug. 15, 2003. Cost: just $2,299 per person (covers nearly every cost, including round trip travel from New York.) We will be in all of the old Slovak counties of Spis, Liptov and Orava and in Poland's Spisz, Podhale and Orawa regions, too, plus a day in Krakow, Poland and lots of side trips available to archives and other destinations of interest. This is truly a tour made for TARG members looking for ancestral villages, records and possible remaining relatives!
If you've gone with us before, you will want to go again! If you've
never been, you don't know what fun and life-changing experiences await you! A fuller itinerary and other information is available to you on our Trips
page on the TARG website at: http://www.mytarg.net/Trips.html. Have a
look!LATEST TARG WEBSITE UPDATE____________
If you click on the Village List link on the TARG website's main (or home) page, it takes you to a list of over 800 TARG villages. Over 90% of these now have an active link you can click on and it will take you to a village-specific webpage! (This was no small task.) While many of these simply say "Under construction" if you go to them, they will ultimately all contain history, photos, links and other info to help you learn much more about that one specific village or town. There are some village pages which have photos or nearly complete info on them now. These are: Batizovce, Benus, Besenova, Betlanovce, Biala Woda, Bialka Tatrzanska, Bialy Dunajec, Bielanka, Biely Potok, Bobrovec, Brezno, Brezovica, Brzegi, Bukowiec, Bystre, Czarny Dunajec and Dursztyn. I will be adding lots more of the info and photos you send me and things I can find in my own library in the days ahead. For those few village names not highlighted, they have a problem. These are being researched to find out if they still exist, where they are located exactly, if they are now part of a larger village, or just a duplicate name for a village we already have. If anyone has more information on any of the non-highlighted village names, I'd love to hear from you, too! P.S. -- The Village List page will also have coordinate hot links to all of our TARG site's maps, too, in time!SEARCH ENGINE HINTS_____________
"Google" (a name which is a take-off on "Googol", a word meaning the number ten followed by a hundred zeros) represents probably the most extensive indexing of the internet to date. I used to be an Alta Vista fan, but Google has them beat hands down now. If you want to try and find genealogy, cultural or historic text and pictures for your family research, consider giving Google a try at: www.google.com. Within less than a second, you may discover articles, letters, photos, maps, travel summaries, papers, postings or lots of other data you never knew existed. One helpful trick to broaden the useful information gained from your search is to include items produced in Slovakia or Poland. However, not using native diacritics (or in other words, the letters and accent marks of the Slovak and Polish languages) will greatly limit what you find.
So how do you use diacritics in Google? While you can find a Slovak or Polish webpage and then cut and paste individual letters from it to your Google query box, it is much simpler to use the codes Google uses. And although many of the accented vowels used are available from our western keyboards (like Á, á, ä, é, Í, í, Ó, ó, ô, ú, Ý, ý), many are letters are not. These are shown with their Google codes below:
Polish Diacritic codes for Google search:
261= a~
263= c'
281= e~
321= L~
322= l~
324= n'
347= s'
378= z'
380= z~
Slovak Diacritic codes for Google search:
268= C'
269= c'
270= D^
271= d'
318= l'
327= N^
328= n^
352= S^
353= s^
356= T^
357= t'
381= Z^
382= z^
To use these codes effectively, you must enter them correctly. The phrase"&#__" is the key here. Plug in the code shown above, and all of the otherwise unavailable diacritical marks and letters of both languages are possible. For example, if I were trying to find info on the Polish town of "Lapszanka" (where the "L" has a "/" through it), I would enter the phrase "ł" in place of the "L" and then "apszanka" after it. Google would then recognize łapszanka as the Polish word I was looking for, resulting in many more hits from my search.CONTACTING TARG_____________________
To contact TARG the e-mail address is: TARG_NET@hotmail.com. Our mailing address is: TARG, P.O. Box 3533, Escondido, CA 92033. Our website is: www.mytarg.net. Thanks for participating!
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