Place Name Identification Strategies Ancestral Village Sources Social Security | INS File | Ship Manifests | Slovakia Phone Book Present and Former Place Names Very few folks make much progress by searching by a surname. Name variations due to errors and overt changes are renown. The same name can arise in distant villages and never be related. Your key to success will be identification of the ancestral village. Archival records are organized this way and are quickly accessed this way. Here are the most reliable places to find the ancestral village are in one of the following documents, if they emigrated to US. Always remember that your ancestral village probably had multiple names. Follow the place names guidance to be certain that your search doesn't preclude any of these names Most Reliable Places to Find an Ancestral Village Family Documents or Memories – passports, correspondence back home, other documents. Ask elders for whatever place names they can recall. Record them phonetically. Church (place of destination) records of immigrant's marriage or offspring's birth. Ask the priest to look in the actual church record, NOT a church-issued certificate. Social Security Application SS-5 (if legally employed in US 1936 or later). Contains place of birth and mother and fathers' names. Petition the Social Security Administration (SSA) through the Freedom of Information Act. More information on the Social Security Program can be found at the SSA web site. (As an aside, the Social Security Death Index is well known to be incomplete and should not be relied on.) Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly INS) File May include Alien Registration Form, 1st or 2nd papers, naturalization documents and yearly reports amongst items. INS Alien Registration Form (if a resident alien in the US in the year 1940 only). Most files are quite small, so request the entire file. Expect 3-6+ month response time, or longer since 9-11. I've include information on how to request (petition) for a copy of the file. US Census (from 1900, 1910 or 1920) or Canada Census. Well, I'm not a big fan of Census documents for genealogy purposes. It may help to locate the person, but unfortunately, in most cases, all that is listed is "Hungary", which is of little use. US Port of Entry Records (Ship Manifests), even if you cannot identify the date of arrival. Microfilms of these items are available via the USA National Archives or more conveniently through the Mormon's Family History Center. There is an index for records, organized by last name (Port of NY SOUNDEX) referenced to date of arrival (records 1902 and later). SOUNDEX is particularly useful in locating surnames that sound-alike. Port of New York: The Ellis Island Database (we like to call it the "EIDB") contains a database and images of manifests from 1892 to 1924 from the Port of NY. Since 80% of all U.S. immigrants between 1892 and 1924 passed thru here, it's convenient and easy to check these records via the web. An important tool for searching the Ellis Island records is the Steve Morse 1-step Web Tools replete with sounds-alike tools. It is a better mechanism than entering your query into Ellis web site directly, conducts superior sounds-like searches, allows searching by village name. All results are shown in a convenient, clickable chart, allowing you to go directly to images or lists at EIDB. The 1-Step facility also allows you to "manually" scroll through films, frame-by-frame. This is handy when the image you are looking for is "missing." Many errors are present in the Manifests. I've compile a list of common errors and approaches to dealing with them to assist in reading manifests. More strategies and approaches to Ellis Island Research - including indirect research using friends and family.
Immigrants' Friends and Family - What I call the "Indirect Method". Involves tracing individuals who may have traveled with them, been left behind or met up with in the States. Neighborhood friends, Godparents and social club friends should be examined. Very useful to trace them when yours cannot be located through any other method. Reading their records may help you locate places and dates, especially useful clues. Sometimes also the name is so badly bastardized in the ledger, that you would not find it, no matter that you have tried all sounds-alike and looks-alike name variations. Phone Books If all the above fails, consider looking at a present-day phone book. Country phonebooks for the region are quite helpful with identifying people with similar sounding surnames. (Phone books are also useful for hypothesizing about how your surname is spelled today.) For Slovakia, Peter Nagy has put together a great guideline on using the Slovak Republic phone book. Put in partial names, minimum of the first three letters and see what names fall out. Most surnames, with the tragic exception of Hebrew names appear to have survived, though the spelling may vary from what you expect. Although descendants may have moved from the ancestral village, it is likely you’ll still find some of them nearby. Take the villages listed for the probable surnames and plot them out in a map. One possible strategy from here is to take these village names (misspellings too) and enter them into the 1-Step web tools, searching for all immigrants from a specific village. Czech and Poland phone books are also available online.
LEAST reliable places to find an ancestral village U.S. Death Certificate – the information is only as good as the informant, who is many times uninformed or in error. This information generally remains unverified. Obituaries – For the same reason. Certificates of Naturalization - This is mostly a ceremonial document and contains very little helpful information. In many cases, this information is in error.
After you've got a Place Name, Verify It Even after you've found a place name on a document, you've got more work to do to ensure you've got a workable name. More often than not, there is more investigation to follow. Spelling In many cases, the place name that you receive may have been incorrectly spelled. This happened for many reasons - the transliteration or translation into another language, poor penmanship, name only spoken, never written. The best way to verify the name and its proper spelling is to consult with people who are knowledgeable about your region. Although there are thousands of villages, these people can quickly recognize the misspellings due to their knowledge of the indigenous languages. Town, County and Administrative Names - Knowledge of counties and administrative districts cannot be under-emphasized. Many immigrants sometimes included these as their place of origin. Do not be discouraged if only the county name is listed. This can be extremely helpful in limiting your search area. Duplicates There are many villages within Slovakia that had or have the same or very similar place names. Old versus Present-day Place Name
Someone familiar with the area will also be able to recognize an "old" Magyar (Hungarian) language name versus a present-day Slovak language name. These people also have access to numerous cross-reference books. While these books are available for purchase, it is faster and more effective to post a message or email the individual. This will save you a tremendous amount of time looking for an old name (which is often what we start with) on a new map!
Discussion Groups You have a decision to make at this point. You can verify by either "do it yourself" by utilizing Present and Former Place Names or you can post a query on a discussion group/email list. I suggest starting with the latter. The chief benefits are that it is free, it's fast and it's another data point. It is also apt bring forth some issues that didn't occur to you. If you then want to research further, you've got some information to build upon. The most efficient way to locate folks familiar with the region now days is through discussion groups. The Delphi group has a terrific set of regulars who are very helpful for identifying Czech Republic and Slovakia settlement names. Some of the people who participate in these forums are for-hire genealogists, but the great majority of participants are hobbyists. Once you identify the village name, many doors will open for you, as most of the records, resources, databases are organized geographically. The Mormons are actively filming church and civil records in this region. Links to off-site webs will open in a new window. Please disable your pop-up stopper. Last Update: 06 June 2004  Copyright © 2002-2006, Bill Tarkulich |
