TATRA AREA RESEARCH GROUP


(c) TARG (Formerly ZARP & PARG) All rights reserved.
Newsletter for May 2001
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Vi'tanje & Powitanie! (Welcome!)
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Greetings to all TARG members, new and old. Our thanks again to many more of
you who continue to visit the TARG website and list your villages and
surnames in our guestbook. All entries are available for viewing and
searching by clicking the link listed now at the bottom of the main page.
I believe the number of postings has now passed one hundred. If you haven't
been by to look or post your information, then please do. We have added some
other new things to the site as well. Please go by and have a look. The URL
is: http://www.1avenue.com/targ.
* Paul K. Bingham
TARG Founder
bingham@iols.net

LETTERS________________
"Great job with the tips about Ellis Island. Your incredibly detailed
description is excellent. I found a few people there already. However, in
the next newsletter, you may want to mention that not all ancestors came
through Ellis Island. People may be disappointed that they can't find
someone listed thinking the website is useless when this is not true.
You're right about misspelled names. First and last names can be completely
different. Those volunteers did the best they could with interpreting the
original data but I can already see mistakes in country names, etc. and one
never knows who made them. In the end, its a great site!"-Thanks, Zelda
Tomlinson "Paul, Great shortcuts for the Ellis Island site. I'll give them a
try. I have exhausted all the typical variants for Vodzak and have yet to
find my GGF Mihaly and his brother Anthony who came in 1896-97. This is truy
where no matter what, it comes down to the person who WROTE the
manifest...not the poor volunteer trying to interpret it. The difficulty IF
you could see the manifest, you MIGHT type the same thing the volunteer did.
Otherwise one is simply biased by the variants we are used to seeing in our
research. Actually, variants have very little to do with it."-Karen Melis
"Paul: Thanks for the tips on how to get into the Ellis Island web site,
which I had tried to access without success until now. I used your method
and got in, but unfortunately couldn't find any ancestors. I used Csisarik
(the spelling on my grandfather's papers) and got three people who are
unrelated to us and Cisarek, which gave me one arriving in 1924, almost a
generation after my grandparents. Suddenly I feel rootless! Thanks, though,
for the suggestion on how to get in. It worked."-John Cisarik

°°°°John, Don't give up! Try all kinds of strange spellings and ones that might have
made sense in the language of the day: Cisarak, Czisarik, Czisarek,
Ciszarik, Ciszarek, Ciscarik, Ciscarek, Tsisarik, Tsisarek, Cysarik, etc.
Also try look-alike letters that may have been misread like Gisarik,
Oisarik, Qisarik, etc. If you don't have success-don't worry. I'm sure soon
you will be able to search names with wildcards (Ci*ar*k) and by village of
origin, date of arrival, ship name, etc. as the Ellis Island group continues
to add features to their new website. And they will be repairing
misspellings, too, as they go, I am told. Remember, too, if any of your
ancestors came through a different port, they won't be on here-only the Port
of New York for the 1892 to 1924 are available on the Ellis Island site.
Good luck! -- Paul

"Dear Paul, Thanks to your encouragement, I tried various
alternate spellings for my paternal grandfather's name, and tonight found
him listed as Janos Ciszarik. The age is right, the place of residence is
given as "A. Lipnicza", which I understand is the Austro-Hungarian name for
the village now known as Lipnica Wielka. What a thrill to see his name
there! One of his brothers is also listed in the same manifest. Thanks,
again, for the tip on how to get into the site, and the encouragement that
kept me trying."- John Cisarik

"Dear Paul, I thought that you might be interested in this
follow-up. Having found my grandfather's ship's manifest, I tried to decipher the destination, and could only make out that it appeared to begin with "Ph" and end with
"ville," somewhere in Pennsylvania. Elsewhere on the manifest, though, I
found others from the same place, Lipnica Wielka (given as A. Lipnicza on
the manifest), going to Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, someone else
who subscribes to the TARG newsletter noticed that I was looking for a
Gombarcik ancestor, my paternal grandmother, who came from Lipnica Wielka
but actually met my grandfather in this country. The lady who is doing
research into her own Gombarcik ancestor from Lipnica Wielka told me that
the ancestor came to this country and first settled in Phoenixville,
Pennsylvania. I'm betting that this lady and I are at least distantly
related, but whether or not we are related, it's a pretty safe bet that my
grandparents met in Phoenixville. All this is really thanks to you and your
group. Bravo, Paul!"-John Cisarik
°°°°Thank, John, for your kind words. This is why TARG exists and the kind
of success stories that keeps us going. Our congratulations to you! Please
do keep us posted as you make further discoveries.-Paul

WRITING TO RELATIVES________________
Yes, writing to possible relatives in Poland and Slovakia is possible. I
have had lots of requests for help doing this lately. So I'm including this
"how-to" guide for ideas on writing, addressing and mailing a note to
potential relatives. Some of this is a reprint from a newsletter in 1999,
but some is new. (My thanks to Jaga and Lucjan for helping me put this
together.)

A. WRITING______________
Here's a simple little note in English, Polish and Slovak to mail to
potential relatives. You can simply fill in the blanks and leave out the
sentence(s) that don't apply to help you customize it as needs may require.
***ENGLISH:
Hello. My name is (__fill in your name__). My grandfather (__fill in your
grandfather's full name__) was born around (__fill in year__) in (__fill in
village name__). He immigrated to the U.S. around (__fill in year__). Could
we be related? I will be visiting your village (__fill in month__) (__fill
in day__), (__fill in year__). Could you please write back to me? Thank you
so much!
My U.S. address is: (__fill in your complete mailing address__)
>>Note: you can substitute grandfather with grandmother,
great-grandfather or great-grandmother, too.
***POLISH:
Dzien dobry, nazywam sie (__fill in your name__). Moj dziadek, (__fill in
your grandfather's full name__) urodzil sie okolo roku (_fill in year_) w
(__fill in village name__) i wyemigrowal do Stanow Zjednoczonych okolo
(_fill in year_) roku. Czy jest mozliwe ze jestesmy spokrewnieni? Odwiedze
Panska wioske (__fill in day__) (__fill in month__) (__fill in year__). Czy
mogliby Panstwo odpowiedziec na moj list? Z gory dziekuje za odpowiedz! Moj
adres w USA jest nastepujacy: (__fill in your complete mailing address__)
>>Note: you can substitute, too. Grandfather=dziadek,
grandmotherºbka, great-grandfather=pradziadek and
great-grandmother=prababka.
***SLOVAK:
Dobry den. Volam sa (__fill in your name__). Moj stary otec (__fill in you
grandfather's full name__) narodil sa okolo roku (__fill in year__) vo
(__fill in village name__). Emigroval do Spojenych Statov okolo roku (__fill
in year__). Moleme byt pribuzni? (__fill in day__) (__fill in month__)
(__fill in year__) navstivim vasu obec. Molete prosim odpovedat na moj list?
Dopredu Vam velmi dakujem za odpoved!
Moja adresa v Spojenych Statoch: (__fill in your complete mailing address__)
>>Note: you can substitute, too. Grandfather=stary otec,
grandmother=stara mama, great-grandfather=prastary otec and
great-grandmother=prastara mama.

B. ADDRESSING_____________
Here's some help with addressing to both countries.
***POLAND:
(This including use of the new Polish province of Malopolski which just
took effect in January 2000.) Example: someone named Jan GOMBOS in house
#333 from Jurgow, Spisz, Poland you would write:
Gombos Jan
Jurgow 333
34-532 Jurgow
woj. Malopolskie
POLAND
Notice the surname is first in line one. Then the village and house number
appear in line two. If a street name is used in the town, use it here- most
villages don't-you simply put in the village's name. Line three is the
zipcode and post office serving the village-in this case Jurgow has its own
post office. Some villages, like nearby Brzegi, don't-they use Jurgow's. So
line three may have a different town name than line two. Line four indicates
the "wojewodztwo" or province-in this case the new Malopolskie province. All
TARG villages in Poland are within the new Malopolskie province. The last
line is the country. Poland in Polish is "Polska", but since you want the
U.S. officials to send it to the right country its best to put "POLAND" in
English in BIG letters. ***SLOVAKIA:
Example: to someone named Marian Svec in house #211 in Zalesie, Spis,
Slovakia you would write:
Svec Marian
Zalesie 211
059 05 Matiasovce
SLOVAKIA
The Slovak address system is very similar to the Polish one. In this case
the little village of Zalesie does not have its own post office but uses
nearby Matiasovce's. So line three has the zipcode and post office location
for Matiasovce. The country name is in the last line. Slovakia in Slovak is
"Slovensko", but as stated above for Poland, best write this in English so
our postal officials don't send it to Slovenia or somewhere else.
>>Note for both countries: If you have an apartment number it goes on a
line between the person's name (shown here as line one) and the village &
house number (shown here as line two). The postal codes for Poland and
Slovakia can be found in Polish phonebooks and the Podrobny Autoatlas for
Slovakia as well as on many websites. (If you need a code and can't find one
e-mail us and we can do a look-up for you as time permits.)

C. MAILING__________
This little note can be used as a letter, a post card or even an e-mail. In
the interest of simplicity we've left out the diacritic marks and the
various possible endings that should be put on the village name. I am told
they will be able to understand it just fine nonetheless.
Visit your post office for weighing and exact postage. Items with
insufficient address usually never come back. Worth noting: mailed letters
sometimes disappear once they hit central Europe if they look like they
might contain something valuable inside. A post card, however, will almost
always get through. They are also cheaper to send-helpful if you are sending
out many to a long list of new-found potential relatives. You can find a
local picture postcard from your hometown or have a family photo turned into
one at the local photo shop, too. This will add even more excitement for
whoever receives it! And good luck to all of you writing relatives!

CONTACTING TARG_____________________
E-mail address: TARG_NET@hotmail.com Mailing address: P.O. Box 3533,
Escondido, CA 92033 Website: http://www.1avenue.com/targ

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