Hi. The Ellis Island registry lists "Horvatqurab, Hungary" as the
place of residence for my Dad's father, who emigrated here on the La
Touraine on November 8, 1908. I'm unable to locate this town on the
few older maps I've found, and my curiosity has been piqued even
further by the fact that we were always told we are Czechoslovakian.
Where can I find a copy of a map of this vintage that depicts this
town? Thank you SO much!
Patty Denison

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 01 Sep 2004 19:27 PDT

Patty,

I'm close, I think...but not 100% there yet!


Poking around in the Ellis Island database revealed a variety of
spellings for the village you mentioned, and subsequent Google
searches turned up this one as the most fruitful:

Horvat Gurab

[two separate words!]


Which led to a site for the 1828 Hungarian Census:


http://www.iabsi.com/gen/public/Documents/1828_Census.pdf


that places Horvat Gurab in a section (province?) of Hungary called:


ABAUJ-TORNA MEGYE


and a search on that phrase leads to a beautiful old map from 1910:


http://lazarus.elte.hu/hun/maps/1910/abauj-t.jpg



But I'll be danged if I can find the town itself!


My best guess is that Horvat Gurab is in the brownish province on the
left (west) of the map that is labelled Tornai.

There is a town there to the right of the middle of Tornai (just off
the main thorofare running North-South trhough the province) that is
called something along the lines of Hidvegardo.

Could that be your grandfather's town?

Perhaps someone who knows the language can provide a proper
pronunciation for that name, and perhaps someone with keener eyesight
can find your exact town.

Good luck.


pafalafa-ga

Hi Patty,

First of all, it is entirely possible that your family *is*
Czechoslovakian, while still emigrating from Hungary in 1908. This is
because of the many shifting political boundaries in eastern Europe
following WWI and WWII. Most significantly, in this case, the Treaty
of Trianon signed on June 4, 1920 which reduced the size and
population of Hungary by about two thirds. In a nutshell, big portions
of the Kingdom of Hungary, part of former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy,
were broken up and distributed as follows:

- the region of Transylvania went to Romania
- Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia went to Czechoslovakia 
- Croatia, Slavonia and the western part of the Banat joined the newly
formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
- most of Burgenland went to Austria

So, the town where your family lived may very well have been part of
Hungary in 1908, but later part of Czechoslovakia (now part of the
Czech Republic or Slovakia). I've often encountered similar situations
in my genealogy research - my grandfather's family always said they
came from Poland (and they did), but most census records and their
immigration record through the port of Philadelphia list them as
coming from Austria (which had control of the section of Poland where
they lived during the early 1900s).

I could go into great detail a variety of strategies for finding the
location of this town (or other town in Eastern Europe), but others
already do it well. Due to the changing politics of the region,
chances are that the town name from 1908 is very different from the
name of the same town today. That's the key thing you need to realize
when researching in Eastern Europe. Anyway, here is a wonderful Web
site which discusses the entire process, including a list of sources
for tracing place names from the former Kingdom of Hungary.
http://www.iabsi.com/gen/public/kingdom_of_hungary.htm

Given the specific information you provided I was able to find your
grandfather's entry in the Ellis Island database. If you notice, they
also list that they are planning to meet their father in New York. I
looked up his name and found the individual who I think is he (he
lists Mineville NY as his destination...the same destination as his
sons a year later) immigrating to the US in 1907. He lists the town
from which he came as Gurab. Since that is also how I read the
original (not transcribed) manifest for your grandfather -
horvatgurab, rather than horvatqurab - I think this may help to
identify the town.

Using this spelling, the following site tells me that Horvatgurab is
now the present-day town of Chorvatsky Grob, Slovakia. (This would
have been a part of Czechoslovakia between 1920 and 1993 - after which
the Czech Republic and Slovakia were formed from what was formerly
Czechoslovakia).
http://www.radixforum.com/places/browse/ct1913/pozsony.html

As the previous researcher mentioned, the 1828 census put this town in
Hungary...but in the "Pozsony" county (megye), not "Abauj-Torna."
http://www.iabsi.com/gen/public/Documents/1828_Census.pdf

Here are two family genealogies (from the same Web site) which
specifically mention both the old town name and its current town name:

http://www.angelfire.com/oh4/civwar/family/slovak.html
http://www.angelfire.com/oh4/civwar/family/pommern.html

This site about the town itself includes a list of some of the former
names of the town:

1552 Horwat az Grwab
1730 Horvath Ayszgrub
1808 Horvátsky Grob
1948 Chorvátsky Grob

Don't ask me what the rest says, however, as I don't read Slovak.
http://www.chorvatskygrob.sk/historia.html

The town itself is located in present-day western Slovakia, just a
little east of Bratislava (coordinates 48°14'00"N   17°18'00"E)
according to this gazetteer of Slovakia:
http://www.iarelative.com/c.htm

I hope this helps to answer your question. Best of luck in your search
for your roots!

--inquisitive-ga

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Clarification of Answer by inquisitive-ga on 01 Sep 2004 21:35 PDT

Here's a map which you may appreciate:
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Trail/1037/samorin/map.html

And this one from 1912 Hungary (before it became part of
Czechoslovakia) actually lists the town as Horvatgurab (it's in the
light gray-green section in the middle of the left-hand side. The town
name itself is in the upper right of the gray-green area, just
slightly down and to the right of the larger town name of SZENTGYORGY
(in the light brown section):
http://lazarus.elte.hu/hun/maps/1910/pozsony.jpg

Hope this helps!

--inquisitive-ga

Outstanding! Thank you so very much for your incredibly detailed
responses- I can't wait to share this with my brother and sister. It
also hadn't dawned on me to check earlier records for his father's
records, which revealed the more likely spelling of "Horvatgurab" (I
kept looking at the original spelling which used "qurab"- thought it
looked odd, but with languages...). Thank you *so* much!!!
Patty Denison

A bit of information on the history of Chorvátsky Grob in English
(about settlers coming from Croatia):
http://www.hr/darko/etf/croslov.html