Jednota!

March is Women's History Month! It's time for the spotlight to shine on the ladies in our family trees. I'll be writing all month on women I've researched. I encourage all family history lovers to take the month to seek out the stories of our foremothers! They are often under-documented, but they have a lot to teach us.

 

My great-grandmother, Anna Tatar Simonik.

 

On 14 March 1988, after my grandmother, Margaret Simonik Kozlina (1913-1988) died, my mother got a letter from the First Catholic Slovak Ladies Association. In contained the death claim benefit owed to my Grandma's heirs.¹ What Mom probably didn't know at the time was that this letter represented just one event in a chain that reached back 70 some years and was begun by her grandmother, Anna Tatar Simonik (1883-1950).

Anna joined the First Catholic Slovak Union—commonly known as Jednota, meaning "union"—in 1915, about a decade after she immigrated to the U.S. from then Austria-Hungary. I learned this fact about Anna when I read the AR-2 Alien Registration Form she completed in 1940.² 

The First Catholic Slovak Union (FCSU) was one of the oldest and largest fraternal organizations in the U.S. The organization was founded by twelve Slovak men, under the leadership of Rev. Stephen Furdek, on 4 September 1890 in Cleveland, Ohio. The group was looking for an alternative to the National Slovak Society, another Slovak organization, and its too-secular approach to the issues and problems facing Slovak Americans.³

Originally, the FCSU's goal was to provide insurance and other benefits to immigrant Slovaks and their families living and working in America, especially in and near Pennsylvania's dangerous mines and Cleveland's factories.⁴ This would have been a familiar concern for Anna, as her husband, Janos (John) Simonik (1873-1950), toiled in the coke ovens and mines, first in Westmoreland Co., and later in Fayette Co., Pennsylvania, where they made their home.⁵ The dangers were apparent all around them. In a time before health insurance or workers compensation, the sick or dying depended upon the kindness of their friends or neighbors for care or funeral arrangements.⁶ By joining Jednota, Anna and John may have purchased insurance for John, providing more financial security than they otherwise might have had.

Janos Simonik, Anna's husband, worked as a coke drawer in Westmoreland Co., Pennsylvania, in 1910. Detail from this H.C. Frick Coke Company poster shows what his daily life would have looked like.

But there were other benefits besides. Jednota provided cultural connection to other Slovak immigrants in their community. By 1933, Jednota had over 100,000 members. By 1934, there were 52 Jednota lodges in Fayette County alone, with a membership of over 5,000. For a sense of scale, consider that a local newspaper announced a change in venue for the 1936 annual Jednota Catholic Slovak picnic; originally to be held at one park with an expected 5,000 in attendance, the event was moved to a larger park in Connellsville, which would accommodate 10,000!⁷

The lodges also sponsored dances, baseball teams, and bowling leagues. Jednota was instrumental in  founding many Catholic Slovak churches and an orphanage. In 1891, FCSU began publishing bi-lingual newspaper (also called Jednota), which is still in publication today.⁸

Slovak cookbook published by the FCSLA. 

 

Rev. Steven Furdek also encouraged the founding of the First Catholic Slovak Ladies Association (FCSLA), begun in 1892 in Cleveland. Another fraternal organization, it too offered death and injury benefits to its members.⁹ Both my grandmother and my mother, Ann Kozlina Gilbride (1937-2010), belonged to FCSLA, and purchased insurance from them. I remember well the green FCSLA cookbook that Mom owned as well as seeing the Fraternally Yours newsletter come to the house periodically.

Among the artifacts that I inherited after my mother passed away were some of my grandmother's belongings. In November 1976, Grandma received a letter from the FCSLA which announced that her insurance certificate was paid up as of 31 October 1976. The small, yellow certificate #120729 must have provided some comfort to Grandma knowing that she could leave some small inheritance to her children when she died.¹⁰

Grandma's insurance certificate, issued in October 1976.

Mom's 1988 letter closed the circle begun in 1915 by her grandmother Anna and represented three generations of benefit from Slovak fraternal organizations Jednota and the First Catholic Slovak Ladies Association.

Until next time...

© Nancy Gilbride Casey, 2026. All rights reserved.

 

 

IMAGES

Anna Tatar Simonik, unknown photographer, circa 1920, private collection of author, Tioga, Texas, 2026.

Genuine Connellsville Coke, print, n.d.; imaged, Library of Congress (https://lccn.loc.gov/2003673029 : accessed 15 March 2026); citing Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540. Public domain.

Cookbook, photo by Nancy Gilbride Casey, 15 March 2026. Private collection of author, Tioga, Texas, 2026.

Insurance certificate, image by Nancy Gilbride Casey, 15 March 2026. Private collection of author, Tioga, Texas, 2026.

 

NOTES

¹ Helen L. Golias, FIC Treasurer to Thomas J. Kozlina, Jr., letter, Beachwood, Ohio, 14 March 1988, death claim for Margaret Kozlina, check cover letter; family papers privately held by N. Casey, [address for private use,] Tioga, Texas, 2026. Letter was held in personal belongings of Margaret's daughter, Ann Kozlina Gilbride, at her death in 2010, and passed to Ann's daughter, Nancy Gilbride Casey.

² Anna Simonik, A2052201, Alien Registration Form, 20 September 1940, Uniontown, Pennsylvania; Record Group 566: Records of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, College Park, Maryland.

³ Jim Dubelko, "First Catholic Slovak Union," Cleveland Historical (https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/593 : posted February 26, 2013. Modified September 27, 2023). 

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ 1910 U.S. census, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, population schedule, East Huntingdon Twp., Enumeration District (ED) 118, sheet 29B, John Semallak household; imaged "1910 United States Federal Census," Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7884/images/4449972_00618  : accessed 15 March 2026).

⁶ "History of Slovak Union Is Related," The Morning Herald (Uniontown, Pennsylvania), 26 Feb. 1936, p. 10, col. 1-2; imaged, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-morning-herald-history-of-slovak-uni/192156689/ : accessed 27 Feb. 2026).

⁷ Ibid. 

⁸ Dubelko, "First Catholic Slovak Union."

⁹ "First Catholic Slovak Ladies Association (https://www.fcsla.com/about/history/ : accessed 2 March 2026), "History of FCSLA Life."

¹⁰ First Catholic Slovak Ladies Association, certificate of final payment, #120729, issued to Margaret Kozlina, 31 Oct. 1976. Certificate was passed down to Ann Kozlina Gilbride, Margaret's daughter, upon Margaret's death in 1988, then to Nancy Gilbride Casey, Ann's daughter, after Ann's death in 2010.