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Celebrating 300 Blog Posts with My Top Ten Favorites

  October 1st marks my 300th Leaves on the Tree blog post. Hooray!! Writing my blog posts is one of my very favorite things to do. I am excited to share my discoveries, family stories, photos, heirlooms, and more. It's always a kick when a cousin, subscriber, or even casual reader comments on a post or finds their own link to my extended family. What could be better than to find connection ?   To celebrate this milestone, I've picked my Top Ten Leaves on the Tree Blog Posts .  And wow, it's hard to pick just ten favorites. But here they are, in no particular order: What Would You Tell Me, Catherine? My imagined conversation with my second great-grandmother, Catherine Ryan Gilbride. In Periculo Mortis A reflection on my strange baptism. Mom's Chocolate Covered Cherry Caper A favorite holiday story! Family Fun Stories: The Rabbit Another fun anecdote involving my mother and brother. What is a Pickslate? Defining the role my great-great uncle took as an eleven-yea...
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GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021 - Photo of Ancestral Place


 

GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021

Ancestral Place - January 14th entry of a 31-day challenge to post a document, photo or artifact on social media every day in January.  

by Nancy Gilbride Casey

 

Soaring 700 feet above the surrounding valley, on a limestone cliff in northern Slovakia, is the magnificent Stará Ľubovňa Castle.1 This very sight may have captured the imaginations and stirred the souls of my great grandparents Anna Sophia Tatar (1883-1950) and John Simonik (1873-1950). 

Well, that was the way this blog post about an ancestral town photo was going to begin. Insert sound of needle scratching a phonograph record here.

Sometimes our imagining of what our ancestors may have experienced collides head on with reality. 

Both Anna and John were born the village of Forbásy, a few miles from this castle. They were baptized in the Roman Catholic church at Gňazdá (now known as Hniezdne). The map below shows the distance from these towns to the castle (starred).


I wondered: Could my great grandparents see this imposing sight from their village? Were they inspired by it every day? Never having been to Slovakia to see for myself, I posed some of these questions to the good folks on the Slovak Genealogy FaceBook page.

Turns out the answer was, "Nah!"

One knowledgeable FBer noted, "Hniezdne is about 2 miles from the castle at Starã Ľubovňa, and Forbásy is about another mile away. So if you were up on a hill and no other hill was in the way, you could barely see the castle in the distance." Womp waaaa.

On the other hand, I did come away from my FaceBook exchange with some other interesting tidbits, such as: 
  • Forbásy was a very small village, with clustered, independent houses. It had no church, only chapels. So, residents went to nearby Gňazdá to tend to Catholic sacraments like baptisms, marriages, etc. 
  • The church in Gňazdá was named Kostol sv. Bartolomeja or Church of St. Bartholomew.
  • The residents of Forbásy at the time my great grandparents lived there may have actually been Goral, a mini-ethnic group combining Polish and Slovak characteristics; I'm tasking myself with learning more about this group in the future.
So as the search continues for a good photograph of Forbásy, at least I now have a bit better mental image of the area...even if my great grandparents couldn't see the castle on a cliff.


NEXT UP: Military Picture
 
 
Thanks to the members of the Slovak Genealogy / slovenské genealógie Facebook page for insights which contributed to this post.


1 "Ľubovňa Castle," by Kateryna Baiduzha (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php : accessed 13 January 2021), licensed under Creative Commons License - CC BY-SA 4.0.



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