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The Vavra Story The Family of Joseph Vavra (1849-1892) and Helena Maderic (1858-1940)
Mary Kadlik |
Joseph Vavra |
Teresa Antalek |
Genevieve_Kadlik
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Helena Maderic was born on Aug
18, 1858.
Her parents, Jan Maderic (1826) and Helena Riska (1836) were married 3 Feb
1853.
Josephus
(Joseph) was born
in 1849.
His parents, Stephan Vavra (1825) and Terezia Valachovic
(1830) were married on 6 Feb 1848.
Joseph
(age 24) and Helena Vavra (age 17) were married 28 Oct 1873 in Kuty, Slovakia.
The
witnesses of their marriage were Michael Karafiat and Michael Vrabel.
Joseph
was living in Kuty, House # 126; Helena was living in Kuty, House #458.
They were both Roman Catholic. (Source:
FHL, Kuty 1873, entry 34)
(Update August, 2010) We are very excited that the Family History Library (FHL), now has Kuty, Slovakia records available in the United States. We are learning many new and interesting things about our Vavra and other Slovak ancestors. As time permits, we will record the information at this website, starting with the Vavra Birth Records as linked below.
Joseph and Helena lived in Kuty.
Between 1874 and 1993, they had eight children. Two children died only
months after their birth.
Their first four children were born in House #458. The last four were born in House # 546.
The godfather for all the children was Joannes Palkovic. With only two exceptions, the godmother was Teresia Palkovic. Two children had Susanna or Helena Palkovic for their godmother.
See Vavra Birth Records for the details of each child's birth as recorded in the Kuty, Slovakia records on file at the Family History Library.
Joseph died from whooping cough on
October 28, 1892, six month before his last child was born. He is bury in
Kuty, Slovakia.
After
his death, his widow became a seamstress to earn money to support her children.
(Source: verbal, ML)
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A Young Single Mother. Helena Vavra was 34 years old and pregnant when her husband Joseph died in 1892. The children were the following ages:
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In 1897, Helena's children began immigrating to the United States.
Dates of
immigration:
(Source
www.ellisisland.org)
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Natick, Massachusetts
Most of them eventually settled in or around Natick,Massachusetts.
Johnstown, New York
The only son, Joseph, settled in Johnstown, New York.
Schenectady, New York
The youngest daughter, Josephine settled in Schenectady, New York.
In 1911,
when she was 53 years old, Helena
immigrated to Roxbury, Massachusetts with her
youngest daughter, Josephine.
For more details of Helena's immigration,
see
Manifest
After
Josephine married and moved to Schenectady, New York, Helena went
to Schenectady, too, and lived with Josephine and her family.
She is buried at St.Cyril & Methodius Cemetery in Schenectady, New
York
From the obituary of Helen Maderic Vavra,
we learned that she had three brothers:
If any happen to read this page, please e-mail us.
(Update August, 2008) In recent months, we have received emails from several Maderic families. In some cases, we think they may be cousins of Helena. We are continuing to share information with these families to find more and more clues to all of our family history. Learn more about these families at http://Palkovic.us/Genealogy/Maderic.htm
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Josephine and Anna |
Learn more about these families as their individual web pages are developed.
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Virginia Flynn, granddaughter of Anna Vavra Hesek did persistent research at www.ellisisland.org to find the immigration records of the Helen Vavra, her children, and some of the people who married into their family. She also did extensive research at cemeteries, municipalities, and neighborhoods in NY and MA to gather information about all these families. She obtained most of the documents included on this site.
(Update August, 2010) In 2010, now that some records from Kuty, Slovakia are readily available at the Family History Library, Virginia once again devoted time and patience to do extensive research at the Family History Library (FHL) to find and document birth, baptism, marriage and death records of all the Vavra children, their spouses, and close family friends. We are very grateful for the way Virginia's research has enhanced the story of our family with information that none of us knew before.
Barbara Whitaker, granddaughter of Josephine Vavra Palkovic initiated this site. She is the coordinator and webmaster of the site.
Frances Frizzell, granddaughter of Mary Vavra Kadlik has put the Vavra family tree on www.ancestry.com. It is a very comprehensive list of several generations of the Vavra family. Search your grandma, grandpa, mom or dad's name. You'll probably find it on the Kadlik/Vavra Family Tree. It's been the place where we cousins interested in genealogy meet each other. Our special thanks to Fran for this marvelous list and some good pictures, too.
Ivan Faltejsek from Slovakia is researching his own genealogy from the Kúty records in the Bratislava Archives. Some people in his family and ours are connected through marriages. When he finds information pertaining to our family, he forwards it to us. Ivan has been a valuable source for information for our families from Kúty. He has a website at faltejsek.com which includes genealogical data bases and useful links . Ivan is a continual source of help to us and we are grateful to him.
We are in the process of gathering resources that will help us learn about Slovakia--past and present. In 1992, the Slovak Republic became an independent democratic nation. Gradually more books about this country and its culture are being published in English. Since 1995, websites in both English and Slovak are fast appearing. Here are two such books:
Streissguth, Tom; Sexton, Colleen, ed. Slovakia in Pictures. Visual
Geography Series. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Company, 1995.
(ISBN 0-8225-1912-7)
Stolarik, M.Mark Stolarik. The Slovak Americans. The Peoples of
North America Series. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988
(ISBN 1-55546-134-4)
www.amazon.com for very little money. The first is a great overview of modern Slovakia. The second reminded me a lot of what I remember about the community of my immigrant Slovak grandparents. I highly recommend both these books. (Barbara Whitaker)The two books listed above were published for school children to supplement their social studies curriculum. I found them very useful as an adult learning about my heritage. I found them on
Meet Beverly
www.valcovic.blogspot.com
Beverly found our site when searching "Kuty", where her husband's family comes from. They recently made a trip to Slovakia, including Kuty and she has some wonderful information on her blog which we will all enjoy--pictures, information, and links to other peoples sites that are very good.
For the Hesek's among us, these Valcovics have some Hesek relatives.
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This is a mini-bulletin board to network with Vavra families that may be related to Joseph and Helen.
(Update August, 2008) We received an email from Carole who said, "I am currently working on my family tree and my great grandmother was Julia Vavra Zilka. She was born in Kuty Slovakia in 1872." Julia could could possibly be a sister or cousin of Joseph Vavra?
(Update April, 2009) When researching Sprusansky ("kadlic") in the Bratislava archives, we found that Josef Sprusanksy married Julianna Zilka in 1837. Could there be a connection here?
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