Our family name "Mancik" is quite uncommon. My grandfather Joseph was Slovak and came to the U.S. about 1910 or so. My dad used to say that he entered the U.S. as a stowaway on a cattle ship. I don't know if that is true, since we do have citizenship papers for him. The citizenship papers are dated 1936, and do not include his place of birth, only that his previous nationality was "Slovak". He began working in the coal fields of Pennsylvania as was common for Slovak immigrants in that time, but soon moved on to the Detroit, Michigan area, probably for factory work in the growing automobile industry.

The other "Mancik's" that I have recently come across all seem to trace their people as coming from Moravia. The Slovak Manciks I have corresponded with all seem to recently hail from the town of Palarikovo, a bit east of Bratislava in current day Slovakia. But they say their ancestors first came to Palarikovo from Moravia in the mid 19th century. Moravia is the eastern portion of what is now the Czech Republic. This is the region between Bohemia and Slovakia and includes the city of Brno. From U.S. Social Security records, I know that at least one Mancik (but not from my family) was born in Slavcov. This is the small town in Moravia just east of Brno (and very interesting - it is the site of Napoleon's famous Battle of Austerlitz).

According to our family lore, my grandfather Joseph's father was named "Georgs" [Note: on second inspection that "s" on his Social Security application might actually be an "e" after all. So maybe it was simply "George"]. Joseph's father was killed accidentally when Joseph was still "young". There were no other brothers or sisters. The story goes that the man, who was somehow responsible for the accident, took in Joseph and his mother Eva (Halustick) Mancik. Or maybe they took in Joseph after his mother died sometime later. The story goes that Joseph stayed with this family "until he was old enough to be farmed out." I guess that means until he was old enough to work for his own support.

That is about all we know about Joseph's life in Europe. My dad once said my grandfather could ride a sled full of firewood downhill "all the way back to town". Sounds like a hilly region. Bohemia or Pennsylvania? Certainly not Palarikovo, it is flat there. My dad said my grandfather came to the U.S. because he had no family and also because he wanted to stay out of the Austrian army. Many Slovaks came to the U.S. in those days because there was little opportunity for them in what was then the Hungarian dominated region of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. The U.S. needed labor for coal mines and factories. O.K. Might as well go. How do you say, "I'm there, Dude." in Slovak?

Family tradition is that after he had been in the U.S. for a period of time and had accumulated sufficient money, he then "sent" for my grandmother Eva Hakac who was "an orphan". They were married in Detroit, Michigan in 1912. Both died fairly young in 1942, and are buried in Sacred Hearts Cemetery in Roseville, Michigan (a suburb of Detroit). They had six children, including my father. There were stories of another child who died in infancy. Recently, we confirmed that there was also a 4-month old girl who died in 1914. So, they actually had seven children.

My grandmother Eva Hakac is also somewhat of a mystery. Evidently, my grandparents must have known each other before coming to the U.S. But Eva Hakac was not an "orphan". Her mother had died in childbirth (her birth?) and her father had remarried. This is where the story gets confusing. Evidently her father and stepmother and step-sibling(s) also ended up in Michigan. And evidently they did have some contact with my grandparent's family. Or maybe it was only the step-sibling(s) who came to Michigan. I still need to clarify this with someone. I'm guessing that maybe this involved just one stepsister of my grandmother. The story is they would visit a family named Borsinic somewhere near the town of Brant, Michigan, where my grandparents had owned a small farm. Perhaps Borsinic was the married name of my grandmother's stepsister. My dad said my grandmother could speak something like 5 or 6 languages. These must have been: Slovak, German, Hungarian, Polish, and Ukrainian. (Dad said "Russian", but I bet this was really Ukrainian.)

"Hakac" is also an uncommon name. One genealogical web site that I came across had a reference to the town of Radosovice associated with the name "Hakac". But I have no idea if my grandmother had any association with that town. Radosovice is kind of north of Bratislava and east of Brno, just on the Slovakian side of the border with Moravia. There are only a couple people here in the U.S. with the name "Hakac" - 2 phone book listings and about 3 deceased. [And they got thier Social Security cards in Pennsylvania; fits typical Slovaks in the U.S. stories - coal mining.

Other names of Slovak family friends of my grandparents in the U.S. are Stephanides, and Poulik. I do not know if they knew each other before coming to the U.S. The "witness" name on the marriage license of my grandparents is "Moravek". Perhaps these families came from the same place as my grandparents. Perhaps not. There were certain churches in Detroit that the Slovak immigrants tended to belong to. The church my grandparents were married in, St. Wenceslaus, closed in the 1980's. I think that's where they were married. I think they were members there at one time.

My father always said that my grandfather had no remaining family in Europe. No brothers. No sisters. I remember asking my dad "No cousins?" and he would get kind of defensive and say "No! No family!" Like it was a sensitive subject or something. Strange. I guess my father and aunts and uncles were busy intermingling in the great "melting pot" of the U.S. to be very interested in their parents origins in Europe.

So our family had always assumed there were no other people with the name "Mancik" besides my grandfather's progeny. Recently, I have learned that is not true. Internet name searches list several people with the name "Mancik" in several countries in Europe including of course Slovakia, but also France, Austria, and Germany (Reichenberg, near the Czech border).

There is a reference: "Jan, age 29, arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1910." This showed up in one of those "Family Reports" offered by companies who do a quick genealogical search for a small fee. The reference given in the report is: Baca, Leo. Czech Immigration Passenger Lists. Vol.3. Halletsville, TX; Old Homestead Pub. Co., 1985.

There are also several people with the name "Mancik" here in the U.S. who are NOT from our immediate family. They seem to be clustered in New York and Illinois, but I have also seen references to Kansas and California. Many of these had various people named "John", "Joseph", "Chester", and "Louis" in their families according to U.S. Social Security records.

Do not be confused with "Manczyk", who evidently are of Polish origin. There are also listings of "Chester", "Joseph", "Louis", etc, with this name in the U.S. But this is a different family altogether.

I would be interested in determining exactly where my grandparents came from and if, or how closely, the other Mancik's in the world are related to each other. But all we have to go on right now is Bohemia, Moravia, Slavcov, Palarikovo, and Radosovice as clues. Perhaps my great-grandfather Georgs moved west to Bohemia from Moravia about the same time that other Manciks moved south to Palarikovo also from Moravia. Maybe 100 years ago, Mancik was a very common name in Central Europe and the relationship of the current families is very distant. Who knows?

But it is interesting, isn't it?

Maybe some day, someone will come across the graves of Eva Halustick and Georgs Mancik somewhere in Moravia or Bohemia or Slovakia and e-mail me a photo of the tombstones.