Saturday, August 11, 2001

Alan Horbal of Massachusetts is throwing a Horbal Family Reunion on Saturday, August 25th, in Ansonia, Connecticut. He’s posted a web page about the Reunion. Unfortunately for me, the date conflicts with my monthly NASWA duties, so it’s unlikely I’ll be able to attend.

Alan and I haven’t made any connection between our two families yet, but we’re still exploring.

Posted at 8:59:23 AM Link to this entry

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Friday, August 10, 2001

The mystery of the photo of Sobol in uniform ca. World War I is solved. Back in June, I participated in a "ethnic day" put on by my local genealogical society where people could come in and ask questions about how to research their families. I was the "expert" for Ukraine and Italy. I found myself sitting next to Mark Conrad, who was the expert for Russia, but who, more importantly, is an expert on military uniforms. He offered to look at the picture, and came up with an answer:

Bottom line - absolutely American, but with studio props and smelling of either costume get-up or some kind of marching band/civic/fraternal/patriotic organization.

Lots more information from Mark on the Unknown Pix page.

Posted at 12:52:25 AM Link to this entry

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Thursday, August 2, 2001

Well, June and July have certainly flown by. I haven’t had time to update the page in that time, because I was swamped with work on the Coalition to Save the BBC World Service in June and at my day job in July. Genealogy has had to take a back seat for a while, but things haven’t come completely to a standstill. Here’s something I dug up during that time.

Among the stuff my great-great-uncle left at my grandmothers house when he was living there was a book entitled Iistoria Mist i Sil Ukrainskoi SSR, or the History of the Villages of the Ukraine. This is a multi-volume work, but the only one Sobol had was for Ternopilska oblast, where he and my grandmother were born. It’s a book published in Kyiv (Kiev) in 1973, so of course it has a Communist slant to it, but I thought it was interesting anyway. I asked my friend Lidia at work, who knows Ukrainian, to translate the brief entry for Lychkivtsi for me, especially since there was someone mentioned in it with the same last name as my grandmother, Zurbyk. This is what she and her parents came up with. It doesn’t appear to be complete, but it’s close enough, and very interesting.

The village Lychkivtsi is between two rivers, the Tainy and Hnyloï. It is ten kilometers from the railroad station Husiatyn. There are 747 houses in the village. The population is 2,607.

The federal farm, Zhdanova farm, raises wheat, tobacco, sugar/milk and meat. In 1972 the people received the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Flag. The people were S. T. Sitsyns’kij, M. V. Tsupruk, H. M. P’iatkovs’kij, and the one who took care of the pigs, P. P. Zurbyk.

It has two schools to the eighth grade, 28 teachers, and 366 students. It has two clubs, two libraries, one hospital, a drug store, and a kindergarten. There are three stores, and one tailor shop.

From 1962-72, 92 houses were built. In the village, there work 41 Communists and 158 Communist youth. The farm was established in 1954.

The village Lychkivtsi was established in 1562. The Bolsheviks came to the village between July and September, 1920. In the Red Army during the Second World War, 42 men were killed and 30 received medals from the Soviet Union. There is a monument in the village for the veterans of World War II.

Silver artefacts from Kievan Rus (between the 15th and 16th centuries) were found around the village.

I love that bit about the pigs.... I can’t tell if P. P. Zurbyk is my grandmother’s brother Petro from this, but it’s interesting to speculate.

You can see a larger scan of the original Ukrainian text if you wish.

Posted at 10:11:37 PM Link to this entry

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