A Stepping Stone: Anna Benjak Found.

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Lately my daily routine was to jump on FamilySearch and look for random surnames to see if I could find anyone. No real rhyme or reason to my search habits. I guess I was just hoping for that needle in a haystack moment. I started the same as every other day, the usual names Hopfengartner, Maczek, Kondrc, and then I went to Benjak. So far I was not getting anywhere fast. At this point I decided to search for a total block in my tree. I mean I know her parents names, I know where she was from, but there was no documentation besides a SS-5 form for Social Security. I wanted to know more about her.

The name I searched for was Maria Lisciski. She was my great great grandmother on my mothers side. She was the wife of Pavol Benjak and they lived in Slovakia. Punched in the name Maria Lisciski, 5000 matches. Hmm, lets try and narrow that down a bit. Started with Collections.

I used Slovakia, Church and Synagogue Books, 1592-1910. Still about 300 names. I tried to add Benjak under spouse name but that did not help much so I tried Pavol as his first name. At the bottom of the search with Pavol, and the Slovakia Collection there was a Maria Lisciski (Liszicky) and a Paulus Benyak.

Maria looked good, Paulus? I guess that could be Pavol, not really sure, as for Benyak vs Benjak from what I understand not much of an issue. But the first name that appeared was a Catherina Benyak. Currently I do not know of any Catharina Benjak (Benyak) in my tree.

But the parents names and location of birth: Cerová: Lieskové, Senica, Slovakia sounded familiar to me. I remember that Lieskove from either the mother, or the children that I have listed. Not having info currently in front of me (thanks to a dead computer). No worries really, I have all documents and what not stored in dropbox, but my ready tree is now just Ancestry.com till I can get everything back up.

Well back to this searching. Page 2 pulls up and now there are 4 more names that are children to these parents that I have no clue about. Same parents, same location, ect, and then I see her. Anna Benyak, quick look at date puts her a year off from what I know. It shows her birth year as 1890, I have her as 1889.

Ok not a big deal right? The 1890 was the christening. Anna was born 13 Feb 1889 per my current info. Thank to FamilySearch they have a document to view available. Going to her name shows she was born 1890, and then I scroll over to the year/month. 13 Feb 1890. I think I found her after all these years. Never considered her a brick wall but now it gives hope that if I found her I can fill out the rest of her family and go back another generation with actual facts, not just assumptions.

About Post Author

Xfaith

David has been an avid home genealogist for 15 years, researching surnames: DECKER, KONDRC, MACZEK, HOPFENGARTNER, PERUTZ, LEDERER, and more.