After finding that immigration document that listed Mihail Salaj I immediately called my grandparents and told them. As far as I knew this was the first name we had ever had past my great-great-grandfather Nikola. I scheduled a day to go out and show them the document that I’d found. My grandpa had done some digging in the days before and managed to upstage me on the surprise scale. I might have had a manifest with a name on it, but my grandparents had something even better: an obituary and a few letters.

The obituary was for Mihail, otherwise known as Mija. It was essentially everything I had been looking for, and it had been lost in a stack of papers for who knows how long. At one point in time, my grandparents hired a professional to travel to Sremska Mitrovica and see if he could dig up some information for them and in my opinion he very much delivered. The letters were written to Nikola’s brother, Ivan, who also immigrated to Pennsylvania. Some of the letters had English translations companions but three were still in Serbian, along with the obituary, and try as we might, we could not find someone who would translate it without charging an arm and a leg. A year later I took my boyfriend with me to their house, and the genealogy records were brought out again. We started talking about renewing our search to find someone to translate them when my boyfriend offers an interesting nugget; he actually knows somebody who speak Serbian.

I cannot put into words how over-excited I got. I immediately had him ask his friend if she could look at the obituary since it was the smallest and least daunting task. He did, she said yes, and she definitely delivered.

The obituary not only listed his age and time of death but also what cemetery he was buried in. Most importantly, it had names. Suddenly I had something real to work with. It listed Mihail’s spouse, his five sons (and three of their wives) and his daughter, as well as her husband’s surname. It was hard to tell which wife was married to who, but it was a start. As far as the letters went, they were mostly written to Ivan from his sister Klava. However, there was also a couple letters written from Nikola and Ivan’s great-nephew Rudolf. The one that stuck out the most was a faded letter written in light blue ink. Toronto was written at the top alongside a date and down at the bottom in the prettiest cursive I’ve ever seen was “M. Salaj.”

If this seems like a lot of information to digest, trust me, I get it. I didn’t even know where to start. There was so much I wanted to try and verify but I had no clue how to do it. In great-nephew Rudolf’s letter he had mentioned his grandfather, who would’ve been Nikola’s brother, as Rudolf Salaj who was killed at war during World War II. The obituary, however, does not list a Rudolf as Mihail’s son. Mihail died in 1934 so Rudolf would’ve definitely been alive.

Another question nagging at my mind was, who is this M. Salaj in Toronto? I had never heard anything about having Canadian relatives, unsurprisingly given that I did not really know much about the Salays. I decided the best thing I could do was enter all the names in my Ancestry tree and hope that somebody else had at least one of these people in their trees. I lucked out with Nikola’s brother, Hinko a.k.a. Hajnrik. If the obituary was a breakthrough, then Hajnrik was a full on miracle because the next day when I checked me tree there was a hint attached to Hajnrik. He was listed in the tree created by his great-great granddaughter, Carla.

I messaged Carla and we began sharing information. She too had experienced an enormous amount of trouble finding information on her Salaj ancestors. It was truly amazing when I saw her tree. I had wondered if my line of Salajs had been the only ones to survive this long but it was very apparent at that point how wrong I was. Her tree also answered some of the questions I had. I now knew to pair Hajnrik with Tereza on Mihail’s obituary, and who this M. Salaj from Toronto was. By looking at Carla’s tree, the only person it could be was her great-grandmother and Hajnrik’s daughter-in-law, Matilda. I had tried to get the letter translated after knowing for sure who had written it. The grad student I asked wanted more than I was willing to pay, but did tell me that it was a very, very personal and angry letter.

If only I could read it.

*Pictured at the top is Mihail and his wife, presumably named Ana, courtesy of Bonnie Salay.