Category: Back in Yugoslavia

I wrote about Ivan in my last post and wanted to dig a little deeper into him now. He has been somewhat of a mystery to me, but at least he was a Salaj I knew existed outside of my direct line. In fact, I actually have a lot of information on him. He immigrated to the United States in 1909 and settled in Beaver County, Pennsylvania where his brother Nikola and family would later join him. He lived from 1888 until 1964. Ivan probably didn’t marry until his wedding to Mary (Kopich) Brkich at an age that was relatively late for the times (this according to census data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census) and he never had children.

Just as Nikola’s would, Ivan’s surname would change once he settled in the States. He seems to have primarily gone by Ivan, however some documents list him as “John Ivan” or “J. Ivan”. I found this somewhat funny when I learned that Google Translate changes “Ivan” to “John” when you enter it in as Serbian to English. I have since taken to calling him John-John in my notes. As my luck would have it, he was not the only John Salay from Yugoslavia in the Midwest. He wasn’t even the only John Salay from that region in Western Pennsylvania. The other Pennsylvania John-John was a real trip too because his wife was named Mary. It was rough distinguishing the two at first but after I figured out that that Ivan pretty much stayed in Ambridge, Pennsylvania from the start things became easier.

As far as his marriage to Mary (Kopich) Brkich, I can say with full certainty they were married in Wellsburg, Brooke, West Virginia on August 30, 1924. He was 42, she 35. In 1924, the average age of a person at their first marriage was between 22 and 23 years old. Now, I know that Mary had been married previously to Mathew Brkich, who passed away April 21, 1924. I do not have their marriage date so I had to do some math of my own to figure out approximately when they could’ve been married by. Their only child, George, was born in April 18, 1913, and assuming their were married for at least 9 months before he was born and that Mary’s birthday falls in February then I can reasonably conclude that Mary was around 23 at the oldest of her first marriage.

You might be wondering why this matters to me, or at all even. Back in 2011 I found a ship manifest from August 1909 for the S.S. Carpathia, departing from Fiume and arriving in the Port of New York. That lists an Ivan Salaj who is Slovak and whose closest relative in the country from whence he came lived in Sremska Mitrovica. While that’s all well and good, there are some problems with it, such as it spelling his surname as “Salej” and listing his age as 34 (he would have been 21 in August of 1909). The big thing that holds me back from saying it is without a doubt him is that in the closest living relative portion it looks like he listed a wife. But, that could be for the person above him. That column of the manifest is, typically, so cramped from trying to fit full names and cities that it can be hard to tell what information goes with who. It doesn’t help that the documents are old and in really swoop-y cursive, and are scanned. They can be very difficult to read. I was more inclined to believe it isn’t him, but it is the only manifest I can find that lists and Ivan Salaj and it is about the right time he came over. It would be absolutely wonderful if this Ivan was my Ivan, but I could never convince myself it was. With good reason, considering it is not him.

In 2015, I found Ivan’s naturalization record from West Virginia. I know without a date it refers to my Ivan because it has his correct name (Ivan J. Salay), his exact birth date, and lists him as a tailor, which I know was his occupation thanks to basically every census I found for him. It has his former residence as Mitrovica. More importantly, it has his immigration information. Ivan actually came over on the S.S. Chicago, departing from Havre, France and arriving in New York on April 15, 1910. I checked, and this manifest is not available online so I will have to do some digging for it through actual records.

As I said earlier, Ivan was a tailor by trade and is known to have owned a tailor shop in Aliquippam Pennsylvania with his brother Nikola and also a shop in Ambridge. My grandparents had a surprising number of documents on him that they’ve uncovered over the years and while they are very cool, the documents did not exactly connect the dots for me. They had the guest book from his funeral, a photo of him, notes about him they’d taken during interviews with other relatives, the collection of letters, and finally (so far) a copy his will.

Ivan had some correspondence with his sister, Klava, although from the letters she wrote it seems that he would send her money but would either not write her back often and would not come see her in Srem Mitrovic even though she desperately wanted him to. The first time I read these letters I was under the impression that Ivan was probably not the world’s nicest guy. An unfair assessment to make given that I had never met him and had no real knowledge of his personality aside from the letters, I’ll admit, but it’s hard not to feel like you know a person when you have all of these details on their life.

I eased my harsh judgement a little when I read the letters written to Ivan from his great-nephew Rudolf. Rudolf was the grandson of Ivan’s brother, also named Rudolf. He initially wrote Ivan to inform him that Klava had died and that since they were essentially the only Salajs left, Rudolf the nephew really wanted to keep in touch. It is unclear to me at this time if Rudolf was aware of his relatives in Canada, but my best guess is that he did not. It isn’t the fact that Ivan kept up a relationship with Rudolf that softened my opinion so much as the fact that Ivan kept the letters at all. He kept these letters from his sister and his great-nephew, usually along with the envelopes. In the case of Rudolf, he also kept pictures Rudolf sent of his wife and son. On some level, I reasoned, he had to care.

It wasn’t until I was searching newspaper archives that I realized Ivan was probably not the somewhat cold man I imagine him to be. It was much easier to track down information on Ivan’s step-son George Brkich’s family than it was my own. Brkich and his family popped up frequently in Ivan’s funeral guest book and I knew from Ivan’s will that George was named as a beneficiary. Ivan’s will dictated that $1,000 was to go to his great-nephew Rudolph while the rest of his savings were to be split equally among George Brkich and Nikola’s surviving sons George (my great-grandfather) and Louis. I spent some time searching newspaper archives for the Brkich names in the book when I came across a Classifieds ad published in the Beaver County Times on October 22, 1954.

I’ve found a lot of obituaries and articles on Nikola Salaj’s descendants and George Brkich’s descendants, but only one other time have I come across a separate article over somebody post-death (George Brkich’s wife and children took out newspaper ads multiple times to honor George on the anniversary of his death). Granted, this particular ad from Ivan aimed more towards those who helped them through that difficult time but it still stood out as an anomaly among the Salays.

I’m going to end this post with Ivan and Mary’s obituaries, both published in the Beaver County Times. Mary’s was published October 18, 1954 and Ivan’s February 13, 1964.

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.