Dream On, Chapter 8: Family History Mystery
My ancestors were the Slovaks, minority immigrants living in Yugoslavia. For decades my Aunt Winnie and her mother, Oral Amanda Blackburn had done research on my Slovak Grandfather's side but never got further than his parents. They had contacted his half brother, Josef (from his father’s third wife), but he didn’t know much about his father’s side of the family.
I wrote to his son, Jan, when I was young. It was exciting to think I had relatives far away in a place called Yugoslavia. I remembered that it was communist for a while. My letters would come back to me with parts cut out because I had asked him about communism or said how America was better. I was 10 years old, so I didn’t understand about governments reading personal mail and editing with scissors! I was stunned by the revelation that this was his reality.
We communicated off and on through a decade. Jan lived with his father in Africa, where his father, Josef, was a diplomat for Yugoslavia. He sent me a beautiful purple stone necklace. Then somehow he did something “bad” according to the government and had to leave the country for the safety of himself and his family. By then I was married. He needed to immigrate but was having difficulty coming to the US. I didn’t comprehend why it was difficult. It seemed he needed a sponsor, it was very expensive, I contacted my uncle Don who was wealthy and asked if he could help Jan out.
Somehow Uncle Don was able to bring Jan to Canada and give him a job. Josef came over to visit, I was not able to meet either of them at that time. Evidently Jan was not a good worker, and apparently was quirky, entitled, and maybe depressed. Uncle Don and Aunt Winnie were pretty mad at him. Jan and I would speak on the phone and he was confused and couldn’t figure out why people were mad at him. I think it was a situation of unmet expectations, terrible communication skills on both parts, and typical toxic family dynamics.
Jan finally moved out of Uncle Don’s business and got a job doing something scientific. Jan explained it to me but I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around it. Plus his strong accent made it hard to understand his words, especially over the phone. There was always intrigue, people monitoring his computer, shutting down his phone, landlord’s kicking him out, bosses spying on him, always something.
As I became very busy with my young family I lost contact with Jan. Then in about 2016 I suddenly had a strong urge to find our Slovak ancestors. It persisted, I made some futile attempts on familiysearch.org to find stuff with no success. Then one day I got on Facebook and searched “Šimovič”, my grandfather’s last name. I found 4 or 5 people with the last name of Šimovič. I contacted each one of them with the same message. “I am Heather Seable, my grandfather was Paul Leonard Šimovič, a Slovak from Yugoslavia, I am interested in family history and looking for any information leading to his father Stefan Šimovič or mother Susana Bohdan from Hungary.”
Months passed with no response from anyone. Then one day I opened my computer and saw this response. “That’s MY father.” That’s when I personally contacted Josef Šimovič for myself. I was thrilled. I asked him if he had any historical records showing his father’s birth, parents, or death.
Again, months passed and one day another message appeared. A photograph of an old church record with the entry of Stefan Šimovič and his birthday. My eyes widened with surprise and joy! A written official record was a gold mine.
I immediately expressed my joy and asked if there was more family information…I knew he probably had a job and was very busy, but I was willing to pay $300 USD if he could please go back to that church and find other relatives.
NO response…for months, then over a year, then I woke one day knowing I had to go to Yugoslavia and find these people. I was driven. I had a stash of money I was saving for a future mission with my husband. I decided that going to Yugoslavia was part of a mission I needed to do.
I didn’t know anything about Yugoslavia except that our family was from there. My father said our family lived in Backy Petrovac. I Googled airports in Yugoslavia, and nothing came up. I was amazed. I searched “nearest airport to Backy Petrovac” and the closest airport was Belgrad, Serbia. Serbia? Wasn’t that a dangerous war torn place I heard about in the news? I definitely wasn’t going to fly in there. I searched on. Maybe it was in Slovakia? Where was that? I got a map of Europe… no Yugoslavia! I Googled, “Where is Yugoslavia?” AND found out that there had been a civil war in the 1980s and it had broken up into separate countries.. In my online search I found that Backy Petrovac, which was once in Yugoslavia, is now in SERBIA!
I was embarrassed by my ignorance! Holy Cow, I didn’t know anything. After a LOT of research into the history of the geographical spot my family is from, I have found that it was once Austria, Hungary, Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Yugoslavia, Serbia…back and forth and back and forth the borders have changed. My ancestors were very acquainted with the devastations of war and hardship and VERY adaptable.
I called my brother, Adam, who was a high school English teacher. I knew he’d have the summer off and might be free to join me. I wanted him to come with me to Serbia as my body guard. I have traveled foreign countries with him before, he wasn't the best traveling companion then, but decades had passed, maybe this time would be different, and I thought it just plain safer to not be traveling in Serbia as a lone woman.
“Adam, I’m going to Serbia to do family history work. I need a body guard. I will pay your way but you have to do everything I say. It’s not a vacation, it’s work.”
“It’s not a good time”, Adam replied, “we’re having trouble with Henry, Holly won’t want me to go.”
“Come on,” I pleaded. “ This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. You never do anything fun any more. Henry will always be Henry. It’s just two weeks. Please work it out.”
“Oh man, I’d love to go. That does sound good. I’ve never been to Serbia. Maybe….and you’ll pay my way?”
“YES, but you HAVE to do what I say. It’s not vacation, it’s business!”
So a few days later he called to say he’d go and I booked the tickets. Then I FACEBOOK messaged Josef, “I’m coming to Backy Petrovac in June, I would like to stop by and take you to lunch and talk about our family history. If you have any photographs, or an old family bible or anything like that please bring them with you. I would love to take pictures of them.”
The response was IMMEDIATE. “YOU’RE coming HERE??!!” Then Josef gave me his phone number and his email so we could communicate better. A few months later Adam and I were on a plane excited for our journey.
We worked hard, walking graveyards and recording interviews with Josef. He spoke English very well. His son, Miroslav and Miroslav’s wife, Ana, lived with him. His granddaughter, Miroslava, had recently left for medical school and she rarely came home anymore even though her university in Novi Sad was only 30 min away.
Josef didn’t know anything about his father really. His father rarely talked about his family and didn’t know his own father who had died when he was young. Joseph had NO Šimovič photos or information…at least not any he was willing to share or tell about. He took us to a graveyard in Kulpin telling us that his father was from Kulpin…it was about 15 min from town by car.
As I walked the Kulpin graveyard I was so frustrated. I had come all this way and paid so much money for nothing…not a single extra piece of information. It was hot and humid. Josef and Adam gave up walking the graveyard and sat under a tree. They wanted to leave. I wasn’t leaving until I had LOOKED at every single headstone. The graveyard was extensive and in shambles..many of the headstones were unreadable, broken, or vandalized but I dutifully marched on in the heat.
“Your sister is very determined” Josef muttered to Adam in the warm shade of the tree. “Yes, she can’t be stopped when there’s a bee in her bonnet” Adam laughed. “She reminds me of my wife,” Josef smiled. Josef’s wife had passed away a few years ago and he missed her very much.
Of the hundreds of gravestones I only found ONE with the name of “Šimovič” , the wife of someone. I took a picture. Across the street was a large Evangelical church that looked ancient. I’m going in there to see if they have a map of this graveyard. Maybe they have names of people whose gravestones are ruined.
“Oh don’t bother the priest. He’s very busy” Josef protested. He was really adamant that we should not bother that priest.
“Look, if I was here alone I would just walk into that church and ask questions. So that’s what I am going to do.” I was annoyed.
I went in and sure enough, the priest WAS busy but I made an appointment to meet with him the next day.
When we returned, the priest, who spoke perfect English, said, “ How can I help you?” I told him we were from America and researching our father’s paternal line. We were looking for anything that could help us with Simovic names. “Simovic?” he repeated, tilting his head.
“SHIMOVICH” Josef interjected. “Shimovich” “AHhh”, said the priest “yes we do have Shimovich’s here.
Adam and I were stunned. OUR name was SHIMOVICH? Not Simovic. We laughed. We had been saying it wrong our whole lives. There’s a little curve over the S and the c that give them the “sh” and “ch” sounds that we didn’t know about. It was very fun. Then the priest opened a cupboard behind his desk and there were 6 or 7 VERY OLD record books. He opened one up and looked in the year that Josef said was his father’s birth year.
He ran his finger over the faded brown ink and handwritten rows and columns and stopped at Stefan Šimovič (Shimovich) there he was, listed as being born and to the right…his parents names…mother’s maiden name listed…CLUES…pieces to the puzzle, I began to cry. I was SO excited. The priest said that so many people had contacted him from the United States looking for their family history that he had paid someone to take pictures of every single page of every book and he had uploaded them to his church website.
He gave me the link and I downloaded all the books onto my ipad. I was THRILLED beyond belief. I thanked him profusely and could hardly wait to go back to the house and start searching. Josef and his family wanted to take us places and go out to eat, but once I got those books I just couldn’t not look at them. I sent Adam off with them and began skimming the digital pages…name after name after name..So many people in Kulpin in 1822, Šimovičs marrying Valentijks, Hrubjks, Maglosky’s…..on and on I read until my eyes burned like hot coals. It was a burden to eat, or sleep but I did.
On the second to last day of our stay Josef took us to see his brother Jaroslav in Novi Sad. He didn’t want to and it was only on our insistence and pleading and Ana’s intervention that it happened. Jaroslav was the older brother. He and Josef had separated paths twenty years or more ago during the civil war and Jaroslav refused to return Josef’s calls or so he said. Josef came with us to help translate but he was not comfortable.
Jaroslav’s home was in a dilapidated apartment complex that looked like it had been bombed out. Many ground floor apartment windows were broken and the rooms appeared to be unoccupied. We climbed the stairs. The apartment was very tiny but had the appearance of old finery. Polished and decorative wood covered the walls and furniture. A chandelier hung in the sitting room that doubled as a bedroom.
Jaroslav’s spinster daughter, Reina, sat quietly on the edge of the bed and smiled as we talked and shared pictures of our families via our cell phones. Then Jaroslav produced a stack of black and white photographs of himself and Josef when they were young, and their father and mother. MORE pieces of the puzzle! Jaroslav, the artist, had the family information and cared to hold on to it! As the men talked to each other, Adam and I were suddenly very aware that the men’s mother was in the room. We felt our ancestors in that room!
On the way home, Josef expressed happily, “Did you see how he laughed? Did you see how he talked to me? Maybe there is hope. Maybe we will be friends again.”
My heart broke. These brothers had been separated by family jealousy, war, and politics for decades and the younger brother had yearned for a relationship. Our family history efforts were healing generations past and present. A Miracle.
On the way home we entered the Belgrad airport and I went up to the counter to get our boarding passes. The ticketing people were very kind. I handed Adam his pass and we got on the plane. I looked at my seat and it was in the NICE seats up front..they were wide and spacious. Adam’s ticket was in the very back of the plane, very small and crowded.
Adam came up to me and said, “Hey did you upgrade your ticket and leave me in the back?!” “No, I just gave them my confirmation number and assumed they’d put us together. There’s no one in this row, just come sit by me.” So he did.
The flight attendant came to check our tickets and said there was no way Adam could sit there unless we paid $200 more dollars or something crazy like that. We were so surprised. Poor Adam. He scowled as he went back to his crowded seat.
As I stretched out over the nicely padded empty seats and fell asleep I had the distinct feeling cross my mind that the spirits of our ancestors had changed my ticket to give me the comfortable seats and a good rest to say “THANK YOU for finding us”.
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