Ancestors

Mária Vasily

Mária Vasily was born at Vehécz, a village of Zemplén county in the northern part of the Kingdom of Hungary. Vehécz is Vechec today, in the Vranov nad Topľou district of eastern Slovakia. She was born between 1852 and 1855. Her age at her second wedding points to 1855, and her age at death to 1852.

She was Greek Catholic. That was the church of most villages in this corner of Zemplén. Its rite and its liturgy were Eastern, but it was in union with Rome and acknowledged the pope. Her parents are not known.

Vehécz belonged to the Greek Catholic parish of Čemerné, Varannó-Csemernye in Hungarian, whose books also covered Vranov and Juskova Voľa. The parish baptisms from 1831 to 1863 survive, written in Cyrillic script. In 1852 and 1853 three Vasily households were bringing children to be baptised there. In 1852 János Vasily, a gazda, a farmer who owned his land, and his wife Anna Kolesar, of house number 132, had a son Mihály baptised. So did a János Vasilov and his wife Anna, of house number 4. In late June 1853 György Vasily, also a gazda, and his wife Anna, of house number 133, had a daughter baptised Mária. That date fits her ages. But that Mária was of Čemerné, and this one always gave Vehécz as her birthplace, so the two may be different girls.

She married twice. Her first husband is not named in any record found, and he was dead by 1880. When she married again that year, the priest wrote one word in front of her surname. It reads Toncsomak, and the index renders it Tomcsov. It is probably her first husband's surname. Hungarian church books of the 1880s entered a married woman under her birth surname, and every later entry about her says Vasily.

Her second wedding was on 4 October 1880. It is in the marriage book of Varannó-Csemernye, now Vranov nad Topľou and Čemerné, and it was written in Latin. The groom was "Michael Henczovszky viduus", of Rakócz, Greek Catholic, twenty-six. The bride was "Maria Toncsomak Vasily vidua", of Vehécz, Greek Catholic, twenty-five. Viduus and vidua mean widower and widow. The witnesses were Stephanus Gyurko and Joannes Grecula, and after each name the priest wrote colonus, a peasant who worked land he did not own.

She went to live at her husband's village of Rákócz, now Rakovec nad Ondavou. Her children were baptised there. Mihály came first, in 1883. Mária was born on 24 April 1887 and baptised the next day. András was born on 19 May 1889 and died on 10 June, three weeks old. Pál was baptised in 1890, and a János also belongs to the couple. In each entry the priest wrote her as "Vasily Mária", surname first in the Hungarian way, and added gk., Greek Catholic. At András's baptism he gave her husband's standing too: zsellér, a cottar, a man with a cottage and no farmland of his own.

Mária and András had the same two godparents. János Szojka was a Greek Catholic. Mária Harman belonged to the Reformed church, the Calvinists of Hungary.

The family lived between Rákócz and Berettő, a village a few miles off. Berettő is Bracovce today, in the Michalovce district, and it lies next to Falkus, now Falkušovce.

She died at Rakócz-Berettő on 18 May 1892. The Greek Catholic priest of Falkus entered her death. He wrote her as "Vasily Mária, Hencóvszki Mihály (Misó) hitvese": Mária Vasily, the wife of Mihály Hencóvszki, with a pet name for him in brackets that reads Misó. She was born at Vehécz and lived at Rakócz-Berettő. She was forty. The cause was sorvadás, wasting, the usual word in these books for consumption. She was buried at Berettő the next day.

Her daughter Mária was five. Her son Mihály was about nine, and he died two years later, on 29 March 1894, aged ten. Her husband married again. On 25 February 1894 a daughter was baptised at Rákócz to him and a new wife, Mária Ragancsik. The baby was named Mária too.

The daughter of five sailed for America in 1910 and died at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1940 as Mary Hensovsky Kovacs. Her husband could not give the clerk her mother's maiden name, and it went down as Unknown. Mary's own daughter Malveene came closer. Applying for a Social Security number in Ohio in March 1945, she gave her mother's name as Mary Wasil.

If Mária Vasily is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Mária Vasily (d. 1892)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/maria-vasily-1892-f19ada.