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In Search of "Dead Relatives" (Page 2)
It was time to
do some serious digging. I had read about the "Ships Passenger
Lists" that detailed every newcomer who came to America
during the great immigration of 1900-1920. There was a copy of
them at the research center of the Public Library in New York
City. Surely, it would be easy to find a name like "Buryk"
on it. I hadn't strained my eyes so much on microfilm since graduate
school. And all the handwritten name listings were almost indecipherable,
but there it was. Buryk, Mihal. Eureka? No, just the beginning.
Next stop, the Family History Center of the Church of Jesus Christ
of the Latter Day Saints (LDS). The Mormons travel all over the
world filming birth, marriage and death records to help reunite
families through religious conversions even after the intended
convert has long since left this mortal world. I found the village
of Mihal Buryk listed in the Ships Passenger records. Radosycze.
Here were Buryks, hundreds of them, stretching back into the 18th century! Was this our family? Not exactly. The names didn't fit and the records ended in 1860 so I couldn't make any final connection to Mike who was probably born around 1890. More digging...
Then came new
Buryks. Living Buryks. Buryks here I could talk with! My father,
Harry, remembered there was a Theodore Buryk in Newark when he
first went there to trade school in the late 1940's. He never
met him. After some serious detective work, I found his daughter,
Mary, still around at 72 and willing to tell me as much of the
story of her father as she knew. He came to America through Boston
in 1910 from Wolochyi, Ukraine, near Pidhajci. Great story --
too far east!
Next came Linda Buryk and the Buryks of Staten Island. Linda
tracked me down through a newspaper article in which I appeared
in the Jersey Journal in 1994. We agreed to get together for
me to meet her family. Over dinner in their kitchen, we talked
about her grandfather, Dmitrii, who came from "Ukraine"
in the early 1900's. No one knew any more. The names in the family
matched many of ours. I was sitting across the table from Mike
Buryk, Linda's Uncle. There was also an uncle Harry Buryk living
in Central Jersey. I went back to the Ships Passenger Lists and
found Dmitrii Buryk. Arrival: 1905. Village: Sokole. Where the
heck was that? Gotta dig deeper...