A Touch from Slovakia

When I started working on genealogy, I really couldn't find much information on the web about our families. I decided I'd leave tracks across the internet, so that other family members wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel.

Over the last few years, I've been contacted by a good number of distant relatives and it's been wonderful! Many have shared information. Some relationships have resulted.

Toward the end of January, I got a totally unexpected message from Slovakia! It was from Beata, who didn't think she was related to the Valachovics (original spelling), but was wondering if we knew of some of her mother's friends who had immigrated to the US.

Their names were familiar to Larry, from his childhood in upstate New York, but he didn't know anything about them. I forwarded the message to his cousins [brother and sister] Rodney and Dee. I soon heard from Rod, who said that he (and his wife Jean) and Dee (and her husband Dick) were thinking of taking a trip to Slovakia in September--and would we be interested in going, too. Yes, yes, yes! More about that later. Back to Beata.

Beata is a teacher in Bratislava, although she lives outside the city. We exchanged several messages and at some point, I told her about Larry's great uncle Tony who had made a trip to Czechoslovakia in 1963 for the ordination of another great nephew. I told her the name, as I remembered it. Wouldn't you know! I had the correct name and Beata was able to locate him easily! She even went to visit him in his office in Bratislava! Now we're looking forward to meeting Beata and her family, as well as members of Larry's family when we get there! I love the internet!!!