I am a history freak. My favorite books are historical. I get a kick out of learning about events and ways of life that were previously unknown to me. I suppose that my interest in history goes right along my search for my ancestry. I have had great luck in some branches of my family tree and not so much in others. I have been rather surprised by how much I was able to learn about my immigrant grandparents who came here from Czechoslovakia. Using ancestry sites, family stories, reading historical tracts and culling through dusty boxes of family documents have provided some interesting insights about my ancestral heritage. 

For years there was a family disagreement about where my grandparents were born. Everyone seemed to agree that my grandmother was born in Czechoslovakia but there were two different stories about my grandfather. While some agreed that he too was born in Czechoslovakia, others insisted that he was born in Cleveland, Ohio. For a very long time I had no proof either way until one of my cousins sent me a box of documents that had sat for years in a dusty garage. 

I had to use gloves to handle the yellowing and brittle papers and most of them gave me little new insights about my grandparents. It was a photo of a page in the family Bible that unlocked the mystery for me. It clearly listed both grandparents dates and locations of birth along with the names of their respective parents. Further verification came from yet another cousin who had enlisted the help of a professional from Slovakia who confirmed that the names, places and dates that I had found were indeed correct. Furthermore the new findings gave me the names of my great great grandparents as well. 

My grandfather was born Pavel Dusan Uhrik in Trencin in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I read about the era when he was growing up into an adult and learned that the Hungarians had created very strict laws for the nations under their thumb. In fact they had made it unlawful for anyone in their empire to speak native languages, instead insisting that all citizens had to speak Hungarian in schools, churches and other public places. The rules were incredibly restrictive and considered Slovaks like my grandparents to be of a lesser quality than Hungarians. The Slovakian people were treated as inferior and generally relegated to lives with less education and laboring jobs. 

I suppose that my grandfather was looking for a way out of the horrific treatment of his people and so when places like Houston, Texas sent advertisements to European countries enticing the people to come to America he saw a way out of the situation. In 1912, he booked a ride on a steamship from Bremen, Germany and found his way to Galveston, Texas which was one of the ports of entry at that time. I have seen his name on the register for the day that he arrived. 

Grandpa Uhrik found work at a farm near Houston and saved his money so that he might send for my grandmother the following year. She too arrived in Galveston and the two of them got busy planning for a future that would allow them the freedoms that were missing under Hungarian rule. Eventually Grandpa would Americanize his name to Paul D. Ulrich and he would also become a naturalized citizen of the United States.

. According to my mother and aunts and uncles my grandfather was quite proud to be and American and he cherished the freedoms that came with his move. He instructed his children to ignore the taunts that were hurled at them by people who were angered by their presence because they were immigrants. He urged them to hold their heads high and to appreciate the opportunities that were so numerous in the United States even as rocks were being hurled at them.

My mother often spoke of her father’s attention to the country from which he had come. He was quite happy after World War I when the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell apart. While he was not so sure about the Slovaks and the Czechs being joined as one country, he was at least happy that his nation finally had found a way to be free. When Hitler invaded he was gravely concerned that his people were once again subservient to a nation that only wanted them for their rich farmland and supply of labor. He carefully followed World War II and was especially proud that all four of his American sons served in the military and helped to free Czechoslovakia once again.

My grandfather had wisely used his talents, his curiosity and his investments to have a house that he owned and a job where he faithfully worked. He had even bigger plans for his retirement years so he had purchased land in Richmond, Texas where he hoped to one day have a farm. Unfortunately he had a cerebral hemorrhage and died after World War II around the time when Russia laid claim to Czechoslovakia and made it a member of the USSR.

My mother always wondered if her father’s stroke resulted from yet another disappointing enslavement of his homeland by an authoritarian government. She said that when the takeover was announced in the news her father cried, something that he had rarely done in all of his life. 

I have followed the fate of what is now Slovakia for most of my adult life. I was ecstatic when the USSR fell apart and Slovakia became a free nation in its own right. I have most recently been concerned by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his rarely spoken but very real desires to resurrect the former USSR. I worried about the authoritarian government in Hungary with its rules that sounded so much like the ones that convinced my grandfather to leave his homeland so many decades ago. I felt his smile in my heart when Orban was defeated in the recent election and I found myself hoping that there will be no more bitter disappointments that would have make him cry. 

I think I understand my grandfather even though I have never met him. He was an honorable man who endured humiliation from Hungary in his youth and had to ignore those who did not want him in the United States. His grandchildren like me and my brothers and cousins have truly enjoyed the best that the United States of America has had to offer. My hope is that we will preserve our freedoms which are now under stress. I think he would appreciate that so far we can still speak our minds and even protest the wrongs that we see. I imagine him feeling quite proud that he was able to give us such a gift. I know that I will always thank him for his foresight and will do my part to preserve the freedoms that mean so much to us all.