Liptak

Discussion in 'Looking for Ancestors' started by judi, Aug 16, 2004.

  1. judi

    judi Active Member

    my father tells me that our ancestors are czech. could Liptak be a czech surname? if so, is it possible to find out about that further if we do not know anything else other than that surname?
     
  2. Ruzete

    Ruzete Well-Known Member

    Hi Judi,
    check out this site-
    http://www.iarelative.com/search/l.htm
    i think its a site where people type in the surnames they are researching to find family members there are many Liptak surnames all either being searched for in Hungary Czech Republic, or Slovakia!
     
  3. judi

    judi Active Member

    thanks Ruzete, I'll go and have a look...
     
  4. judi

    judi Active Member

    I still don't have a clue what to do and where to begin :(
     
  5. Sova

    Sova Well-Known Member

    Judi,

    I'd start by compiling a family tree from information your father, grandparents (if possible) and other relatives, with the aim of finding when your ancestors immigrated. Hopefully, you will be able to find the name(s) of your immigrant and when they immigrated. Then you can search for them in the immigration records. This should tell you where they came from. If you are in the U.S., some immigration records (Ellis Island, 1892-1924) are available online at http://www.ellisislandrecords.org (there were over 800 Liptaks on record there!). There may be some other online sources that I am unaware of. If you are not in the U.S., I would do a internet search for online immigration records and hope you get lucky (I know, for instance, that the U.K. has some online resources).

    Hope this gives you a place to start!
     
  6. judi

    judi Active Member

    thanks Sova,
    both of you were helpful, it's just that I'm so hopeless.
    I am in Australia but my grandgrandparents were emigrated to Croatia, probably through Hungary. And the only thing I know is their names and aproximate place where they lived, which is Croatia, Baranya.
    I would like to know further. My father says that his grandfather came from Czech but he is unable to tell me where from so I would have a starting point.
    My grandfathers name was Florian Liptak.
    I have tried to look at those pages for people with that name but none of that match.
    so many Liptak's showed up in those searches and no one with that name :(
     
  7. judi

    judi Active Member

    what do you think about professional researchers? would I come up with the same results as they or they have more possibilities and better resolts?
     
  8. Sova

    Sova Well-Known Member

    Judi,

    Do you have dates (at least years) of when they lived in Croatia? It might also help to know if they had official permanent residence status in Croatia, as it may be possible to determine their point of origin from the permanent residence records in Croatia. How to then access these records is another matter, however. Perhaps your best bet is to try a professional researcher, one with experience in Croatia as well as in the Czech Republic (or start with a Croatian expert until you can get a point of origin in the Czech Republic). Unfortunately, I have no experience, first-hand or otherwise, with such professional researchers, so I have no idea what to expect in terms of results. The only other alternative I can see is to try to contact the Croatian consulate/embassy in Australia and ask for information on how to obtain copies of records from their country. Good luck!
     
  9. judi

    judi Active Member

    thanks Sova,
    actually I want to know before Croatia where they were from. I already have some croatian data. Apparently Florian came from Czech to Croatia and I would like to find out where from Czech.
    He married Ana Cople in Croatia...and she came from somewhere...
    what kind of surname Cople would be, and the "o" is with two dots on the top...
    do you have any idea what kind of surname that could be?

    my friend tells me that best thing to do is to go to cemeterys
     
  10. Sova

    Sova Well-Known Member

    The letter "ö" appears in at least two languages I know of, namely German and Hungarian. My first guess is that the surname Cöple is Hungarian, given the proximity of the Baranya region to present-day Hungary, although my brief internet search of Hungarian surnames didn't turn that name up. It's also possible that it is a Hungarian spelling of a foreign surname.

    I understood that you are looking beyond Croatia to find where your grandfather was from. My point was that perhaps you can pick up the paper trail in Croatia in their archives, and in those papers there may be a hint as to where he immigrated to Croatia from and when. Do the Croatian data you have give you any clue as to where your grandfather came from originally (country, region?), or when? If not, it may be possible to narrow your search in the Czech archives by looking for this information in the Croatian archives. U.S. immigration records typically give the place the immigrant came from, and so this was the basis for my suggestion of looking in Croatian records. Note, if your grandfather emigrated from the area of the Czech Republic pre-1918, there may be no immigration records, as both the Czech Republic and Croatia were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before WWI.

    As for cemeteries, if your grandfather (assuming he is no longer living) is buried in Australia, perhaps there is a record of his birthplace on his tombstone or in the cemetery records. It's definitely worth a try, as it's much less effort than the alternatives.
     
  11. judi

    judi Active Member

    thanks,
    yes, my ggrandfather emigrated before 1918. and I do not know where exactly from czech.
    and at this moment I even don't know where he is buried.

    is there any other archive that I can check other than immigration data?
    there's no census kind of data around that date?
    I tried czech and slovak ancestor pages but most of those posts are made few years ago, so all e-mail addresses returned to me :(
    is there any other source I can look at?
    I have looked at that page Ruzete gave me, and the same one for czech.

    so far, it looks like there are many Liptak's around, and my father told me that they all could be coming from one family. :roll:
    it looks like that there are two different Liptak's: from czech and from slovakia.

    I found some Liptak's in Australia too, and not many, so yesterday I tried to call them all.
    none of them could give me more info where they came from and they did not looked interested in finding that at all. :cry:

    I have tried with other surnames that are connected to me, and some of them like Kundinger is even worse to track as that one is also common surname in germany.

    it looks like I will never find out anything :cry:
     
  12. Sova

    Sova Well-Known Member

    If you know the city and/or county he died in, you may be able to find a death certificate in their archives. That certificate may mention a burial place.

    If you can't find the graveyard your grandfather was born in, I still think you are better off trying to look in Croatia first to narrow your search in the Czech Republic. Looking in one small region in Croatia beats searching the entire Czech Republic.
    Since you mentioned your grandfather was married in Croatia, there may be a Catholic (or Orthodox) parish record of the marriage, if your grandfather belonged to one of these religions. It is possible that such a record would have the information you'd need to continue the paper trail back to the Czech Republic. I did a quick search on Croatian parish records and came up with an interesting note (see http://feefhs.org/fij/fij-tom1.html) about records from the Osijek archive (which appears to be something like the county seat/capital of the region which includes Baranya). It reads,
    The microfilming was done by the Genealogical Society of Utah, which is funded by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). It appears that you might be able to access these records locally just by contacting the local group of this church in your area. Of course the records you are looking for might not be there, but it still may be worth trying.

    As for census data, I haven't found any information that there were any censuses in the area at the time. Maybe there were, but I haven't found anything to indicate that there were.
     
  13. judi

    judi Active Member

    thank you Sova,
    I looked at those pages. Osijek is the place where they lived for some time I think.
    I have look at the yellow pages and found address of one of the churches there and I will send them a letter.

    I also heard that some of data were burned but this is realy good info that you found at the internet...

    thanks, thanks, thanks...
     

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