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Slovaks in Pre- World War 1Pittsburgh June Granatir Alexander

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Slovaks in Pre- World War 1Pittsburgh June Granatir Alexander Diversity Within Unity: Regionalism and Social Relationships Among Slovaks in Pre- World War 1Pittsburgh June Granatir Alexander began immigrating to Pittsburgh in the 1880s. The majority of these early immigrants came from counties innorth- SLOVAKSeastern Hungary. By 1900, however, the emigration movement had spread to include northern Hungary's central and western coun- ties. As Slovak immigrants moved into the "Steel City/' they did not cluster in a single Pittsburgh neighborhood. Instead, during the pre- World War Iera, several areas of Slovak settlement emerged in Pittsburgh and Allegheny City, which Pittsburgh annexed in 1907. By 1910, Slovak immigrants had established one Lutheran and four Roman Catholic churches in different Pittsburgh neighborhoods. These national churches brought together Slovaks who shared a com- mon language and religion but who had emigrated from different regions of northern Hungary. On occasions such as the dedication of Saint Joachim Church in1910, Slovaks from the Pittsburgh area came together to celebrate their countrymen's achievement and to share in their satisfaction. In addition to Saint Joachim's congregation, fifteen Slovak lodges from Pittsburgh and nearby towns marched in the parade. Five bands engaged by various Slovak societies added pomp to the day's festivities. 1 Describing the dedication, one Slovak boasted that "other nationalities could not help but be overwhelmed withhow Slovaks stick together so nicely and publicly demonstrate their soli- darity." 2 This Slovak celebration probably didimpress passersby and non-Slovak residents of the area. During the two decades prior to World War I,Pittsburgh's non- June Granatir Alexander, who holds a doctorate from the University of Minnesota, has taught at the University of Cincinnati and Ohio State University. Her book, The Immigrant Church and Community: Pittsburgh's Slovak Catholics and Lutherans, 1880-1915, is being published this fallby the University of Pitts- burgh Press. This essay is based largely on Chapter 7 of her book. 1 lednota, Sept. 7, 1910; Branch 50, First Catholic Slovak Union, Zapisnice [minutes], meeting of Aug. 7, 1910, inBranch 50 Collection, Slovak Museum and Archives, Middletown, Pa. (hereafter, Branch 50, FCSU, Zapisnice). 2 ]ednota, Sept. 7, 1910. The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 4 (October 1987) Copyright © Historical Society of Western Pennsyhrania 317 *\u25a0?! o r-l r-» O (D f-! <T> O V k«.^Ct» >>. v 4< I " "> ° ° IIP 3 s I 4J O S C ,H * * 1-8 i s •^ O <o 2 Si U Si £> c *C «> ? c3 rs ts vO ro rH (M <^l "2 3 §^ a^ siI fc g-5 g . £ & S|«8 v. $;£ « c X v h « « 3 » Hi " -* S^ H rH CO IS.-r 5 5 ! .a ISw Io »H? <» v^ 8 Q> 1§ L- >o <*> u) <i Q >Q « "Z ti g o« Mf-lcOtSrHrH 0>,J2S iiiilJSii 1 1Mill5 llll u en tn en en X A Slovak Regionalisms 319 Slovak residents saw repeated examples of such activities. Marriages and funerals, as well as the dedication of churches, provided oppor- tunities for joint public observances worthy of the occasions. To on- lookers, Pittsburgh's Slovaks probably did appear as a unified com- munity whose members were cognizant of a unique ethnic identity. These immigrants certainly attached themselves to clearly ethnic parishes. A shared commitment to their churches 7 survival had helped coalesce strangers as well as family and Old World friends into church communities. A view from within Pittsburgh's Slovak communities, however, re- veals that they harbored significant diversity. Despite the ethnic awareness that joining a Slovak church seemed toexemplify, parochial ties and identities cultivated in northern Hungary often persisted. These ties affected social relationships among Slovaks as they decided which fraternal society to join, whom to marry, and whom to choose as godparents for their children. Regional diversity was one of the divisions within unity that Pittsburgh's Slovak communities tolerated as they grew. The following analysis of persistent regionalisms among Pittsburgh Slovaks is divided into two parts. The first section provides statistical data that demonstrate the influence of regionalisms on Slovak marriages, the selection of godparents, and fraternal member- ship. The subsequent analysis offers examples of how regionalisms affected Slovak church and community life. The persistence of regionalisms was evident in Slovak marriages. During the prewar years, the majority of marriages were between immigrants from the same region of northern Hungary. Table 1pro- vides a summary of these marriage patterns. Itincludes only marriages in which at least one partner came from one of Hungary's sixteen northern counties and lived in Pittsburgh when the marriage took place. 3 In 65 percent of these marriages, the partners came from the same Old World county. Equally important, the high percentage of marriages between Slovaks from the same county was due inno small part to the fact that immigrants often married someone who had lived close to them in the old country. A total of 84 percent of the people who married a person from their own county married someone from the same or neighboring Slovak village or town (see table 2). 3 A detailed discussion of the problems and limitations of using church rec- ords, and particularly marriage records, for determining regional persistence is provided in the Appendix ("Methodology for Deriving Data From Church Records") of my larger monograph. June Granatir Alexander, The Immi- grant Church and Community: Pittsburgh's Slovak Catholics and Lutherans, 1880-1915 (Pittsburgh, 1987), 145-47. 320 June Granatir Alexander TABLE 2 Regional and Village Origins of Partners from Same County, Pre-war Pittsburgh Slovak Marriages Total Partners Partners Partners Partners from Villages from Villages from Same from Same Less than More than Church County Village 10 Miles Apart 10 Miles Apart St. Elizabeth 464 161 213 90 St. Gabriel 138 53 58 17 St. Matthew 135 62 68 15 St. Joachim 38 15 19 4 Holy Emmanuel 84 38 37 9 Total 859 329 395 135 Sources: See table 1. Even when Slovaks did not marry someone who had lived in a neighboring village, they often wed an immigrant from the same section of the county who had dwelled perhaps no more than twenty miles away (table 2). For example, Saint Matthew's parishioners from Spisska Magura, in the northern tip of Spis County, who did not marry immigrants from the same or nearby villages, generally mar- ried persons from villages in northern Spis just east or south of the Magura region. Slovaks from Spisska Magura rarely married members of Saint Matthew Church from southern or central Spis County. Similarly, Slovaks from eastern and central regions of Zemplin County who migrated to the Manchester-Woods Run section of western Allegheny City displayed a decided preference to wed persons from their own section of the county. There is, of course, no way of knowing where Slovaks who were married in Pittsburgh's churches first met. Surely many knew their prospective spouses before they emigrated, while others became ac- quainted in the United States. Moreover, the tendency for Slovaks to chain-migrate and settle in the same sections of Pittsburgh no doubt accounts in part for the high rate of marriage between immigrants from the same regions of northern Hungary. Nevertheless, the marked preference displayed by Slovaks to wed men or women from the same area or county offers an illustration of the persistence of regional identities among the city's Slovak immigrants. In instances when Pittsburgh Slovaks did marry persons who emi- Slovak Regionalisms 321 grated from different counties, as 25 percent did, there is evidence that more broadly based regional identities, resting on geography or dialect, still could influence the choice of a partner. The three Slovak dialects (eastern, central, and western) corresponded with specific geographic regions and counties in northern Hungary. Nearly 76 percent of the Slovaks who married someone from a different county still chose a partner from the same geographic region who, hence, spoke the same dialect (see table 3).4 Only 17 percent of Slovaks from the eastern counties married persons from a central or western county. The low incidence of marriage between Slovaks from different regions of northern Hungary apparently did not result solely from the migration and settlement patterns that brought Slovaks from the same regions together in Pittsburgh. Even when Slovaks from different regions lived in the same neighborhood and attended the same church, marriage between them rarely took place. For example, Saint Joachim Church inFrankstown claimed a number of Slovaks from Zemplin, an eastern county, and from Bratislava and Nitra, two western counties. But marriages at Saint Joachim's between Slovaks from Zemplin and the western counties were uncommon. From 1909 to 1914, the church's marriage register recorded seventy-two marriages in which at least one partner was Slovak; only one of these united a Slovak from Zemplin with an immigrant from a western county.5 Frankstown Slovaks from the two western counties of Bratislava and Nitra, how- ever, did frequently intermarry. Since part of the emigration from Nitra and Bratislava was in fact a chain migration from the central border regions of these two adjoining counties, some of the county intermarriages were actually between persons from neighboring villages. A significant portion of Nitra's emigrants, however, came from the northwestern tip of that county, which was a far distance from central Bratislava County. When immigrants from this northern region married persons from central Bratislava County, as they often did, they broke out of the tightly limited geographical marriage pat- tern. But they still adhered to a regional pattern, for they did not marry people from such distant counties as Zemplin. Saint Gabriel Church in Woods Run also claimed Slovaks from different areas of northern Hungary, primarily the central county of Liptov and Zemplin, in the east.
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