The small town of Jakubany lies on the Levocske Valley where the River Jakubianka flows. The area was logged a long time ago, some of the surrounding mountains have iron mines that are now exhausted. There are pastures surrounding the town and the steeple of the Saints Peter and Paul Greek Catholic Church is the most recognizable landmark.
There are records of the village dating back to 1322 when it was within the property of the Ľubovňa landlords. Jakubany is in the ethnographic region called Lemkivshchyna that straddles the Poland-Slovakia-Ukraine border. The Lemko people are part of the larger ethnic group called Rusyn or Carpatho-Rusyn and sometimes the terms may be used interchangeably. There is a local saying that the people from Jakubany have lived in many countries without ever leaving town and that is true: the area has been part of Great Moravia, Poland, Austria-Hungary when it was called Galicia (not to be confused with the community in Spain), Czechoslovakia and now Slovakia. The original people from the region, from whom the Lemko descend directly, are the White Croats, with the term white referring to being from the North. In the 7th Century a group of White Croats migrated to the South of the continent and that allowed for other Slavic peoples to take part of their old territory, among them the Poles and Czechs. Later German, Slovak and Wallachian migrants came to work for the hereditary landlords. The area is relatively isolated, being ensconced in rugged mountains and subject to harsh Winters. Jakubany’s population over the centuries has always averaged around two thousand people, and that is still true today. The XIXth century was particularly hard with bouts of epidemic diseases coupled with the Austro-Hungarian domination that forbade the locals from practicing their language and religion caused a diaspora that brought many families, including the Stuckas, to the United States. During the two great wars of the XXth century the Rusyn people were targeted as minorities and sent to concentration camps, the most well-known being Thalerhof near Graf in Poland, where almost six thousand people, many of them Lemko, were detained and tortured and killed during WWI. There were two attempts at establishing an independent Rusyn/Lemko nation in the XXth century, around the time of the two big wars. Both were short-lived. Today Lemkos still live in Slovakia, Poland and Ukraine where they are among recognized minorities, and they also have a big and thriving community in the US, specially in Western Pennsylvania. That is where our branch of the Stucka family arrived in the early 1900s.
We can find Stucka, or Sztuczka family members in Jakubany since at least the late XVIIIth Century, going back to the oldest church matrika records have available. Here is the direct family line:
Eliaz Sztuczka b. ca. 1744 d. 24 Mar 1801 married to Maria (1758-1839), parents of
Georg Sztuczka b. 18 Apr 1787 d. 13 May 1867 married to Anna Katrenicz, daughter of Eliasz and Anna Czopiak, parents of
Jan Sztuczka b. 10 Sep 1809 d. 25 Oct 1892 married to Christina Scsurko daughter of Anton Scsurko and Anna Gulyassy, parents of
Jan Sztuczka, b. 8 Dec 1841 d. 2 Oct 1891 married to Suzanna Raß, daughter of Jan Raß and Anna Sztrachan, parents of
Jan Sztuczka, b. 29 Oct 1893 d. 3 Nov 1959 married to Suzanna Vaszily, daughter of Nikolaus Vaszily and Anna Mrug.
This is the Jan Sztuczka who came to the United States sometime between 1907 and 1909. He left his wife Suzanna Vaszily and daughter Anna, a toddler, in Jakubany. Suzanna and Anna joined him arriving in the US right on 28 Dec 1909. Ten months later, John Stucka was born in Graceton, Pennsylvania. He is my children’s great-grandfather. The family did not stay in America, which was not a common move at the time. We do not know the reasons, but the family went back to Europe just as the continent was to embark in World War I. Besides Anna and John, they also had Katarina, Suzanna, Eva, Joseph and Stephan. Anna, John and Eva returned to the United States as adults. I was able to trace all of them except for Stephan, that I suppose was conscripted to fight in World War II. With to him being born in 1926 this would likely have been towards the end of the war.
John Stucka, my father-in-law’s father, returned to his birth country on 28 Sep 1928, just shy of his 18th birthday. He came back malnurished and went straight to work in mining in Pennsylvania and Colorado, where he had relatives. Eventually he settled in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a city with a large Estern European population. He got married to Maria Fuchila (Fuczyla), also of Lemko heritage, at the Saints Peter and Paul Russian Orthodox Church in 1942.
The couple had two children and John died a few weeks before the birth of the third child, victim of a workplace accident at age 37. His oldest sister Anna married John Zavalidroga, they had one son. She died in Elizabeth, NJ in 1976. The other sister that came to the US, Eva, married John Zereback. She died on Long Island in 1984 and I am not certain about descendants.
I was able to find some information about the remaining siblings in Jakubany. Katarina Stucka married Jan Duffala and died during childbirth in 1936. Suzanna Stucka married Nikolaus Horcsar, had two children I could locate, and died in 1968. Joseph Stucka married Anna Marchevka, I found references to three children, he died in 1994. Stephan Stucka I was not able to locate as mentioned above, he probably went to war and his whereabouts are unknown.