Interpreting History of Rusyn Villages based on Church Schematismus Data

Have I mentioned how much I love Archive.org lately? It's so good! There's so much incredible information for those willing to sift through it. I don't remember how, but I found a number of Schematismus books for the Diocese of Munkacs, Hungary. The Diocese of Munkacs is now known as the Greek Catholic Eparchy of Mukachevo, and is in today's Ukraine. It used to include parts of eastern Slovakia, but today only includes Zakarpattia Oblast, Ukraine. These books detail information on each of the Greek Catholic churches, the village, etc.

Research Subjects

Both of my Rusyn ancestors attended churches in that diocese, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I thought it would be interesting to see what I could learn about their villages from these church records.The villages are 50km apart (approximately 30 miles):

• Kalna Roztoka, Slovakia - Current population: 615 ^[1]
• Lyuta, Ukraine - Current population: 2412 ^[2]

Data Collection

In total, I found 32 books on Archive.org, ranging from 1814 to 1915. On average, there were 3 years between each book. I set up a spreadsheet to collect data for each village, including the following:

• Year
• Link
• Village Name
• Page #
• Priest's Name
• Administrator's Name
• Cantor's Name
• Church Name
• # of People 
• # of People in Other Branches
• Total # of People
• Church Name (Other Branch)
• # of School Children
• Other Notes
• District

This is the majority of what can be found in the books. A comprehensive look would want to translate the descriptions and capture additional data, such as whether the village had a train station or post office. Amenities like these were identified with a symbol.

Results

I found it interesting to learn the names of the priests in each village. The priest in Kalna Roztoka in 1915 was Basilius Lyachovics. I have a 1933 letter from him to my great-grandmother, providing the birth and death dates for my great-great-grandparents, and asking her to send money to help care for her sister. In a separate post, I might look into the average length of time priests stayed at these two villages.

One of the most interesting, quantifiable changes over this 100 year period is the population of each village. This chart highlights the largest changes. The image below has the population colorized on a scale of red-yellow-green, where red is lowest and green is highest.

This raises the question: what happened circa 1856, that Kalna Roztoka lost 50% of their village population, and Lyuta lost 17%, in the prior 9 years. Or in 1836 when Kalna Roztoka lost 28% of their village population, and Lyuta lost 25%, in just 1 year.

Here's another view of the population changes:

Data on European Epidemics, Famines, and Weather

I'm writing this blog post while under a Stay At Home order for the COVID-19 pandemic, but I started work on this post in Fall 2019, before the virus was on anyone's radar. At that time I found it interesting how much information there is on historical climate-related disasters, pandemics, and famines. Now I have a different perspective, as we are living through a modern-day pandemic. The situation is eerie.

While I was unable to find any documentation of specific disasters, famines, or epidemics in either Kalna Roztoka or Lyuta, I did find some related information.

Lyuta is on the other side of the mountain crest from Austrian Galicia. It seems logical that a famine in Galicia could indicate difficult times on the other side of the mountains as well. The Wikipedia article on Famines in Austrian Galicia ^{[3, 4]} notes famines in 1832, 1853-1855.

The Wikipedia List of Epidemics ^[5] shows a global epidemic from 1855-1860: the 3rd (Bubonic) plague pandemic.

I looked into potential climate-related disasters, but had a hard time finding specific data. This website has some interesting climate observations: https://www.tambora.org/index.php/grouping/event/list?g%5Bqt%5D=&t%5Byb%5D=1800&t%5Bye%5D=1954&s%5Bcn%5D=9934&sort=t.begin&mode=search&page=14 If anyone has climate data for the 1800s, let me know!

Sources

1. Kalna Roztoka Wikipedia Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaln%C3%A1_Roztoka
2. Lyuta Wikipedia Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liuta
3. Famines in Austrian Galicia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famines_in_Austrian_Galicia#Chronological_occurrences
4. Excerpt from "Oil Empire" by Alison Fleig Frank mentioning Galician famines: https://books.google.com/books?id=jNaFc1OdN-QC&pg=PA45#v=onepage&q&f=false
5. List of epidemics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics