MY DEDICATION

From the Carpathians to Pennsylvania

This Page is dedicated to the memory of my parents, FRED DRAN (b. 1900) and MARY SIRAK DRAN (b. 1913) who were children of immigrants, and to all of the relatives that came before and after them. It is also dedicated to the inhabitants of the Carpatho-Rusyn villages of my ancestry,

SWIATKOWA WIELKA and DUDYNCE, both formerly in the crownland of Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire, as well as the village of HRABOVCIK on the southern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire administered by Hungary.

My ancestors were originally serfs, emancipated in 1848 by the Hapsburgs who ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They became peasants with small land holdings and had a self-sufficient lifestyle dependant on the land. In May 2002 I traveled to my ancestral villages now located in southern Poland and eastern Slovakia. Somewhere in my mind I envisioned an idyllic life of the past and anticipated visiting and entering a time warp of village life. Time changes things and so do war and politics. I found a few of the typical log cabin homes, but in most cases homes had been destroyed and rebuilt after WWII. In two of the villages, Greek Catholic residents had been deported in 1947. Houses were abandoned, decayed or scavenged, leaving only an empty space. Like shrines, springtime apple trees bloom and bear witness to the past souls who once lived there on the still beautiful but sparsely settled rolling landscape of the Carpathian Mountains.

e-mail me at Carpatho_mts@hotmail.com

Return to index