In this post: For Basilius Marcisak (b. 1848) and Maria Gladis (b. 1851) of Litmanova, Slovakia, their season of change came through staying—not leaving. Between 1901-1920s, all seven of their surviving children emigrated to America, settling in Pennsylvania coal towns and New York City. While their children became Americans, Basilius and Maria remained in the Kingdom of Hungary, maintaining ancestral ground as their family transformed across an ocean.
@Genealogy Matters Storyteller Tuesday Challenge
This post is the sixth for Robin Stewart’s Genealogy Matters Your Sixteens – Storyteller Tuesday Challenge.
A Season of Change: Basilius Marcisak and Maria Gladis
My Mother’s Mother’s Father’s Father and Mother
History follows the travelers, the ones who pack trunks and board ships. But for Basilius Marcisak and Maria Gladis of Litmanova, the most profound season of change involved staying exactly where they were while their world migrated away from them.
A House That Was Once Full
In Litmanova, nestled in the Carpathian foothills of Szepes County, Kingdom of Hungary (now in northern Slovakia), Basilius and Maria raised twelve children. The mathematics of their lives were stark: between 1872 and 1895, five of those children died in infancy or early childhood—Nicolaus, a second Nicolaus, Anna, Gabriel, and Eva.
This gave them years of practice in loss, in the particular grief of parents who bury children in the same rocky soil where they themselves were born. But seven children survived to adulthood: Vasilius, Michael, Nicolaus, Anna, Mary, Joannes, and finally Helena, born March 20, 1897.
For a time, their home must have been full—of voices and hands and the particular chaos that comes with a large family in a small space. This was the world before change arrived.
The Geography of Staying
Around 1900, the surviving children began their departures. One by one, they left Litmanova. Nicolaus left for Pennsylvania, marrying Katherina Hurkala in 1909. Vasilius followed his younger brother in January 1901, marrying Katherina’s sister, Anna in September 1903. Two brothers married two sisters, creating a new family structure an ocean away (See: “When Sisters Marry Brothers: A Tale of Two Families Intertwined“). Little sister, Anna, followed in 1902. Michael in March 1901. Mary (Maria) left in 1905 and in 1907 Joannes departed Litmanova. Even baby Helena would eventually leave, in 1913.
By the 1920s, all seven surviving children had relocated to America, settling in Pennsylvania coal towns like Star Junction and Mount Braddock, and across New York City’s boroughs – Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx.
The Transition of Subtraction
For parents who stay behind, change arrives not as arrival but as absence. It’s measured not in new addresses but in empty chairs. The transition happens gradually: one less place at table, one fewer voice in the morning, one more silence where conversation used to be.
Basilius and Maria experienced a fundamental shift in identity. They transitioned from being the heads of an active local household to serving as the remote anchors of a legacy that existed almost entirely elsewhere. While their children were becoming Americans, learning English, navigating Ellis Island, working in coal mines and factories, and building lives in industrial landscapes, the parents remained in Litmanova.
The village around them likely changed little. The same church where their children were baptized still marked the hours with bells. The same neighbors who had helped bury five infants and celebrated seven survivals remained nearby. But their world had fundamentally transformed. They had become living links to a past their children were leaving behind.
The Endurance of Remaining
This was their season of change: not the drama of departure but the quiet experience of watching departure happen again and again. While the documented history of the Marcisak family follows seven children across the Atlantic, it began with two people who stayed.
They endured the deaths of five children in the same village where they were born. They raised seven more to adulthood. And then they experienced the gradual transition from fullness to emptiness as those seven children rebuilt the family name in places called Pennsylvania and New York.
By the time the migration was complete, the Marcisak presence in Litmanova existed primarily in memory and in graves. The home that once held twelve children held far less. The family Maria and Basilius created had become thoroughly and irreversibly American. They remained thoroughly and permanently in Litmanova, in the Kingdom of Hungary, in a world their children’s children would know only through stories.
This is the season of change that doesn’t make it into immigration stories: the long, slow experience of being left behind, of staying in place while everyone you created moves toward a world you’ll never see.
Your Turn!
Have you discovered ancestors who stayed behind during family migrations? The season of change for those who remained is rarely documented in ship manifests or naturalization papers, yet their choice to stay shaped your family’s story just as much as those who left. Share your own story of ancestors who stayed behind in the comments below.
- “Empty dining table in Slovak cottage,” digital image generated by Kirsten M. Max-Douglas using OpenArt.ai, 10 February 2026; image file privately held by Kirsten M. Max-Douglas, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2026. ↩︎
- “Litmanova village in Carpathian mountains Slovakia,” digital image generated by Kirsten M. Max-Douglas using OpenArt.ai, 10 February 2026; image file privately held by Kirsten M. Max-Douglas, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2026. ↩︎
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