The World Around Them: My 2x Great Grandparents from Litmanova

In this post: From mountain village Litmanova to company town Star Junction—how two worlds shaped one immigrant family.

@Genealogy Matters Storyteller Tuesday Challenge

This post is the fourth for Robin Stewart’s Genealogy Matters Your Sixteens – Storyteller Tuesday Challenge.

The World Around Them: Constantinus Hurkala and Anastasia Hlinka
My Mother’s Mother’s Mother’s Father and Mother

Two Worlds, One Family

The world around Constantinus Hurkala (erroneously Konstantine in previous blog posts) and Anastasia Hlinka changed completely between 1883 when they married and 1900 when they left what is now known as Slovakia, forever. They traded mountain meadows for cinder-covered company town streets, subsistence farming for industrial labor, and open skies for the orange glow of beehive coke ovens. Their story is not just one of immigration, but of how two unforgiving worlds shaped the choices available to one family.

Litmanova: A Mountainside Struggle

Both Constantinus and Anastasia were born in 1860 in Litmanova, a mountain Ruysn village perched at 656 meters above sea level in current northeastern Slovakia.¹ The world around them offered little hope. Hungarian nobles owned more than 90 percent of arable land while peasants struggled to survive on plots smaller than five acres. Landless agricultural workers earned less than twenty-five cents per day under harsh conditions.²

Each July, entire Litmanova families migrated to “majdans,” wooden mountain chalets where they cut and prepared hay for winter. The hay became their most important source of survival. It fed the livestock that provided milk and meat. Bread always had to be purchased. For several weeks each summer, families swapped village life for these mountain retreats because in this poor land, the majdans represented survival itself.³

Constantinus and Anastasia married in 1883 and started their family. They would have six known children. They buried little Maria, presumably their first, in 1885, then Petrus, the last born in Litmanova, in 1894. The losses were devastating, but they reflected the brutal reality of rural poverty.

By 1900, staying meant watching their surviving children face the same grinding poverty. The decision to leave was survival, not adventure. Somewhere between Litmanova and western Pennsylvania—across borders, languages, and an ocean—the world around them changed forever.

Star Junction: Industry’s Harsh Promise

The world that greeted them in Star Junction, Pennsylvania bore no resemblance to mountain villages. Founded in 1893 when Washington Coal and Coke Company opened Washington No. 2 Mine, this company town housed nearly 700 people by 1900.⁵

Constantinus became a laborer in the coke works. The work was brutal but steady. They lived in a company house built by Washington Coal and Coke Company. The houses sat on cinders dumped from the coke ovens. Grass would not grow. When wind blew, cinders flew everywhere. The beehive ovens burned so intensely their light allowed residents to read newspapers at night.⁷

Everything connected to the company. Workers bought from the company store, rented company houses, and their children attended company-sponsored schools. This total control characterized patch towns throughout Pennsylvania’s coal country.

The air Anastasia breathed carried soot and sulfur. The ground beneath her feet was industrial waste. The sky glowed orange each night from hundreds of coke ovens. This was the world around them now.

This was the world in which Anastasia cooked, bore children, and aged—her lungs and hands absorbing the cost of industrial America.

What They Gained, What They Lost

Constantinus and Anastasia traded one harsh world for another. They left behind mountain traditions, their native language as the primary tongue, and burial plots holding two children. They gained steady wages, surviving children who would build American lives, and escape from aristocratic oppression.

Anastasia died on January 18, 1917, having spent seventeen years in this industrial world. Constantinus followed on June 30, 1923. Neither lived to see their American-born grandchildren grow up, but the world around those grandchildren offered possibilities Litmanova never could—possibilities built on choices made in both places.

For more about my Slovak ancestors, see:

“From Wide Open Spaces to New American Lives“, “Diving Into the Names That Built Our Family Tree” and “Life Before America: Farming, Famine, and the Roots of Emigration“

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Have you traced ancestors who made similar dramatic transitions between rural and industrial worlds? Share your stories in the comments.

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1. “Litmanová,” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litmanov%C3%A1 : accessed 25 January 2026). ↩︎
2. Cleveland State University, “Socio-Economic Conditions,” in Slovak Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland, digital edition (https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/slovak-americans-and-their-communities-of-cleveland/chapter/socio-economic-conditions/ : accessed 25 January 2026). ↩︎
3. “History of the holy place Litmanová – Hora Zvir,” Hora Zvir (https://horazvir.sk/en/history-of-the-holy-place-litmanova/ : accessed 25 January 2026). ↩︎
4. ibid. ↩︎
5. Historic American Engineering Record, “Town of Star Junction, State Route 51, Star Junction, Fayette County, PA,” Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/item/pa3046/ : accessed 25 January 2026). ↩︎
6. Historic American Engineering Record, “Star Supply Company, Church Street & Old State Route 51, Star Junction, Fayette County, PA,” Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (https://www.loc.gov/resource/hhh.pa3047.photos : accessed 26 January 2026). ↩︎
7. “STAR JUNCTION, PA,” Coal Camp USA (https://www.coalcampusa.com/westpa/klondike/starjunction/starjunction.htm : accessed 25 January 2026). ↩︎
8. Photograph of Constantinus Hurkala, Anastasia Hurkala, and unidentified child, Star Junction, Pennsylvania, date unknown; notation on photograph reads “Sztaba 56 umrela January 21 1917” [Company House 56, she died January 21, 1917]; privately held by Kirsten M. Max-Douglas, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2026. ↩︎