Dobrý deň! Welcome! This site is my attempt to share what I’ve been doing over the past 8 years or so. I chose the domain name “SlovakJames.com” because in all of my travels to meet my Slovak relatives I’ve always been told “There is no name ‘James’ in Slovak”. Well, now there’s a Slovak James!
My interest in genealogy started in 2010 after seeing the show “Who Do You Think You Are?” on NBC (currently on TLC). I soon signed up for a month-to-month ancestry.com account and I was hooked. Unfortunately, I didn’t start earlier when my parents or grandparents were alive to fill in some of the holes. The records that you find online can give you facts, “the what and when”, but they can’t always give you “the why”. Years later and I’m still discovering new stuff about where I come from. I’ve learned a lot about my Slovak roots but there’s so much more to learn.
On this site you’ll find a small subset of my family tree. I still use ancestry.com for my work (yes, I’ve switched to a yearly subscription!) so all of my tree can be found there. So why setup this site? Ancestry is good for showing the facts — relationships, dates, sources, etc. , but I wanted to mix both the genealogy and history with travel and pictures. I wanted to tie the facts to the experiences of today. To that end, you’ll also see some of the many pictures I’ve taken during the trips my wife and I have made to Slovakia and around the United States.
If anything you see on this site looks familiar to you and you think we may be related, let me know. If you want to use any of the pictures or documents from this site, please ask first. I’ll gladly say yes to any private use but it’s still polite to ask. I’ve been surprised a couple of times to see my pictures scattered on other sites and they didn’t even think to ask if it was OK. My contact information is available on the Contact Me page.