Ancestral Villages & Towns in our Family History
Lekart | Dobra | Nagy Azar | Michalovce
Our families have come from a relatively few towns in eastern Europe and spread out all over the world. This page gives a few facts and links to picture pages for some of these locations.
Rege's Shogan/Sogan ancestors lived in the small farming town of Lekarovce in the 19th century. The town was called Lakart when it was part of the Ung district of Hungary in the 19th century. I have also seen it called Lekart, Lakord and Lekord. After WWI it was placed in the eastern edge of the Subcarpathian-Ruthenian state of the new nation of Czechoslovakia. The citizens were not too thrilled to have been excluded from the central Slovakian state and traveled to Uzgorod to protest. Apparently to no avail. Just before WWII (1939) Hitler forced a separate state of Slovakia to be formed. The area imediatly around Lekart, however, was granted to Hungary. After WWII Czechoslovakia was recreated and included Lekart. In 1993 the Slovak Republic sepaerated as an independent nation. The town now sits right on the boarder with Ukrania in the south-east corner of Slovakia. It is on flat land just south of the Carpathian mountains. To the east you can see the city of Uzhorod, obviously once a market for Lekart's farm goods, but now separated by a barbedwire fence. The city is split by the Ung river. Years ago the Sogans had to cross by raft or ferry to get to the Greek Catholic Church on the North shore. The town was first mentioned in the historical records about 1400. It now has a population of about 1200 as it did 200 years ago. The Greek Catholic Church was built about 1800 although tradition says that it is much older. There are lots of Sogans still in the town.
Lekarovce is in the southeastern corner of the Slovak Republic, right on the Ukranian border. It lies about 120 miles north east of of Budapest. It is a farming town with a population of about 1000, about the same as in the early 1800's.
I visited the town in 1998 and some of the pictures I took can be accessed below. Sitting on a flat plain south of the Carpathian mountains, the town was in the way of both the Germans and Russians dring WW2. I've been told that the only buildigs that survived the war were the two churches and the Sogan "castle". My Sogan ancestors belonged to the Greek Catholic Church but most of the grandmothers were Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholic records are not in the LDS files so I have not been able to trace them. The GK Church and the castle are both supposed to be 300 to 400 years old.
The castle is not a castle of course, but when it was built most people lived in small huts and it was the biggest structure in the area. I do not know when the Sogans took position of the building, at least by 1900 if not much earlier.
Lekart Links:
You can see the location of the town on a map at:
http://www.mapquest.com/cgibin/ia_find?screen=ia_find&link=ia_find&uid=d00a4a24e06pczm
Other Lekart decendents I have found on the internet
Dobra/Kis Dobra, Slovak Republic
Kathy's Radvansky (Radvanszky) and Pastor ancestors both immigrated from the town of Dobra, known as Kis (little) Dobra in the 19th century. It is located just ~15 miles south of Lekart and is now located immediately north of the Hungarian border. It is flat farmland in the subCarpathian plain. The quiet hamlet has it's own Greek Catholic Church, a town hall and is still a Hungarian speaking town. The southern edge is bordered by train lines that have consumed the Pastor house.
Dobra was in Zemplin county in the Austro-Hungarian era, Slovakia during the first Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938), Hungary during the war, the 2nd Czechoslovak Republic til 1993 then the Slovak Republic. The town has a population of about 500 today compared to ~800 in 1800. There are still Radvanszkys and Pastors in and nearby the town.
Kis Dobra Links:
Other people on the web from
Dobra (Kis Dobra)
This is the town were Rege's grandmother Susan Gulyas Shogan immigrated to the United States from. Velke xxx is a suburb of and is on the northwest corner of the city of Trebisov. It lies about 30 miles west of Lekart. This area is rolling hills. There is a Roman Catholic Church. There are no known relatives still in the town.
Velke
Ozorovce picturesOther Nagy Azar links:
This is the small city in eastern Slovakia were I have stay on my trips to visit Lekarovce. My cousin Milan lives here. I have a few pictures for anyone interested in the area.
