Hi all,
I recently cracked a longtime family mystery, and the information was very hard to come by.
My maiden name is Joanna Copjec. But for the past 2-3 generations, we had no clue what our original surname was. We knew Copjec was unlikely to be our original name, since we are the only Copjecs in the world and also the spelling was not typical of a Czech surname. We knew only that my father's grandparents, Peter and Julia, had settled in Bristol Connecticut after arriving from Czechoslovakia in the early 1900's to 1910's. but there are no records, anywhere, for COPJEC, and we didn't have their parents names or the names of any siblings. After a painstaking process of manually searching handwritten census records from 1940 (because we had an address for them that year) backwards, I realized that the same family lived in that same house since the 1920 census, but that despite having the same first names and birthdates, their last name changed drastically over the years. I've also found draft registrations and ship manifests that have been proven to belong to my great grandfather Peter, but they all have various different spellings of the surname as well. Also, their actual birthplaces are Austria/Hungary/Czechoslovakia, depending on the year. As many of us who have researched this part of the world know, these places have had an almost constant shift of boundaries. One year the same village would be considered a part of Austria, and considered Hungary the next year. Then it became Czechoslovakia, and it is now split into the Czech Republic and Hungary.
Anyway, between the 1880s and the 1950's, we have been called Kopscak, Kopscek, Kopcsik, Kopsik, Kupcsik, Kopak, Kupelick, Kupelica, Kupchick, Kupchak and finally, Copjec, which is the name both my great grandparents ended up buried with. It seems likely my great grandfather was born either Kopcsak or Kopcsik or even Kopcsyk. Perhaps there was even originally a Z in there. Anyway, it seems different siblings and cousins "Americanized" or evolved the name in their own way...we have even speculated that since most of them spoke almost no English and had no understanding of the English alphabet, etc, they would simply state their names and whatever record keeper (census taker, Ellis Island official, etc) would just guess at the spelling based on the phonetic pronunciation, and this spelling would follow the family member through the next phase of their life. It seems almost certain that siblings of this same original family each ended up with their own variation of the last name- their own spelling. But if you look carefully, you will notice similar first names...I.e., they seemed to favor naming their children after their own siblings. My great grandfather had children named Anna, Mary, Peter, John (my grandfather) and George. There are also people with each of these first names and some variation of Kopcsak/Kupcsik as their last name. Their birthdays are close enough in year to surmise that they may be siblings...perhaps cousins. And they all arrived within a couple years of each other from the region that would later officially become Czechoslovakia...either Austria or Hungary. It seems they split and settled mostly in Connecticut (Bristol, New Britain, Bridgeport, etc), and perhaps Ohio, New York/New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Because of the evolving surname, unfortunately, a lot of conclusions must rely on guesswork backed up by likely facts. But there will probably never be absolute certainty to some of these conclusions. It would be mind blowing if all of us who share these probable ancestors had DNA profiles done to confirm the link, but for now, we can do our best to put the puzzle together. If anyone thinks they may be related to my family based on a similar name or any of the variations I cited above, please email me.
Joannamichelleheath@gmail.com