The Documents

30 May 1756

Baptism of Joannes, son of Martinus Dzjacovsky

Latin baptismal register, folio 151 · Šarišské Michaľany R.C. parish · FamilySearch film 004407849

Joannes — son of Martinus Dzjacovsky and Anna. Godparents: Stephanus Brydos, Eva Mikulasova. Szent Mihály.

The earliest confirmed appearance of the family surname. The register was kept by Father Bonaventura, OFM Conv., chaplain to Count Thomas Szirmay the Younger. Martinus reappears ten weeks later as godfather to a Sapara child — the priest spelled the surname two different ways on the same page, both clearly opening with Dz-.

3–4 December 1875

Baptism of Andreas, son of Andreas Dzákovszky

Hungarian baptism register, entry 115 · Sabinov R.C. parish, house no. 267 · FamilySearch ark:/61903/1:1:V1QJ-417

Andreas Dzákovszky and his wife Barbara Focefcsik baptize a son also named Andreas — the child died at three, in 1878. Because Andrew Zachary’s father is taken to be a Ján, this Andreas of Sabinov is not Andrew’s father; the exact relationship, if any, is unproven. The value of the entry is the house number — 267 — and the confirmation that the surname was rooted in Sabinov well before 1875.

April 1887

Andreas Jacowsky on the SS Werra

Ship manifest · Hamburg → Castle Garden, New York · FamilySearch ark:/61903/1:1:QVPF-VGMB

Andrew’s first appearance in Western paperwork. A seventeen-year-old farm boy from Šariš County, traveling on the German shipping line Norddeutscher Lloyd. The German clerk who wrote his name had no convention for the Slovak Dž- and rendered it as J-. The lines above and below his are filled with other Šariš men headed for the same Pennsylvania coal towns.

8 April 1893

Marriage of Andrew Jakofski and Zofia Trisco

Marriage license docket, No. 13136 · Clerk of Orphans’ Court, Luzerne County PA · License No. 13136

No. 13136. Andrew Jakofski, born in Hungary, residing at Harwood, occupation miner. Zofia Trisco, born in Hungary, residing at Harwood. Marriage license issued 4 Apr. 1893. “Married Apr. 8, 1893 by Rev. C. Fitzmaurice at Hazleton.”

The Luzerne County license docket — the primary record of the marriage. It names the groom “Andrew Jakofski” and the bride “Zofia Trisco” (Tresch), both “born in Hungary” (the political-subject label Slovaks carried) and both living in the mining patch of Harwood; Andrew’s occupation is given as miner. The ceremony was performed at Hazleton by Rev. C. Fitzmaurice — priest of St. Gabriel’s, the town’s Irish territorial parish, used by Slovak couples because their own St. Joseph’s had not yet built a permanent church. The self-reported birth years read as roughly 1872 for Andrew and 16 May 1871 for Sophia; marriage-license ages of this era are often approximate, but this is the earliest document to give Sophia a birth date at all — and it places it in May.

26 April 1894

Baptism of John J. Djacovsky

Slovak parish register, page 35 · St. Joseph’s R.C. Church, Hazleton PA

First child of Andrew and Sophia. Father recorded as “Andrei Djacovsky,” mother as “Zofia Trisch” — a Slovak priest writing the surname phonetically rather than in any Hungarian or English convention.

5 October 1895

Baptism of Mary

Slovak parish register, page 44 · St. Joseph’s R.C. Church, Hazleton PA

Father recorded here as “Andreas Djacimovsky.” A different priest, a different ear, the same sound. Mary later married Paul Benne in Chicago and died there in 1928.

3 May 1897

Baptism of Andrew Peter

Slovak parish register, page 54 · St. Joseph’s R.C. Church, Hazleton PA

Father recorded as “Joannes Djacovsky” — a clerk error: it should be Andreas. Andrew Peter was born in the Lattimer Massacre summer of 1897; he later registered for the WWI draft in Portage County, Wisconsin.

21 January 1912

Marriage of Mary Jacowski and Paul Benne

Civil marriage record · Cook County, Illinois · FamilySearch ark:/61903/1:1:QVMN-PK8S

Mary, Andrew and Sophia’s second child, marries Paul Benne in Chicago. Her parents are recorded as “Andrej Jacovsky” and “Sofia Tresch.” The witness, Zuzanna Handžak, carries a Greek Catholic surname — the kind that turns up across the mixed Slovak and Rusyn borderland of eastern Šariš the emigrants came from.

2 July 1915

Death certificate — Andrew Zachary Jacowski

Wisconsin state death certificate · Portage County Register of Deeds

Andrew dies at forty-four in Linwood Township, Wisconsin. The certificate is the one document that names his parents — recorded by a Wisconsin clerk in Americanized form as John and Julia, the Ján and Júlia of the old country. It is an American record, not a Slovak one: it gives the names, but no Slovak register has yet been found to confirm them. Received April 2026; field-by-field transcription pending the upload of a scan.

September 1928

Death certificate — Mary (Jacowski) Benne

Illinois state death certificate · Cook County · FamilySearch ark:/61903/1:1:N3WT-JSL

Mary dies in Chicago, four years before her mother, and is buried at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Alsip. The certificate names her father as “Andrew Jacowski,” birthplace “St. Michael, Slovakia” — the English translation of Šarišské Michaľany.

6 May 1933

Sophia’s obituary

Newspaper obituary · Stevens Point Journal

Sophia dies at St. Michael’s Hospital of a ruptured appendix. The obituary is the only document that locates her birth precisely as “Prešov, Šarišská county, Czechoslovakia,” and confirms her father John Tresch Sr. was still alive in the old country in 1933.