My Great Grandfather – St Mary’s Catholic Cemetary in Snow Shoe, Pennsylvania
Arrival in America
Both of my parent’s ancestors immigrated from Europe and settled in either Pennsylvania or Virginia.
On my Dad’s side, the Hortons arrived first from England very early in America’s formative days, immigrating in the early 1600s and moving to western Virginia around the time of the Revolutionary War. The Tubridy family came during the height of the Great Famine in Ireland in the 1850s. They settled in Pennsylvania, as did my Mother’s parents.
Mom’s family, the Kovachs, came in the early 1900s as part of a mass immigration from central Europe to work the coal mines near Pittsburg. They were undoubtedly both looking for a better life. They came from the Carpathian Mountian ranges of the Ural Mountains in a town near the easternmost part of modern-day Ukraine.
They eventually had one thing in common. Coal.
The Tubridy family settled in Snow Shoe outside of State College. It was on the edge of the northeastern part of the coal fields. The area opened when a railroad was built. They lived at one of the stops on the rail line. Not too much is happening in the present day except for a mail processing facility outside of town.
The Kovachs settled on a homestead in the Vanderbilt township southeast of Pittsburg. I grew up always hearing the name of the nearby town, Connellsville, where some settled. It was deep in the coal fields that dominated the area around Pittsburg.
The Hortons, my fatherβs motherβs ancestors, are connected on Ancestry.com to several sites in 13th-century England. They eventually relocated to the southern coast and immigrated in the early 1600s. They settled in eastern Virginia, near the Richmond area, and gradually moved westward during the American Revolution. Finally, they settled in the southern part of Virginia, near the borders of Kentucky and Tennessee.
Genealogy
My father started working on the family genealogy after he retired in the 1990s. He was able to compile a good picture of his ancestors back through Thomas Tubridy’s immigration in 1850. He used an early version of Ancestral Quest to record the data. I started from there and used Ancestry.com to develop a more comprehensive view. I am now using MacFamily Tree, which has very nice features and integrates with online sources.
The PDF file has the descendants for Tubridy and Kovac, starting when the ancestors immigrated in the mid-19th century and early 20th century. There is a considerable number of ancestors on my grandmother’s side – the Hortons. Their history goes back to the early 1600s.
Tubridy Descendants
Kovac descendants
Ireland
Mom and Dad went to Ireland in the 1990s. I am unsure exactly where they went, but here are the shots of Tubridy-named businesses they frequented. Tubridy House is located in Cooraclare Village, Kilrush. I think these are all in the exact location.
