Tombstone Tuesday - Anna (Jaros) Brycha

ZDE ODPOČIVA

ANNA JAROŠOVA

BRYCHOVA

NAR.18.PROSINCE

1882

ZEM.29.CERVENCE

1908

SPI SLADCE DRAHA

DCERO NAŠE

Here lies

Anna Jaros 

Brycha

Born 18 December 

1882

Died 29 July 

1908

Sleep well our dear daughter

This Czech inscription is found on a larger monument dedicate to her parents Matthias and Mary Jaros (here).  Anna (Jaros) Brycha is my wife's second great aunt, who died in Chicago as the result of a premature birth. Most of the features of the inscription have been explained in earlier posts (here and here).

One new feature is the forms of the surnames.  The maiden name Jaroš is rendered as Jarošova, and the married name Brycha is rendered as Brychova.  In some languages like Czech, surnames can have both a masculine form used with men and a feminine form used with women.  In this case, the feminine form is created by dropping the final vowel of the surname and adding the suffix -ova.  It is important to keep this in mind when searching for Czech ancestors.  If you are searching for a woman, search under both the masculine, "Anna Brycha", and the feminine forms, "Anna Brychova".  Both variants of the name may occur in records, so it is important to consider both.  Also, if you have, the feminine form, you will need to remove the feminine ending when searching for a male relative.    

 

Anna Jaros and John Brycha

Tombstone Tuesday - Willard Davis

WILLARD

DAVIS.

DIED

Sept.12.1883.

Æ.79ys.8ms. 
et 7ds

My fourth great grandfather, Willard Davis, is buried in Baldwin Cemetery in Baldwin, St. Croix Co., Wisconsin.  He was born in Franklin County, Vermont, and moved to Baldwin around the time of the Civil War

Ashes to Ashes

One thing that this inscription illustrates is the persistent use of Latin.  Although the use of Latin is more strongly associated with Catholicism, the language remained a mark of learning among English-speaking protestants.  The motto for the oldest university in the United States is the Latin phrase Veritas "Truth".  Latin is especially common in abbreviations.  Even, today, abbreviations like etc. are common.  So, if you can't figure out what an abbreviation is, consider the possibility that it might be an abbreviation of a Latin word.  In this inscription, we find the abbreviation Æ. for Latin Aetatis, meaning "of the age (of)". Of course, you can probably guess the meaning from the context.  The word aetatis may also be abbreviated as Æt. or Ætat. as it is on the tombstone of Ruth (Denison) Kingsbury (here).  Also, notice how the A and E are written as a single character.  This letter is called "ash" and was originally used in English to represent the vowel in ash.  It still has this use in phonetic transcriptions, like ash [æʃ].  This letter was also commonly used to represent the Latin combination "ae" even though this combination doesn't have the same sound.     

Tombstone Tuesday - Jean Lacoste and Anne Courcelle

Jean Lacoste and his wife, Anne Courcelle, are entombed at St. Louis Cemetery #1 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The vault inscription is typical of French inscriptions found in this historic cemetery.  For the most part, it can be translated directly into English without much trouble.  The phrase "Ici Repose" is literally "Here Lies".  The only major difference between the French original and English translation is the use of the definite article before the date in French.  For example, we find "le 2 Juin 1785",  not just "2 Juin 1785". The abbreviated style is also very similar to that of English inscriptions described in an earlier post (here).

Past participles in French

This abbreviated style is achieved by using a "past participle".  In English this form is usually formed by adding -ed. In many cases it is exactly the same as the past tense (died vs. died).  However, in other cases it is distinct from the past tense, like born vs. bore, been vs. was/were, sung vs. sang, etc. In French you can often identify the past participle by the ending -é, although like English there are many exceptions.  In place of born we find né and in place of  died, décédé.  Another wrinkle is the fact that the past participle in French changes depending on whether it describes a man or a woman.  The feminine form of the past participle is created by adding -e.  Thus, for Anne Courcelle we have née and décédée, the feminine forms.  

This pattern for inscriptions can be extended to other languages, especially languages closely related to French such as Italian and Spanish.  In an Italian inscription in the same cemetery (here),  we find the same basic style using participles.  Like French, the Italian past participles also have special masculine and feminine forms, nato and nata (feminine) "born" and morto and morta (feminine) "died".

Ici Repose

JEAN LACOSTE,

né á Bordeaux le 2 Juin 1785
décédé le 10 Aout 1850.
son épouse
ANNE COURCELLE,
née le 21 Juin 1778.
décédée le  10 Juillet 1857.

Here Lies
JEAN LACOSTE,
born in Bourdeaux June 2, 1785
died August 10, 1850
his wife
ANNE COURCELLE
born June 21, 1778
died July 10, 1857

Tombstone Tuesday - Herman Rich

I live close to the historic Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia, and enjoy strolling around the grounds.  My favorite sections are the two Jewish sections, where many of the monuments are bilingual, inscribed in English on one side and Hebrew on the other.  In an earlier post, I described how it is important to read both inscriptions because the information provided may be different.  Hebrew inscriptions commonly give the name of the father, whereas this information is typically left out in the accompanying English.

In the case of Herman Rich, the English inscription is very informative.  It gives the names of two children and a specific birthplace and place of death.

In fact, the English inscription is in many ways more informative than the Hebrew inscription.

There are a number of online sources that can help you translate Hebrew inscriptions. One of the most useful resources is on the JewishGen site.  They have a guide to reading Hebrew inscriptions which includes a vocabulary list and an explanation of the Jewish calendar (here).  They also have a very useful PDF on the site that provides an indispensable list of abbreviations (here) and a tool for translating letters to dates (here).  The translation of this inscription is as follows:

The great Rabbi Mr. Tzvi Rich

He was born in Kasschau in the country of Hungary [now: Košice, Slovakia]

in the year 5601 [1840/1841], and he died in the city
of Birmingham on the Holy Sabbath, 10th of Tevet
5668 [15 Dec 1907] May his soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life!

I have translated the verbs נפטר and נולד as "he died" and "he was born".  In Hebrew, the pronoun is included in the meaning of a verb, so a single verb can be a complete sentence.  You will often see these verbs translated simply as "born" and "died" following the common phrasing in English discussed here last week, but here I have chosen a more literal translation. In Hebrew inscriptions brevity is not achieved by writing in a shortened style like English, but rather by the generous use of abbreviations.  For example, "on the Holy Sabbath", which in Hebrew is בשׁבת קןדשׁ, is abbreviated as בשׁ''ק. Also, the scriptural passage at the end of the inscription is represented by five letters.

As an aside, coincidentally, Mr. Rich was from the same part of what is now Slovakia as the Kowatch family described in my last Surname Saturday post (here).  

Tombstone Tuesday - The long and short of inscriptions

Information on a tombstone can be presented a few different ways. One of the simplest ways is as a name and two dates, sometimes just the years.  For example, the inscription for my wife's second great uncle, Albert Labiak, is done in this style.

In other cases, you have inscriptions in regular prose with complete sentences, as in the case of the inscription for my 7th great grandmother, Ruth (Denison) Kingsbury (image on Find A Grave):

Here Lies the Body of

Mrs. Ruth Kingsbury

wife to Deacon Joseph

Kingsbury she Departed 

This Life May 6 1779

 Ætat 93

She left five Children

61 Gran Children 132

Great Gran Children

15 Great Gran Gran 

Children

However, this style is not very common in English, especially for more recent inscriptions.

A more common way of composing tombstone inscriptions in English involves a kind of abbreviated style of writing.  It is an example of economics influencing language; the effort and expense of inscribing a tombstone favors brevity.  Instead of full sentences with a subject and a verb, past participles are used. This style is used on the tombstone of my 3rd great grandparents, George and Prudence (Martin) Savage:

 

One reason that it useful to recognize these different styles is that understanding the language of tombstones in English can help you approach tombstones in other languages.  Over the next couple weeks I will show how particular styles are favored in different languages.

Tombstone Tuesday - Sciaccaluga family vault

I recently visited New Orleans and had a chance to explore St. Louis Cemetery #1. Although the city is best known for its French heritage, the city has long been home to a wide variety of communities, including Italians, Irish and Germans. Walking through the cemetery, you'll find that most of the inscriptions are in French and English, but this masks a much richer heritage, which is told by the names you encounter. Not surprisingly many immigrants chose to use the language of the larger community, which was first French and later English. There are even a good number of inscriptions in French for people with clearly British names.

Among the vaults was one inscribed with Italian, the vault of the Sciaccaluga family. The earliest inscriptions are in Italian with last set of inscriptions in English. I want to concentrate on two of the Italian inscriptions:

Filomena Cuneo,
Sposa di G. Sciaccaluga
Nativa di Genova, Italia
Morta il 25 Aprile 1897
Di Anni 53

Guiseppe Sciaccaluga
Nativo di Genova
Morto Decmb. 18 1914
Di Anni 80

The inscription is very easy to understand:

Filomena Cuneo,
Wife of G. Sciaccaluga
Native of Genoa, Italy
Died April 25, 1897
Aged 53

Giuseppe Sciaccaluga
Native of Genoa
Died Dec. 18, 1914
Aged 80

There are a few interesting things in these inscriptions. Notice the differences between the two inscriptions. As in other Romance languages, Italian has grammatical gender. Both nativa "native" and morta "dead" end with -a for Filomena, but nativo and morto end with an -o for Giuseppe. In this case -a is the feminine ending and -o is the masculine ending.

Perhaps, less obvious is that the husband's name is spelled strangelly. Giuseppe is spelled "Guiseppe", the "i" and "u" are reversed. There are also differences in how the date is presented and the abbreviation used for December is unexpected. In Italian, the word for December is dicembre, so it is odd that the abbreviation used is "Decb.". It seems likely that the inscription was done by someone who did not know Italian and perhaps at this date there was no one in the family to guide the inscriber properly.

It is always good to keep in mind that a language might get a little mangled in the wrong hands and that knowledge of a language tends to decline in an immigrant family over time.

Tombstone Tuesday - Josephine and Joseph Fuka

Translation:

Josephine Fuka
Born 24 June 1864
Died 27 Febuary 1944

Joseph Fuka
Born 15 April 1861
Died 18 May 1920

This is a pretty simple inscription, but the use of lots of abbreviations can make things tough. In a previous post, I presented a chart with the Czech names for the months, with different forms including the abbreviations.

Another thing this tombstones illustrates is one of the ways that Czech can form feminine names. In this case we see the name Josef "Joseph" and the feminine form Josefa "Josephine". You simply add -a to the masculine form of the name. For tombstones this will generally work, but in other contexts things get more complicated. There is also another pattern you will see for surnames. These, however, are topics for future posts.

This monument (full picture below) is located in Resurrection Cemetery on the South Side of Chicago.

Tombstone Tuesday - Matěj Jaroš

ZDE ODPOČIVA

MATĚJ JAROŠ
ZEM. 18 SRPNA 1914
ODPOČIVEJ V POKOJI DRAHY MANŽELY
A OTČE DNÉS LOUČIME SE V BOLU V NEBE
SE SEJDEM SPOLU

Translation:

Here rests
Matthias Jaros
Died August 18, 1914
Rest in peace dear husband and father
Now we part in sorrow, in heaven
we will meet together

Czech Dates
If you have only worked with Western European languages, be ready for new challenges when working with a language like Czech. The Czech language is a Slavic language, distantly related to English, German and French, but more closely related to Polish, Russian and Serbo-Croatian. It has sounds, structures and vocabulary that may be unfamiliar and difficult at first. One important difference that a genealogist is likely to encounter is the names of the month. In most of the languages of Western Europe the names of the months are derived from their Latin names. As a result, it is usually fairly easy to guess the names of the months in languages like French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch or German. However, in Czech, you will have to learn or look up the names for the months.

To make things even more difficult, the forms you will find in a dictionary are not the ones you will most likely encounter. Czech is a language like Latin (here) where the relationships between words are signaled by special endings. In dates, you will find the genitive form, which indicates possession, just as in English we use the preposition of in dates, "the third of December". Thus, we find the form srpna "of August" on the tombstone instead of the form srpen, which we would find in a dictionary. It is also common to find abbreviations for the months. The Czech months are listed below, first in the nominative (the dictionary form), next in the genitive as it will appear in dates, and finally in the abbreviated forms.

English	Czech	Genitive form	Abbreviations
January	leden	ledna	led.
February	únor	února	ún.
March	březen	března	břez.
April	duben	dubna	dub.
May	květen	května	květ.
June	červen	června	červ.
July	červenec	července	červen.
August	srpen	srpna	srp.
September	září	září	září
October	říjen	října	říj.
November	listopad	listopadu	list.
December	prosinec	prosince	pros.