The Fearless Females prompt for 5 March 2016 is:

March 5 — How did they meet? You’ve documented marriages, now, go back a bit. Do you know the story of how your parents met? Your grandparents?

John Alzo, Sr. (left) and Elizabeth Alzo posing with my father John Alzo (right) in their backyard in Duquesne, PA, 1944.

In yesterday’s post 4 March 2016, I included my grandparents’ wedding photograph and a story about ordering their marriage license application.  The story of how they met is interesting. Family lore said it was in a boarding house in Pennsylvania, but the truth is more likely that they met when they were growing up in Slovakia.

In a short document entitled “Our Family Background” my aunt, Sr. M. Camilla Alzo, wrote down what she learned from a cousin:

“Cetka [Mary] came to America. She sent for Elizabeth (my mother) to come to America. She came, had a job working for a Jewish family, but visited Cetka [Mary] often. Dad came over to America and was a boarder at Mary’s house.  This is where Mom and Dad met and then married.”

When I traveled to Slovakia, I met my cousin Helen (daughter of my grandfather’s sister Anna who remained in Slovakia) and she mentioned how my grandparents had known one another growing up and that they worked in the same fields and celebrated together at the religious pilgrimages that included many people from their respective villages (located just miles apart).  

Field in Kucin, Slovakia, representative of  the land where my grandparents worked (and likely met) as children.

Whether it was the boarding house or the field, I am just grateful that my grandparents were matched to each other.  I never knew either of them (my grandfather died before I was born and my grandmother died when I was just 2-years-old), but my interest in genealogy has helped me to learn more about them.


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