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I am just starting to look for my mother's family who came to the US in 1912 and 1913. My grandfather's name as I know it was Valentine Tosch and his wife was Eva Yerger. They lived in the Village of Deronje which was formerly Yugoslavia. They claimed to be from Hungary but after looking on several maps, I am not sure. The map I looked at on ancestry.com showed this village to now be a part of Serbia. My mother and her family were Catholic and I see that the Catholic church in Deronje is Saint Michael's. If anyone can help to point me in the right direction or if you know of any living relatives, please help. Thank you.
The village Deronje located in the northern province of Serbia today called VOJVODINA, and in the part of it called BAČKA, will in old records be found under its Hungarian name -Dernye - Hungarian was the official language . Dornau is the name of the village in German that was also used.
If your ancestors were Roman Catholic then you should know that KALOCSA Diocese to which most of this area belonged has an e-archive, where you can research all of their records online. Dernye Roman Catholic records that are available, as well as other records like school records and village census lists are there, for the period 1816-1922.
For info and the links to this e-archive see this post I made:
http://www.rodoslovlje.com/en/forum/vojvodina/kalocsa-roman-catholic-archdiocese-e-archive
If you need any help or assistance registering for this e-archive let me know, I live in Hungary where the diocese is based and can translate - both the records and the descriptions in the listings are in Hungarian language.
Do you know anythig about the ethnicity of your mother and her family - in many cases, especially if they came from such a multiethnic place as Vojvodina, that is not always something that will be correctly recorded in ship manifests and US censuses.
Surname TOŠ, which would be equivalent spelling in Serbian of TOSCH, wa present in central Croatia for the period you need -turn of the XIX &XX century.
In Serbia, I located only TASCH surname variant but not in Deronje, in Banat region and that family are listed as Donauschwaben - ethnic Germans:
http://www.totenbuch-donauschwaben.at/de/search.php
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~banatdata/DDB/ByVillage/Bobda.htm
also lived in ČURUG, Banat, and found as shop owners and employers in the records of the Serbian Trade Association:
I will look up if the family name TOSCHor TASCH appears in the local records and books on the past of the village of Deronje in Serbian & Hungarian and post if I find anything in publicly available records.
For more assistance, like translations, contacting the archives, or posting local queries on your behalf on web pages and local news to find if there are any living relatives you would have to register with "Rodoslovlje" as a paid member - the time we can dedicate to see through and follow up on inividual questions from the forum is limited.
I will try to gather more information but I am limited to what I am finding in the US census records and ship manifest records. My mother came to the US when she was only 6 months old. My grandfather, Valentine Tosch, was born about 1878 - 1880. He came to the US via New York from Havre (according to the manifest record). The name of the ship was La Lorraine. He arrived in the US on 29 September 1912. His wife, Eva, came to the US via New York from Cuxhaven (according to manifest record). She arrived in the US on 5 July 1913 with their 2 children, Michael (my uncle, born 1909) and Katherine (my mother, born 1912). The name of the ship was Pretoria. According to the passenger manifest both my grandfather and grandmother were listed as being from Hungary, Deronya and their ethnicity was listed as German.
Thank you for your help. I will definitely consider paying membership if you can help me with the translation and obtaining records about my family.
Tasch Katherine was born on November 14th 1911. in Deronje village.
Birth and baptism record for her was on behalf of our member obtained from Kalocsa Diocese E-archive for the year 1911. Vital records that are available for Dernye from this archive are for the period 1816 -1922.
http://www.rodoslovlje.com/en/forum/vojvodina/kalocsa-roman-catholic-archdiocese-e-archive
the post above mine is spam but I cannot remove it