The Departure
When the train left in 1905...
It was likely a cold, grey morning in Eastern Slovakia. Your great-grandfather stood on a crowded platform, clutching a single leather suitcase. Inside? A loaf of bread, a Bible, and perhaps a small, faded photograph of the mother he would never see again.
He wasn't just traveling; he was escaping. Between 1880 and 1920, nearly 500,000 Slovaks left their homes for the steel mills of Pennsylvania or the coal mines of Ohio. They built a new life in America, but in the process, the old one slowly faded away.
The letters stopped coming. The language was lost. The silence grew. Today, you might have a name and a date, but do you have the story? We don't just find names in a book. We reconstruct the world they left behind. We take you back to that specific village, to that specific church, to reconnect the broken line.
