The Yura Family — Slovakia to Pennsylvania

I.Ortutová, okres Bardejov, Slovakia

A Village in the Carpathian Foothills

13 Jun 1885 – 28 Apr 1941

Michael Yura Sr.

Michael Yura Sr. was born on 13 June 1885 in Ortutová, a village in the district of Bardejov in what is now eastern Slovakia — then a corner of Austria-Hungary. Around 1901 he made the crossing to America, settling in Humboldt, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where he went to work in the coal mines.

For years, family memory held only that the Yuras were “possibly Hungarian.” The research now gives that memory its proper shape. The family is Carpatho-Rusyn — Slovak Byzantine (Greek) Catholic — from the Bardejov region. But at the time Michael Sr. emigrated, that region was administratively part of the Kingdom of Hungary, which is almost certainly where the old story came from. The memory was geographically accurate for its era all along; it simply described the empire on the map rather than the people in the village. Michael Sr.'s own church membership — St. Mary's Greek Catholic Church in Hazleton — confirms the tradition the family carried with them.

He married Mary Velky, born 26 May 1887 in Slovakia. Michael Sr.'s life ended suddenly on the night of 28 April 1941, at the Humboldt colliery of the Lattimer Coal Company: while at work, he came into contact with electrical wires and was electrocuted instantly. Mary outlived him by more than three decades, dying on 9 September 1973 in Bloomsburg, Columbia County, Pennsylvania.

1941 Plain Speaker obituary1915 naturalization petition

II.1906–1930

Thirteen Children

Michael Sr. and Mary Velky Yura had thirteen children, born across nearly a quarter century. In birth order:

The thirteen

Humboldt & Hazleton, Pennsylvania · 1906–1930

Michael Jr. (1906–1994) — grocer in Allentown; the direct line
Anna Volansky (1907–1961)
Mary Jack (1910–1999)
Andrew J. (1911–1989)
Catherine Saladyga (1913–2015) — lived to 102
Joseph (1914–1915) — died an infant
John (1916–1980)
George (1918–2004)
Joseph “Joe” (1921–1998) — given his late brother's name; ballplayer
Helen Andrejco (1923–2014)
Margaret Damiano (1925–2016)
Stephen (1928–2008)
Theresa Moro (1930–2025) — the youngest, lived to 95

Apart from the first Joseph, lost in infancy, they were a remarkably long-lived family — several reached their nineties, and Catherine lived to 102. All thirteen are documented through two independent sources that check against each other: Michael Sr.'s Find A Grave memorial and his 1941 obituary.

Find A Grave + 1941 obituary, cross-checked

III.The 1941 Obituary's Last Line

Three Sisters, Named at Last

The obituary's quiet postscript

Michael Sr.'s 1941 obituary held one more gift beyond the names of his children. It listed three surviving sisters — his own siblings, back in the old country and in other American cities — but in the custom of the day, gave no first names. Only their married names and their towns: “Mrs. Joseph Drabyak, of Oneida,” “Mrs. George Dziak, of Cleveland, Ohio,” and “Mrs. Andrew Hanincheck, of Slovakia.” For decades, that was all anyone knew of Michael Sr.'s own generation.

Mary Yura Drabyak & Susan Yura Dziak

Two found, by their birthplace

Two of the three have been found. Mary Yura Drabyak was born 1 August 1891 in Ortutová, okres Bardejov — the exact same village as Michael Sr. himself. She married Joseph Drabyak Sr. and died 16 September 1967 in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Her husband's name matches the obituary precisely; only the town differs slightly — the obituary says Oneida, her memorial says Sheppton, both small coal towns in the same stretch of Pennsylvania, a minor discrepancy still unresolved.

Susan L. Yura Dziak was born 26 November 1900 — again in Ortutová — married George Dziak, and died 12 August 1990 in Parma, in the Cleveland metro area of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Name, husband, and location all match the obituary exactly.

It is the birthplace that clinches both identifications: not merely a shared surname and a plausible marriage, but the same small Carpathian village, tying each woman concretely back to her brother's own doorstep.

Exact birthplace match to Michael Sr.Drabyak's town: Oneida (obit) vs. Sheppton (memorial)

Two found, by their birthplace — The Drabyak family monument, Sheppton, PA — a Byzantine cross over the names of Michael Sr.'s sister Mary and her family.

A dead end, and a tentative lead

The third sister, “Mrs. Andrew Hanincheck, of Slovakia,” was searched under two spellings and not found — a genuine dead end, consistent with the possibility that she never left Slovakia at all, unlike the siblings who emigrated.

Susan Dziak's memorial offers one more tantalizing thread: it names her mother as “Anna Hric (Ivanco).” If accurate, that would be the name of Michael Sr.'s own mother — but it is a single-source, unconfirmed lead, recorded here as an invitation to future research rather than a settled fact. No father's name for that generation has been found anywhere.

Hanincheck sister: not found, likely never emigratedMother's name: single-source, unconfirmed

IV.Coal Miner to Professor, Three Generations

Dr. Helen Yura-Petro and the Next Generation

Michael Yura Jr. m. Anna Sokol, 1928

The Sokol family joins

Michael Yura Jr., the eldest of the thirteen, married Anna Sokol on 1 September 1928 in Wilkes-Barre. Anna was born 26 March 1912 in Hazleton and died 7 November 2001 in Allentown. Her own family came from the same world as the Yuras: her father, Michael Sokol (1881–1960), was born in Felső Tárocz — now Vyšný Tvarožec, Slovakia — another Carpatho-Rusyn village in the Bardejov region. He and Anna Felegy Sokol (1888–1976) raised four more children besides Anna: Michael Sokol Jr. (1907–1990), John Sokol (1910–1981), Mary Sokol Hudock (1914–1998), and Rev. Fr. Andrew Sokol (1916–1973), who became a Byzantine Catholic priest.

1929–2015

Dr. Helen Yura Petro, and the family today

Michael Jr. and Anna had six children, and their generation tells the American story plainly. Dr. Helen Yura Petro (1929–2015) became a nursing professor and author — Graduate Program Director and Eminent Professor Emeritus at Old Dominion University, after earlier faculty posts at the National League for Nursing and the Catholic University of America; she married Joseph Petro (1921–2019). Eugene M. Yura (1933–2007) married Joan Millward; their children are Mark A. Yura and Nancy Yura Wilt. Michael Yura, a therapist and university professor, married Catherine Hall — and here the Yura line joins this family's own: their children Jon, Chris, and Lauren Yura are Ian's first cousins. The remaining three — Dr. Joseph Yura, Dr. Anne Yura Hester, and Margaret Yura Gililland — are living, and so appear here by name only.

The arc needs no embellishment. A man who left a Carpathian village around 1901 to mine coal in Pennsylvania had, within two generations, grandchildren holding doctorates and professorships. The record shows it; it speaks for itself.

2015 Virginia Gazette obituaryDirect connection: Catherine Hall

Dr. Helen Yura Petro, and the family today — Dr. Helen Yura Petro — nursing professor, Old Dominion University.

Three questions remain on the table. The third sister — “Mrs. Andrew Hanincheck, of Slovakia” — is still unidentified, with no first name on file; she likely never emigrated, which may put her beyond the reach of American records. The lead on Michael Sr.'s mother's name, Anna Hric, rests on a single source and is unconfirmed, and no father's name for that generation has surfaced at all. And most of the thirteen siblings are so far documented only through Find A Grave and the 1941 obituary — solid cross-checked starting points, but awaiting independent verification from vital records.