So, lately I’ve been researching my family, which seems to be from Lietuva! Even tho my last name is registered as Taraszkiewicz, I found a Brazilian document of the godfather of great-great-grandfather. He was registered in Brazil as Mikas Taraskevicius born in 1897 in a place supposedly called Tabanach-Chatko-R.K-Lituania. Son of Sigismund Taraskevicius and Sofia Taraskevicius. The location name is probably written wrong by Brazilian registry.
Does anybody know where this could be located or any hints on the next step I could look into?

by valla99

4 comments

  1. Idk about location, but (last-)names are very polish-sounding. We “lithuanize” polish names sometimes. I know at least 3 people with an altered last name

    And to add: at least all the spellings I saw are “Sofija” in lithuanian and would have likely been used back then

    I’m no historian, nor am I smart enough to be an authority on this, just my 2 cents, take it with a grain of salt

  2. The family name is Taraskevičius/Taraškevičius. Not very common, but not very rare either; meaning it may be found all over country and by itself gives very little…

    “Tabanach-Chatko-R.K” is a total abracadabra. There is nothing looking even remotely close for a possible place name in Lithuania. Yeah, foreign officials may do that, when trying to make up something which is said in a totally unfamiliar language (or maybe being presented a document in an even more alien-looking language, like church record in handwritten Russian Cyrillic, by people who themselves possibly were illiterate). This particular one seems to be mangled even more than similar USA records, which can be quite omg.

    Where you get that place name from ? It is not seen in that text fragment.

    My personal very wild guess may be that R.K may stand for Rome Catholic, therefore the name represents “something-church-rome catholic”, possibly indicating the church of some record… *very wild* guess.

    UPD.

    Tried to follow my wild guess. Say, “Tabanach” represents some place name, a place which has a parish church. Trying to make up something of “T-b-n” gives us two possibilities, Tūbinės and Tabariškės.

    Tūbinės – seems no mentions of the family name.

    Tabariškės – yea, Taraškevičius/Taraszkievicz family name was present there. I made just a quick glance over some church books of that parish, different years from 1897. Records for 1897 are not available online yet, but they are there, going back to 1798. If you would wish to try that search path, I guess you need to contact archives.

  3. Ok I might not fully understand the situation but Sigismund and Sofia aren’t Lithuanian names, at least not Lithuanian spelling. And also even though Taraškevičius is a lithuanian surname, well, at least a lithuanian version of it, in Lithuania we have a different ending for female surnames (Taraškevičienė). And in your document, it’s Sofia Taraskevicius. So it’s pretty obvious to me that Sigismund and Sofia definitely didn’t marry in Lithuania, maybe neither of them were even born in Lithuania and the surname comes from an even older generation. Mikas does sound like a Lithuanian name though, so are you saying that Sigismund and Sofia came to Lithuania to give birth to Mikas and raise him here? That could be the case I guess. But the location name doesn’t sound lithuanian at all

  4. Wow! Really impressed about that information. This pic I attached here was the page n.4 of his professional ID. The previous image attached in the original post was the ratification of his name ( Miguel to Mikas) and the last name of his parents from Tarachkewickz to (Taraskevicius). He probably knew what he was doing hahah at least I hope so! It looks like my family is way older than I thought it was. I’ll look further into the archives! I’m looking at some hints that are taking me to 1855 lol. Thank you very much for the help 🙌🏻🙏🏻

    https://preview.redd.it/vzflwit3gdaf1.jpeg?width=1206&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=51cbe27d597ae77d1d4310ac72ec24cb071e675f

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