Courtship & Marriage

Young men found interesting ways to pay special attention to young women in whom they were interested. On the night before May Day they decorated small trees with colored ribbons and placed them on the peak of the girl's thatched roof. In the morning the girls came out to see whether there was a tree atop their house. If a boy was no longer friendly with a certain girl, he could express his feelings by putting an old broom on the roof.

Family-made matches were common in Eastern Slovakia but children did not always abide by their parent's choices. When a proposal was to be made, a representative of the young man's family brought the boy's silken handkerchief to the young woman's home and left it on the family's table. If the girl wanted to accept the proposal, she kept the handkerchief; if not, she sent it back to the boy. Wedding clothes were handmade by the family or by the tailor in Poruba. The clothing was made of white fabric, probably linen, decorated with embroidery patterns peculiar to the village.

A three-day celebration was typical of village weddings. There was music, dancing, and food, most of it for the bridal attendants and guests rather than for the bride and groom. On their wedding day the couple traveled to the church in a horse-drawn wagon even though the church was within walking distance. Relatives from far and near came to join with the family for a wedding feast. These occasions were often the only time family living further than adjacent villages were able to be with their loved ones. Travel was difficult on the primitive roads of rural Slovakia with walking being the main mode of transportation. Horses were beasts of burden needed for farming and not meant for the convenience of the traveler, unless occasionally hitched to a cart to haul a group to their destination. Baba recalls that when her sister Anna married Alex Kovac from Helen’s house, on July 18, 1909, her father's brother George Maczko, a large, heavy man, came to the celebration from a larger village called Topolany. This was one of only three or four times in her life she remembers seeing her uncle, and Topolany was not far away by our standards--approximately thirteen miles southwest of Poruba.

Remarriage of widowed men and women was extremely widespread in the villages of this part of Slovakia. The life span was much shorter than what we are accustomed to. Recurrent epidemics of cholera, smallpox, scarlet fever and influenza ravaged the residents. The difficulties of childbirth took their toll on the lives of women. Thus there was an abundance of widows and widowers available for marriage to each other when their first or second spouse died. Yes, third and occasionally even fourth marriages occurred which meant that village children often had several families of step-siblings. A widow required a provider for herself and her family, while it was essential for a widower to have someone care for his children while he provided a living for them; re-marriage was therefore a necessity. It was uncommon for a couple who married for the first time around age twenty to grow to old age together.

About six months after her arrival in the US, Baba's brother, Michael Csornej-Maczko, arranged a marriage for her to John Bubnash of Snowden, Pennsylvania. John had also grown up in Poruba, had been in the country about a year-and-a-half, worked at the Crescent Mines in Snowden, and boarded with Baba's brother. He expressed interest in a marriage with her, and Baba protested to her brother that she was too young to be married--she turned sixteen on June 11, 1912. Michael prevailed and on July 20, 1912, Baba married John Bubnash in Clairton, Pennsylvania, at Ascension Byzantine Catholic Church. Ironically, if she had stayed in the Old Country, Baba wouldn't have been married for several more years. Poruba young women commonly married at age eighteen or nineteen, and men at age twenty-one or twenty-two.

There was dancing and some food and drink at the celebration, and I believe men paid for the privilege of dancing with the bride, because Baba said that about $50 was collected that day to give them a start in life. Unfortunately, Baba and Grandpap have no wedding photograph. They were both orphans and had so little money between them.