Angela, You may contact the Cuyahoga County archives for "John's" Naturalization papers (Declaration and Petition) however.... they will have minimal information and most likely will only indicate Austria or Hungary as his place of origin. It was not until 1906 that those papers were stanadardized to include the village where he originated. You may want to go to your local library and see if they have an Ancestry.com subscription. If they do you can possibly find his immigration records, although prior to about 1900 ship manifest did not have many details. Also be aware the name HEGEDIS does appear in Ellis Island records, where the S has the sound of SH ! Some perhaps you should not assume the name was the more common HEGEDUS. HEGEDISH would be a Americanized phonetic sp of HEGEDIS. And since your John claimed to be Slovak, one may expect that your search would take you to Slovakia.... however it is also known that Slovaks lived in Croatia, in several villages and... that some HEGEDIS from Croatia came to America! Also HEGEDIS are found in what is now the Vojvodina region of N. Serbia. That region until after WW I 1918, was the Banat and Backa region of Hungary... and there were settlements of Slovaks there. Siliva HEGEDIS is a tennis player from that region today. There is a Janos (John) US Citizen arr 1909 age 39 (about the right age for your John) going home to Oil City PA So perhaps you may want to search in another direction. Perhaps more local records, such as the marriage application, or church records where they attended church in Cleveland would help. Do you know the church they attended here? What was their address in Cleveland? Slovaks tended to live in Lakewood's "Birdtown" neighborhood, the St Clair Ave area (where Croatians and Slovenes settled) and also some in the Buckeye neighborhood where Magyars settled. Robert Jerin JANDA143@aol.com wrote: Dear List, I am so thankful for all of the good information that was sent to me on my John HEGEDISH. This is the new information that I have gotten from your leads: *B. 30-6-1869 in Hungary/Austria *M. abt. 1896 *d. 8-3-1922, Cleveland *Immigrated in 1886 (too soon for the Ellis Island records! :( ) *Wife immigrated in 1896 *In 1900 they had one child living, b. 1898. Don't know if the other was before or after her. *Naturalized on 21-9-1896 Since the immigration date is too soon for the Ellis Island records, I cannot search to see if he immigrated with other family members or not. He was 17 years of age when he came to the USA. Would the next step be to order the naturalization records? Would his petition be at the same location and what kind of information is on both of those records? I really want to know where in Hungary/Austria (or Slovakia, as they claim) he came from and if he came alone. Searching for any HEGEDUS in Hungary would be a nightmare without knowing the proximity. Thanks! Angela Grand Rapids, Mi. ==== OHCUYAHO Mailing List ==== Register your surnames and queries at (http://www.rootsweb.com/~ohcuyaho/cuyaoh.htm) ============================== Find your ancestors in the Birth, Marriage and Death Records. New content added every business day. Learn more: http://www.ancestry.com/s13964/rd.ashx Interested in visting Croatia? Click on the link below to find out about a wonderful tour of Croatia! http://www.kollander-travel.com/