Moisescu

 

My great-grandfather Eli Moisesku, as he was known in the United States, was born in 1875 in Sannicolau Mare, Romania. His baptism record shows his name as Toma Ilie Moisescu. (Sometimes in the records the name is listed as Mojszeszko, partially because this was a region under authority of the Austro-Hungarian Empire where Hungarian spellings prevailed.) I was able to obtain a copy of the church baptism register from the Romanian National Archives in 2014. “Toma” was baptized in the Serbian Orthodox Church (because in 1875 there was not a Romanian Orthodox church in this city), and the record was written by the priest in Serbian Cyrillic characters.

In 2016 I made a personal visit to the Archives in Timisoara and located the marriage record of his parents, Andrei Moisescu and Sofia Stanciu. They were married in the Greek Catholic Church in Sannicolau Mare on 17 October 1874.

In the Greek Catholic church records, I also found the baptism record of my second-great-grandfather Andrei Moisescu (15 July 1851) as well as the baptism records for his siblings: Anna (12 May 1853), Matei (25 August 1854), Pavel (31 October 1856), and Sofia (10 January 1858). The parents’ names were Iefta and Petra Moisescu. Only Andrei survived to adulthood; all of the other siblings died in youth, and mother Petra died 12 December 1877 at age 41. I haven’t yet located a marriage record for Iefta and Petra, nor have I found a death record for Iefta Moisescu.

Eli Moisesku came to USA in 1911, followed shortly by his wife Gizella and children Valy and Bela, and after a few years in New York they made their home in St. Paul, Minnesota. (When he died in 1949, his obituary said he had a daughter, Mrs. Alice Demetru, still living in Romania, so he must have been married previously.) Eli had two younger half-sisters who also came to USA, Catita and Elena; their father was Andrei Moisescu but their mother was Mary Naeden. The half-sisters lived mostly in Chicago. Catita Moisescu (born 1883) married 1) Stefan Marian and they had a son Simeon or “Sam” Marian who was born in 1905 in Sannicolau Mare, and then 2) Gus Boata. Elena Moisescu (born 1888) married 1) Ioan or John Sinitean and they had daughters Helen (1899) and Mary (1903) before John died in Chicago in 1926, and then 2) John T. Sarafolean (1884-1955).

I will be pleased to exchange information with anyone who may be related to this family.

For more information about the trip to Romania to visit our ancestral village, click  here.