Bill Tarkulich

With over 30 years of genealogical research, Bill Tarkulich, BSEE, MBA, began his research unaware of his ethnicity or where his grandparents were from. With his own list of “dead-ends”, he inventively used archival sources to identify the Carpatho-Rusyn villages of Zboj and Nova Sedlica in the northeast corner of today’s Slovakia. Within two years, and before the capabilities of today’s internet, he corresponded with cousins by mail, travelled to his ancestral villages, spent two weeks living in his cousin’s homes. He was introduced to countless relatives in eastern Slovakia, walking for miles on old roads and paths and being offered far too many glasses of vodka or slivovice. Needless to say, the stories flowed. 

His strong pre-1918 historical interest includes regional history throughout Slovakia, Ukraine and southern Poland and to all immigrant populations regardless of ethnicity or religion. He freely shares his imaginative, beyond-the-obvious approaches with researchers worldwide through papers and at dozens of conferences on topics including local history, archives, military, census, church records, customs, culture and geography. His web site, iabsi.com was an early leader in the presentation of English-language resources for Slovakia and neighboring countries. He is a past board member of the Carpatho-Rusyn Society.