In the years around 1900 many Ukrainian peasants from what is today western  Ukraine and southern Poland came to North America.  At the time, the area was  called Galicia and was under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867- 1918).  Galicia was a largely autonomous province with Ukrainian as one of the  official languages. Galicia was one of the economically least developed regions  of Europe, leading to a mass emigration starting in the 1880s.

This website is focussed on the large Hulchanski family that, until this  generation, lived in or near Syracuse, New York. They arrived between the mid- 1890?s and about 1905.  They were among the earliest Ukrainian immigrants.   Because Galicia was not an independent nation, these immigrants were officially  citizens of Austria, though they were ethnically Ukrainian and were members of  the Ukrainian Catholic (Byzantine Rite) Church. The terrible economic  conditions in Galicia offered uneducated impoverished peasants few prospects  for a good life. Conditions in the U.S. were not much better for the first  generation who worked as common laborers in factories in the days prior to  labour laws and unions.

John Hulchanski (1875-1954), his first wife Helen (Olena) Halaiko (1877-1940)  and his son Stephen (1895-1950) settled in Auburn, NY, near Syracuse.  John  worked for the large Columbian Rope Company in Auburn. His only child Stephen  Hulchanski, in 1920, married Mary Fletcher (Fecych) (1904-1998) and between  1921 and 1932 Stephen and Mary Hulchanski had seven children (and eventually   40 grandchildren, 59 great grandchildren, and, many great-great grandchildren.  Stephen worked for the New York Central railroad. He reached the position of  engineer at the time of his death, a status which earned him a brief obituary  notice in the New York Times.

The oldest of Stephen and Mary's seven children is John Hulchanski (1921-2012),  who lived in Latham NY, near Albany, with his wife Dorothy (Koczan) Hulchanski (1926-2010).  Since the family history on this website was researched by one of John and  Dorothy's four sons, Thomas Michael Hulchanski (1955-2005), its focus includes  a detailed history of Dorothy's family (the Uchal's and Koczan's).

John and Dorothy were married in 1948 following his service in the Army Air  Corps, and a year before his graduation with an engineering degree from  Syracuse University (the first member of the Hulchanski family to earn a  university degree). Between 1949 and 1957 John and Dorothy had six children and  lived in suburban Syracuse until 1961, when they moved to a suburb of Albany NY  (Latham).

Dorothy Koczan's great grandparents, Paul Uchal (1867-1935) and Sofia Sinko  (1877-1947), came from the same region of Galicia as the Hulchanski's. Dorothy  Koczan's mother, Anna Uchal (1900-1961), born in the U.S., was one of their  children. In 1918 she married Stephen Koczan (1896-1927), who died shortly  after Dorothy was born.  Anna Koczan raised two sons and her daughter Dorothy  by herself as a single mom through the depression.  One of her sons, William,  was killed during the D-Day invasion.

This website, in summary, provides a history of the large Stephen and Mary  Hulchanski family (Halaiko, Fletcher/Fecych, Macko) and the smaller Anna Koczan  family (Uchal, Sinko) - and everyone who was born into or who married into  these families.

The research for this website was compiled by Thomas Michael Hulchanski over a  period of many years during the 1980's and 1990's.  Tom died suddenly on June  19, 2005.  He was well organized and kept detailed files.  He went about the  research in a very systematic way - following up all kinds of leads, from ship  landings, immigration and census records, birth, marriage and death  certificates and newspaper notices, social security application forms, and so  on. He also corresponded with older members of the family.

This website is dedicated to the memory of Tom Hulchanski, without whose many  years of systematic research, none of the family history posted here would be  known to us.