This website celebrates the genealogy of Hubert (Bert) Aloysius Flaherty and Mary Nazar who were born, raised, and lived in Scranton, PA after their ancestors emmigrated from Ireland and Ukraine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Together, Bert and Mary raised a family of eight before Mary passed away in 1963 and Bert in 1991.
Bert was 100% Irish and his immediate ancestors included Flaherty’s, Burke’s, McGuire’s, and Hynes’ who all immigrated to America from England in the 1880s and 1890s. The Flaherty and Burke’s were from County Galway, Ireland while the McGuire’s and Hynes’ were from County Mayo. These two counties were among the hardest hit in Ireland by the Great Potato Famine between 1845 and 1852.
Mary was 100% Ukrainian and her parents immigrated to America in the early 1900s from the small villages of what is today Dobra, Podkarpackie, Poland (Progorowicz family) and Koniukhy, Ternopil Oblast, Ukraine (Nazar family).
While originating from very different parts of Europe, both sides of the family immigrated from locations with significant amount of poverty and hardship. Specifically, the Irish families immigrated to England beginning ~1851 shortly after the Great Potato Famine while the Ukrainian families left the poorest area of the Austro Hungarian Empire (Galacia) in the decade prior to the start of World War I in 1914. The men from both families worked in the Scranton coal mines, primarily the Diamond Mine located near the current day Scranton High School. The history behind where these families came from is provided in the subsequent pages (login required).
