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Re: ethnicity of surname
I'm no historian but I tend to agree with the first post. Also, immigrants to America in that time often ended up having their names spelled incorrectly for the simple fact that they just weren't used to non-English names but also the literacy rate was really low. Just because you worked a public job didn't mean you could spell, read, or write in an acceptable manner. It was probably easier for the English speakers to say and spell Stinic than Stinicova (not that it's actually a complicated name but things were very different 100 years ago). A similar scenario happened to my Dutch and Irish ancestors. It could have also been your gradmother's choice to have him baptized with Stinic too, just for the sake of sanity. You'd be surprised how often that happened.Have you checked with Ancestry.com? It's not usually free but they have so much information and maybe there's something there that can help you.
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