Has anyone ever heard of the town of Husinice, Russia or Ukraine, circa 1912?

Question

My grandfather came to the United States from a town in what was in 1912 considered to be Russia, or possibly Ukraine. The town has been spelled many ways in passenger lists, naturalization documents, etc. - Hunsencye, Husinice, Husimce, Husyniec, Husynisc, Husynise. Is anyone familiar with this town or can tell me where to look to find it? I have checked some historical Gazetteers.

Answer 1

To answer this question, indeed, more information is needed: *Hus- is a very common root for toponyms. It literally means goose, so every village located near a lake or a slow-motion river where plenty of geese resided, might be called in this manner.

So let me focus on the last part of your question,

…or can tell me where to look to find it?

Let me tell how I would run my search. I'll focus on Ukraine, but you can do exactly the same for Polish and Russian sources.

1. Google for "list populated places [country]", better if your request was translated to the country's language:

   перелік населених пунктів України

2. Usually, it will lead you to an official portal of country's parliament where such list is published. Use Web translator if needed;
3. Here, topic #5 is what we need, it's an alphabetical index of all towns and villages;
4. Open the document and search for the name. It starts with "гус" in both Ukrainian and Russian, and "gęś" in Polish;
5. In this case, the list is split into several documents based on the starting letter, so you need to download yet another file;

6. Copy and paste the names into Google and search for them individually.

   Completing the steps above, you will find the following ones:

   Гусельське Днц 119
   Гусельщикове Днц 923
   Гусина Поляна Хрк 820
   Гусинка Хрк 1211
   Гусятин Тр 199; Хм 1272
   

   Format contains village name, abbreviated region, and postal code. I have also stripped the names that don't sound similarly to your request.

7. Also check for list of obsolete towns and villages. One of the most prominent examples of what you may find is Husynci village, 77 km away from Kyiv.
   Husynci village was wiped off in 1971 when Kyiv water Reservoir has been created.

Abandoned Church of Husynci in the middle of water reservoir; image courtesy of Wikimapia

Answer 2

I googled Husyniec which took me quite easily to

http://dolny-slask.org.pl/789805,foto.html

thence to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C4%99siniec.

I suggest Gęsiniec is your answer.

Comment accepted. This was wrong.

Can I bid again with Husince, Ukraine?

http://www.ukraine-kiev-tour.com/husince-flooded-church-transfiguration-temple.html

Answer 3

There's a small village near Polish/Ukraine border called Husiny. I'm not suggesting that's the place, but the Polish wiki note on it's names origin states that the name comes from "Husyci" - Polish for Hussite. Considering how many of them fled into that general region, settling in multiple places, and how many villages were completely wiped by WWI and WWII, I'm afraid you might be out of luck unless you can find some other sources to pin the location better.

Answer 4

I live in Husiatyn this a little town.

I can help you, but to find your relatives I would need to know your grandfather's surname.