The Kokolus Story
History of the surname Kokolus

Dear Friends,

The surname KOKOLUS is rather rare and the KOKOLUS family is very small from a global point of view. The known history of this kin begins in a small settlement calledZawadka, which is located in the area of the Carpathian Mountains in the south-east hook of Poland, near to the borders with Slovakia and Ukraine (next to a town called Ropienka). In bygone times, this area was also known as Galicia.
First records about the Zawadka village are from the year 1506, and the first known member of the KOKOLUS family is Wasyl, who was born in 1709.

The information and data I have collected until now are sorted into following parts:

• The History of the KOKOLUS Family until WW1/WW2
• The History of the KOKOLUS Family after WW2
• Next Steps

The line between WW1 and WW2 is not strict. In the period just before the year 1900 and then until WW1, many members of the Kokolus family left Galicia for the USA, Czechoslovakia and Russia. Registers and other official records from Zawadka and its surroundings from ca 1900 – 1945 are very incomplete, supposedly destroyed during WW1 and/or WW2.

The history of the Kokolus family in Zawadka in the period ca 1770 – 1900 is very well charted – see six Descendant trees. The missing data from 1700 – 1775 are substituted by hypotheses HP-1 and HP-2, which are based on the existence of Wasyl Kokolus.

After 1900, the family tree in Czechoslovakia starts with Gregorius Kokolus and his three sons, who are labeled as CS-1 to CS-4. The abbreviation “IM-xx” by the name means that person concerned left his/her country for the US and is listed in the Immigrant table under number xx.

The genealogical chart regarding the USA and Canada is only approximately drawn, based on examples of the most known individuals – see US-1 and US-2.

Information about the Kokolus family after 1900 in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia are very restricted, due to the fact that no local person being able to cooperate in terms of the local family tree has been found so far. However, the state of family knowledge in Poland has recently been considerably improved thanks to my assistant Zuzanna Waclawek. Based on the Displaced Persons´Cards, Zuzanna compiled more than 10 Kokolus family branches in Poland and hence managed to partially fill the gap in knowledge from 1900 until today. Now we can only wait for more Kokolus family members in Poland to supply us with further information about their ancestors. Any help please ?

I thank in advance to anyone who would let me know about any amplifying information, or more precisely about any error in the data on this web page. Likewise, I do welcome any kind of pictures or documents about the family, especially from the period before the WW2 and immediately after that.

I hope that together we will be able to fulfill the Tom McAvinia’s dream of publishing the Kokolus Story at least in this virtual form on the internet.

Jaroslav Kokolus