The Talpash family in Lemko areas

The Lemko Talpash families lived in the area of the Carpathian Mountains between present-day Poland and Slovakia. Lemkos have been called the Carpatho-Rusyns. They are considered to belong to the most westerly of the Ukrainian ethnocultural people. Because they lived in areas under Polish administration, they spoke a Polonized dialect of Ukrainian. Unlike the Roman Catholic Poles and Slovaks, between whom they were sandwiched, they were all of the Eastern Rite Greek Catholic (Uniate) faith.

The name Talpasz appears in Ivan Krasovsky's book Surnames of Galician Lemkos in the 18th Century, which is based on the Austrian Emperor Joseph's Land Cadaster of 1787-8. The surname Talpasz is listed in these tax assessment rolls as land owners in the villages of Berest in the Grybow District, in Solotviny in the Novy Sacz District, and in Svjatkova (spelled Swiatkowa Wielka in Polish) in the Jaslo District of Galicia.

The 1877 Baptismal Certificate of Anton Talpash of Labowa lists his parents, grandparents and godparents. His godfather was recorded as being Paulus Talpasz of Kotiw, a near-by village. The Certificate was filled out in Latin by a priest who wrote that the religion of "Antonius Talpasz" was "graeco-catholica".

The first Talpash immigrants to the United States did not join the already-established Polish, Russian or Hungarian groups. Together with other Lemko immigrants, they formed their own church parishes and social organizations. Furthermore, any Talpash who married, married an ethnic Ukrainian. 

There is no question that the ethnicity of this "Northern" branch of the Talpasz/Talpash family is Lemkian-Ukrainian, and that their religion was Greek Catholic.

((Further research in Labowa, presently in Poland, is difficult because Lemkos were systematically expelled from their homelands. Just after the Second World War, in 1945, Poland and Soviet Ukraine established their new mutual border, and forcefully pursued a policy of "ethnic exchange." Over a million ethnic Poles (plus some Polonophile Ukrainians) were expelled from Ukraine. In return, some 700,000 Lemkos, who were ethnic Ukrainians, were expelled from southern Poland into areas of western Ukraine, and also into the north-west corner of Poland, from whence its German residents had been expelled. The hills and fields of the old Lemko homelands now lie largely barren, and the villages are very sparsely settled. The church in Labowa, built in 1784, is now closed and in ruin. However, the pre-war Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy offices in Lviv, Stanislav and Peremyshyl had duplicate parish records from most parishes, and many records are now available in the National Archives in Lviv, Ukraine. The Archiwum Panstwowe W Przemysl (Premysl) in Poland also has some material of interest. For further information, read about Lemkos in Vol. 3 of The Encyclopedia of Ukraine, University of Toronto Press, 1993, and in Iwanusiw, Oleh W. Church in Ruins, St. Sophia. St. Catherines. 1987.))