Croatian Genealogy Newsletter
Issue No. 23, 2014
This is the seventeenth year that this newsletter has been published online. In that time we have sought to bring a variety of topics
on Croatian genealogy from regions outside of Croatia.
To make the multiple issues of the newsletter more accessible a new index has been added for places and topics, supplementing
the previous issues index.
Current issue:
Subject and Location Index
Past Issues
Books: within Croatia
in diaspora
Croatian Genealogy: Primer
Croatian Seminar at the Ontario Genealogical Society Conference
One of the first conference seminars on Croatian genealogy took place on June 2, 2013 at the combined facilities of
the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) and Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario as part of the
Ontario Genealogical Societies annual conference. The Socities conference usually features a large number of
session for interest to genealogists of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Ireland. The Croatian
session is the first offical genealogical presentation to have taken place in Canada.
The University of Ontario Institute of Technology is a new university that has only been in existence ten years.
The conference took place in a variety of classroom setting some seating up to a hundred or more participants.
A gymasium-sized display area was available for various genealogical groups and retailers to display their
products, while a computer facility allowd participants to research online at the conference. The conference was
well attended.
In the presentation at UOIT, the importance of the Glagolitic script in Croatian genealogical records was demonstrated.
In addition examples of Croatian birth, marriage, death records were illustrated. The recent 2001 census and the
1948 census were examined for their use in genealogy. As well as, the use of Canadian records to find
Croatian immigrants using the Federal Censuses of 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911, various Canadian city directories and the
Croatian Fraternal Societies in Canada.
Famous Croatian-Canadians were referenced
The presentation documented the literary and historical link between the Croatia and the Ukraine and how
each country is shaped by its diverse and unique past.
The OGS Croatian Genealogy presentation was part of dual presentation entitle "Ukrainian and Croatian Genealogical
Records" by William Vetzel and Grant Karcich. While the Croatian community in Oshawa is very small, the Ukrainian
community is substantial and therefore the presentation was focused to combine the the two into one genealogical
presentation. Ukrainians and Croats each have their own scripts or alphabets. The Glagolitic script was developed
first and was used in both Croatia and the Ukraine in the early Medieval era. However, the Cyrillic script soon
replaced the Glagolitic in the Ukraine.
In the presentation attention was given to the use of Glagolitic script in genealogical records. Into the 19th Century
the Glagolitic alphabet was used in some parishes of western Croatia. On the map above the Glagolitic region is
featured by the red diagonal lines. The Glagolitic predates the Cyrillic script used today in Russia, Ukraine, Serbia,
and Bulgaria, and was once used in an area stretching from the Czech Republic to Serbia. This ancient script was used
only in Croatia since the late Medieval period, having died out in that country and is today only found on monuments.
http://www.croatiancanadianlibrary.com/archivegenealogy/croatiangenealogy.html
Genealogical Resources listed at the The Croatian-Canadian Library and Cultural Society in Mississauga, Ontario.
Croatian Genealogical Society (Hrvatsko Rodoslovno Drustvo) Meetings for 2013
Hrvatsko rodoslovno društvo "Pavao Ritter Vitezovic" or the Croatian Genealogical Society is a national Croatian
genealogical organization headquartered in Zagreb. Named after a seventeenth century historian, the Society was
founded in June of 2005 with Peter Strcic as president. The Society was formed to encourage and support genealogical
research and to educate researchers by the exchange of information on genealogical issue, archival administration,
and information technology.
Meetings are usually held at the Croatian State Archives, Marulicev Square 21 (near the Botanical Gardens)
in Zagreb.
On Saturday May 18, 2013 from 10:00 - 14:00 hours the Croatian State Archives will
celebrate International Museum Day and European Night of Museums. The event provides
an opportunity to showcase museums and the museum profession in Croat and in the European Union.
Igor Kozjak, from the Central Department of Conservation and Restoration at the Croatian State Archives
will describe how cameras were restore. The atrium of the Archives will exhibit restored camera and protective
boxes particularly those of Franz Thiard de Laforest. Laforest (1838-1911) was a photographer and writer in the
late 19th century especially in Dalmatia. His photographs cover the period from 1866 to
1898.
The library was founded in 1853 by Ivan Kukuljevic Sakcinski. Today the library has approximately 160,000 volumes
including 90,000 books and 70,000 magazines. Approximately 770 linear meters house the unbound newspapers and books .
The life and work of Andrija Stampar, physician, founder of the World Health Organization there is an extensive
historiography, but on his second wife , Desanka Ristovic-Typo (1882-1968th) there is no information.
Her role in the Croatian medical history has been neglected.
This lecture for the first time, based on archival sources and details from Mrs. Dawn Typo, Stampar's daughter.
provides more detail on Stampar's wife.
Premiere directed by Nicholas Kostelac in 1957.
September 30 palaeographic workshop at 10 a.m. and "Archives on-line" at 12 p.m.
October 9, 2013 from 12 to 2 p.m. a workshop on European archival portals.
Previous Croatian Genealogical Society meetings are available for
2012 and for the years from
2009 to 2011.:
Croatian immigrants to the Pajaro Valley and Watsonville, California (Book Reviews)
Two books that were released in the last few years focus on the Croatians that came to the Pajaro Valley and
Watsonville, California, an area near the Pacific coast south of San Francisco. Watsonville with a 2010 census
population of 51,199 inhabitants is a city in Santa Cruz County, California. This was an area populated by
Croatians from the region around Dubrovnik, and the island of Brac. Today many of the desendants of this part
of California maintain their links to the old country.
Thomas Ninkovich's book, The Slav community of Watsonville, California : as reported in old newspapers
(1881-1920) was published in 2011 by Reunion Research Press in Watsonville, California. Covering 835 pages,
Ninkovich's book is an exhaustive compilation of newspaper articles of Slav immigrants, who were primarily
Croats. The book provides a journalist history of the Slavs including short biographies of specific families.
An appendix provides details on the surnames of the immigrants and their villages of origin in Europe, while
additional appendices provide maps and language details.
Croatians started coming to California when Croatia was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In the
Watsonville area they came to work in the mines at Jackson in 1870 and later they began to settle in Watsonville
itself. There they bought apple orchards. They built up the area's economy by their entrepreneurial enterprises
in apple growing and cold storage industries.
Most of the Croatians who immigrated to Watsonville were from Dalmatia, not Croatia. At that time Dalmatia was
part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The first Croatians in California came during, and right after, the Gold Rush.
They settled primarily in Jackson, California. Later, starting in the late 1880s, some of them settled in the
Watsonville area where they became fruit brokers at first and later expanded into owning fruit farms, primarily
apple farms. By 1920 they constituted around 12% of the town's inhabitants.
They built up the area's economy by their entrepreneurial enterprises in apple growing and cold storage industries.
Ninkovich is an archivist and historian, originally from Fresno, California, and now retired in Watsonville,
who spearheads a project to collect information and photos of the Slav immigrants to Watsonville.
In his own words Ninkovich describes what lead him to undertake his research. "I first came to Watsonville
in 2002 after having spent three years researching the history of my mother’s Croatian family. In my
retirement I was looking for a project that would involve a Slavic community. I didn’t want to write the
history of a community; I just wanted to collect the information. I knew that someone would come along some
day and use such information to write a proper history or genealogy, or perhaps produce a documentary film."
He outlines the difficulty of take on such a project. "It is truly tedious to read newspapers on microfilm
machines. Often they are too dark or too light. Many are scratched. But after about two years I made it up
to 1905 (I could only do it for about 3 hours a day, every other day or so, without burning out). But I
finally did burn out. At that point (to 1905) I had collected over 1200 excerpts from the microfilmed
newspapers. It was a good, basic collection. It covered the very early years of the Slavs in Watsonville....
At that point I approached the directors of the Borina Foundation and they provided the funds to hire
professional researchers and transcribers to continue to 1920. Having once been in the publishing profession,
I provided the editing, book design and indexing. And that’s how this book came to be."
The Croatians who came to Watsonville were primarily from the region around Dubrovnik -- Konavle, Župa, Primorje,
Pelješac, and the islands of Mljet and Lopud. And around 15-20% came from the island of Brac. Very few (less
than 2%) came from other areas.
The Strazicich, Belin, Dabelich, Cumbelich, and Sersen families came from Mljet, while from Primorje, Ombla
nd Župa (the regions surrounding Dubrovnik) came the Puhiera, Milanovich, Ivanovich, Biskup, Banovac, Zadielovich,
Pulisevich, Borina, Knego, Colendich, Simunovich and Gera families.
But a good 70% of the immigrants came from Konavle, where the primary immigrant surnames were Scurich, Lettunich,
Stolich, Pista, Secondo, Kalich, Ruso, Alaga, Jano, Resetar, Marinovich, Cikuth, Kralj, Skocko, Capitanich,
Pekoch, Sambrailo, Caput, Miladin, Gluhan, Butier, Copriviza and Glage (all spellings shown are as they became
in this country).
The book contains a wealth of photographs of these pioneer Slavs from Watsonville, collected by Ninkovich from
early newspapers and from local families. A superb index provides links to these photographs and individuals and
a large appendix gives biographical details on the early settlers. The book, which was first printed in Canada, is
now available for free in PDF format from
www.croatia-in-english.com. There are no printed copies available and the book will not be reprinted. Any
questions can be directed to Tom Ninkovich at tom@croatia-in-english.com.
The other book review is by Donna F. Mekis & Kathryn Mekis Miller entitled, Blossoms Into Gold: The Croatians in
the Pajaro Valley. The Pajaro Valley is in the Watsonville region. Donna and Kathryn are granddaughters of
Croatian immigrants who came from Konavle to Watsonville, California, in 1901. Their father,
Andrew Mekis, was born in Watsonville’s Croatian colony in 1920.
Blossoms into Gold was published in the Spring of 2009 by Capitola Book Company of Aptos, California.
Its length of 309 pages has details of those Croatian immigrants in the Pajaro.
Kathryn describes the “the first Croatians who came to the Pajaro Valley... as businessmen, not farmers.” They
included men such as, Marko Rabasa, Luke Sresovich, Luke Scurich, M.N. Lettunich, and F.P. Marinovich. Their
work revolutionized the apple industry by creating contracts with growers for apples while blossoms were still
on the trees, and forming packing and distributing cooperatives, as well as, merchandising their products with
their own distinctive apple-box labels. By 1910, there were 53 packing companies in the Pajaro Valley consisting
of 80 Croatian families. The book also describes the lives of John and Martin Franich were two young brothers
when they arrived in the Watsonville area. Rocky Franich, owner of Franich Ford Mercury dealership in Watsonville
today, described his great-grandfather, Martin as one like so many who immigrated to the Pajaro Valley when they
were teenagers.
In the autumn of 2013 Blossoms into Gold was reported to be translated into Croatian by the University of
Zagreb and published by Matica Hrvatska in the Dubrovnik area. The English version can be purchased online
for $29.95 US at www.blossomsintogold.com.
References:
Library at UOIT
Language map of Europe with a yellow line demarcating
the boundary between Roman and Cyrillic scripts.
Don Quixote by R. Vlado Kristl in 1961.
Fifth by Paul R. Štalter , Zlatko Grgic, 1963.
And Videl sem distance Meglena and cal ; R. Zlatko Bourek , 1964.
Wall by R. Anthony Zaninovic, 1964.
Muha by R. Alexander Marx and Vladimir Jutriša, 1966.
Between lip and cup by R. Dragutin Vunak, 1968.
The days by R. Nedjeljko Dragic, 1969.
Crest of the Rodsolvlje Drustvo
October 1 Lubynski Palace workshop at 10 a.m. and a Heraldic workshop at 11 a.m.
October 2 Heraldic workshop at 11 a.m. and at 1 p.m. a workshop on the "Historic Photographic Processes"
October 3 Archives online at 11 a.m. and Lubynski Palace workshop at 1 p.m.
October 10, 2013 from 1 to 6 p.m. a symposium on the "100 years of the palace Lubynski.
October 11, 2013 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. "Meet Zagreb"
October 12, 2013 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. an Open House with
workshops on archives, genealogy, Glagolitic, heraldry, palaeography, and history.
with tours of the building, storage facilities, and restoration and photo laboratories.
Main Street around 1888 about the time
the first Croats settled in Watsonville
