The Blažević Archive
The whole archive, read as one book

Contents

Six parts and the front matter, in the order the story is told. The menus are shortcuts to the same pages; nothing has moved and every address is the same.

Front

Front matter

The cover, what this archive is and what it will not say, and the rules it keeps.

  1. The coverOne woman, four families, and the mountain they were planted on.
  2. AboutEvery claim carries one of five words; every correction is published; living people are named and nothing more.
  3. MethodEvery claim carries a confidence, so a reader can disagree with the reasoning instead of taking the conclusion on trust.
I

I. A mountain planted on purpose 🇭🇷

Smokvica Krmpotska and Krivi Put were settled on purpose, by refugees the Habsburgs planted on an empty mountain to hold it. With one exception, every place in this archive before 1884 lies within a day's walk of the Velebit. These chapters are the Bunjevci and the Frontier, Senj and Karlobag, the map, and the names the registers wrote the family under.

  1. The BunjevciSmokvica Krmpotska and Krivi Put were settled on purpose, by refugees the Habsburgs planted on an empty mountain.
  2. The FrontierOne Latin word in an 1834 baptismal entry puts the family inside the Habsburg Military Frontier.
  3. SenjSenj made this family and then stopped being able to feed it.
  4. KarlobagA small town under the Velebit where this family's mothers came from.
  5. The AtlasEvery place this archive can put a person in: Senj, its hinterland and the Kvarner coast.
  6. The MapEvery town the name appears in, and what the records there consist of.
  7. The NamesBlažević is the seventeenth commonest surname in Croatia; Žubrinić is held by about three hundred people on earth.
  8. The Second NameA household by-name is a second name that identifies which family of a surname you mean.
  9. Say Your NameOne person, written down by six clerks in six languages: type a given name and see every form.
II

II. Four families, and the lines under them 🇭🇷

The archive follows four surnames with a page each, Blažević, Žubrinić, Papić and Prpić, while the descent runs through more than twenty. The drawn line comes first and then each family in turn, with the names of Selce, Otočac and Karlobag that the direct line carries. The registers take the line back to about 1717, in four parishes, and no further.

The line, drawn

  1. The FamiliesThe four that make the grandparents, and the names the direct line itself carries.
  2. The treesEvery family this archive follows, most of them webs rather than lines.
  3. The SpineFrom a boy born about 1750 to Hedviga at Senj in 1926, with the joint that cannot yet bear weight marked.
  4. Our line, drawnThe whole of what this archive knows of her ancestry, as one chart.
  5. How Far BackTo about 1717, in four parishes, and no further.
  6. The Lines of a NameWherever the registers show several households of one name, each gets a lane of its own.

Blažević of Smokvica Krmpotska

  1. BlaževićThe name the archive carries: eight generations out of a Bunjevac settlement.

Žubrinić and Orešković of Otočac

  1. ŽubrinićThe rarest name in the archive and the least resolved.
  2. The Žubrinić FragmentsJoining the Žubrinići is the largest piece of work left in the archive.
  3. OreškovićOn the direct line at ahnentafel 21 and 42.

Papić of Senj

  1. PapićPorters and load-carriers on the Senj waterfront who bought an inn, and merchants at Karlobag.

Prpić of Krivi Put

  1. PrpićThirty-five people born at one house number over four generations, in Krivi Put.

Selce

  1. AntićOf Selce, on the direct line at ahnentafel 24, 48 and 96.
  2. JelličićOf Selce, on the direct line at ahnentafel 25, 50 and 100.
  3. LončarićOf Selce and Senj, on the direct line at ahnentafel 49 and 98.

Karlobag

  1. TomljanovićOf Karlobag and Senj: ahnentafel 111, died at Karlobag in 1809.
  2. PilipićOf Karlobag, on the direct line at ahnentafel 13, 26, 52 and 104.
  3. UrodaOf Karlobag, on the direct line at ahnentafel 27, 54, 108 and 109.
  4. LuckinićOf Karlobag, on the direct line at ahnentafel 105, 210 and 211.
  5. GerkacsOf Karlobag, written Gerkacs (Gergacs) in the tree: ahnentafel 55, 110 and 220.
  6. SmojverOf Karlobag, called Vukić: ahnentafel 53, 106 and 212.

Other names on the direct line

  1. SekulaOn the direct line at ahnentafel 43, 84 and 86.
  2. BrozovićOn the direct line at ahnentafel 51 and 102.
  3. MarićAhnentafel 11 and 22, whom the tree files under «Shambul Marić».
III

III. A port, a war, and the Highveld 🇭🇷 🇩🇪 🇬🇷 🇿🇦 🇦🇺 🇺🇸

Hedviga was born in a dying port on the Adriatic and died seventy-five years later on the Highveld, having crossed a world war, a country that stopped existing, and two continents. These chapters hold her life and her mother's, the town in 1943, the papers and pictures that survive, and the work that took others of the family to Port Pirie and to America.

Hedviga and her people

  1. HedvigaBorn in a dying port on the Adriatic, died seventy-five years later on the Highveld.
  2. MilkaHer mother, the best-documented person in the archive.
  3. The Wedding of 1920One page of a parish register closes the gap this archive was built around.
  4. Senj, 1943Half the town was destroyed in two days.
  5. The BrotherHer brother died at twenty-two in the last year of the war; the family keeps two accounts of how.
  6. RhodesHer second husband was born on Rhodes in 1913 and died in South Africa in 1997.

The papers

  1. The CertificateA sworn English translation of a Yugoslav birth extract: the one state document in the archive.
  2. The Arolsen CardsThree German index cards place her husband in a factory in Württemberg at the age of sixteen.
  3. The GraveSix names on one family plot, and one of them is not buried in it.
  4. The StonesNames read off photographs of the memorials themselves.
  5. The PicturesRegister scans, gravestones and portraits that the GEDCOM never carried.
  6. The FacesA contact sheet to be shown to the family: every picture attached to a name in the tree.

Work and leaving

  1. What They DidThe tree records a trade for sixteen people; the registers record one for almost everybody.
  2. Port PirieOne man left Senj for a lead-smelting town on the far side of the world, and his name changed on arrival.
  3. The Other EmigrationYoungstown, Johnstown, Brooklyn, Leadville, Calumet and Chicago: records that were never looked for.
  4. The Catch AbroadEvery record the commercial indexes returned for the family's emigrant surnames.
IV

IV. How the lines join 🇭🇷 🇺🇸

A pedigree takes one person per generation and drops the rest. These chapters look instead at who the families marry repeatedly, at the cousins, and at the families that married into the line or sit beside it in the registers, among them the Kosina household of Senj.

Marriage and cousins

  1. Who They MarriedWho a family marries repeatedly: a German name inside the Military Frontier, and more.
  2. The MarriagesThis archive follows four surnames; the descent runs through more than twenty.
  3. Blood relativesChoose a person: parents above, brothers and sisters beside, children below, and through them the cousins.

Families that married in or sit beside the line

  1. The Kosina30 people, from a Carniolan cottage to an autumn in Senj; the family an aunt married into.
  2. KalanjLooked for at Klenovica; their own baptismal entry calls them country people of the parish of Brinje.
  3. VukelićThe smallest family on the site, and the answer to who Milka Papić married before Ljubomir Blažević.
  4. BorasFifty-five people joined to Hedviga without scaffolding, and the least-researched family on the site.
  5. PavelićThe family the Blaževići of Mrzli Dol kept marrying, with a branch at Hibbing, Minnesota.
  6. KrmpotićA name that shares its stem with the villages above Senj, written Krmpotich, Krampotich and Kermpotich.
  7. BabićThirty-five readings from the Senj registers, and the seven Babić children dead in August 1855.
  8. ŠpaljSixteen people, four households, and in every one the wife is a Prpić.
  9. ŠestanFifty-five people connected only through a single node the tree itself labels not real.
V

V. Everyone, and everything in order

The people, every name, the places, the register and the people found beside the tree, then the timeline. A person's page belongs to its index chapter here and links back to it.

  1. The PeopleEverybody in the tree carrying one of the archive's eight surnames who is judged dead.
  2. Every NameEvery name in the archive, and how many different people bore it.
  3. PlacesWith one exception, every place before 1884 lies within a day's walk of the Velebit.
  4. The RegisterEvery entry caught: the raw catch, not a family tree.
  5. People Found Beside the TreePeople read off a page that the family tree has never heard of, kept beside the tree.
  6. The TimelineSenj alone ran through the Uskoks, the Military Frontier, Austria–Hungary and Yugoslavia.
VI

VI. How we know, and what is missing

Every claim here carries a confidence. These chapters keep the sources, the registers read and not read, the open questions and the corrections in the open, so that a gap is not mistaken for a fact.

What it rests on

  1. SourcesA family tree, a set of Croatian parish registers reachable through FamilySearch, and national surname statistics.
  2. Which Books Are IndexedAn indexed book is a search box; an unindexed one is a sitting in front of a film.
  3. What Has Been ReadSo that a null is not lost: which volumes have been read, and which have not.
  4. What the Registers Actually SayEvery document read off a page, with the citation in the register's own words.
  5. The Pages ThemselvesA photograph of the register page for each reading that has one.
  6. What Rests on a DocumentWhat each page's evidence is, person by person, added up.

What is missing

  1. Open QuestionsWritten down so no reader mistakes a gap for a fact; each says what would close it.
  2. What Is Left to ReadEvery person whose birth or death was written in a parish whose films are reachable.
  3. The Hungarian PressLika and the Kvarner were administered from Budapest; the press of that administration had never been searched.
  4. ErrandsEvery letter this archive has written, in full: drafted, sent and answered.
  5. The work listWhat is being done here, as opposed to what is known.

What was wrong

  1. CorrectionsThe claims made here and then withdrawn, kept in the open.
  2. What changedEvery change this archive has recorded about itself, newest first.
  3. What Cannot Be TrueThings in one record that cannot all be true at once.
  4. The Same Person, TwiceOne person counted as two, and how that inflates every number.
  5. Labels Where the Father Should BeLabels where the father should be: removed from the people, not yet from the parents.