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Subject: [CROATIA-L] Croatian Church Records
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 10:52:15 EDT

Hello to the list,

My children and I have just returned from our trip to Croatia, Slovenia and
Italy. Besides meeting relatives, we were on a mission to seek more
information on our relatives that had emigrated from there to America. I am
sharing what we found and you will find it on this and subsequent e-mails.

Many who have previously contributed to this list have spoken about the
generous hospitality and friendliness of the Croatians and our experience
exactly duplicated that. They are a warm and loving people who, as one said,
have been conquered many times but who have never set out to conquer anyone
else.

One thing I found that was new to me were the private records kept by each
Catholic Church parish (or zupa) when the Yugoslavia Government required that
the historical birth and death records be turned over to the government.
Many of those records turned over to the government, of course, are the ones
available through the LDS family history centers covering a period up to the
latter 19th/early 20th centuries. I had tried to research the microfilms
prior to our trip and had had some success. (The key for me was always
finding marriage records as these are the only records that more or less
provide a family tree road map.)

If you stop and think about it, requiring that the records be turned over to
the government was analogous to a tradesman being required to turn over the
tools with which he made a living. Hence just as a carpenter couldn't live
without his hammer and the farmer without his shovel, the priests devised
ways to retain sufficient information they needed to administer to their
church members. This information is generally referred to as the priest's,
church's or zupa's personal or private records. Further, there are certain
other records that were never required to be turned over to the government
that can be useful.

I make no pretense that we looked at many or all zupas; to the contrary, we
looked at two and so I pass along to you what I found as it was new to me
and, perhaps, can be duplicated and therefore helpful to you. And at the
moment, I know of no way to obtain it other than through someone's personal
request to the priest in charge of the zupa or church.

Here is a summary of what we found:

1. In the Kastav zupa (and from an intuitive logical sense-other zupas), the
priests kept private records or journals over the years that allowed them to
find information quickly without having to go to the many original volumes.
You have to imagine the large number of heavy volumes (perhaps 15-20 pounds
each) with separate ones for births, deaths and marriages and the difficulty
in finding specific information in a timely fashion. Without a short-cut, it
was about the same process as we researchers have to go through other than
they had physical possession of the volumes.

In this zupa, the private records, again similarly bound in those huge
original volumes where the paper tends to crumble in your fingers, is
organized by village and within village by surname, then house number. We
found our family page. This one page summary covers our family back to 1826
(originating dates vary widely dependent upon when the family settled in the
village; I have no idea what the earliest dates would be covered by other
summary pages). The summary data provide a chronology that include the
names of all family members as well as the dates of birth, death and
marriage. The last entry date for us was in the 1940s. And all of this is
summarized on one page. IMAGINE.

Beyond tracking the hierarchy of eldest son to eldest son who inherited the
family home, other anecdotal information can also be found. This includes,
at times, the names of the spouses your family's children married and where
these spouses originated, such as another village in the zupa. Therefore,
this page and others like it are a cross reference index. For example, if
you followed a woman from your family summary to the volume and page
containing the village and family of her husband, you will find the marriage
date recorded there and all the similar family data kept on the husband's
family.

Think about it! Gads, this is GOLD MINE INFORMATION for researchers
literally at your fingertips (albeit some many thousands of miles away).

2. At the zupa located in Kuzelj, we found a duplicate set of the records
that had been turned over to the government. These are handwritten on the
same type of ledger paper bound in huge volumes as covered by the microfilm.
Admittedly, this is a small zupa where physically duplicating the records was
feasible. So, if you cannot find the entry on microfilm because the image is
poor quality (or covered by those maddening separate pages that the people
microfilming didn't bother to turn over to microfilm the underlying data),
this parish has it.

3. This parish and others have records you may not have thought of like a
listing of all individuals who had been confirmed in the church. In this
zupa, this was a straight chronological listing covering many many decades
and, perhaps, centuries.

The priests we dealt with were cordial, cooperative and seemed most willing
to help. Our visit came during the week leading up to Easter which is a very
busy time for them. Yet, by personal approach or through a family member,
each made time to help us find records and, in one case, photocopied the
information for us. I, in turn, made a voluntary contribution to their
church after completing the search.

Dick Puz

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