RESEARCH
How do you find the history of your family in a place like Croatia?
1. Establish where your family is from. If living in America, use the online archives at Ellis Island to start your search if you have no idea. A city name is good, but what is even better is the name of a church region. For example, your family may be from Kupeć Dol, but the records are all stored under the name Sveta Jana. An internet search is also useful for this, as well as searching Hrvatski Telekom to find phone listings to establish where people live today.
2. Find out everything you can from living family members you know. Remember that story about the fact your family only drank white wine? Something like that is very important in establishing geographic locations. It can be that any story is useful because it will help you mesh up your family history with what people who still live in the area might remember or were told.
3. Visit Zagreb. You will have to go there at some point if you want to dig deeper. This will most likely require a trip to the Državni Arhiv. This is a wonderful, beautiful building in the center of Zagreb's Lower Town. It stores just about every record in the country it seems. The staff are also very helpful, but only a few speak English, so try to learn some basic words beforehand and also learn the Croatian words important to the records. It's good to know these words in Latin as well, since the records shift in the 19th century. Areas in the north often have records back to the 17th century and along the coast, records can go back as far as the 14th century or more!
4. Learn Croatian or find a translator. Most likely your family is from a more rural area where the second language tends to be German in the north and Italian on the coast, although this is slowly changing. If you want to hire a translator, try a local tourist office.
5. Visit family. Once you get these other pieces in place, see if you can go to the town or village and meet distant relatives. Just keep in mind that once a child left, they forfeited their claim to the land, so don't joke about it unless the people living there do first. Also, it goes without saying anywhere, but don't be flashy with money.
