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