This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/DYB.2ACE/1353 Message Board Post: Immigrants from Croatia (ethnic Croats and ethnic Serbs) arrived in large numbers to the US beginning the late 1880s continuing through 1913 or so. They typically came for work, in fact many US companies sent agents to the old Austro-Hungarian Empire recruiting cheap labor. In spite of this most of these immigrants could earn more in a day than they could in a month in the "old country." Most of these immigrants were from villages, we may call them peasants in Croatia they were known as seljaci (sell yatsee) which literally translated is - villager. It may come as a surprise to us but most of these immigrants did not intend to stay, but had a dream of earning money and returning home to buy a farm. In the "old country" farms were small and families large. The eldest male would inherit the farm, thus there was nothing for the younger males, as industrialization was behind western Europe. Also Croatia and Croatians were under pressure from the Hungarian Crown which was! forcing Magyarization (Hungarianization) upon the Croatian people. Most Croatians came from small villages, in spite of many tales that they came from Zagreb or other large cities. City folk typically were better off than village people, thus there was less reason to leave home. There are many, many records which can help establish a family tree for your Croatian ancestors. In spite of many stories about name changes at Ellis Island, 99.9% of the names I have looked up at Ellis Island are spelled as they were in the old country! http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/aboutins/history/articles/NAMES.htm Your Croaitan ancestors could have been listed on various documents as arr from Croatia, Austria, "Yugoslavia", SHS or Hungary. Some may confuse this believing that they were Austrian, Hungarian etc. We need to think in terms much like we do about people in the US, we are all Americans but we sometimes ID ourselves as Italian-Americans, Afro-Americans, Croatian-Americans, etc. Likewise in old Austro-Hungarian Empire all would have been citizens of that country thus they could be called Austrians or Hungarians. However that Empire had about 15 different ethnic groups. On some Ellis Is manifests you will find one column labled NATIONALITY, which is the place that the immigrant was a citizen or subject of. On some ship manifests there is another column labled, Race of People, today we call this ethnicity. The problem is that some ship manifests have only an Nationality column. But the structure of the surname most often can give a clue to ethnicity. Also a few other et! hnic groups came from Croatia, such as Serbs (in fact most Serbs arr 1894-1913 came from Croatia!), Germans (known as Danube-Schwabians), Slovaks, Czechs, Italians, Hungarians, Ruthenians, just to mention a few. It would appear that most Croatians coming to the US 1894-1913 came from Zumberak, Gorski Kotor, Dalmatian areas, as well as Bosnia-Hercegovina. There were fewer from the rich farming area of Slavonia (not to be confused with the country of Slovenia!) And very few came from the capital of Zagreb. There are numerous resources readily availble nearby that can help find your roots in Croatia. They inc. Ellis Island web pages, LDS (Mormon) Church Family History Centers microfilm records of Croatian church records, online Croatian phone books, etc. I have compiled links to those many genealogy web pages. Here is the address to my Croatian genealogy links page. If you click on the home page (web page was done by Tom Ninkovich) you will find how to translate church records, how to write to churches there, etc.. http://www.croatia-in-english.com/rj/index.html Robert Jerin Croatian Heritage Museum Cleveland, Ohio