Janko Spudić (1891–1957) and the four siblings nobody named
Asked in a family-history group by a great-grandchild of Janko: who were the four brothers and sisters his obituary said he outlived? This page is a living, honest account of what his own documents confirm, what they contradict, and where those four names will actually be found. Last updated 17 October 2026.
The original request
Trying to locate the name of my great-grandfather’s four siblings. His name was Janko Spudic (1891-1957). Just found out his parents were Stephen Spudic and Dora Polovich. I don’t have birth/death dates on them. Janko’s obituary mentioned that he had outlived four siblings, but he never spoke of them. Is somebody here related to any of these folks?Post in a family-history Facebook group, as relayed. The poster appears to be the Eric Spudic who replies below, but the thread does not say so outright.
| Asked for | The names of Janko’s four siblings. Nothing in the request rules out writing to archives or parishes. |
|---|---|
| In hand | A baptismal certificate (1931 copy of the 1891 entry), a 1939 naturalization certificate, a 1957 Illinois death record, and Janko’s obituary (the requester’s copy is not yet on this page; an index of a Springfield newspaper obituary of 26 Nov 1957 is described below). |
| Parents, as given | Stephen Spudic and Dora Polovich (from the death record). |
| Place | Leskovac, Yugoslavia, on the death record; Leskovac Barilovićki in Croatia today. |
| Not known | The siblings’ names, birth places or dates, or whether any left Croatia. |
What Janko’s own documents say
Three documents, read directly from the scans supplied. Everything later on this page is checked against them. The most useful one is the oldest, and it disagrees with the newest.
1. Baptismal certificate (Krsni list), issued 12 October 1931
| Form | Kraljevina Jugoslavija, Banovina Savska, Biskupija (diocese) Zagrebačka. It is an extract from the parish baptism register, not the register itself. |
|---|---|
| Parish | Roman Catholic parish of sv. Josipa (St Joseph), Leskovac. |
| Register reference | Volume (svez.) read as 18, page 184, entry no. 59. The volume number is the least legible figure on the form. |
| Child | Janko, legitimate (zakonit). Born the 6th of October 1891 (šestoga listopada); baptized 9 October 1891. |
| Father | Vid(o) Spudić, farmer (polj.), Roman Catholic (Rkt.). The last letters of the first name are a flourish: Vido or Vid either way, and not Stjepan. |
| Mother | Dora (written “Dara”), née Polović (r. Polović). |
| Domicile | Leskovac 10: the house number is the single most useful search key on this page. |
| Godparents | Josip and Ana, surname read as Šerić or Lesić (uncertain), farmers. Kumovi were usually kin or close neighbours, so they are a lead in their own right. |
| Baptized by | Parish priest Stjepan (surname read as Žugčić; uncertain). A priest named Stjepan on this certificate is a coincidence worth noticing and nothing more. |
2. Certificate of Citizenship, 27 January 1939
| Name used | Yanko Spudic, residing at Mount Olive, Illinois. |
|---|---|
| Description | Age 47, male, fair complexion, blue eyes, light-brown hair, 5 ft 4 in, 150 lb, married. Former nationality: Yugoslavian. |
| Why it matters | Age 47 in January 1939 agrees with a birth in October 1891. Petition no. 2878 is the underlying court file: such files usually record the arrival ship and date, the wife’s name and the children, and sometimes the previous residence. That file has not been seen. |
3. Illinois death record, 25 November 1957
| Name | John Spudic, Sr., 511 East Main Street, Mt. Olive. Retired coal miner. |
|---|---|
| Born / died | 6 October 1891, “Leskovac, Yugoslavia” · 25 November 1957, coronary thrombosis, age 66. |
| Father / mother | “Stephen Spudic” · “Dora Polovich” (maiden name). |
| Informant | John J. Spudic Jr., 804 E. Main St., Mt. Olive: son. A son gave his grandparents’ names thirty-plus years after a first-generation immigrant who “never spoke of” his family had passed them on. |
| Burial | 27 November 1957, Calvary Cemetery, Mt. Olive. Becker & Son Funeral Home. Coroner John Ferketich; certified copy issued 4 February 1971. |
| Left out here | The record includes a Social Security number. It is deliberately not reproduced on this page, and the scan is not published. |
The 1891 baptismal entry says the father was Vid(o). The 1957 death record, filled in by a son, says Stephen. The baptismal entry is the earlier and firsthand record, so Vid is the name to search first. This page does not claim that Stephen is wrong. Three explanations fit, and none is confirmed: (a) the informant had the name wrong; (b) Stephen is Janko’s grandfather or another relative and the name slipped a generation; (c) a patronymic: Vid Stjepanov, Vid son of Stjepan. Local surname lists in this parish carry house-names built exactly that way (Spudić Grgin, Markov, Matkov). Searching Croatian registers for a “Stephen Spudić” with a wife Dora would very likely find nothing, and the absence would mean nothing.
A couple that fits, found 17 October and still only a candidate. FamilySearch’s Family Tree has a Vid Spudić, born 15 November 1846 at Leskovac, son of Ivan Spudić and Ana Maglić, who married Dorotea Polović (born 4 June 1846 at Novaki, daughter of Josip Polović and Barbara Jurčević) at Leskovac on 27 November 1867. Dora is the usual short form of Dorotea. The tree entries have no sources attached and list no children.
The part that can be checked has been. The parish’s own baptism register for 1846 (image 78 and image 81 of the FamilySearch volume; a free FamilySearch sign-in is needed to view images) contains both babies with the parents’ names the tree gives: on 4 June 1846 “Dorothea”, daughter of Josephus Polovich of Novaki and Barbara née Jurcevich (the surname reading is partly uncertain); and in mid-November 1846 “Vitus”, son of Joannes Spudich of Leskovac, house number read as 16, and Anna née Maglich. So Vid and Dorotea existed, and “Vid Spudić and Dora Polović of Leskovac” is no longer a bare guess.
Not shown: that they are Janko’s parents. Their marriage and any children fall after 1857, in books that are not online. Two things to test: Vid’s family lived at house 16 in 1846, while Janko’s baptism says house 10 in 1891 (families move and houses divide); and Vid was 44 and Dorotea 45 when Janko was born, which is possible but late. Neither rules the pair out, and neither proves them. Another Vid Spudić, born 8 January 1828 in the same parish, appears in other people’s trees and is a different man: his marriage entry of 2 March 1851 (image 492, left page, last entry) calls him “Vid, son of the late Janko Spudić of Leskovac, house 3” and his bride Jele, daughter of Miko and Julija; the trees give his parents as Johannes “Janko” Spudić and Ana Pavletić. Both ages are read as 20, not the 23 that an 1828 birth would give, and the house number is read as 3 with some doubt. That marriage entry makes him a different man from the 1846 baby (the groom was about 20 in 1851), so he is not our candidate, and he cannot be Janko’s father either, because the Curlovic tree has him dying in 1869. (The death entry described in the next paragraph makes the distinction “Janko, not Ivan” less certain than this page first said: both are forms of Joannes.)
What the marriage pages say about house 10. Across the whole book (1842 to 1857), Spudić families are given at Leskovac houses 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 15, 16 and 17: house 16 is the one Vid’s family had in 1846 (a Marko Spudić, widower, of house 16 marries in 1849), house 3 belonged to the late Janko Spudić’s family (Marko Spudić of house 3 marries on 4 November 1857, the last wedding week of the book), and a Mijo Spudić of house 17 marries on 28 November 1855. House 10 never appears as a Spudić house; it shows up only as another family’s house in one 1852 entry. The book stops in 1857, thirty-four years before Janko was born, so it cannot say where Vid’s family lived by 1891. It does mean that if Janko was born at house 10, the family either moved there after 1857 or the number changed, which is exactly what a house-by-house census (a Status animarum) would show. The same pages also show Polović men elsewhere (a widower Jure Polović of Gerčak house 10 in June 1851, and a Jure Polović, aged about 20, of “Brga” house 7 marrying Magda of Novaki house 9 on 29 November 1854). The 1854 groom might be Dorotea’s brother Juraj, but his village and age do not fit cleanly, so this is only noted, not claimed.
What the births and deaths add (read 19–20 October). The household of Vid’s baptism turns up in four more entries. His sister Jelena was baptised in December 1842 and his sister Katarina on 9 December 1844, both as children of “Joannes Bapt. Zpudich of Leskovac” and “Anna née Maglich”; Jelena died of a fever on 30 June 1847, aged four; and on 23 November 1847 the death register records “Joannes Bapt. Spudich of Leskovac, house 16, married”, aged 44, buried the next day. That is the father of the 1846 baby, dead when Vid was one year old. The house number reads 16 in 1842, 1846 and 1847 and 17 once, in 1844 (the 7 is clear, so it is probably a slip of the scribe). The same death pages show a cluster of Spudić child deaths at houses 3, 4, 16 and 17 in the summer and autumn of 1847 (a dysentery and fever season), and the 1844–45 baptisms show other Spudić fathers: Marcus at house 16, Lucas at house 15 and Josephus at house 6.
What this does to the two Vids. It shows that the 1846 baby’s father, Joannes (the tree’s “Ivan”), died in 1847, so he is a possible candidate for “the late Janko” of the 1851 marriage. The 1851 groom would then be an older son of his, born before 1846, with the same name as the baby, which is unusual; his house reads 3 and not 16; and he is about 20 in 1851, which does not fit the tree’s 1828. So the two Vids are still kept apart here, but that rests on those three oddities, not on a proven difference of fathers. Reading the 1851 entry again at full size would help (house number and age), as would finding a Janko Spudić of house 3 in the deaths before 1851, if there was one.
Who worked on this branch of the tree, and why it matters. The entries for Vid, Dorotea, Ivan and Dorotea’s father were edited in 2012 by a FamilySearch contributor shown as “Debra Papa” (the first record of each person is attributed to FamilySearch itself) and carry notes of August 2013 attributed to her: “Leskovac #16” (Vid), “Novaki #13” (Dorotea and her father), “Josip was 22 when he married Barbara Jurcevic”, and “Ivan = Joannes Bapt.” Two of those notes match what the register images show (house 16 for Vid’s family; age 22 for Josip at his marriage), and the marriage dates of Josip and Barbara (26 November 1832) and of a Susana Spudić, daughter of an older Vid Spudić (26 November 1836, a different Spudić household), match the marriage book. So whoever worked on this branch was evidently reading the registers themselves, which makes it more trustworthy than most. It still has no source attached, and the contributor’s data for the years after 1857 (the 1867 marriage) cannot be checked from here. She is the single most useful person to ask: see the third message under “Draft enquiries”.
What the replies in the thread add
Each reply is checked against what could be found independently. A reply is a lead until a record backs it.
| Who | What they said | What this page makes of it |
|---|---|---|
| Ivan Šutej, Fiorela Jakovcic | Records are only at the registrar’s office in Croatia; the Leskovac parish office should have the family. | Both are right, for different years. The 1931 certificate proves the parish held the 1891 book then; since the 1946 law, post-1860 registers sit with the civil registry (matični ured). See the section on where the records are. |
| Robin Schmidt | Grew up with a Spudic family in Illinois: a John Spudic, born about 1920, and his son Joseph; offers to reach out. | Fits Janko’s son: the 1930 census has a son John aged 7 (born about 1922–23) in his household, and the 1957 informant was John Jr. Unverified, but close. It is also an offer of a way in to living family, and one worth taking up through the requester. |
| Karen Curlovic | An Ancestry tree has Janko and Polovich names blurred; no sibling names are blurred. A “Vid,” born 8 Jan 1828 at Leskovac, with a son Mijo Josip “Michael” and a Mary Movre (1863–1931). A Barbara Spudic who wrote to her grandfather; the name became Spudich. | The Vid matches the 1891 entry, which supports Vid over Stephen. But a Vid born 1828 would have been 63 when Janko was born, so he may be the grandfather, or two different Vids are tangled. The date is written ambiguously in the post and the tree is paywalled. Unconfirmed. |
| Eric Spudic | Researched a Barbara Spudic (formerly Polovich), who ended up near St. Louis, and believes her to be Janko’s aunt; her son Marco died young and is buried at Mt. Olive. Census records show Janko using Spudich for a few decades, then Spudic again. | Confirmed on the key point. An Illinois death certificate for “Marco Spudich,” Mount Olive, 28 Aug 1930, names his parents as Nic Spudich and Barbara Polovich. So Eric’s Barbara was born a Polović, which resolves the disagreement with Karen, who thought her maiden name was Spudic. Whether Barbara and Dora were sisters is still untested. Marco is therefore a cousin, not one of the four siblings (see below). |
| Karen Curlovic (again) | Ivan John Spudic (1883–1985) married Barbara Paur; 10–11 children, mostly at Sawyerville and Benld. Two sons named Stephen, but “not your Stephen.” | Ivan John died in 1985, so he cannot be one of four siblings who died before Janko. He could be a cousin, or an unlisted sibling. The Paur line is a separate family-tree branch to keep apart from Janko’s. |
The spine
Confirmed means a document in hand says it. Everything else stays dashed.
Note that a “sibling” in an obituary may include children who died as infants or in childhood in Croatia, and Janko may never have known them. If so, they will appear in the Leskovac death register, not in any American record. The parish enquiry below asks for deaths as well as births for that reason.
Found: Janko’s household in the American records
Read on FamilySearch on 17 October 2026, through the requester’s own signed-in session. These are indexes: the transcription of a name can be wrong, and one is.
| 1930 census, Mount Olive | Head of household indexed as “Marko Spudich”, age 39, born Yugoslavia, married. With him: wife Anna, 25, born Illinois; son John, 7; daughter Rose Mary, 4; son William T., 0 days. This is Janko (see the name trap below), not the cousin Marco who died that August. |
|---|---|
| 1940 and 1950 censuses | John Spudich (1940) and John Spudic Sr. (1950), Mount Olive, wife Anna (C.), son William Thomas. Age given as 1892 in both. |
| Obituary, 26 Nov 1957 | Daily Illinois State Journal, Springfield. Indexed as John Spudic Sr., age 66, born Yugoslavia, died 25 November 1957. Survivors named: wife Anna; sons John Jr. and William; daughter Mrs. Rose Marie Celix. Officiant: Rev. Elmer Sanders. No siblings are named in the index. The obituary page itself is on GenealogyBank, a paid third-party site that I did not enter. “Outlived four siblings” may be in its full text, or may be in the Mount Olive paper’s notice that the requester holds. |
| Anna’s own obituary | Anna Catherine Spudic, born 1904/05, died 11 April 1990 at Litchfield; children John Jr., Rose (Celi) and William. Obituary printed in Springfield. |
| Arrival, 1913 (probable) | Ellis Island index: Janko Spudic, age 24, single, of Leskovac, “Hungary, Croatian”; arrived 22 April 1913 on the President Lincoln, sailing from Hamburg (manifest page 116, series T715, film T715-2057). The index names two other people on the line: a father, “Janko Spudic”, and a brother, “Marko Spudic.” Read with care: the age is two or three years off Janko’s 1891 birth, though manifest ages often are; the father is given the traveller’s own first name, which looks like an indexing slip (the 1891 baptism says Vid); and which of the two named men is the nearest relative at home and which the person he was joining is not shown by the index. I could not read the manifest image legibly in the viewer. The index record. |
| Not found | His marriage record and his naturalization petition no. 2878, in the indexes searched. Other Spudić arrivals from Leskovac turned up (Ivan, 15, in 1904; Iwan, 18, in 1912, with a father Stefan) but none is tied to Janko. |
Found: the Spudic burials at Calvary Cemetery, Mount Olive, sorted
Macoupin County’s ILGenWeb volunteers transcribed Calvary Cemetery; its R–S page lists thirteen Spudic or Spudick burials, each with a photograph of the stone. Years are as carved. I first took several of these for possible siblings. The census and death records say otherwise: none of the thirteen is a sibling of Janko.
| Name on stone | Years | Whose they are | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Sr. & Anna C. | 1891–1957 · 1904–1990 | Janko and his wife. | Stone, 1957 death record, censuses. |
| Marko · Mary | 1888–1930 · 1893–1927 | Marco Spudich and his wife Mary. Marco’s parents were Nic Spudich and Barbara Polovich: a cousin, probably, not a brother. | Illinois death certificate, 28 Aug 1930: born 8 Mar 1886 in Croatia, spouse Mary, buried the same day. (The stone says 1888; the certificate says 1886. The record is on FamilySearch.) |
| Thomas · Catherine, and Catherine, Barbara, Josephine | 1867–1922 · 1876–1924 · 1906–25 · 1910–35 · —–1920 | One household: Tom Spudic and his wife Catherine and their children. | 1920 census, Mount Olive: Tom (born about 1862, Austria) and Catherine (about 1881) with twelve children, among them Katie (1906), Barba (1911), Josephine, Mary, Anna (1904), Joe, Ella. A Barbara Spudic, 25, died in Chicago on 11 Feb 1935, with a Springfield obituary. The stone and census years differ by a few years. |
| Anna Spudick · Ella · John Joseph · George C. | 1882–1968 · 1918–20 · 1919–97 · 1923–45 | A separate household: John Spudick (born 1882) and his wife Anna. Their children include John Joseph (Tec 5, WWII) and George C. (Cpl, killed 1945). | 1910, 1920 and 1930 censuses, Mount Olive. A 1910 index entry names John’s parents as George and Barbara Spudick, which I have not checked and which may or may not be Eric’s Barbara. Not Janko’s son: Janko’s John was born about 1922–23. |
So the four siblings are probably not in Mount Olive’s cemetery at all. They are more likely to have died in Croatia, perhaps young, or to have lived and died elsewhere under another spelling.
Where the siblings’ names will actually be found
The parish and civil registers at Leskovac
Janko’s siblings were presumably born in the same house, Leskovac 10, between roughly 1875 and 1905. Their baptisms were entered in the same parish baptism registers as Janko’s, in the volumes around page 184 of whichever volume he is in. Two rules govern how to get at them:
- FamilySearch will not have them. The Record Atlas lists one FamilySearch volume for the parish: births 1832–1857, marriages 1832–1857, deaths 1782–1857 (waypoint 9R2M-YW1). That is a generation before Janko. It matters only for the parents’ side: a Vid born 1832 or later would have his own baptism there, and so would his brothers and sisters. It cannot show Janko’s siblings, because they were born after it ends.
- After 1860 the books went to the registry office. The 1946 State Registers Act sent registers from 1860 onward to the civil registry offices (matični uredi); only entries up to 1860 went to the state archives. The catalogue of the Croatian State Archives (HDA) lists Leskovac Barilovićki only for 1782–1857. A nil in the archive catalogue for 1891 therefore says nothing about whether the book survives. It is at the registry office or the parish.
- The 1931 certificate proves the parish itself still held the 1891 book in 1931, signed by its priest. Both parish and registry office are worth asking, which is what the two replies in the thread were saying.
- Leskovac lay in the Military Frontier (Vojna krajina) until its dissolution in 1881; after that its records file like any Croatia-Slavonia parish. That affects the pre-1881 generation only.
I could not find a published address, email or phone number for the Leskovac parish office or for the registry office that covers Barilović, and have not invented one. The two enquiries below say who to ask and what to ask for; the requester or a Croatian-speaking relative will need to look up the current contact through the diocese’s parish directory or the municipality of Barilović.
The surname locally
Spudić is overwhelmingly a Leskovac Barilovićki name: the Croatian surname survey on Acta Croatica reports about 420 bearers in Croatia, 60 of them in Leskovac Barilovićki itself, and says that in Leskovac, Kolenovac and Vinski Vrh near Duga Resa roughly every third inhabitant is a Spudić. Polović is also a Leskovac name, 14th in the village’s present-day list. With a husband and a wife both from the same village, “Vid Spudić and Dora Polović” should be a very findable couple once the right register is open. The difficulty is access, not ambiguity.
Locator
A tentative family tree: a “maybe”
Drawn on 17 October from FamilySearch’s Family Tree and checked, where it could be, against the parish baptism register. It shows the best candidate line, not a proven one. Everyone in it died long ago.
Read in the registers: Jelena (“Hellena”), baptised December 1842 (image 54, right page, first entry), died of a fever on 30 June 1847, aged 4 (image 607, right page); Katarina (“Catharina”), baptised 9 December 1844 (image 68, right page, protocol no. 77); and Vid, November 1846. Tree only: Petar (1830), Katarina (1831–40), Ana (1832–57), Margareta (1834–35), Barbara (1836–48), Suzana (1839–41) and Katarina (1840–42).
Their marriage on 26 November 1832, the date the tree gives, is in the register. It sits on the second marriage page of the book (image 465, left page), not on the first (image 464), which holds only the six entries from March to September. Children in the tree: Juraj (b. 1836), Jelena (b. 1838), Josip (1841–43), Nikola (1844–51), and Dorotea.
Look at the records yourself. FamilySearch shows the register images only to signed-in users (a free account is enough). Each link opens the image; the entry is named so you can find it.
- Vid’s baptism, mid-November 1846: image 81, left page, the entry headed “Vitus”.
- Dorotea’s baptism, 4 June 1846: image 78, right page, entry no. 21, headed “Dorothea”.
- Josip Polović’s and Barbara’s marriage, 26 November 1832: image 465, left page, the entry for “Josephus Pollovich”. The first marriage page of 1832 is image 464.
- Vid’s sisters and father, read 19–20 October: Jelena’s baptism, December 1842 (image 54, right page, first entry); Katarina’s baptism, 9 December 1844 (image 68, right page, protocol no. 77, “Joannes Bapt. Zpudich … Anna nata Maglich”); Jelena’s death, 30 June 1847 (image 607, right page); and the father’s death, 23 November 1847 (image 609, right page, protocol no. 67, “Joannes Bapt. Spudich … Nº 16 maritatus”, age 44).
- Other Spudić households in the 1844–45 baptisms: “Marcus Spudich ex Leskovac Nº 16 and Catharina née Sivičić”, a daughter born 20 July 1844 (image 66, right page, first entry); “Lucas Zpudich, Nº 15 and Hellena née Matičich”, a daughter born 3 October 1844 (image 67, right page, protocol no. 68); “Josephus Zpudich, Nº 6(?)”, a son born 21 January 1845 (image 69, left page).
- The other Vid’s marriage, 2 March 1851: image 492, left page, last entry (“Vid … sin pokojnoga Janka Spudića”).
- The later marriage pages read so far: image 466 (25 and 26 November 1834) and image 467 (25 November 1835).
- The contributor’s notes (“Collaborate” tab): Vid, Dorotea, Josip Polović and Ivan Spudić; the change log for Vid shows who added what and when (change log).
- The Family Tree entries: Vid Spudić, b. 1846, Dorotea Polović, b. 1846, and, for the other Vid, Vid Spudić, b. 1828.
- The 1913 arrival of “Janko Spudic”: index record and the manifest image (line 25 on the sheet).
Four things, in order of strength. (1) Janko’s own baptismal entry in the 1891 register, if it gives the parents’ names in full and ties them to Vid Spudić’s 1846 family; the certificate copy already says Vid and Dora Polović, but does not name the grandparents. (2) The 1867 marriage entry of Vid and Dorotea and the baptisms of their children, 1868 to 1891, which sit in post-1857 books that are not online (the letters below ask for them). (3) A house-number trail: Vid’s parents were at house 16 in 1842, 1846 and 1847 (his father died there) and Janko was born at house 10 in 1891, so a record showing Vid at house 10 would close that gap. (4) Hearing from the contributor who built the tree branch, who may have seen the post-1857 books. The tree is not wrong to suggest the pair; it only has no source behind it yet.
What would move this forward
Ranked by how directly each step reaches the four names. The first two cost nothing to start.
- Share Janko’s obituary text. The requester has it. Its exact wording (“preceded in death by…”, any named towns, any surviving relatives) tells us whether the four were in America or in Croatia, and whether the Springfield notice (26 Nov 1957, Daily Illinois State Journal) says more than the index.
- Write to the Leskovac parish and the registry office (drafts below). With the Mount Olive stones ruled out, the siblings’ trail most likely runs through Leskovac itself, and “siblings” may include children who died young. Ask for baptisms and deaths, house 10, 1875–1910, and for the 1867 marriage of Vid Spudić and Dorotea Polović (candidate couple above); the draft now asks for both.
- Errand: request Janko’s marriage certificate from the Macoupin County Clerk in Carlinville (about 1920–22; draft letter below). It names Anna’s maiden name and may name witnesses and parents, and it tests whether Anna was Tom Spudic’s daughter. No free online index reaches 1920: the ILGenWeb lists stop at 1900 and the clerk’s own online index at 1916, so this has to be a direct request. The clerk charges $5.00 for a genealogy copy of a certificate more than 50 years old.
- Request Petition no. 2878. Janko’s naturalization file at the Macoupin County Circuit Clerk (Carlinville) or the National Archives may name the ship, the date, the wife and the children. It is a formal application the requester has to make themselves.
- Read the 1913 manifest image (FamilySearch image 643 of 831 in that film group, via the index record above; April 1913, President Lincoln). Two columns matter: the nearest relative at home, and the person he was going to join with that person’s address. If the name there is “Marko” and the address is Mount Olive or Cahokia, we learn whether the “brother” is real. It needs a person to read it at full size. Tried on 17 October: the right sheet and the “Spudic” line (line 25, age 24) were found, but the relative and destination columns could not be lined up with that line at the viewer’s resolution, and what was legible nearby belongs to other passengers.
- Ask Eric Spudic and Karen Curlovic to compare their Ancestry trees against the baptismal certificate and the 1930 death certificate of Marco Spudich. The certificates are better sources than a tree. Draft message below.
- Errand: ask three tree owners what they hold. The contributor who edited and annotated the Vid and Dorotea entries on FamilySearch (the best lead), the owner of the Curlovic family tree on MyHeritage, and the Geni manager of the Polović family of Žabljak may have sourced baptisms for Vid, Dorotea or Janko that the public pages do not show (drafts below). All three are routine messages through the site’s own contact feature; no personal addresses are needed.
- The parish’s FamilySearch volume, 1782–1857 (Record Atlas listing), to find Vid’s own birth and his brothers and sisters. Partly done on 17 October: Vid’s own baptism (mid-November 1846) and Dorotea Polović’s (4 June 1846) are in it and have been read (see the candidate couple). Marriage book II has since been read to its end, and Vid’s sisters (1842, 1844) and his father’s death (23 November 1847) are found (see above). Still to read: the rest of the births (Dorotea’s brother and sister, 1836 and 1838), the deaths outside 1847 (Anna Maglich; any Stephen Spudić), and a second look at the 1851 marriage entry. This volume cannot name Janko’s four siblings, who were born after 1857; it can only make the Vid and Dorotea identification stronger or weaker.
Draft enquiries
The first is in Croatian with an English gloss; the others are in English. Fill in the bracketed parts. None has been sent; sending them is the requester’s call.
To the parish office of sv. Josip, Leskovac, and to the registry office (matični ured)
Poštovani,
Zovem se [ime i prezime], pravnuk/pravnuka Janka Spudića, rođenog 6. listopada 1891. u Leskovcu (kućni broj 10), a krštenog 9. listopada 1891. u župi sv. Josipa u Leskovcu (knjiga krštenih, str. 184, br. 59). Njegovi roditelji bili su Vid Spudić, težak, i Dora rođ. Polović. Janko je 1957. umro u SAD-u, u Mount Olive u državi Illinois.
U njegovoj osmrtnici piše da je nadživio četvero braće i sestara, čija imena ne znamo. Molim Vas da, ako je moguće, pregledate matične knjige krštenih i umrlih za razdoblje od oko 1875. do 1910. te mi javite imena i datume rođenja, krštenja i smrti sve djece Vida Spudića i Dore rođ. Polović iz Leskovca br. 10. Molim i za podatke o vjenčanju Vida i Dore. Ako za Leskovac postoji popis župljana (Status animarum, stanje duša) iz razdoblja od oko 1860. do 1900., molim Vas da pogledate kućni broj 10 i navedete sve članove tog kućanstva. Rado ću platiti sve pristojbe i troškove, a mogu poslati i presliku krsnog lista iz 1931.
Prema jednom nepotvrđenom obiteljskom stablu, možda je riječ o Vidu Spudiću, rođenom 15. studenoga 1846. u Leskovcu (sin Ivana Spudića i Ane rođ. Maglić), koji se 27. studenoga 1867. u Leskovcu oženio Doroteom Polović, rođenom 4. lipnja 1846. u Novakima (kći Josipa Polovića i Barbare rođ. Jurčević). Molim Vas da provjerite nalaze li se ti podaci u matičnim knjigama i jesu li imali djecu.
Unaprijed zahvaljujem,
[ime, adresa, e-pošta]
English. I am the great-grandchild of Janko Spudić, born 6 October 1891 at Leskovac (house 10), baptized 9 October 1891 in the parish of St Joseph (baptism register p. 184, no. 59); parents Vid Spudić, farmer, and Dora née Polović. He died in 1957 in Mount Olive, Illinois. His obituary says he outlived four siblings whose names we do not know. Please search the baptism and death registers, about 1875 to 1910, for all children of Vid Spudić and Dora née Polović of Leskovac no. 10, and for their marriage. If a parish census of households (Status animarum, “state of souls”) exists for Leskovac for about 1860 to 1900, please look at house no. 10 and list every member of that household. I will gladly pay any fee and can send a copy of the 1931 certificate.
An unconfirmed family tree suggests the parents may be Vid Spudić, born 15 November 1846 at Leskovac (son of Ivan Spudić and Ana née Maglić), who married Dorotea Polović, born 4 June 1846 at Novaki (daughter of Josip Polović and Barbara née Jurčević), at Leskovac on 27 November 1867. Please check whether these entries are in the registers and whether they had children.
Note: Croatia charges small fees for extracts, and registry offices may ask for proof of descent. Say honestly that the request is for genealogy.
Where to send it (checked on 17 October 2026 against the offices’ own sites). Three places can help, and none has been written to yet.
- Općina Barilović, the municipality that now includes Leskovac Barilovićki: Barilović 91; main line 047/847-100; the head of its administrative department is reachable at procelnica@opcina-barilovic.hr; office hours Monday, Wednesday and Thursday 7:00–15:00, Tuesday 7:00–17:00, Friday 7:00–13:00. Its contact page does not mention a civil registry office, so the first question to ask is which matični ured holds the Leskovac registers from 1858 on and where the parish office serves Leskovac. (Contact page.)
- Državni arhiv u Karlovcu (State Archives in Karlovac): info@da-ka.hr; +385 47 412 366; reading room 8:00–13:00. The archive has moved temporarily to Trg hrvatskih branitelja 4 (Trend centar, 2nd floor) from 1 June 2026, so check before visiting. Ask whether it holds the Leskovac parish registers after 1857, or copies. (Site.)
- Hrvatski državni arhiv (Zagreb), which keeps the microfilm of the registers up to 1857 and a microfilm index: info@arhiv.hr.
What could not be found: a telephone number or e-mail for a parish office at Leskovac, and which registry office covers Barilović. Ask the municipality for both. The same letter works for all three; change only the first line.
To the Macoupin County Clerk, Carlinville, Illinois (marriage certificate)
Macoupin County Clerk
Macoupin County Courthouse
Carlinville, IL 62626
[Date]
Dear County Clerk,
I am researching my family and would like a genealogy copy of a marriage certificate. The groom is John (Janko) Spudic, born in Croatia on 6 October 1891, who later lived at Mount Olive and died there on 25 November 1957. His wife was Anna C. Spudic (1904–1990); I do not know her maiden name, which is one of the things I hope the certificate will show. I believe they married in Macoupin County between about 1918 and 1925, most likely around 1920 to 1922.
The surname is often spelled differently in records, so please also look under Spudich, Spudick, Spadich, Spudec and similar. The groom may be entered as John, Janko, Yanko or Ivan. If you find more than one possible entry, please tell me what you found and I will help narrow it down. If nothing is found for those years, please let me know which years were searched.
I understand a genealogy copy of a marriage certificate more than 50 years old costs $5.00. Please tell me if the fee or the search differs, and where to send payment. I enclose [a self-addressed stamped envelope / my e-mail address] for the reply.
Thank you for your help.
[Name]
[Address]
[Telephone, e-mail]
Before sending. The clerk’s office is open Monday to Friday, 8:30 to 4:30, telephone 217-854-3214. Phone first to confirm the fee and how they take payment, since the page that lists the $5.00 price does not say what a request must include. Anna’s birth year comes from her Find a Grave memorial and the groom’s dates from the 1957 death record and baptismal certificate; neither is a marriage record, so treat both as working dates only.
To the owners of two online family trees (messages through each site’s own contact feature)
1. The Curlovic family tree on MyHeritage
Hello,
I am helping a great-grandchild of Janko Spudić (born 6 October 1891 at Leskovac Barilovićki, died 25 November 1957 at Mount Olive, Illinois) find the names of his four brothers and sisters. Your tree lists a Vid Spudić born 8 January 1828 at Leskovac Barilovićki, with a son Mijo Josip (Michael) and a death year marked as uncertain. Could you tell me where the 1828 birth and the death year come from, for example a baptism entry or a family document?
I have one thing to share. The parish register for 1846 shows a different Vid Spudić (baptized in mid-November 1846, son of Joannes Spudich of Leskovac and Anna née Maglich), and FamilySearch’s Family Tree says he married Dorotea Polović in 1867. Janko’s own baptismal entry names his parents as Vid Spudić and Dora Polović. If your tree or papers have any Spudić or Polović family at Leskovac with those names, or anything about Janko’s brothers and sisters, I would be glad to hear it, and I will share what I find in return.
Thank you,
[Name]
2. The Polović family of Žabljak on Geni
Hello,
I am researching a Polović woman, Dorotea (Dora), baptized at Leskovac Barilovićki on 4 June 1846, daughter of Josip Polović of Novaki and Barbara née Jurčević, who married Vid Spudić there in 1867. Your tree has Polović families from Žabljak near Karlovac and from Mount Olive, Illinois (Juraj, or George, Polović, 1885–1939, and his parents Josip Polović and Magdalena Grman). I do not know whether the two families are connected, and I do not want to guess. Do you have any Polović at Leskovac or Novaki, or any link between your Josip Polović and the Josip Polović who married Barbara Jurčević at Leskovac on 26 November 1832?
Even a “no” would help. Thank you,
[Name]
3. The FamilySearch contributor who edited and annotated the Vid Spudić and Dorotea Polović entries
Hello,
I am helping a great-grandchild of Janko Spudić (born 6 October 1891 at Leskovac, house 10, died 25 November 1957 in Mount Olive, Illinois) find the names of his four brothers and sisters. His baptismal entry names his parents as Vid Spudić and Dora Polović. Your tree entries for Vid Spudić (born 15 November 1846, Leskovac #16) and Dorotea Polović (born 4 June 1846, Novaki #13), who married on 27 November 1867, look like the only candidates, and I have confirmed both baptisms and Josip Polović’s 1832 marriage in the register images, which agree with your notes.
May I ask: (1) where the 1867 marriage came from, and whether you saw the post-1857 books or a copy; (2) whether you found any children of Vid and Dorotea (the tree lists none), or any record naming a Janko born in 1891; and (3) whether you know where the baptism registers for Leskovac after 1857 are kept today. I will gladly share what I find in return, and I will say on the page that your notes were the starting point if you are happy for me to.
Thank you very much,
[Name]
Before sending. Use each site’s own message button, not an e-mail address or phone number found elsewhere. Do not send a living person’s details to anyone. Treat any answer as a lead until a baptism or marriage entry backs it.
A note on names and places
Every spelling here is one a real document or a real person used. Search all of them.
| Thing | Forms found | Where each shows up |
|---|---|---|
| Surname | Spudić · Spudic · Spudich · Spudick · Špudić | Spudić on the 1931 certificate; Spudic on the 1939 certificate and the 1957 death record; Spudich on the census for “a few decades” (per Eric); Spudick on a Calvary family stone. |
| Janko vs. Marco | Index trap | The 1930 census index lists Janko as “Marko Spudich,” age 39. A different man, Marco Spudich (1886–1930), a cousin, died at Mount Olive that August. Two Spudić men of nearly the same age lived in one small town. Read the household, not the first name. |
| First name of Janko’s father | Vid · Vido · “Stephen” · “Janko” (1913 index) | Three sources, three names. The 1913 index probably just repeats the traveller’s own name; check the image. |
| Mother’s surname | Polović · Polovich · Polovic | Polović on the certificate (as “Dara … Polović”); Polovich on the death record. |
| Janko | Janko · Yanko · John · Ivan | Janko is the Croatian pet-form of Ivan, English John. The 1957 record says John Spudic, Sr., and a cousin-line man named Ivan John Spudic (1883–1985) exists: do not merge them. |
| Father | Vid · Vido · Vid Stjepanov? · “Stephen” (Stjepan) | See the contradiction above. |
| Mother | Dora · Dara · “Ana” (in one tree hint) | Karen reports a blurred “Ana Polovich” in a tree. The certificate says Dora. |
| Place | Leskovac · Leskovac Barilovićki · Barilovićki Ljeskovac (older form) · Barilović | Plain “Leskovac” collides with the large city of Leskovac in Serbia. Always add Barilovićki or Karlovac. |
| Country | Austria-Hungary (Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia) in 1891 · Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Sava Banovina in 1931 · “Yugoslavia” in 1939 and 1957 · Croatia now | An emigration record from about 1905–1914 may say Austria, Hungary or Croatia, and not Yugoslavia, which did not exist yet. |
What has and has not been looked at
- Read: the baptismal certificate, 1939 certificate and 1957 death record supplied; the Macoupin County ILGenWeb Calvary Cemetery page R–S (all Spudic/Spudick rows, and the photographs of the John Sr./Anna C., Marko/Mary and Spudick stones); the WPA Calvary page (no Spudic or Polovich); the Acta Croatica pages for Spudić and Leskovac Barilovićki; the rodoslovlje.hr surname list; the Record Atlas place file for Leskovac and its HDA holdings.
- FamilySearch (signed in by the requester), index searches only: Spudic/Spudich in Illinois deaths, in Macoupin County for people born 1880–1900 (all of the 76 results scanned), and for deaths in 1930 (the first page of 1,534 results, which surfaced Marco Spudich’s death certificate). Opened in full: Janko’s 1957 newspaper-obituary index entry, Miss Barbara Spudic’s 1935 obituary index entry, and Janko’s 1930 census record. A catalogue search for Leskovac returned nothing; a Croatia Church Books search for a Spudic born at Leskovac returned nothing, as expected for a collection that stops in 1857 here.
- Ellis Island, FamilySearch index: Spudic and variants, born 1888–1894 (53 results scanned in part); four records opened in full (Janko 1913, Mijo 1909, Ivan 1904, Iwan 1912, Miko 1912). FamilySearch’s Family Tree has a person for Janko (GBGQ-YRV) with wife Anna and son William only, no parents or siblings. The Genealogies and IGI results for Spudić at Leskovac name no Vid or Dora; the IGI extracts that surfaced are for Kolenovac, Piščetke and Dubovac. One Spudić–Polović marriage appears in a Michigan family tree (Anna Spudic, 1873–1972, wife of Matthew Polovich); she outlived Janko, so she is not one of the four.
- Family Tree and the 1846 register (17 October): FamilySearch’s Family Tree entries for Vid Spudić (born 1846) and Dorotea Polović (born 1846), then the parish register itself at image 78 and image 81 of the volume, read at zoom. Both baptisms are there with the parents the tree names (see the candidate couple). Only those entries were read; the rest of the volume is unread. Marriage book II, images 464–467 (1832 to the end of 1835), was also read at zoom; it confirms the 26 November 1832 marriage of Josephus Pollovich and Barbara of Novaki, Dorotea’s parents (image 465, left page). An earlier version of this page said that marriage was not in the register; that was wrong, because I had read only the first of the two 1832 marriage pages. A second reader later went through nearly all of the rest, images 468 to 510 (1835 to the end of the book, 25 November 1857; images 511–512 are blank and 513 is the end-of-item card). Gaps remain: the bottom rows of a few pages (481, 504, 505) were blurred at first but were re-read on 19 October and show no Spudić or Polović, and for the Latin images 482–489 (1844 to 1847) only Spudić and Polović items were searched for, so they are not a transcription. Handwriting was only partly legible in many entries, so a “no Spudić seen” on an image means none was legible. The full entry-by-entry notes are in the reading notes. MyHeritage showed a security check (a CAPTCHA) partway through, so the Curlovic and Borovac–Duga Resa trees were not opened.
- Births and deaths in the same volume (19–20 October, signed in by the requester): only small parts were read, at zoom, and each “none seen” means none legible. Births: November–December 1842 (image 54), February–December 1844 (images 62–68, legibility mixed) and January–February 1845 (image 69); images 78 and 81 (1846) earlier. These gave Jelena, Katarina, and the other Spudić fathers named above; Dorotea’s brother Juraj (1836) and sister Jelena (1838) were not looked for. Deaths: February to November 1847 only (images 606–609). Everything else in the births (1832–1841, 1843, 1845 from March, 1847–1857) and in the deaths (1782–early 1847, December 1847–1857, about 130 images, unindexed) is unread, so Anna Maglich’s death (the tree says 1852) and any Stephen/Stjepan Spudić death are not established either way. FamilySearch’s full-text search does not cover this volume. The notes with every entry are in the reading notes.
- Searched with nothing found: a naturalization-index search for “Yanko Spudic”; a search for any record naming a Vid and a Dora Spudić as parents (the search tool’s wildcard matching returned unrelated noise, so this is a weak negative).
- Later, public trees and indexes (17 October): Geni (the Spudić, Polović and Polovich surname pages, 67 and 30 profiles), MyHeritage and Findmypast (first page of results), Find a Grave and WikiTree. (An earlier note here said Find a Grave had no Spudic in Macoupin County; that was a false zero from the site’s location filter. Searched without it, there are dozens of Spudic, Spudich and Spudick memorials at Mount Olive, Benld and Staunton, including a John Spudic Sr., 1891–1957.) They name no father for Janko, and no tree entry names a Vid or Stephen as his father. A Vid Spudić born 8 January 1828 at Leskovac Barilovićki appears in unsourced trees but is recorded as dying in 1869, so he is at most an older relative. Ancestry’s Springfield Diocese sacramental index lists five Spudich-type marriages between 1917 and 1925, but opening a record needs a paid subscription. Find a Grave shows a Polović family from Žabljak near Karlovac buried at Mount Olive; no record yet links them to Dora.
- Not done: the GenealogyBank page of the 1957 obituary (paid, third-party; I declined the redirect); the Ancestry records themselves (paywalled); the other Macoupin cemetery pages; other arrival lists and the manifest image itself; marriage indexes for Janko and Anna; the rest of the 1832–1857 Leskovac register images (births and deaths above); every Croatian archive and parish office.
- Not looked at at all: an image from the thread of an unrelated Vodice marriage index, which has nothing to do with this family.
What this page is, and is not
This page has not named any of Janko’s four siblings. It has found one real contradiction (Vid vs Stephen), ruled out every Spudic burial at Mount Olive’s Calvary Cemetery as a sibling, confirmed Eric’s cousin Marco and his mother Barbara Polovich, and pinned down where the records that will answer this are: house 10, Leskovac, 1875–1910. Names on gravestones are used only for people who have died; living relatives mentioned in the thread are referred to only as they presented themselves there.