Blažević

Where they are from

Every Blažević ancestor on the direct line before 1892 is placed at Smokvica Krmpotska, a village in the Vinodol hills behind Novi Vinodolski — founded, like Krivi Put, by Bunjevci Krmpoćani settled there by the Military Frontier between 1605 and 1647. The settlement →

The move to town

Toma Blažević (1838–1907) is the hinge. He is born at house 114 in Smokvica Krmpotska and he dies at Senj, a nadničar — day labourer. The family comes off the mountain into a port town in the decades after that port stopped working. Senj →

His death entry, read

The Senj death register for 1907 (p.225, entry 60) gives him in full: 26 srpnja — July — 1907, Blažević Toma, nadničar, udovac iza pok. Tereze — widower of the late Tereza — aged 69, of tuberculosis, sacraments administered, buried at the cemetery of sv. Vid on 28 July.

He is not alone on that page. Two entries above him a tobacco-factory worker of thirty dies of the same disease, three days earlier; three entries above, a coachman of twenty-four is entered as ustrieljen — shot — with the sacraments not administered. This is one week in one small town.

House 114 is a zadruga

The register identifies a household by its house number, and one number runs through this family. Toma Blažević is born at Br. 114, Smokvica Krmpotska in 1838, and is recorded there with Terezija Pećanić at the baptisms of Ivan in 1882 and Tonka in 1884. In 1895 Juraj appears in the same book as “Jurko Blažević i Tereza rođ. Žubrinić, selj.”, at Smokvica kbr. 114.

This archive first read that as one household, and was wrong. A control document settles it: the baptism of Frane Blažević, 2 August 1890, puts Pave Blažević i Marija rođ. Tomljanović at Smokvica 114 as well — and that Pavao is the son of Luka, not of Toma. Three distinct nuclear families share the number across thirteen years.

They join one generation up. Luka Blažević and Anton Blažević, Toma's father, are both sons of Ilija Blažević. Pavao and Toma are first cousins. Smokvica 114 is therefore a zadruga — the South Slav extended-family household, in which married brothers and cousins live under one number and hold the land in common. It is the characteristic form of the Military Frontier and of the Bunjevac settlements.

So the number places Juraj inside Ilija's kin-group, which is real and worth having, and it does not single out which man in that group was his father. What still would →

The parish, at last

The same entry gives his birthplace not as a village but as a parish: Sv. Jakov Krmpote — St James of Krmpote. That is the register that holds Smokvica Krmpotska, and therefore the book in which Juraj, Anton, Ilija, Grgica and Mateša should be found. Nobody has opened it. Open questions →

A caution about the surname

Blažević is the 17th most common surname in Croatia — 7,216 bearers there, 11,163 worldwide — and its densest counties are Split-Dalmatia, Virovitica-Podravina and Osijek-Baranja, none of which is this family's. Shared surname is not evidence of shared descent here. The names →

Where they were born

• 16 Mrzli Dol, Senj, Croatia
• 11 Senj, Lika-Senj County, Croatia
• 10 Senj, Croatia
• 9 Mrzli Dol, Lika-Senj, Croatia
• 8 Smokvica Krmpotska
• 8 Krmpote, Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Croatia
• 4 Smokvica Krmpotska / Krmpote
• 4 Krmpote

How the tree spells it

• Blažević × 198
• Blazevic × 20
• BLAŽEVIĆ × 1
• Blažević (Sojat) × 1

Everyone of the name