The Blažević Archive
21 sorting buckets, 218 published people

Labels Where the Father Should Be

This archive found four of these being published as ancestors and removed them, because publishing research scaffolding would be a lie. They were removed from the list of people. Nobody removed them from the list of parents — and it turns out two-thirds of the archive is standing on them.

A sorting bucket is an entry like Unknown Sorting Working Blažević or Brothers [of Josephus] Žubrinić. No priest wrote those words and nobody was ever called them. They are labels somebody typed into the father's slot while working through a pile of records — and they are still there, still doing the job of a parent.

The scale of it

Buckets acting as a parent21
Published people hanging off one218
With no other parent at all74

Whose loose ends they are

Blažević30
Prpić22
Papić10
Žubrinić8
Perpić4

Only the Žubrinići have ever had their loose ends counted. That page was itself wrong by 25 until today, for exactly this reason.

The biggest ones

The labelFamilyPublished children
Unknown Sorting Working Blažević Blažević 30
Senj - Unknown To be sorted Prpic Prpić 26
Unknown - Klenovica Ledenice Kalanj Kalanj 26
Krivi Put Working Other Unknown Blažević Blažević 25
Selce Other Working Papić (Papa) Papić 19
Žubrinić Zubrinix Xubrinic Zubrinic Otocac - Working Tree otocac - working tree 15
Krivi Put 136 For Sorting Perpić Perpić 14
Senj For Sorting Working Other Unknown Blažević Blažević 14
1800-1830 Birth - Selce Papić (Papa) Papić 9
Žubrinić Working - Zubrinic Other Senj senj 7
Brothers of Casparus (It Seems) Žubrinić Xubrinich Zubrinic Žubrinić 5
Brothers [of Marcus] Žubrinić Xubrinich Žubrinić 5

Do the labels encode anything real?

Somebody grouped these children for a reason. Krivi Put 136 For Sorting Perpić carries a house number; 1800-1830 Birth — Selce Papić (Papa) carries a village, a date range and a nadimak. The question is whether the reason survives well enough to place a person by — and it can be tested, because some of the children under each label have a place of their own on record.

It splits sharply, and on one thing: how specific the label is.

Labels naming a house number or a date range

8 agree / 0 disagree

Every testable child matches. Krivi Put 136 is 5 for 5; 1800-1830 Selce is 3 for 3 on place and 3 for 3 on the year range. These were written by someone who knew something.

Labels naming only a town

5 agree / 13 disagree

Right 28% of the time — worse than useless, because it looks like information. Senj – Unknown To be sorted Prpic is wrong on every one of the four children who can test it.

LabelWhat it claimsAgreeDisagreeUntestable
Krivi Put 136 For Sorting Perpić Krivi Put · kbr 136 5 0 9
1800-1830 Birth - Selce Papić (Papa) Selce · 1800–1830 3 0 6
1831-1860 Birth - Selce Papić (Papa) Selce · 1831–1860 0 0 2
1861-1899 Birth - Selce Papić (Papa) Selce · 1861–1899 0 0 1
Senj - Unknown To be sorted Prpic Senj 0 4 22
Unknown - Klenovica Ledenice Kalanj Klenovica/Ledenice 1 0 25
Krivi Put Working Other Unknown Blažević Krivi Put 2 4 19
Selce Other Working Papić (Papa) Selce 0 0 19
Žubrinić Zubrinix Xubrinic Zubrinic Otocac - Otocac 0 0 15
Senj For Sorting Working Other Unknown Blaže Senj 1 3 10
Žubrinić Working - Zubrinic Other Senj Senj 1 2 4
Senj - Unknown To be Sorted Papić Senj 0 0 2

So: 134 published people with no place of their own sit under a label that names one — and only 18 of those sit under a label worth believing. The rest cannot be placed this way, and this archive will not place them.

Which is a result worth having either way. The two specific labels are worth taking to a registrar as a question; the vague ones should be treated as what they are, a note to self by someone half way through a sorting job.

The uncomfortable part

Delete the labels and two-thirds of this archive floats free

The section above asks whether a label is accurate. This asks something harder. If every sorting label were removed from the tree, how many of the people published here would still be connected to Hedviga at all — by any path, however long, of parents, children and spouses?

393 of 1245. 32%.

FamilyPublishedStill connected
Šestan 55 0 0%
Žubrinić 414 21 5%
Prpić 118 7 6%
Perpić 37 3 8%
Blažević 220 51 23%
Papić 116 31 27%
Vukelić 15 10 67%
Boras 55 55 100%
Kalanj 215 215 100%

Šestan is nought per cent

All 55 of them. The shortest path from Hedviga to the nearest Šestan runs eleven steps — out through her husband's family, the Defranceski, back through Teresa Grach, and then across a node the tree itself calls Grah's for Investigation (not real). Take that node away and there is no path at all.

The archive describes this family as “of the Croatian Littoral”. Twenty-three of the twenty-four placed Šestani are at Gologorica, which is in central Istria — a different peninsula, eighty miles west. And not one Šestan marries into any of the other eight families. They are here because somebody was investigating whether they belonged, and the investigation is still sitting in the tree as though it were an ancestor.

And the Žubrinići are five per cent

Twenty-one of four hundred and fourteen. This is the largest family in the archive and the subject of its longest-running question — and the great majority of them reach Hedviga only by way of a label. Prpić is 6%, Perpić 8%, Blažević 23%, Papić 27%.

Two are whole. Boras and Kalanj are 100% — every published member connects by ordinary parent, child and marriage links. For Kalanj that chain was confirmed from registers this month: Ana Kalanj of Klenovica 22 married Josip de Franceschi, and their line runs to Hedviga's husband.

What this does and does not mean. It does not mean these people are invented, or that the research was careless — the register is full of real entries about real people, and this archive publishes by surname group, never having claimed each person is a proven relative. What it means is narrower and still worth saying out loud: for most of the names here, the link to Hedviga is currently made by a sorting note rather than by a document. A reader is entitled to know which two-thirds.

It also reorders the work. Reading one Otočac marriage that joins a Žubrinić fragment to the line is worth more than reading fifty pages that confirm dates already held.

What follows

  • Un-publishing is not removing. A record hidden from the register goes on acting as a parent in every tool that asks whether someone has one. That is how the fragment count was wrong by 25 for months.
  • Nothing here has been edited. The buckets remain in the tree exactly as they are. Method →
  • Sixty-two of the seventy-four are not Žubrinić. Thirty Blažević, twenty-two Prpić, ten Papić and four Perpić have never been counted as loose ends anywhere on this site. They are, and now they are listed.

The Žubrinić fragments → The same person, twice → What cannot be true →