How Far Back
The honest answer is: to about 1717, in four parishes, and no further — and the reason it stops is not that the records stop.
This archive reaches 9 generations above Hedviga and names 70 ancestors. The earliest with a recorded birth year is Nicolaus Gerkacs, 1717.
| Generation | Slots possible | Named here | Filled |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 2 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 3 | 4 | 4 | 100% |
| 4 | 8 | 8 | 100% |
| 5 | 16 | 8 | 50% |
| 6 | 32 | 13 | 41% |
| 7 | 64 | 22 | 34% |
| 8 | 128 | 8 | 6% |
| 9 | 256 | 4 | 2% |
The fall-off is the real story. Generations 1 to 4 are nearly complete. By generation 7 the tree is naming a small fraction of the people who must have existed, and by generation 9 it holds four. That is normal, and it is a statement about who did the research, not about who the ancestors were.
The oldest named people
- 1717 Nicolaus Gerkacs
- 1727 Catherina (Catta) Luckinić — Karlobag, Općina Karlobag, Ličko-senjska županija, Croatia
- 1731 Josiph Smojver Vukić
- 1739 Joannis Antić
- 1741 Pauli Lončarić
- 1742 Anna Papić
- 1750 Mateša Blažević
- 1754 Vicentius Fabiano Smojver Vukić — Karlobag, Općina Karlobag, Ličko-senjska županija, Croatia
Notice where they are. The deepest reach is not on the Blažević line — it is through Matija Pilipić's people at Karlobag and the Antić–Jelličić line at Selce. Somebody read those registers properly. Nobody has yet done the same for Smokvica Krmpotska.
The records go further than the research does
The Croatian Roman Catholic parish registers digitised as “Croatia, Church Books, 1516–1994” begin, for some parishes, in the sixteenth century. The Senj births volume cited repeatedly in this tree covers 1756–1858 — and the family's use of it stops around 1838.
So the wall at 1717 is not an archival wall. It is where the reading stopped. Going further needs someone who can work in Latin parish hands, who knows that X spells Ž in the older entries, and who is willing to search a name five ways.