Papić

One change in four documents

The tree lists Josip “Joso” Papić's occupations as trhonoša, bremenar, gostioničar — load-carrier, porter, innkeeper — as though they were three trades in a row. Four parish registers give him four words, and only one of them is a change. At his own wedding in 1885 he is a bremenar; at his daughter Milka's baptism in 1886, a trhonoša; at his daughter Anica's in 1888, a težak. Those are not three trades — they are three words a priest reached for to mean a man who works with his body: burden-carrier, load-carrier, labourer. Then at Milka's wedding in 1907 he is a gostioničar. That is the change. He owns the inn. Milka →

The tobacco factory

His daughter Milka Lucia Papić (1886–1971) — Hedviga's mother — was supervisor of workers at the cigarette factory in Senj, an address the tree records as Ul. Stjepana Radića 4, “now a textile factory”. She was baptised at Senj on 19 October 1886, ten days after her birth, with Josip Glavičić and Ivka Filipović as godparents — one of the best-cited entries in this archive.

A name changing in front of us

The Selce line is entered as “Georgius Juraj (Joannis) Papa ‘Jure’ Antić Papić” — carrying Antić and Papić at once — and seventy-nine people in this tree are written Papić (Papa). The register settles that this is a real alternation and not a transcriber's slip: in the 1885 marriage entry the groom is Josip Papić and his father, on the very same line, is Juraj Papa. And the doubling is old: the 1806 baptismal entry for Josephum at Vinodol enters his mother as “matre Marthe Antich Papa” — both names on one line, eighty years before the tree's Papić (Papa). His godfather is the village judge, Judice Mathia Jellichich — of the family he would marry into. Whether Antić and Papić were ever two families is now the open question. Open questions →

Why the Papići have no house number

The Blaževići can be traced through a single house number because the village registers of Krmpote and Krivi Put record every child against one — Smokvica 114, Krivi Put 136. The Senj register does not. Under mjesto obitavanja i kućni broj — place of residence and house number — the Papić entries say simply “Senj”, and nothing else.

That is a difference between a town and a village, not between two families. It also means the zadruga that is visible at Smokvica would be invisible here even if it existed, and no amount of reading Senj baptisms will show it.

The other half of this family

Hedviga's descent is not all peasants, and the other half arrives through this family. Josip Papić's mother was Matija Pilipić, and through her the line runs into Karlobag, a free royal city on the coast under the Velebit, and the register there speaks a different language about them: Dominus at the 1768 baptism of Josephus Pilipić; negotiator — merchant — when he is named as deceased in 1838; and godparents who are Franciscus de Justiniani, a Venetian patrician name, and, in 1777, Pro-Colonel Joannes Hallinich de Zirfeld with the wife of Centurion Daniel de Kalbenaeck.

A colonel and a captain's wife stood for an Uroda child; a Giustiniani for a Pilipić. That is not the world of Smokvica 114, and the two meet in one woman four generations later.

The marriage, 3 February 1885

Senj marriages p.192, entry 5. Josip Papić, bremenar, of Senj, aged 27, bachelor, married Antonia Perpić of Krivi Put, resident at Senj, aged 26, spinster. Banns published; married by the chaplain Mirko Babić.

His parents: Juraj Papa, težak — a farm labourer — and Matia rođ. Pilipić. Hers: Ivan Perpić, seljak — peasant — and Luca rođ. Perpić, which supplies a maiden name the tree did not carry: Antonija's mother was herself a Perpić. The witnesses are Franjo and Toma Perpić, both peasants — the bride's people, standing up in the groom's town.

Where they were born

• 34 Selce, Croatia
• 24 Senj, Lika-Senj County, Croatia
• 6 Senj, Croatia
• 1 Senj, Lika-Senj County, Croatia`, Croatia

How the tree spells it

• Papić (Papa) × 75
• Papić × 35
• Papic × 3
• Papich × 3

Everyone of the name