Ivan Defranceski married Hedviga Blažević of Senj. Behind her stand Senj carriers, tobacco-factory workers, and a Karlobag ancestry that reaches further back than the Defranceschi spine does.
This archive was built around one surname and kept finding that the surname was the shallower half. Hedviga Blažević, who married Ivan Defranceski and died at Johannesburg in 2001, came from a Senj family whose registers run back without a break to the middle of the eighteenth century, and whose Karlobag branch reaches people born around 1690. Six photographs of register pages, taken at Senj in 2014 by a researcher the family engaged, and a MyHeritage ancestor chart for one woman, are all it took. Nobody had read them.
Named as the parents in their son's baptism of 1857 and again in his marriage of 1885. Matija — Matia Papić as she became — was born at Karlobag on 18 September 1838 and died at Senj on 9 February 1886, four months before her granddaughter Milka was born. Her own ancestry is the deepest thing in this archive and is set out below.
Baptised at Senj on 1 November 1857 by Joannes Pisić, cooperator of the place — «Josephum filium legitimum Romano-Catholicum Joannis Papić et ejus uxoris Mathia Pilipić». Godparents Michael Slipomišić and Catharina Pasquan. He was a trhonoša, one of the Senj carriers, when he married and when his daughter was born; by 1907 the register calls him gostioničar, an innkeeper. He died on 19 November 1939, aged eighty-two.
Born at Krivi Put house 136 on 12 May 1859 and baptised there on the 15th, «Antonia Prpić, legitima», daughter of Ivan Prpić. She came down off the Velebit road into the town. Died 2 February 1935.
Born at Senj on 9 October 1886 and baptised on the 17th — entry 96, «Milka Lucia, zakonita», daughter of Josip Papić trhonoša and Tonka née Prpić. Both her godfather Josip Glavičić and her father are entered as trhonoše: two of the three men named in her baptism carried loads for a living. Eighty-five years later somebody came back to this page and wrote her death across the remarks column — 7 September 1971, from the Sveti Križ death register, entered by the registrar on the 30th.
Born at Senj on 8 March 1926, the daughter of Milka's second marriage. She married Ivan Defranceski of Crikvenica and died at Johannesburg on 30 October 2001 — six years to the day after he died at Senj.
Entry 30 of the Senj marriages. He is twenty-four, born 13 January 1883, «činovnik u tvornici duhana» — a clerk in the tobacco factory. She is twenty-one, «radnica u tvornici duhana» — a worker in the same factory. Her father is entered as gostioničar. They married by dispensation, the licence dated 3 November 1907.
Entry 41. She is thirty-four and entered «udova». He is twenty-eight, born at Rijeka on 1 March 1892, living at Senj, unmarried; his parents Šime Blažević and Terezija née Zdunić are both recorded as dead. Her parents are given as Josip Papić and Antonija née Prpić. Witnesses: Franjo Đorić, tailor, and Mirko Trifun, innkeeper and tobacco-factory man. Married by Ivan Škrivanić, archpriest and registrar, under dispensation no. 3371.
How and when Zvonimir Vukelić died. Between November 1907 and December 1920 fall the whole of the First World War and the influenza of 1918–19, and Senj lost heavily to both. The Senj death register for those years would answer it in an afternoon and nobody has looked.
The word is entered three times across these pages and it is not a general term for a labourer. The trhonoše of Senj were the carriers — the men who took goods up the Vratnik pass on packhorses, from the harbour into the Lika and the interior, and brought grain and timber down. Senj lived on that traffic for centuries; the town's whole reason for existing was that it was where the sea met the road over the Velebit. Josip Papić was one of them in 1885 and still one of them in 1886, and by 1907 he kept an inn — which, on that road, is the same business by other means.
And his daughter went into the tobacco factory. The Senj tobacco works was the town's industrial employer, and both Milka and the man she married at twenty-one were in it. One generation from packhorse to production line.
A MyHeritage ancestor chart in the family's files, «Preci od Matia Papic», carries her line back five further generations, all at Karlobag on the Velebit channel. These are the oldest people the archive can name, and they are on the mother's side.
| Who | Born | Died |
|---|---|---|
| Vicentius Andreas Pilipić, called Vicko | 17 November 1805, Karlobag | 14 November 1897, Senj |
| Matija Pilipić, born Uroda | 23 April 1810, Karlobag | 9 February 1886, Senj |
| Who | Born | Died |
|---|---|---|
| Josephus Pilipić, called Josip | 11 March 1768, Karlobag | 26 June 1828, Karlobag |
| Maria Pilipić, born Smojver, called Oliva | March 1781, Karlobag | Karlobag |
| Joannis Uroda, called Georgius | April 1777, Karlobag | — |
| Maria Uroda, born Gerkacs | 11 August 1789, Karlobag | 6 August 1834, Karlobag |
| Who | Born | Died |
|---|---|---|
| Jacob Pilipić | — | 10 April 1778, Karlobag |
| Catherina Pillipić, born Luckinić, called Catta | 30 March 1727 | 29 May 1790, Karlobag |
| Vicentius Smojver Vukić, called Fabiano | 18 January 1754, Karlobag | — |
| Oliva Smojver Vukić, born Bacchi, called Andreana | — | 15 September 1795, Karlobag |
| Georgi Uroda | — | 10 September 1791, Karlobag |
| Michaeli Gerkacs | 1762 | 9 July 1836, Karlobag |
| Lucia Gerkacs, born Tomljanović, called Maja | Montani Stanište | 19 September 1809, Karlobag |
| Who | Born | Died |
|---|---|---|
| Josiph Smojver Vukić | 1731 | 16 May 1776, Karlobag |
| Antonia Smojver Vukić, born Pekas | — | — |
| Nicolaus Gerkacs | 1717 | 30 October 1783, Karlobag |
| Vicentius Luckinić, called Vicko, and Maria Luckinić | — | — |
| Caetano Bacchi | — | — |
| Pauli Tomljanović | Montani Stanište | — |
| Simoni Pekas and Mara Pekas | Smiljan | — |
Nicolaus Gerkacs was born in 1717 and Josiph Smojver Vukić in 1731; the parents standing above them were born in the last years of the seventeenth century. Nothing on the Defranceschi side of this archive goes nearly so far — the documented spine there begins with a baptism of 1787. The names are the names of the Podgorje: Pilipić, Uroda, Gerkacs, Smojver Vukić, Luckinić, Tomljanović, Pekas — with one Italian among them, Caetano Bacchi, in a town that had been an Austrian free port since 1776. Two of them are placed not at Karlobag but at Montani Stanište up on the mountain, and one couple at Smiljan inland.
This chart is a MyHeritage product and carries no citations on its face. Its dates are precise to the day and its month names are the Croatian ones, which points at somebody reading the Karlobag registers directly — and the family holds scans of Karlobag births 1691–1770 and 1804–1861 and the Karlobag Stanje duša. Treated here as good but unverified: the register images to check it against are already in the house.
The MyHeritage GEDCOM gives Josip Papić's father as «Georgius Juraj (Joannis) Antić», born at Selce in 1838, with Matia Pilipić as his mother. He cannot be. The baptism of 1 November 1857 names the father as Joannes Papić and the child takes Papić; the marriage of 3 May 1885 names him again the same way. And an Antić born in 1838 would have been nineteen when the child was baptised — possible, but the register does not say it, and the register is the record. Josip Papić's father was Ivan Papić. The parenthesis «(Joannis)» sitting inside that Antić's name in the file looks like the seam where two men were merged.
This is the second such splice found in the same file. See the Imotski page for the first, and for why they happen. The Imotski page →
Because a family is not a surname. The line this archive was built to follow comes down through Crikvenica and Istria to Ivan; the line that meets it at Senj is the other half of the same people, and it happens to be the older and better-recorded half. Half of everyone descended from that marriage is standing on this page.
The family keeps its own genealogy in a MacFamilyTree database, last written in November 2021 — two hundred and eighty-four people. This archive had been into it once already, for the photographs: every portrait on the Crikvenica house page comes out of it. What had not been taken out of it is the written half. Most of that is the living, who are omitted here, but under Hedviga Blažević it holds two ancestral lines that appear nowhere else in this project, and one of them is deeper than anything on the Senj side.
| Anton Blažević | No dates. The earliest of the name in the file. |
| Toma Blažević | 27 January 1838 – 26 July 1907. Married Tereza Pećanić. |
| Juraj Blažević | No dates. Married Tereza Žubrinić, born 29 November 1867 — the join to the other line below. |
| Ljubomir Blažević | 1 March 1892 – 1966. Married Milka Papić, 9 October 1886 – 7 September 1971, who is generation 4 of the Senj line above. |
| Hedviga Blažević | Their daughter, and the woman this line runs through. |
The file also carries a second Blažević strand it does not connect to the first: Mateša Blažević, then Grgica, then Ilija, then Anton and Luka, and Luka's son Pavao Blažević, 31 December 1853 – 11 February 1930. Whether the Anton at the head of the first strand is the Anton in the second is exactly the sort of thing a family file leaves open and a register would settle.
And Ljubomir and Milka's children, so far as the file records them, with the ones who have death dates: Karmela, 1922 – 25 September 1987, who married Branislav Karić, 3 March 1920 – 20 March 2008; Oto, 1923 – 1945, dead at twenty-two in the last year of the war; Ljubomir, 1929 – 2007, who married Božica Barec, 1933 – 2005; Mario, 1933 – 1984; and Leo, Milka and Hedviga.
| Toma Žubrinić | born 1768. Married a Marija whose surname the file does not give. |
| Michael Žubrinić | 1811 – 1863. Married Marija Orešković. |
| Nikola Žubrinić | born 24 January 1834. Married Ana Shumbul-Marić. |
| Tereza Žubrinić | born 29 November 1867. Married Juraj Blažević, and so becomes Ljubomir's mother and Hedviga's grandmother. |
Four generations, ending in a man born in 1768 — which makes the Žubrinić the deepest maternal line this archive holds anywhere, deeper than the Papić spine at Senj and second only to the Karlobag ancestor chart. Not one of the four appears anywhere else in this project. The surname does not occur in a single one of this site's data files before today.
And a third, shorter. Lovre Hreljac married Dragica Vlahović, and their daughters were Ruža — 13 February 1922 to 30 January 1996 — and Antonija, born 1930. This archive settled Ruža's birth at 13 February 1922 last week from three documents against a single contrary reading in the Arolsen index. The family file agrees to the day, and adds her death, her parents and a sister, none of which was here.
And the family file says what she actually did there. Against Milka Papić it records one word of occupation: «Cigar Roller / Maker». The Senj marriage entry of 1907 has her as «radnica u tvornici duhana», a worker in the tobacco factory, which is what a register says; the family remembered the bench she stood at. The same file gives Josip Bepo de Franceschi as a stone mason — the Crikvenica register of 1906 calls him «vešti klesar sada tvorničar», a skilled stonemason now a factory hand — and the trades of the generation after: a welder, an auto mechanic, a forwarding and clearing agent, a beautician, a pilot, a priest, and a man remembered for the piano accordion.
What all of this is. It is a family file: testimony written down by relatives, not entries read from a register, and it carries the marks of one — dates that are days and months without years, a child entered under the wrong parents, a woman given her mother's death year. It is recorded here as family lore, and every line of it is a question for the Senj and Krivi Put registers rather than an answer from them. But a name and a year are enough to order a certificate, and until today this archive did not have twelve of these names at all.
The research log has carried a question about Josip's wife: the Crikvenica registers name Ana Kalanj at four baptisms and give her own baptism at Ledenice on 3 January 1864, while the family holds a photograph of a gravestone reading ANA DE. FRANCESCHI for an Ana Grubišić, 19 September 1863 to 28 May 1936. The database shows where the second version comes from and how firmly it is held.
In the file, Anton Rudolf — entered as «Ante de Franceschi», who married Ursula Kovačina and whose children are Pepe, Zdravko, Ivan, Anka and Peter, so certainly the right man — is the son of «Josip Bepo de Franceschi», born 1870, and «Ana Nona-Nana Grubišić», 1863–1936. The registers make his father Josephus, born 22 March 1863, and his mother Ana Kalanj, born 3 January 1864. Two birth years for the father seven years apart, and two maiden names for the mother.
The file also gives Josip more children than the registers have yielded: besides Ante, it lists Sretko, Pauldo, Dragica and three more entered only by surname. The Crikvenica baptisms this archive holds give Anton Rudolf, Marija Stjepanka, Ivan, Zorica and a second Marija. Either the file has merged two households, or there are three or four children of this couple still unfound.
The Crikvenica marriage register, and the death register for 28 May 1936. One of those two documents ends the question.
«Defranceski Family Tree1.mftpkg», the family's own MacFamilyTree database, last written 18 November 2021 — 284 people, 114 families, 211 recorded events. Its photographs were used on this site in an earlier round; the written records in it were read in September 2026. Names of the living are omitted from this page under the rule stated in the footer.
Black polished granite, laid flat, with a plain incised cross and the name in Croatian orthography. This archive already holds a photograph of it; here it is again, from the head of the slab, with a stepped block and flowers at the centre and a lamp at the foot. The boy who went from Crikvenica to a Reutlingen displaced-persons file and then home to Senj, and the man this whole line runs through.
This site published this stone in September saying the upper panel «cannot be read from this photograph», that the surname was clear twice and what looked like MILKA above it, and that what to go back for was a raking-light photograph. It did not need a new visit. A frame taken at the same wall on 5 June 2019, in soft even light rather than flat sun, reads the whole panel. «LJUBOMIR BLAŽEVIĆ ✻ 1891 ✝ 1966 · MILKA BLAŽEVIĆ rođ. PAPIĆ ✻ 1886 ✝ 1971 · OTO BLAŽEVIĆ ✻ 1923 ✝ 1945 · MARIO BLAŽEVIĆ ✻ 1933 ✝ 1984», and on the dark plate below, «BLAŽEVIĆ — KATA ✻ 1924 ✝ 2007 · LEO ✻ 1920 ✝ 2008».
It is Milka Papić, and the guess is now a reading. Generation 4 of the line above: the cigar-roller in the Senj tobacco factory, born 9 October 1886, married Ljubomir Blažević as a widow in 1920, died 7 September 1971 — the death date a later hand wrote across the remarks column of her own baptism page. She is Hedviga's mother, and this is where she is. Beside her is Ljubomir, and beside them two of their sons. Oto, 1923–1945, dead at twenty-two in the last year of the war, whom the family's own database records with those bare years and nothing else. And Mario, 1933–1984. The lower plate adds Leo, 1920–2008 — a son the family file lists among the children without dates, and who now has both — and a Kata, 1924–2007, who is not in the file at all.
The lower plate was published here as «KATA 1934–2007 — LEO 1920–2009». It is KATA 1924–2007 and LEO 1920–2008. Both were misread off the flatter frame, and both are corrected.
The stone gives Ljubomir's birth as 1891. The family's MacFamilyTree file, and this site after it, give 1 March 1892 at Rijeka. A year apart. The Senj marriage entry of 1920 has him twenty-eight and unmarried, which fits 1892 if the wedding was late in the year and 1891 if it was early — so the register does not settle it either. Both are printed here. The Rijeka baptismal register for 1891 and 1892 would.
The Ivan Defrančeski slab photographed by the family at Senj in 2026; the Blažević wall panel photographed at the same cemetery on 5 June 2019 and supplied in September 2026. The 2019 frame is the legible one, and the difference is the light.
The full bibliography, with what each source gave and where it is weak →