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CROATIAN GENEALOGY COLUMN EXTRA

Quality time with an expert (2)

Be careful
not to miss a widower

Lidija Sambunjak
professional genealogist

22 Jan 2010 A family from the US contacted me, and asked if I could do the research on their great grandfather from Croatia. They didn't know much about him, but they had an unconfirmed piece of information that great grandfather's marriage from which their branch of the family came into existence wasn't the only one he had. They also suspected that his wife was also married before.

When I looked into the records, I realized that they were mistaken about their great grandmother. She got married when she was 24, and was not a widow, let alone divorced. (Divorces were unheard of before 1900's, so she must have been a virgin.) But her husband was sixty two, and the record clearly stated that he had been married before.

Careful examination

So I looked further. When had his previous marriage taken place? Only two years prior to that! Poor man, his previous wife died soon after they got married. But the interesting thing is that that was not the end of my research. I realized that he was married twice more, first time at the age of twenty one, and the second at the age of 53! He had eleven children from four marriages. This was a wonderful news for my client!

So, as we do the genealogical research, we should carefully examine each of the records. If I haven't paid attention to the fact that next to the person's name was a note written that he had been a widower, I would have not looked deeper down into his family tree.

Recent columns by Lidija Sambunjak

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A unique wedding present One of my best friends got married this month. I wondered what could I possibly give her as a wedding present which would be of any real worth to her? (2 Aug 2010)

Why do grandma and grandpa have the same surname? There are parishes where you can find people with the exact same surname that are not directly related. But sometimes they are. (21 May 2010)

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What a joy it is to connect lost relatives! It is very rewarding and often quite emotional for a researcher to witness how profound impact he or she can have on the people (6 Mar 2010)

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Where did the children hide? As I was trying to find siblings of a grandfather of a family, I looked back and forth in records of many years, but with no success. (06 Feb 2010)

Be careful not to miss a widower The case was clear: the man had been married more than once, but the question was - how many times? (22 Jan 2010)

Bingo! Elderly superladies! As I exhausted all the ideas on how to continue with a paricular case, a simple phonecall saved my day. (15 Jan 2010)

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