We have an important piece of information for genealogists who seek to find ancestry from the village of Lećevica near Split. Most of vital records from Croatian Catholic parishes are microfilmed and are available in State Archives, either in Zagreb or in other major Croatian cities that has an official archive established (Rijeka, Split, Osijek, Karlovac, Varaždin etc).

Due to historical reasons, however, there are parishes in Croatia that have never made their records available for microfilming. Instead, the records have been kept and preserved in the local parish. Lećevica county, which comprises villages Divojevići, Kladnjice, Lećevica and Radošić, is one of the counties where birth, marriage and death records have never gone out of the local church. So, devoted genealogists who want to research their ancestral files from this region have only one option: to visit the place.

It should be added here that Mr. Ante Ivanković, a retired journalist and devoted genealogist, published a book “Surnames of Lećevica county” (Prezimena općine Lećevica) in 2007, where he recorded history of 73 surnames from the area. According to his findings, most frequent surname in Lećevica county is family name Matas.