Outside Gardening and Inside…

What a beautiful Florida day! I was able to get out and work on my first love, my yard and garden. With all the rain we’ve had, things were a mess. My son mowed and edged and I pulled weeds, pulled some dead plants, and moved some plants around. It was glorious.

I then decided to spend time on my other “tree” and was met with some frustration. Yes, I received my CD’s from the Gottscheer Heritage and Genealogical Society and although I did not find what I was looking for, I found some other tidbits.

First, a little something to blow Susan’s mind a little… this is from the genealogist at the GHGA. Mathias Stefanitsch was born 1818 Oct 6 at Radenci. His parents were Mathias Stefanitsch & Maria Gersetitsch, both born about 1799.
Sibling was Maria born 1814 Jan 20.

I have always been told that the name Stefanc and Stefanitsch are two separate surnames so I am not holding too much salt in Stefanitsch. I am thinking it was transcribed incorrectly. All documents thus far show Stefanc, Stefanz, or Stefanec. I have never seen a document with Stefanitsch on it. I am thinking she tried to make it sound Gottscheer, but it’s not.

Update 10/14/18– One of my FB group members is stating that -IČ (a patronymic) ending of the name was lost from one generation into the other. That is the -itsch sound. And, is a completely different surname than Štefanc and Štefanec. But uniform name spellings are a rather recent “invention”, earlier, the priest would spell the name as he saw fit (and it was not rare to see children in one family with different last name spellings).

Margaretha Schutte was born 1818 JUN 4 at Radenci… to Johann Schutte & Katharina Michelitsch. She had at least 2 siblings:
Michael born 1816 Oct 6 and Katharina born 1813 Jul 21. There are several more children born to a Johann with different spouses. Don’t know if same one.

Schutte (German) is also spelled Šutej (Slovenian). These spellings making it very hard to keep up. When looking up names, everything is spelled “German/Slovenian” and then “Slovenian/Gottschee” so you must have some kind of key to keep up.

Maria Bauer was born 1814 Mar 21 at Prelesje #4, Črnomelj to Georg Bauer & Maria Ostermann. Siblings: Margaretha born 1816 Jan 12 and Margaretha born 1818 Aug 28.

I’ve seen this a lot, siblings with the same name a few years apart. Usually it is because the first one dies young.

By the way, the Bauer’s may have originally come from Croatia. The Kupa River forms a natural border between north-west Croatia and southeast Slovenia.

With the help of the CD’s I was able to find the names of Margaretha Šutej’s parents. They are Johann Šutej, born 1784 in Oberberg (German) Gorenja Podgora (Slovenian) and Katharina Michelitsch, born 1783 in Tscheplach (German) Čeplje (Slovenian).

The same for my Švegelj side. I was able to find Katharina Fugina’s parents. They are Jakob Fugina and Margaretha Rom. Both Gottscheer’s.

The genealogist then emailed me on my Katharina Ilić, mother to Jozef Švegelj.

Unfortunately, the film of this birth record for Katharina Illitsch is on is terrible. Some pages are almost blank they are so poor.

By checking the Illitsches in the marriage records, the majority of them came from Schmiddorf village in the parish of Altenmarkt (Stari Trg ob Kolpi). The film separates the births by village. I found Schmiddorf and what very much looked like Apr 4, 1820 and the given name appeared to be Catharina. However, when I got to the page with the parents names, it was nearly all unreadable, but the parents were not Illitsch.

I then looked at the digitized version on-line at FHC and found they must have digitized from the same film I had.

I also checked the village of Radenci with no results.

So, dead-end there.

I guess I shouldn’t be discouraged. A year ago I never would have thought I would get to the late 1700’s with these lines/limbs. 🙂

Until next time…

Click Below