Slovenia – Loganalogy- Your Family Historian

Uncovering Mat Stephanz’s Roots: A Journey Through Family History

Who Were Mat’s Parents and Family?

Mat Stephanz’s story begins in Kansas City, where he lived from birth until his marriage to Clara in 1920. His journey also included service in the Navy, but where did his family come from? How did they settle in Kansas City?

To uncover this, I started with his last known residence and the most recent record I could access: his Social Security Application. You might have guessed I’d say his death certificate, but because that record is over 50 years old, it’s only available through a family member—possibly among my great aunt’s possessions.

The Social Security Application confirmed that Mathias Stephanz and Mary Svegel were Mat’s parents. This wasn’t entirely new information; family trees from my Uncle’s and a paper trail from Clara or Mat had suggested it. However, in genealogy, documentation is key to verifying claims.

For privacy, I edited the document to exclude Mat’s Social Security number.

Knowing his parents’ names wasn’t enough to trace their origins. Census records and connections to Kansas City’s Strawberry Hill provided further clues. The 1900 census listed both Mathias and Mary’s birthplace as “Austria,” while the 1910 census specified “Austria Germany.” According to Marshall’s research, they hailed from Črnomelj, Austria (modern-day Slovenia).

With this foundation, I found more census records: Mathias Štefanc appears in the 1920 and 1930 records, while Mary’s entries span 1920, 1930, and 1940. These documents revealed more about their lives: Mathias’s naturalization in 1900 and the fact that he didn’t finish school. Each census offered a glimpse into their journey as immigrants building a life in a new land.

One interesting article was written by a genealogical cousin, Peter Hawlina.

Slovenia by Peter Hawlina

Slovenia has been an independent country since 1991. Before this, it was a part of Tito’s Yugoslavia. Prior to the second world war it was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Until the end of the first world war, it belonged to the Austrian Habsburg monarchy for centuries but also for a short time was under the direction of Napoleonic France. More than one thousand years ago the Slovenians lived in a Slavic empire led by King Samo. A more curious reader can read more about this in other publications. As an illustration, I will name just one example from modern history.

My sister was born in 1940 in the kingdom of Yugoslavia. I was born in 1941 under the Italian occupation in Italy. My brother was born in 1943 in Germany after the Italians capitulated, while my next sister was born in 1945 in the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. We all were born in the same house in the suburbs of Ljubljana, so it is important for a genealogist to be aware of the fact that there were changing religious and civil jurisdictions at various times. These changes are of critical importance when conducting this research. I will not go into details but I will mention those characteristics that would be helpful to the inexperienced researcher.

The local parish church is dedicated to Saint Joseph and belongs to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Novo Mesto. Records from there are Status Animarum Records.

Status Animarum translates as “the state of souls.” They contain names and information about baptism, marriage, burial, and relationship to head of household for everyone living in a parish by house number. Spouses often show the town and house where they were born or moved. They were kept by the parish priests for internal purposes. Handwriting and format vary by priest. Below is the Status Animarum for Matijas’ household.

Now known as Mathias and Mary Stephanz, they lived their remaining lives in Kansas City, Kansas, raising two girls and two boys. Mary was Naturalized in 1895, and Mathias in 1900.

By the 1920s, he was a “Cabinet Maker” at a Cabinet Shop. He took his “Coach Maker” skills to work on furniture. This skill took him to Abernathy Brothers Furniture Store. In 1936, while working as a “furniture packer” with Abernathy, he received an injury that infected and caused Streptococcus in his left hand. It seems it went downhill from there with pneumonia and fluid in his lungs. I wonder if it had to do with Kansas City experiencing one of the worst heatwaves in North America in the same year, causing it not to heal.

He died at only 68 years of age. For an interesting twist to this family, read Hidden In A Letter.

Above is his death certificate. It also lists where he was buried, Mt. Calvary Catholic Cemetery.

Another interesting tidbit. Had I known about this family in 2012, I might now live in Slovenia! In researching Mathias’ father, I received a Google response:

Matija Štefanc, rojen 17. 2. 1845, nazadnje stanujoč Dolenji Radenci 10, pošta Stari trg ob Kolpi, umrl neznano kdaj, je nedvomno že pokojni, ni pa mogoče dobiti dokazila o njegovi smrti. Poziva se vse, ki kaj vedo o Matiji Štefancu, zlasti o tem, kdaj in kje je umrl, da to sporočijo Okrajnemu sodišču v Črnomlju, najkasneje v treh mesecih po objavi tega oklica, ker bo sodišče sicer po preteku tega roka, imenovanega razglasilo za mrtvega.
Okrajno sodišče v Črnomlju dne 21. 5. 2012

Google translation is:

Matija Štefanc, born 17. 2. 1845, last residing Dolenji Radenci 10 mail Stari trg at Kolpa, died when the unknown is no doubt already late, but it is impossible to obtain proof of his death. It urges all to what they know about Matija Štefanc, in particular about when and where he died, to report this to the Local Court in Črnomelj within three months after the publication of the notice because the court after the expiry of this period, known as declared dead.
The District Court in Črnomlju of 21. 5. 2012

This land was the property of our ancestor, Matija Stefanc. As the Republic of Slovenia built a road through this land and they could not reach the person or next of kin, they proceeded with an act through the court, which proclaimed him dead.

Through careful documentation and family research, we’ve pieced together Mat Stephanz’s story, connecting the threads of his roots to his life in Kansas City. The journey to uncover your family’s past is as much about the process as it is about the stories you discover along the way.

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Marija Švegelj: A Journey Through Gottschee to America

Sometimes a person carries a whole world inside them—memories of language, land, loss, hope. One of those people in our family was my 2nd great-grandmother, Marija Švegelj, known in the U.S. as Mary Swegel. Her life bridges two worlds: the rugged past of Gottschee and the new land she came to love.

Roots in Gottschee, Childhood in Change

Marija was born on November 19, 1867, in Stari Trg ob Kolpi, Slovenia. Her dad, Jožef Švegelj, was about 20; her mother, Marija Koce, was 27. She wasn’t alone for long—she had a younger sister, Katarina, born in 1870, and brothers Jožef and Peter.

When Marija was nine, tragedy struck: her mother died in June 1877. Little Katarina had already died earlier. Her father, just 30, was left with three children under the age of ten. Only two months later, he married again—to another Marija (Marija Sterk)—and together they had seven more children. Change came early in Marija’s life; responsibility, too.

Both sides of Marija’s family were Gottscheers—her mother’s Koce and Fugina families; her father’s second wife’s Sterk line; her grandmother’s Ilić line. Gottschee wasn’t just a place; it was a patchwork of culture, dialect, and a sense of identity folded into every conversation at home.

Crossing Borders, Holding Identity

Though several of Marija’s siblings immigrated in the late 1890s, she stayed. She came over in 1914, after her children were already in America. By then, the world she was born into had twisted: Austria became something else; political crises bubbled; states shifted. Identity was being reshaped fast—not always by choice.

Gottschee was German-speaking, settled long ago under the Habsburgs, but with the fall of empires and the rise of new nations, what “home” meant got complicated. Borders changed; citizenship changed. But family stories, language at the dinner table, the tastes of childhood—those are harder to change.

Hard Times, Strong Roots

World events were anything but kind to Gottscheers. As years passed, political pressure increased, language laws shifted, national boundaries wobbled, and finally, during World War II, the community was forced to uproot in ways no one should have to. Homes were lost, families scattered.

For Marija, it meant she never saw her homeland—or many of her family—again after leaving. But she carried the smells, the songs, the family recipes, the whisper of Gottscheer German dialects, deep inside her. She carried community and faith and family, even when geography said “you are far.”

What Marija’s Journey Gives Us

Heritage is not just a place of birth—it’s what you carry across oceans. The stories, the lullabies, the names.
Change isn’t sudden. It builds gradually: loss, shifting borders, new languages. But identity can survive that, thrive even.
Love and belonging are powerful. Even though she couldn’t return, Marija helped us remember. She helped bridge “there” and “here.”

Looking Back, Moving Forward
Marija’s life is a reminder: roots matter, even when they’re hidden beneath the surface. Hers reminds us that though borders change and homes can be lost, what we pass down—our family values, our memory, our voice—are ours forever. We are living proof of persistence, love, and the invisible threads that keep families whole.

Gottschee refers to a former German-speaking region in Carniola, now in Slovenia. The original German settlers of the region are called Gottschee Germans or Gottscheers, and they also developed a distinct German dialect called Gottschee German or Gottscheerish. It is like comparing Old English to our current English. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottschee)

Seal of the City of Gottschee

The city of Gottschee was granted
city status in 1471. The seal of
the city shows Saint Bartholomew,
the patron saint of the parish church.

The inscription on the old seal,
Sigilum Civitatis in Kotschew 1471,
is translated,
Seal of the City of Gottschee 1471.

From some Gottscheer’s : In school, Belay had to learn three alphabets: Cyrillic, Roman, and Old German—a sign of the many cultures that shared the lands around Gottschee. In high school, he had to learn Slovenian in just one year, because it became the language of instruction.

Teachers who spoke German were removed and replaced by teachers who would only speak Slovenian to the school children. This presented a huge difficulty for the Gottscheers since most of them did not speak Slovenian. Problems arose and a feeling of ill will was created.

Edward Eppich lived on his father’s farm in Gottschee until he was 11. “You had only maybe one or two horses and a pig, and that’s what you lived on,” Eppich recalls. When Austrians first settled Gottschee in the 1300s, they found the land rocky and difficult to sow. “It was not that easy,” he says.

A camp for displaced Gottcheers in Austria after World War II

From the time of their arrival until the end of the war, Gottschee farmers were harassed and sometimes killed by partisans who saw them as an instrument of the occupying regime. (Source: http://alpineclub.ca/our-story/history-of-the-gottscheers/

The horrible things that happened during Hitler and Tito’s reigns are unimaginable. Some say that Tito was worse than Hitler, but evil is evil. Many could not return to their country for fear of Tito’s “purge”. The Kočevski Rog massacre and killings continued after the war, through 1945.

It is no wonder that Marija would never again see her homeland or her family again. Her country was torn apart. The once privileged Gottscheers were now a minority in a war-ravaged country.

Adolf Eppich says in his memoir, Memories of a Gottscheer Refugee “Gottscheers are blessed to have been part of a heritage that focuses on God and neighbor and strong family values.” They carried this heritage and faith to America for their descendants to carry on.

Want to dive deeper? I’m here for it. Because family history isn’t just about knowing who came before — it’s about seeing ourselves in them, feeling their triumphs and struggles, and finding what they left that’s still alive in us.

External links
www.gottschee.at Website of Gottscheer societies
www.gottschee.de Information on history and culture of the Gottscheer Germans.
www.gottschee.com Website with audio folklore samples from Gottscheers in the United States.
Gottscheer Heritage and Genealogy Association (GHGA) website “founded in 1992 to preserve the culture, history, and genealogical records of Gottscheers and Gottschee (1330-1941)”

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