My second great-grandmother Marija Švegelj, later known in America as Mary Swegel, was born on 19 November 1867, in Stari Trg ob Kolpi, in what is now Slovenia.
Her story has taken me into one of the more complicated corners of my family tree, where villages had German and Slovenian names, surnames changed spelling from one record to another, and families lived in a region shaped by several languages and cultures.
It also led me to discover my family’s connection to the Gottscheers.
Marija’s Family in Stari Trg ob Kolpi
Marija was the daughter of Jožef Švegelj and Marija Koce.
Her younger sister Katarina was born in 1870, and she also had brothers Jožef and Peter.
Marija was only nine years old when her mother died in June 1877. Her younger sister Katarina had already died, leaving Jožef with three young children.
Only two months after his wife’s death, Jožef married Marija Sterk. They went on to have seven more children.
It is easy to reduce a family like this to names and dates in a tree. But for nine-year-old Marija, the changes came quickly. She lost her mother, had already lost a little sister, and then found herself part of a newly blended and growing household.
Those records tell us more than who was related to whom. They give us a glimpse of the family in which Marija grew up.
Discovering the Gottscheer Connection
When I first began researching this branch, I quickly discovered that modern maps weren’t going to tell the whole story.
Stari Trg ob Kolpi lies in the Kolpa Valley in southeastern Slovenia, in the historic region of White Carniola. But my research into Marija’s family also led to the records and families studied by the Gottscheer Heritage & Genealogy Association.
Gottscheer Heritage & Genealogy Association
The Gottscheers were a German-speaking community whose ancestors had settled in the region of Carniola beginning in the Middle Ages. Over the centuries, they developed their own German dialect, commonly called Gottscheerisch, and a distinct regional identity. The historical Gottschee area was centered around present-day Kočevje, but the genealogical records and interconnected families extend into surrounding parishes and communities.
My own research through GHGA included the parish of Altenmarkt, now Stari Trg ob Kolpi, and helped me trace several branches of Marija’s ancestry.
One of those was her Fugina line.
My research through the Gottscheer Heritage & Genealogy Association opened this branch of the family considerably. Using its genealogical collections and assistance from a GHGA genealogist, I was able to trace several families connected to Marija’s ancestry.
In her Fugina line, the research identified Katharina Fugina as the daughter of Jakob Fugina and Margaretha Rom, both Gottscheers. The same research took me into the parish records of Altenmarkt, now Stari Trg ob Kolpi, and surrounding villages.
That gave me something much more valuable than simply attaching a label to Marija’s ancestry. It gave me families, places, and records to follow.
One Family, Several Spellings
Researching this part of my family taught me very quickly not to become attached to one spelling of anything.
People and places could appear under German or Slovenian names, and surnames changed depending upon the language of the record, the priest who wrote it, and the period in which it was created.
In related branches of this family, I encountered names such as Schutte and Šutej, Michelitsch, and Illitsch and Ilić.
Even Švegelj itself would eventually become the much easier-to-spell Swegel in America.
Place names could be just as challenging. Altenmarkt is Stari Trg ob Kolpi. Oberberg appears as Gorenja Podgora. Schmiddorf has a modern Slovenian name.
For a genealogist, this is more than an interesting language lesson.
If I search only the modern Slovenian name or the spelling my family eventually used in America, I can miss the very record I’m looking for.
That lesson has stayed with me throughout my research: search the person in the language, place, and time in which the record was created.
Following the Family to America
Several members of Marija’s family left Europe before she did.
Marija remained behind until 1914, when she finally crossed the Atlantic after her children were already in America.
That date matters.
She wasn’t leaving the post-World War II world that would eventually devastate the historic Gottscheer community. She left before the First World War transformed Europe and before the collapse of Austria-Hungary redrew the political map of the region.
When Marija departed in 1914, she was leaving a homeland that was itself on the edge of enormous change.
Within months, Europe would be at war.
The country names found in records for Marija and her relatives can therefore vary depending upon when the document was created. The village didn’t necessarily move.
The borders did.
That’s another lesson this family taught me. When an ancestor appears to have been born in Austria in one record, Slovenia in another, and Yugoslavia somewhere else, don’t immediately assume you’ve found three different people.
Get out the historical maps first.
The Gottschee They Left Behind
The history of Gottschee after Marija’s departure was devastating.
Following the breakup of Austria-Hungary after World War I, the Gottschee region became part of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia. The German-speaking Gottscheers became an ethnic minority within the new state.
World War II brought far greater upheaval.
After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, most of the Gottscheer population was resettled from its historic homeland during the winter of 1941–1942. War, displacement, and the political upheavals that followed scattered a community that had lived in the region for centuries.
That history belongs to the larger story of Marija’s ancestral community, but it wasn’t the reason she immigrated.
By then, Marija had already been in America for decades.
That distinction matters to me now. Family history becomes much more interesting when we place our ancestors within history without making historical events happen to them simply because they happened in the same place.
What Marija Left Me
When I originally researched this branch, I was thrilled simply to reach another generation.
Then another.
And another.
Suddenly names that had seemed almost impossible to research were carrying me into the late 1700s.
I also learned that researching this family requires flexibility.
Švegelj becomes Swegel.
Šutej becomes Schutte.
Ilić becomes Illitsch.
A village may have one name in Slovenian and another in German.
A birthplace can appear under several countries during one person’s lifetime without the family ever moving.
And behind all of those spellings are the same people.
That’s what keeps me coming back to Marija.
She connects my family to a small corner of Central Europe with a complicated history, documented Gottscheer roots, and generations of families whose names survived in records even as languages, governments, and borders changed around them.
Marija left Stari Trg ob Kolpi for America in 1914.
More than a century later, following her backward through those records has taken me home again.
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