Croatian Ancestry DNA
Recently I read a post on Ancestry.com. They offer their standard DNA tests in Croatia, and other countries you would be shocked to hear about.
Since most Croatian records are burned, and it varies from place to place who or what records were burned, buried, or destroyed. This depends on who was doing the burning. So for example the records in my ancestral village Gračac, the Catholic records were burned by the Serbs, but this is tit for tat. There are only pravoslavna or Orthodox Christian records available in Gračac. Some are available on FamilySearch. Others are digitized, but due to a distinct lack of interest by amateur genealogists, these records have not been indexed yet. One solution might be, due to the prevalence of the zadruga, or the traditional South Slavic extended family unit, the search for family members in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other parts of the world. These family members may have better family history records that will help you solve your family history. But due to the way that immigrants and their families have separated over the last several generations, it's really hard to find those families. Your best bet is to use a DNA test such as Ancestry.com, find those people. Then if you get better records from those distant relatives, or reconnect with your family you can start figuring out all the missing links. While I wait for these other records to be indexed, such as the Croatian Military Frontier muster rolls, I can be busy looking to extract DNA from my family here, finding distant relatives in the Americas, and also extracting DNA from family in Croatia. You might want to start to find out where they live. I was super lucky and got to live in Croatia for two years, learn the language, and find my family. What helped me the most was knowing the language, having local support and help, and knowing what and where to look for. You actually can find a lot of resources in the United States. Using immigration records on FamilySearch and Ancestry, one can find a lot of data. I found out that my family lived in a place called Lotić, a part of Sveti Rok our ancestral village. This helped me enormously as I searched on a place called Mapire, sets of old Austro-Hungarian maps to find where they lived. I will discuss more in the future on how to find your family, and use Ancestry DNA kits in the ancestral country to help improve DNA results in the future.
Since most Croatian records are burned, and it varies from place to place who or what records were burned, buried, or destroyed. This depends on who was doing the burning. So for example the records in my ancestral village Gračac, the Catholic records were burned by the Serbs, but this is tit for tat. There are only pravoslavna or Orthodox Christian records available in Gračac. Some are available on FamilySearch. Others are digitized, but due to a distinct lack of interest by amateur genealogists, these records have not been indexed yet. One solution might be, due to the prevalence of the zadruga, or the traditional South Slavic extended family unit, the search for family members in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other parts of the world. These family members may have better family history records that will help you solve your family history. But due to the way that immigrants and their families have separated over the last several generations, it's really hard to find those families. Your best bet is to use a DNA test such as Ancestry.com, find those people. Then if you get better records from those distant relatives, or reconnect with your family you can start figuring out all the missing links. While I wait for these other records to be indexed, such as the Croatian Military Frontier muster rolls, I can be busy looking to extract DNA from my family here, finding distant relatives in the Americas, and also extracting DNA from family in Croatia. You might want to start to find out where they live. I was super lucky and got to live in Croatia for two years, learn the language, and find my family. What helped me the most was knowing the language, having local support and help, and knowing what and where to look for. You actually can find a lot of resources in the United States. Using immigration records on FamilySearch and Ancestry, one can find a lot of data. I found out that my family lived in a place called Lotić, a part of Sveti Rok our ancestral village. This helped me enormously as I searched on a place called Mapire, sets of old Austro-Hungarian maps to find where they lived. I will discuss more in the future on how to find your family, and use Ancestry DNA kits in the ancestral country to help improve DNA results in the future.
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