Help Clarifying My (Probably Serbian) Ancestry

Fri Aug 23 21:30:20 UTC 2013

Bocchi is probably going to be Bay of Kotor. Without more info it would seem that your family came from Montenegro. Not sure about your grandmother's knowledge of English vs. Serbo-Croat but Montenegro is Crna Gora for the locals which might explain why the Montenegro name didn't ring true, but I really don't know the situation.

This is certainly no rule and I can't speak definitively, but in my personal experience men named Čedomir or Čedomilj are usually of Serbian heritage, but if they're coming from Montenegro then they could just as easily be Croats living among Serbs and liked the name. Really do need some other tidbits of info before anymore can be said.

It's vague, but I hope it's some help,
Dorian

Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 09:39:42 -0800
From: agregovich at GMAIL.COM
Subject: [SEELANGS] Help Clarifying My (Probably Serbian) Ancestry
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU

Hello Colleagues,

I'm doing research for some memoir/family history writing, and I'm hoping someone can help me sort out the clues and confirm that my grandfather's family emigrated from Serbia.  Anyone who would know for sure is long passed.  We always said the name "Gregovich" was "Yugoslavian".  My American-born grandfather Nick Gregovich himself referred to it this way.  Nick had pride in his heritage, though he didn't go past eighth grade in school and didn't know that much about the specifics of the region, so "Yugoslavian" it was.  He did speak the language, interestingly, but didn't seem to have a lot of intellectual inquiry about things like this -- he was a guy who worked with his hands, if that makes sense.  His eight siblings all changed their surname, the women to their husbands names and the men to "Gregson" to be more American.  When Yugoslavia was breaking up and I started asking questions about where the name came from specifically in the region, nobody still alive knew for sure.  Because the Serbs were the "bad guys" in the news, my grandmother, then in her eighties, swore her husband couldn't have been Serbian.  She thought they were from "a different one" but she couldn't remember which.  "Montenegro?" I remember asking her.  "No..." she said, but couldn't go any further.  But the family emigrated to Bisbee, Arizona, where there was a notable community of Serbian immigrants.  As far as the museum there is concerned, if there were Croatian immigrants they would have been a small minority.  My dad also is fine with the Serbian designation, though his knowledge of the family's history is only an overview.  But to complicate matters even further, the one last detail my mom remembers is "Dubrovnik".  This was my dad's family, however, and I'm unclear where my mom got Dubrovnik as a significant detail and what role Dubrovnik even plays in the story.  Plus, Dubrovnik being historically contested territory, it doesn't really help pin down a nationality, if I understand the area correctly.  

My mom did some Ancestry.com research for me and discovered that Maria and Cedomir Gregovich (my great grandmother and grandfather) came to the U.S. in 1897 with three children from what looked like to her (on the hand written document) as a port or city called something like "Bocchi".  I couldn't find a place name that looked like this, but many of these old ship manifests and such are very hard to read, so who knows what it really said.  Can anyone thing of a place that sounds like "Bocchi"?  That wouldn't have necessarily been their hometown, though.

But here's where I'm wondering if the list can help me: perhaps the key to the mystery is in Cedomir's unusual name.  In all the census records and other documents there are several names used for him: CM, Chedomir (with an h), Chas, Charles.  His name seems to have been a source of difficulty for him in the new world.  It appears on his gravestone in Bisbee, Arizona as "Cedomir".  No mark over the "C" to make it a "ch", but it's written in Latin letters.  So on one hand, this would seem a bit more Croatian.  There are a few gravestones in what looks to me like Serbian-Cyrillic at that cemetery.  But there are also hints throughout the documents and family stories that Cedomir may have struggled with culture shock and longed to fit in in America, so I suspect the family wasn't interested in his being remembered in Cyrillic.  He died alone in Bisbee in 1941, likely a depressed alcoholic.  His wife had long since moved to California with several of her children, who found a much better life there.  His obituary suggests that his family "on the coast" made the funeral arrangements rather than my still Gregovich grandfather, the only one who stayed in Southern Arizona, but the one who was mostly estranged from the rest of the family.  These were the folks who Americanized their names, so this could also play into why they chose to spell Cedomir's name in Latin letters.  And yet, there is the omission of the "h", which makes his name look more Slavic, and more Croatian.  And, just a thought, but perhaps there was no allowance for an accent mark for the "C" in a 1940's cemetery in Arizona.  And, to be fair, "Chedomir" with an "h" just looks awkward and clumsy.  My question is really a general query for anyone with more detailed knowledge of Serbo-Croatian linguistics -- does any of this make sense, and/or point us toward one nationality or the other?  

My goal here is just to feel like I'm relatively correct in referring to the family as "Serbian immigrants" as I write about them.  Ironically, I spent some time in Croatia years back and people were always excited that I had a "Croatian" name, to which I just smiled and nodded.  

Thanks for anyone who waded through this, and I appreciate any and all input in helping me solve my mystery!

Best,
Andrea Gregovich

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