Archive for Our Story

The Evolution

As time goes on, so does our work. In the last year and a half since we have stepped up our work, we have added over 21,000 new names to our “family tree”. This is something that we have no intention of slowing down with. We are striving to connect all the people in the Bela Krajina region of Slovenija to show everyone that even if we’re not family, we are still connected in some way.

As time has progressed, our ambitions and goals have also evolved. While our genealogical research goals remain unchanged, we have discovered a very enticing side project which will go hand in hand with our research. We are in the process of compiling the stories of the people of Bela Krajina.

The history that is written in books is generally written by the victors of war and those who had the means to tell their own stories through writing. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always give a fair representation of all of the people, their lives, their ambitions and the reason why we are who we are.

Our goal is to meet and interview the people of the senior generation to get a first hand version of what life really was like in various parts of the region. Unfortunately, time is not on our side and we must expedite this work as that generation is growing older and slowly diminishing in size.

With this additional objective, we hope to expose a greater picture of the life of the people of the Bela Krajina region with stories that date back as much as one century to give us a true picture of what life was like in this part of the country through the years.

As always, we appreciate any contributions and donations made to this project and with what we hope to accomplish.

The work continues

A year has passed since we stepped up our work. We have published 7 different villages spanning 2 parishes and are working on our third right now.

We have definitely been noticed by many people trying to find their roots from all over Slovenia, Canada and the United States. It has been very fulfilling to be able to help people discover who they are by helping them get connected to their families in Slovenia.

We have completely collected records for 3 parishes and now have at least 4 more set in our sights. With a tree that has over 25,000 people, we are working hard to increase that number and give more people the ability to find their ancestors and their relatives. Despite the volume of work that we have already done, the goal is to absorb as much genealogical information as possible from all over Slovenia starting in the Bela Krajina (White Carniola) region in the south.

We have not limited ourselves simply to studying families but also the lives these people led, how they lived and why they lived the way they did. The history of the region is just as important to our work as the people. While helping to find their roots, we want to be able to tell them something about those people and how they lived.

Our fund raising campaign has been successful so far and we hope to be able to raise more money in order to help this work move forward at a quicker pace. Every bit of support is appreciated and goes directly into our work in an attempt to connect every Slovenian worldwide to the places that they came from.

The fund raising begins

After some careful planning and deliberation, we have come up with a plan to help our work proceed at a more constant pace. This job brings us a great sense of accomplishment in the fact that we are able to help people discover who they are. We are committed to keeping the flow of information open and free to all.

Nonetheless, bills still need to be paid. We will not create a payment system for access to the site but rather ask for donations from those who are able to help support our work.

If you are one of the many who have found our site to be helpful in any way, we ask that you help support our work so that others may find some benefit from our site as well.

Thank you so much for your support!

Click here to contribute to our passion:

Donate today!

Moving forward…

Moving forward, the plan is to go full force into researching the genealogical past of Bela Krajina (White Carniola) as well as some other parts of Slovenia. This is something that was never done before but it realistic with the proper support.

We have already started working quite intensely into the southern region, mostly around the parishes of Vinica and Preloka. There is a great deal more that we need to do in order to get this project rolling.

Work will continue on the Vinica parish but will continue onward into Sinji Vrh, Adlešiči, Dragatuš, Podzemlj, Stari Trg and eventually Črnomelj, Metlika and the surrounding area and Semič and the surrounding area.

While most for-hire genealogists will research your family’s history with an associated cost, our goal is to research everyone’s family history. The information will be freely available (with restrictions according to privacy laws) to everyone. As research continues, our findings will be published online.

This is an enormous undertaking but it is not unreasonable. This work involves a great deal of accuracy and discipline so as we move forward, we also hope to bring on others to help us in our work.

We have set our goal and know what we want to accomplish. We can only make it happen with your support!

Thank you in advance.

The people and the stories

As I think back to our earlier days of all of our work, I have to admit that some of the most exciting times I had in building our family tree must have been speaking to all of the people of the older generations of our family.  We had to the opportunity to get to know people who were alive in very different times from World War II to the revolutionary times in Europe and even as far back as World War I.  We had an opportunity to understand the hardships that most people lived through and had to get through in order to survive.  It was a nice added bonus to get all that on top of some family tree information.

Once we reached a certain point back in time, we decided to branch outward as well capturing people who are truly distant relatives.  This led us on a quest where we were able to get even more stories about different places.  Our family for the most part was confined to Slovenia but after expanding outward, we had the opportunity to learn more about life in the US since many distant relatives settled there, specifically in Pittsburgh and then moving outward from there.

The whole point is, take advantage of the resources you have today.  They won’t be around forever and you will definitely lose a point of interest which you’ll never get again, a true, personal account of the experiences of life.

Where It All Began

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…no wait, that’s not it, OK, a while ago a couple of cousins were asked to make a family tree for their elementary school projects.  Seemed simple enough.  So they both did the same and drew up a simple little tree with their parents, aunt, uncles, cousins, grandparents and called it a project well done.

Well, if only it was that simple.  Several years later we began talking and decided to take our projects a little further.  The initial stages were definitely the most amusing as we used people as our sources to compile more and more information.  Aside from getting the who’s and when’s, we also got to hear stories about these people.  Everything from a bootlegging great grandfather during prohibition in the United States to a grand uncle with no hands.

Our family tree is not only packed with statistics about people but also some of their stories.  From then we moved on to using other sources to collect older information and came to the over 5600 people we now have in our family tree.

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