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Women's History Month: Mom's Autograph Book

March is Women's History Month, so I'm looking at items owned, used, or made by some of my female ancestors, as well as my memories connected with them. In my last post for Women's History Month I'm sharing this fun autograph book my mom, Anna Margaret Kozlina Gilbride (1937-2010), owned.  Autograph books were around when I was in grade school, though I don't recall having one. By the time I was in high school, friends usually signed each other's yearbooks, a practice which took the place of autograph books over time. "Before there were yearbooks, there were autograph albums. Keeping an Album amicorum or 'book of friends' was first popularized among university students in 16th-century Germany, and the books were primarily used to record signatures. But they also included quotes, advice, and fond messages from students, professors, and people of note. It was not until the late 18th century that autograph albums arrived in the U.S., reachi

SO FAR AWAY: WHAT DREW VJEKOSLAVA TO AMERICA?

Poster advertising the Cunard Line's Hungarian-American route between Rijeka (then Fiume), and New York. (Transport Museum, Budapest)

I am occasionally participating in 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, a writing challenge encouraging genealogy researchers to write about their ancestors. The challenge is hosted by genealogist, blogger and podcaster Amy Johnson Crow.


Last month, I set a goal of researching more about the Croatian roots of my great grandmother Vjekoslava Baltorinic, later known as Louise Kozlina. Here's an update on what I've found so far.

This week's prompt: So Far Away

NOTE: With thanks to R. Jerin for assistance, this post was updated on 2 Feb. 2020. Thanks also to the Croatian Heritage & Genealogy and the Fayette County Genealogy Facebook communities for help.


By Nancy Gilbride Casey


Beginning her life so far away as Vjekoslava Baltorinic in Srednjak, Croatia on 14 August 18821 she ended it as Louise Kozlina in Lemont Furnace, Pennsylvania in 23 July 1974.2 Vjekoslava’s life is pieced together from records and documents: baptismal record, ship manifest, marriage record, petition for naturalization, newspaper accounts, grave information, and a few recollections of her remaining grandchildren.

Yet these only tell part of her story, and don't give reasons for her departure from Croatia. To understand why she may have left means understanding conditions at the time in her homeland—then part of the Austria-Hungarian dual monarchy—which may have pushed her to leave, as well as what pulled her to southwestern Pennsylvania where she not only settled, but remained the rest of her life.

The Slavonia, on which Vjekoslava sailed to "Amerika."
Vjekoslava clearly stated on the manifest for the ship Slavonia on which she emigrated in December 1905, that she was going "to her brother-in-law Jacob Vukic, Lemont Furnace, Pennsylvania."3 Jacob  was the husband of Louise's sister, Zora.

About six months after she arrived, Vjekoslava Baltorinic married Frank Kozlina. Both gave their addresses on the marriage record as Lemont (Pennsylvania).4 Could Louise have known Frank in Croatia and followed him to the United States? Or did her sister Zora and brother-in-law Jacob perhaps arrange the marriage to entice her to emigrate?

Marriage record of Frank Kozlina and Vjekoslava Baltorinic, 1906, held in the Fayette County Courthouse.

While a marriage match is certainly a possible reason for Vjekoslava to emigrate, it is also clear that life in Croatia was hardly ideal for any rural family at that time. Poverty, deprivation and oppression were a way of life in Central and Eastern Europe's primarily agricultural landscape in the towns and villages far away from the burgeoning Austria-Hungarian cities of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.5

Austria-Hungary in 1914. Vjekoslava was born in Sv. Jana, to the southwest of Zagreb. (Image: NZHistory.com)

Industrialization led to a renaissance in these larger cities in the mid-to-late 1800s, but left the rural farmers far behind. While the cities enjoyed developing education, architectural advances, increased opportunity for employment and better wages, the rural areas on the periphery suffered poor harvests, illiteracy, agricultural stagnation and poverty due in part to the remnants of the feudal farming system.6

Patriarchal families in rural areas sometimes lived in tiny one-room wood huts with branches or straw roofs. A single small room may have served as an all-purpose room where families cooked, ate and slept. Animals and tools may be kept in a second room.7 In the area near Srednjak, homes were a bit more substantial, made of square-cut logs with thatched roofs.

Farming was often a losing battle when armed only with primitive agricultural methods and overtaxed land. Payment due to the old feudal landlords—sometimes seized as the very crops the farmers needed to survive—as well as taxes due to the state, province and county, meant less and less for the farmer to live on. Each year meant falling further and further into debt, with few means to provide for one's family, much less seek out employment and better wages in the bigger cities.8

This was likely the lot of Vjekoslava's family. If so, America may have seemed like the last hope.

Louise's husband Frank Kozlina may also have been drawn to emigrate in 1904 as part of a larger tidal wave of Eastern and Central Europeans to flood the shores of America in the late 1800s. While before 1890, 85% of ethnic immigration to the U.S. came from Western & Northern Europe—countries like England, Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia9—after 1890, it was fueled by Central and Eastern Europe immigrants from countries like Italy, Austia-Hungary, and Russia.10

Between 1900-1910 more than a quarter of all immigrants to the United States came from Austria- Hungary. In 1907 alone—just a few short years after Louise and Frank emigrated—over 338,452 immigrants came from the monarchy. It was the single largest one-time flow of immigrants from one country to another in history.11

What exactly drew some to southwestern Pennsylvania in particular? Coal is the most likely reason. Though it was illegal at the time to advertise or promise jobs to lure workers from abroad, the news of available work likely spread within families to those back home seeking a new life in "Amerika."

In southwestern Pennsylvania, where Vjekoslava and Frank made their home, that opportunity was plentiful. Here, companies in the expansive bituminous Connellsville Coal Field were in need of thousands of hands to continue mining the vast riches of this natural resource.  It was a task which had begun in the mid-1800s and which would eventually build Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas into one of the nation's most important industrial centers.

Dozens of mines in the Connellsville Coke Region, c. 1880; the number would only grow in the coming years.12

In future posts, I'll explore life in the "coal patch" towns which sprang up in the area, and how immigrant Croatians—Louise among them—assimilated into America, and strengthened their communities with religious connection and fraternal organizations.


Until next time...

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NOTES

1 "Croatia, Church Books, 1516-1994," database with images, FamilySearch ( http://bit.ly/34DxKJ1 : accessed 22 Dec 2019), Roman Catholic (Rimokatolička crkva) > Gorica Svetojanska > Births (Rođeni) 1858-1897 > image 347 of 605; birth of Vjekoslava Baltorinic, 14 Aug 1882; citing Arhiva Hrvatske u Zagrebu (Croatia State Archives), Zagreb.
2 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Health, certificate of death 67003 74 (1974) Louise Kozlina; Vital Statistics, New Castle.
3 The Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island - Ellis Island Foundation, database (http://bit.ly/2Qg90B8 : accessed 22 Dec 2019), "Passenger Record," for Vjekoslava Baltorinic, age 19, arrived 1 Dec 1905 on the Slavonia from Fiume, Croatia.
4 "Marriage license dockets, 1885-1916," database with images, FamilySearch (http://bit.ly/3724HQU : accessed 22 Dec 2019); Marriage license dockets v. 39-41 1906, Record #17374, marriage of Frank Kazlina and Louise Baltorinis, 19 June 1906; citing Fayette County Courthouse, Uniontown, Pennsylvania; FHL film Film # 004460687, image 210.
5 Ervin Dubrovic', From Central Europe to America, 1880-1914, ISSUU edition (Rijeka, Croatia - New York, New York: City Museum of Rijeka, 2012), 19.
6 Ibid, 19.
7 Ibid, 19.
8 Ibid, 20.
9 This pattern of emigration was certainly true of our Irish Gilbride and German Baker family lines. Our Gilbride line emigrated in 1850, no doubt also driven by the Famine, to settle in Wayne County, Pennsylvania; the Baker (then Becker) family had settled in Sheldon, in upstate New York, by 1856. Once conditions in these countries improved and the population began to live better, residents' desire to leave lessened. This is when those from the periphery left—the Austria-Hungarians, Italians and Russian among them.
10 Dubrovik', From Central Europe to American, 1880-1914, 10. 

11 Ibid, 24. 
12 Connellsville Coal & Coke Region, Connellsville, Fayette County, PA : Historic American Engineering Record, Creator, et al., Documentation Compiled After 1968; digital image, Library of Congress (<www.loc.gov/item/pa2870/> : accessed 1 Feb 2020). "Considered among the world's richest mineral deposits, the Pittsburgh seam of coal underlying portions of Fayette and Westmoreland Counties in southwestern Pennsylvania produced metallurgical coke of exceptional quality. Covering nearly 147 square miles, the seam's thickness, nearness to the surface, friable structure, and chemical attributes made Connellsville coke the ideal fuel for late nineteenth and early twentieth century iron furnaces. Combined with the adjacent Klondike fields, the region contained the world's largest complex of beehive coking ovens."

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