Evkovich

[Sanja]

I'm looking for information on my great grandfather Gjuro (George) Evkovich who emigrated from Croatia (a small place near Karlovac) in 1907. My great grandmother Milica (who was pregnant) with 5 children returned back to Croatia where she died during childbirth.
My great grandfather settled in Pittsburgh and remarried. He got 3 children (2 dauthers and son). I think one dauthger's name was Milica.
Son Nikola (Nick) from his first marriage 1956. returned to USA and settled somewhere in Pennsylvania. He was married, no children.
Any information would be useful.

[Christine in Herts]

Welcome to FTF, Sanja!

Please be very wary how you post info about this family. You will see that our T&Cs try to protect people's privacy by not allowing the posting of names of living people (or people who cannot be confidently thought to have died) in open forum.

There's an increasing amount of information online about USA records: Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org - and even the new FMP.com. There are also some other USA sites around, too. Where have you looked so far? If you are looking for the European side, then FamilySearch is probably the best bet to start with: more stuff appearing there every day! It might be worth having a look in our FTF Reference Library, just in case there's something there you hadn't thought of.

Christine

[PhotoFamily]

I wonder if this is George in 1940:

https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/KQQW-73Q

Allegheny was a big city which was annexed into Pittsburgh.

Hmm, there are lot's of Ivkovichs in the Pittsburgh/Allegheny area:

https://familysearch.org/search/records/index#count=20&query=%2Bsurname%3AIvkovich~%20%2Bresidence_place%3Apittsburgh~%20%2Bresidence_year%3A1907-1950~

Findagrave for Ivkovichs in Pennsylvania:

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gsr&GSfn=&GSmn=&GSln=ivkovich&GSbyrel=all&GSby=&GSdyrel=all&GSdy=&GScntry=4&GSst=40&GScnty=0&GSgrid=&df=all&GSob=n

US census is only released to 1940. There is no national BMD registry, tho the SSDI (available on familysearch) includes most deaths after ~1938 (if the deceased had a social security number). You would need to check county or state resources to find their BMD sources, but those are usually subject to privacy rules, requiring significant periods before release.

Your options for finding them by other resources would include ancestry's public record, and newspapers. You might find the latter in public libraries. Google may be useful. Check the resource list in FTF's reference section.

Good luck!

[Sanja]

Thanks for your help. Although I'm interested in last name Evkovich not Ivkovich, I found the names that I believe that they may be the children from second marriage of my great grandfather. I believe that they are alive. And I have a problem. Where to look for some information about them?

[Christine in Herts]

Thanks for your help. Although I'm interested in last name Evkovich not Ivkovich, <snip>

Sanja - don't forget that "?VKOVICH" is (at some stage) a transliterated name. It's likely to appear in all sorts of forms (the ending may be OVICH, OVITZ, OVIC, OWITZ, and more, for example). It's true of British names that there are variants, and you cannot afford to discount someone just because of a small (occasionally, even a large!) difference in spelling. It's massively more true of names that may have started out in a different alphabet. And if there's any possibility of it being a Jewish name, then the spelling was even less important to the holder because surnames were just secular things imposed by a resented (usually) state - the real name was what mattered, and that was usually a patronym - bar/bat {Hebrew given name of father}; you can find siblings who have chosen different surnames, and individuals who use different surnames from census to census.

Another factor is that it's really only since the advent of mechanised/computerised systems that the spelling of a surname has been so critical: before that - when it was a matter of interpretation by eye and brain - it didn't matter how you spelled a name, so long as people knew who it was. If you look at the names in my footer... those are variant spellings of the same family's name, not different families with similar-sounding names.

Christine

[PhotoFamily]

There's also what happened when you stood in front of an immigration official: he's the one filling out the papers, and often chose the spelling of names in the new country. There's also just giving into the new language: I've also seen Mueller on the Declaration of Intent change to Miller and the Naturalization record.

So, as Christine says, it pays to think more broadly when it comes to spelling names.

It's been a while since I looked at the record, but I seem to remember that there were family members mentioned who seemed to match up with one or two that you had mentioned.

Did you look at the census record on familysearch? I think it was available - upper left hand corner, click View Image.

Do you know George's date of birth, or at least an approximate year?

Yes, I know you want to find next generations, but a) those records are mostly held private b) you may be able to find them by tracing forward from what you know c) if the surname spelling did change, knowing that may help find future generations.