Where Did I Find This?

Melissa, your comment on Melanie's blog was probably a pretty general one but I decided to really answer it. Mostly because before I actually did it I had no idea where to start or what to do, it all seemed like a foriegn language. So here's the break down...

First, I went to the Family Search Website and clicked on the Library tab. That that takes you to the church's Family History Library. I clicked on the Family History Catalog and did a Place Search for Grandpa's hometown, Bjelovar (which I learned from Mom). Mom said her dad's family was Roman Catholic so I picked the Roman Catholic Church Records (Rimokatolicka crkva). If you click on the bottom where it says "printable version" it gives you a list of films that the church had made of parish records in that town (under "film notes" at the bottom). There are birth records (Rodeni), marriage records (Vjencani) and death records (Umrli) and the dates and film numbers. Usually you'd have to order the films you want to look at and then wait for them to be sent to your local Family History Library but I was in Provo at the time so I just drove up to Salt Lake and took a look at them. I found birth records for the year I wanted and looked for Stefani (Grandpa's mom). The whole thing was in Croatian so I found a Croatian to English dictionary online and looked up words that I couldn't guess. Mom had a birthdate for Stefani so I scrolled through to the year and then to the month and then the day. Nothing. So I just looked forward and backward and finally I found her!


I was so excited I ran straight upstairs from the basement of the library and called Mom on my cell phone. She was skeptical but I swore it was her so I made a copy of the record and sent it to her. This was the first breakthrough in about 40 years, nobody had ever been able to find any records! Something that I noticed on her birth record was a little note on the far right. It says that she married "Mirko" Omerza Sept 24th 1910 in Bjelovar. Mom had said that Mirko was short for Emerick so I now had a marriage date for Grandpa's mom and dad.

From there I searched birth, marriage and death records for Omerza's. I found an Omerza family but I couldn't find Grandpa's dad, Mirko, anywhere. We were always told that Grandpa was named after his dad, Emerick (or Mirko) Joseph Omerza Sr.. One day I found a Joseph but he died right after he was born. I found an Imbro Omerza and I was about to add him to the pile of random Omerza's when I saw another little note on the right column of his birth record.


It says that he was married in Bjelovar on September 24th 1910 to Stefani Exner! Bless that monk! We never would have known that "Imbro" is also "Mirko" if it wasn't for these little notes about their marriage (which is actually pretty unusual)!! This was my little geneology miracle and because of it we had a whole lot of temple work.