Browsing through the Forum.hr site's topics covering history I came across a thread where one of the forum members started to share his collection of 1:75,000 old military maps covering Croatia from the time of Austria-Hungary (early 20th century). If that's not enough, post #221 has a link to a huge collection of topo maps of former Yugoslav republics. The scale for the maps vary. For Croatia the site has 1:25,000 ones (grid), just like for Slovenia (grid), Serbia is covered by both 1:50,000 and 1:100,000. There is also a section for Crna Gora (Montenegro). These maps were made in the 1970s.

To build some skills in the Croatian language every now and then I listen to the programs on Croatian TV (available online as RealPlayer streams). While it was playing in a background window I noticed a program dealing with history.

This program turned out to be a 4 piece series on the genetic history of of Croats. The film on show on Aug 5, 2007 was part 2 of the series. This piece tried - with no success - find descendants of White Croats in the Czech Republic and in Poland. Everyday people in villages were asked about White Croats, and they had no clue.

In Part 3 connections between Ukrainians (Poles?) will be reviewed. The program will be on show at 14:55 local, 08:55 (AM) US Eastern time on Aug 12, 2007.

The last part is scheduled for Aug 19, 2007. No details are available yet, only its title is shown: Genetic origin of Croats: Iranian influences.

Besides the field reports the series also employs experts, including historians, linguists and scientists from genetic laboratories.

I happened to crank up my browser and go down crossing the Drava River to see what was up in Croatia. I could find quite a few remarkable things down there.

Genealogy fans founded the Croatian Genealogy Society named after Pavao Vitezovic in June 2005. They seem to be an active group, consisting of both academic and hobby researchers. During their annual meeting in March 2007 their president announced their coming journal Rodoslovlje (Genealogy). They organized a presentation of the 2004 Slovenia made reference book Rodoslovje in April 2007. The society hosts a genealogy forum on their site, too.

I'm not quite sure following what links I found my way to Moja Bastian (My heritage). This is a Croatian firm run by young people offering printing services for family trees and heritage, biographical books. Besides their flagship products they also provide research services, done either by themselves or by their research associates.

Would they reach for international markets? Could they become competitors for Ancestry.com's coming AncestryPress?

The last part of my virtual Croatia trip took me to the Zagreb City Cemetery website. If the visitor clicks on the "English" (s)he will be presented with an English language brochure about the cemetery. It's better not to fear to enter the Croatian (hrvatski) page and to click on the "Trazilica" link on the right menu. This will bring up a search form. Well, one can search the database of not only the main cemetery, but all the Zagreb ones. My sample searches brought up burials back from the 1910s, so, the database might cover the records from the opening of the cemetery (1876). The English brochure mentions 300,000 burials. How to search? Put the surname into the "Prezime" field, and hit "Pretrazi!". One thing I notice is that it's not possible to jump further from the 1st page of hits. To truncate the search one can use the % sign to stand for several characters or the _ sign for one character. The system requires the use of proper Croatian accented letters. If you are to lazy to produce them, just use the % or _ characters.

Robert Jerin of the Croatian Heritage Museum will visit Denver to host a one day seminar on 20 March. More information can be found here.