Croatia Beginning Research

Parish registers, 1700s-present. Roman Catholic parishes kept registers earlier than Orthodox parishes which were required to keep them only after 1777. Civil transcripts of registers were mandated during the 19th century. A tabular format was adopted after 1848. In 1946, civil registration replaced parish registration of vital events. Older parish registers have been and continue to be transferred to the district historical archives or the Croatia State Archive.

Civil registers, 1946-present. Civil registration was conducted for Moslems only before May 1946 when universal registration by civil authorities was introduced in Croatia as well as throughout Yugoslavia. The registers are located in civil registry offices.

Census, 1785-present. In early years compiled for the purpose of taxation and later for military conscription and to provide an overview of the population. The first military census was carried out in 1785. A civil census was conducted in 1804/05. Regular censuses were conducted in 1857, 1869, and every ten years, 1880-1910. If the name lists still exist, they are located in municipal and district archives.

The Family history library has approximately 2,600 rolls of microfilm from Croatia since filming began there in 1985.

To identify the jurisdictions and localities in Croatia (as well as Macedonia, Serbia & Montenegro, and Slovenia) refer to: Imenik mesta u Jugoslaviji (Place names in Yugoslavia). Beograd: Novinska Ustanova Službeni List SFRJ, 1973. (949.7 E5u; film 874,462 item 2).

Croatia State Archive. Hrvatski Državni Arhiv, Marulićev Trg 21, 10000 Zagreb, tel 385-01-4801-930, fax 385-01-4829-000, email , web site http://zagreb.arhiv.hr/en/index.html. There are twelve district historical archives and contact information as well as links to sites for some district archives is on the web site.

The language of the records is either Latin, Croatian, Hungarian, or Italian. Glagolitic and Cyrillic as well as Roman script occur in the records. A good genealogy web site is found here.