I will forward your question to our team member for Serbia  but if their birthplace was *Austria* I doubt anyone was born in Belgrade.

The misconception that your ancestors came from Serbia is the result from them trying to articulate to the best of their abilities the fact that they were Serbs/Serbian, especially if they came from places like Croatia or some other territory where they were minority population and their true ethnicity would have been recorded or in US interpreted based on their country of origin.

As for Belgrade as place of birth - I have looked at and reviewed literally thousands of US censuses, draft registration cards, ddeath certificates and other documents of ethnic Serbian emigrants that state *Belgrade* as place of birth. In all but one cases that inforamtion was incorrect. )))

If you have any original documents like ship manifests or  certificates please either post them or send them to my email to be reviewed. It is much easier for us to help once we  have established what info after emigrating is there and which of it needs to be checked against period records for territorial distribution of a surname and available public records relevant for researching ethnic Serbs - like Privrednik database and WWII victims records.

You can read more on these in our research section under *Serbian Genealogy* here:

http://www.rodoslovlje.com/en/documentation/serbian-genealogy

I also recommend the into general research article :

http://www.rodoslovlje.com/en/documentation/guide-researching-ethnic-serbian-ancestors-austria-hungary

because Austria as country of origin does indicate it relates to how you should be researching your ancestors.

Hope this helps and welcome to Rodoslovlje.

I will also update this thread when I check period records for the surnames you listed , it may take about a week to do that.

Thank you for your reply. Since I posted originally, I have found out a bit more information.

My great grandmother's maiden name was Milica Ronchavic, but when she arrived it was Milica Tribic. I believe her first husband (Roy Tribic) died, but I'm not sure when.

My great grandfather's name was Petar Poznic and on a draft card I found, it lists his birthplace as Rhezoseves. I have not been able to find any information about a place named Rhezoseves.

My great grandparents immigrated to Johnstown, Pennsylvania seperately, since they didn't know each other yet, and I'm told a vast majority of Serbs that immigrated there were from two provinces of Croatia: Lika and Kordun. I have not been able to get any further back than that, but perhaps this thread should be moved to the Croatia section instead of the Serbia section. Any thoughts?

I have not found any ship manifests for either of them. The earliest documentation I have found is their marriage certificate from 1916 which was a few years after both of them had moved here.

Hopefully this will help Even a tiny step forward would be encouraging.

Closest thing to that I found is a very large branch of the Poznić family that lived in RISOVAC, nowadays in Bosnia. The spelling you have may be result of a bad phonetic transcription on behalf of the person who wrote the info into the draft registration card, because the name of this village is pronounced rɪsɒvʌtz/ *reese-o-vuts*.

This village is near the town of Bosanski Petrovac and a person coming from it in 1905 would have been listed as coming from Austria as country of origin ( Bosnia had been occupied by the Austria-Hungary empire since 1878.)

There is one other location that starts with "R" - Rogoža, Veliko Vukovje in Croatia where I found Poznić family in period records - so keep that as an option open too before you  confirm your ancestors place of origin.

Yes, every  bit of even the tiniest info you can find in records after emigrating is helpful. And also, please always try to either attach here to your posts l the documents you find - often a native speaker will interpret ship manifests and other documents more accurately, and the more people see it more chances you get of correct interpretation.

I would be happy to post or email you some documents to review, but I can't figure out how to attach a document to a post and I don't see your email address. I'm sorry, I feel like it's a dumb question, but I don't have much experience in this kind of a format. Can you point me to a FAQ or help me figure it out?

Thanks for the instructions. I looked, but still did not see File attachments. I have sent you an email instead.

attached documents :

draft card Peter Poznic WWII

marriage licence 1916.