I have an Internet connection today and am hopeful of any help that can be provided. On the US draft card which my grandfather is listed it shows his birthplace different then Babus if that is what I am reading. If there is anyone who can help me further sort this out I would be so grateful. I have joined up and hope to go to a place with electricity to do more research in the days to come. Thanks for any help at all! Cherie

Cherie en Robert,

The draft card isn't clear, at least when I try to open it. Could you try to re-upload it. Does Ellis Island have any immigration record on file? Srpski Babuš is in the Uroševac district and I believe Jugoslava already posted some info on this on the Ancestry board. It has been heavily hit during the 1999 war and aftermath. There are however still Serbs living there today. Srpski Babuš was also in occassions refered to as  Ferizovići or  Ferizaj,  Ferizovich  in English.

Uroševac was an important medieval Serbian city and it has a rich history. Until 1873 Srpski Babuš was a small town, after the construction of a rail road line it grew but even today its a relativly small place.

The Veljković surname is comon in Montenegro and southern Serbia. A lot of Serbs fled the Kosovo war to surrounding areas such as Kursumlija. Looking for relatives will take time. How long will you stay?

Cherie,

I see you joined the SGS, welcome

FYI, if there is information you don't want to be on public forums, post in the SGS Member forum. You can see it after you login in the Forum List. It is for members only.

dear Sergej, The draft card was the best that I could get. I even ordered an enlargement of the original and this seems to be the best we could get. There is the naturalalization certificate which I don't believe Robert has uploaded here. I believe the birth place is different. Many years have passes but I had always the memory it was Babus then actually found it on a map. I will stay as long as possible. I would dearly love to be useful and have no immediate plans after this trip so I want to explore as many historical places as possible. I'll ask Robert here if he has the immigration paper as this might give further clues. Thank You from the bottom of my heart for having a look at these papers as I have been lost!

 double:)

Serbian ancestors who came from Kosovo while under the Ottoman rule - their surnames were recorded in the manifest according to the way their travel documents, issued by the Turkish authorities stated - surname that is recorded in the manifest is actually the fathers name. This had nothing to do with French port spelling issues.

SO:

For VELCO MILOVAN -

first name MILOVAN
surname in the manifest VELCO=VELJKOVIĆ derived from his fathers first name

name of the father - VELJKO STANOYE= STANOJEVIĆ, = first name VELJKO, son of a man with first name STANOJE

You can see the same pattern in all people coming from the same place in this manifest - people of Serbian ethnicity coming from Turkey& "Vilayet":

passenger number two
first name STAJO
surname listed as SAVE (with case ending) his contact listed brother first name RADOSLAV, same *surname* SAVE

passenger number nine
surname listed as STOJKO, his father listed as first name STOJKO  ,*surname* SAVO

The three generations of your ancestors:

MILOVAN , son of VELJKO - VELJKOVIĆ

VELJKO, son of STANOJE - STANOJEVIĆ

STANOJE, son of ?

Now  all we have to do is go back and determin the place of origin ...from the scratch too.

Jugoslava Thanks for the explanation of Serbs coming from Turkish controlled regions. Now as for his birthplace if you look at the second page of the manifest, line 24 his birthplace is listed as Bitinic, which is also listed for other passengers.

I can not find anyplace by this name.  Do you any idea where this place is located?

Robert

Robert,

With regard to the other post I can say the following. The municipality has the following villages in it: Babljak, Donja Grlica, Glavica, Gornje Nerodimlje, Muhadžer Talinovac, Raka, Softović, Srpski Babuš, Staro Selo, Tankosić (Biba, Doganjevo, Donje Nerodimlje, Gatnje, Jerli Prelez, Kosin, Laško Bare, Muhovce, Mužičane, Nekodim, Paraz, Pojatište, Sazlija, Štimlje, Trn, Uroševac, Varoš Selo, Zaskok). There is a difference between Ferizaj and Ferizovic. As for those maps, I don't know what their source is but they are not accurate. There are difference village with the ending of Babuš. It is not uncomon to give the municipality name instead of the village name as they fall under the same administrative authority.

Jugoslava already eloquently stated some important info. With the online pedigree system in testing stages I soon (1 month from now) expect that we can use it on the site. Then we can put the info in and it will be easier to talk about this as well.

I have old maps from Kosovo from that era and I will check to see if I can find Bitnic on there. However, in order to make sure all proper steps have been made I would take the data that Jugoslava listed and inquire with the Uroševac archives from that time. This means contact the archives of Serbia because the current archives don't hold that data. Also, the Serbian Orthodox Church should be contacted.

Cherie, did your grandfather ever mention a "Slava" and did he ever had a religious icon on the wall? I am asking because family saints play an important role in Serbian families and it will help in your search when you encounter families with the same surname.

So much for now, I'll write some more later.

OK some maps that are online. Please note that the old maps I have cannot be scanned in at the moment. We are working on getting those in the Places database but that will take time.

Detailed map of the Urosevac region:   You can see Srpski Babus on there (EN 2 location). If you look close you see its in the valley close to the railroad. The settlement was very small even then. It is very well possible there were even smaller villages that can not be found on this map. I will continue checking and get back to you all later.

Sergej, My grandfather had only one child, my father. He was married and divorced from her when my father was quite young. He married a conservative Christian woman who didn't seem to want anything to do with his past so I have no memory of ant religious aspect of his life except when he was more or less forced to participate in her church. Sadly my own father left before I was born and I only met him once after I had moved to Viet Nam to work so there just never was a family historian except my grandfather reminding me always that I was Serbian. There was a box of his things but a cousin tells me it was destroyed. I did everything possible to try to get any papers and could not. Thanks for the suggestion, if only!

Sergej

The old map section I posted was from the 1910 Austrian Military mapping

http://lazarus.elte.hu/hun/digkonyv/topo/3felmeres.htm

Specifically that map can be found at

Robert

Sergej, I think that Srpski Babuš is the completely  wrong location - based on reviewing all other documents , there is not one single listing that corresponds to it or mentions it. I am trying the phonetic equivalents  and parishes and the closest thing that covers more than one source document is in the bordering municipality of Štrpce - so the info from the old maps whether under Ottoman rule that was part of  (wider) Uroševac administrative unit would be great

Places of origin listed are: Bitinie&Bitnie, Popouze, Popovitze, Ferizovitch.

Based on that, Srpski Babuš is definitely NOT the place of origin.

I am going to look for information on surnames that were present here: Bitinja, Popovce in Štrpce county.

Jugoslava,

Could be very well possible, I am checking now the older maps and there are two places called Uroševac and more then 5 variations of Babuš in Kosmet alone. There is a Uroševac in Štrpce as well, its much smaller though. I am going through the maps now so if I find something I will let you know.

Robert,

Thank you for the links. The German footnotes state that the maps are not 100% accurate due to various reasons and the spelling is not consistenlty in Serbian but also German, Albanian and Turkish. That would explain the discrepency.

Short link of the image: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=gornja+bitinja&hl=en&ll=42.257365,21.036716&spn=0.023409,0.038409&sll=47.012518,14.593952&sspn=11.042987,19.665527&t=h&z=15