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NIKOLA TESLA origin and family

May 15, 2012 by yugaya

( headstones of Nikola Tesla parents Milutin Tesla and Đuka born Mandić)

Dušan Ivković, famous Serbian basketball coach has a documented MANDIĆ ancestry related to that of Nikola Tesla :

His grandmother, OLGA MANDIĆ, and mother of Nikola Tesla, ĐUKA MANDIĆ were sisters.

http://www.b92.net/zivot/licni_prostor.php?yyyy=2008&mm=11&dd=19&nav_id=329664

One uncle of Nikola Tesla and brother of Đuka and Olga was PETAR MANDIĆ. He was a Serbian Orthodox priest who was later in life ordained as a monk in the Monastery Gomirje and served as head of the monastery brotherhood (arhimandrit), and became the head of Eparchy of Dabar and Bosnia of the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1896 – vladika Nikolaj. Nikola Tesla visited his uncle who took him to Monastery Gomirje to recouperate in 1892. after his mother died.

http://sajkaca.blogspot.com/2009/08/monastery-gomirje-in-croatia.html

Direct descendants of the family TESLA of the Nikola Tesla line, descendants of the Tesla uncles and great-uncles of NIKOLA TESLA, fled as refugees in 1995. and now live in Serbia.

http://www.cafe.ba/fun/18057_Naslednici-Nikole-Tesle.html

http://www.srpskadijaspora.info/vest.asp?id=7526

Both families – MANDIĆ and TESLA are extremely well researched and documented.

http://www.planeta.org.rs/20/8jubileji.htm

http://www.bogatstvorazlicitosti.com/sva-sela/multikulti/velebit/3093-velebit.html

ancestral genealogy of Tesla family, Smiljan, as told by the maternal grandmother of Nikola Tesla and mother of Đuka Mandić – SOFIJA MANDIĆ (BUDISAVLJEVIĆ):

“Of Nikola Tesla, on his mother’s side is known this: SOFIJA BUDISAVLJEVIĆ, his maternal grandmother, told the story, how in the middle of the 15th century, three brothers, Juriša, Budiša and Pilip, left their native village of PEĆANE by Prizren, (Kosovo) for Montenegro, and retreating before the Turks, made their way to Lika, to a place called Lički Novi. Juriša and Pilip converted to Catholicism, but BUDIŠA kept his Serbian Orthodox faith.

In 1527, when the Bosnian Turks attacked Lika, Budiša’s son RADOMIR BUDISAVLJEVIĆ moved to Gacko. Radomir’s descendents in the sixth generation, TOMO and MALEŠ BUDISAVLJEVIĆ, founded the new village of PEĆANE in Lika, and in that village was born MARKO BUDISAVLJEVIĆ, Nikola Tesla’s great-grandfather.

For his exploits against the Bosnian Turks, MARKO BUDISAVLJEVIĆ was knighted by Emperor Joseph II, as the “Hero of Prijedor”. One of his four sons, PETAR BUDISAVLJEVIĆ, was killed near Verona, in 1805, in the Austrian army, fighting against the French, and the following ballad was sung to praise him:

He fought like a hero everywhere,
And in war, in a knightly combat,
Near Verona, in the land of ‘Talians,
A French leaded ball struck him
Near the very heart, in his heroic chest,
May the black earth rest on him lightly,
For he was a hero to the nation.

The oldest son of Marko, TOMA BUDISAVLJEVIĆ, (1777-1840), was decorated in 1811, with the French Medal of Honour. TOMA BUDISAVLJEVIĆ was a Serbian Orthodox priest, able and ready to hold a church liturgy in the morning, and as a captain, command a company of Serb border guards in the afternoon. He could build a complete ox cart with his own hands.

Toma’s daughter, SOFIJA BUDISAVLJEVIĆ, married Serbian Orthodox priest NIKOLA MANDIĆ, who lived in Tomingaj.

NIKOLA and SOFIJA MANDIĆ had four sons and four daughters. The eldest, Georgina – ĐUKA MANDIĆ, born in 1822, was the future mother of Nikola Tesla.

Less is known about Nikola Tesla’s forebears on his father’s side. His paternal grandfather, NIKOLA TESLA (1789-1855), a staff officer in Napoleon’s army, is mentioned in June 1824, as returning with four heads of cattle from Srem, where he might have gone for a year or two, to escape famine. He married ANA KALINIĆ, from the family of Colonel Kalinić in RADUČ, county Medak, and sometime around 1820, moved to Gospić. Nikola and Ana had five children: Milutin, Josif, and three daughters: Stanka, Janja and one whose name has not been preserved.

MILUTIN TESLA, Nikola Tesla’s father, was born in RADUČ, on February 19 (OS), 1819., according to the Julian Calendar, which, in the nineteenth century, was twelve days behind the Gregorian Calendar.

Serbs had arrived in Raduč from around Knin, in 1716, having made their way there from western Serbia, via Herzegovina. The name TESLA denotes either a trade, as tesla is Serbian for adze, or a physical characteristic, such as protruding teeth, prevalent in the Tesla family.

MILUTIN TESLA attended the German-language public school in Gospić, then, together with his brother, enrolled into the Military Officers’ Training School; but the military profession, with its discipline and drills, did not suit him and, following a reprimand for not keeping his brass buttons bright enough, he left, and, after obtaining the necessary release from future military obligations, enrolled into the Serbian Orthodox seminary in Plaški. The school had opened in 1824 and worked, some years better than others, because of the poorly trained teachers and sometimes barely literate students. Milutin Tesla completed his studies in 1845, as the best in his class. He could speak and write Serbian, Croatian and German and knew some Italian.

When in 1846, army officer Nikola Tesla asked his friend, Priest Nikola Mandić, to give his daughter, Đuka, in marriage to his son, Milutin, the Teslas may have stooped a little, for the girl was already 24 years old, and had little or no dowry. But Nikola Mandić was a man of renown, and the young woman, as the oldest of eight children, had proven her mettle. In 1838, when she was sixteen, a virulent pestilence swept the country – thought to have been either cholera or smallpox – which damaged her mother’s eyes to the point of blindness, and early death, and Đuka took charge of the household.

Following his marriage, Milutin Tesla was duly ordained as a priest of the Serbian Orthodox Eparchy of Upper Karlovac, and appointed, first, to the church in Štikad, and from there, on April 30, 1847, sent to Senj, on the Adriatic coast. The young pastor was expected to strengthen the congregation of some forty households, and represent Serbs before the “foreign and Catholic persons.” He was paid 200 forints per year – and an additional 40 forints toward lodging – which was barely enough to make ends meet, and avoid ridicule due to poverty. And even that was paid him irregularly; but Milutin was consoled by the honour and dignity of his calling.

Pastor Milutin was spare and “a head taller” than his congregation, of serious visage, high cheek bones, sparse beard, “as contented as he could be,” he wrote, and a talented speaker and preacher. His sermons were said to be very eloquent . He was a fine penman too, and wrote many letters, some of which have been preserved.

Sometime in 1847 or ‘48, the first child was born, a son, DANE TESLA. Two more children were born in Senj: ANGELINA TESLA in 1850, and MILKA TESLA in 1852.

Poor material circumstances were compounded by Milutin’s ill health. In July 1850, he was so ill, that first, an uncle, one Serbian Orthodox priest DRAGANIĆ, and then his brother-in-law, TOMA MANDIĆ, traveled to Senj to perform his pastoral duties. Toma would stay for much of the next nineteen months in the “stony church on a steep cliff.” In late September 1852, after nearly five-and-a-half years in Senj, Milutin and Đuka Tesla put their three children, and few possessions, in the ox-cart for the 75-kilometre trek over the mountains, back to Lika, to their new pastorate in SMILJAN. Nikola Tesla was born in Smiljan on 28th of June 1856. according to the old calendar used by the Serbian orthodox Church (July 10th 1856).”

Nikola Tesla birth certificate – copy of Serbian Orthodox Church baptismal record, copied and issued in Gospić in 1883.
http://www.nikolateslaclub.com/index.php/en/news/8-latest-news/18-nikola-tesla-the-european-years

NIKOLA TESLA sisters, married names:

Angelina Trbojević,
Milka Glumičić
Marica Kosanović

All three married Serbian Orthodox priests.

(sisters of Nikola Tesla)

NIKOLA TESLA Mandić uncles :

Petar Mandić
Paja Mandić
Trifun Mandić
Toma Mandić

( vladika Nikolaj – Petar Mandić, uncle of Nikola Tesla)

All records and documents in Serbian Orthodox church archives and libraries, especially the internal documentation about the priests and their families, are only available for research via individual research request permission being granted by kind permission of the Serbian Orthodox Church directly from the central office in Belgrade, or the eparchy that parishes they served in belong to – Eparchy of Upper Karlovac.

http://www.spc.rs/eng/contact

http://www.eparhija-gornjokarlovacka.hr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=87&Itemid=27&lang=en

A beautiful traditional custom Nikola Tesla carried out until he died was to give as apresent for birth of a child a golden coin ( zlatni dukat ) to every child his cousins had – this customary gift is an old Serbian tradition, still upheld by many.

(golden coin- zlatnik issued in 1976. in Yugoslavia in honor of Nikola Tesla. His name is written in his native language Serbian Cyrillic script – НИКОЛА ТЕСЛА )