LET THEY BE FORGOTTEN… ABOUT AUTHORS FROM THE ADRIATIC COAST OVERSEAS

In leaving for distant destinations in search of a better life, Croats carried with them memories of the old country that they handed down to their children, and many of them did not wish to see the memories fade so they wrote them down. In this way they incorporated them into the literature of distand countries. Although distand from home, this literature is still a part of the Croatian cultural heritage. The first written accounts from the emmigrant community were letters written to Juraj Kapić, the founder of the “Pučki list” periodical from Split, in which emmigrants described the life in new lands, and they were regularly published in newspapers in Split at the end of the 19th century. We can consider the authors of the letters to be the Þ rst correspondents. The exhibition “Lest they be forgotten” speaks about all those that left the Adriatic coast and took up the pen, regardless of the extent to which they were successful, which does not have a literary value nevertheless has an emotional or documentary value. The largest number of writers from the Adriatic coast wrote from South America, and in Chile alone there were some two hundred of them, including as many as nine academy members. In cases where they did not write poetry, novels or stories, our emmigrants in most cases described the history of the arrival of Croats to the place where they lived or wrote professional literature dealing with their profession. Unfortunately, only rarely did they write in Croatian since they forgot it soon after leaving because of assimilation

CITIZENS OF SPLIT BEYOND SPLIT

Tijekom 19. i 20. stoljeća u prekomorske se krajeve osim stanovnika dalmatinskih otoka i Zagore često iseljavalo i gradsko stanovništvo. Autorica donosi spoznaje o iseljenim Splićanima na osnovi postojećih popisa hrvatskih iseljenika širom svijeta i splitskih matica rođenih.Emigration from Croatia began in the 19th c. for economic reasons. It was most intense in Dalmatia, which from 1899-1920 saw an exile of 40,000 people. Those who left were mostly farmers or unskilled workers, 18-30 years old who exiled to South and North America, Australia and New Zealand. Most of them were from the Dalmatian islands or villages and it was long considered that only individuals emigrated from urban centers. There are truly very few citizens of Split in South America, Australia and New Zealand but there are very many of them in the United States. As all boats coming to North America landed at Ellis Island in front of New York City where systematic evidence was kept from 1892 to 1924, we are able to learn about the number of citizens of Split arriving there. The lists were made by hand and many errors occurred. Also, not all who were entered on the list as citizens of Split were found in the Register of Birth in Split. Some claimed to be born in Spalato, Spljet or Split while others claimed Veli Varoš or Lučac as their place of birth. Split was most often referred to as being in Austria, rarely Hungary, and later in the SHS or Yugoslavia. The year of 1907 was unsurpassable by the number of citizens who exiled from Split. Most of them were born in 1880, they were between 20 and 30 years old while one third of them were women