DoljackSeifert

Born in house Nr. 7 in Samatorza.

Arrived May 9, 1905, departed Havre. Ship was the L'Aquitaine.

When married his address was via Belvedere 13, Trieste.

1. Janez and Johanna married in Slavina (the Zele home was there) in October, 1903. (I have the marriage document)
2. Our uncle John Doljak was born in Slavina January, 1904. Clearly Johanna was 6 months pregnant with John when they married. (John’s birth date is available from several sources.)
3. The Ellis Island ship manifest shows that Janez boarded 28 April 1905 in Le Havre, France and came to America. I found a ship manifest showing Johanna brought son John more than a year later in 1906.
4. I have Janez’s Arbeitbuch. This book is a work record that the Austro-Hungarian government required in order to work officially for businesses. Janez’s book begins in 1892 just prior to turning 18 years old. In 1896 he worked for a series of stone cutters in Nabresina, which is near the Doljak domicile in Samatorca. Nabrisina marble is well known and universally used for gravestones, even today. Then he got a job in Trieste that lasted for 3 years as a worker in a “work gang” at a well known shipyard there. (Stabilmento Tecnico Triestino-Cantiere di San Marco). This job ended at the very end of 1902. His next job did not began until January, 1904. All of this implies that for all of 1903 he likely was with Johanna, perhaps living in Slavina. We cannot be sure of that, but somehow he came to meet Johanna, made her pregnant around March of 1903, and married her in October, 1903. I speculate that Janez during 1903 may have been helping in the fields since the brothers Joseph, Anton, and Franc Zele were already in Cleveland, thus leaving only the 63 year old father Jernej Zele along with mother Neza and two other sisters in Slavina. But this is speculation.
5. One month before the marriage in October, 1903 the Arbeitbuch has a permission-to-travel entry that is authorized for three years. The authorization was to travel to “Amerika”. So the implication is unmistakeable. Janez and Johanna had already planned to emigrate just prior to their marriage and two years before Janez actually did emigrate. After all, all Zele brothers were already in Cleveland.
6. The Arbeitbuch finishes with Janez’s last job as a miner, begun the 28th of January 1904, two days before John’s birth. The company was an Austrian company headquartered in Klagenfurt and the signature is that of the “site administrator” . After a lot of searching I have not been able to figure out where this job site took place, but it seems certain it was not in or near Slavina. There are no mines nearby. The work period ended 3 April 1905, more than a year later. As mentioned above, Janez traveled to Le Havre, France the same month and left for America. Where Johanna and John lived during this period of work is unknown. It may seem reasonable to assume that they lived apart during this period since there were no more pregnancies until Johanna came to Cleveland and uncle Frank was born, although this period is only 14 months starting with John’s birth and knowing that Janez’s departure was pending they could have taken care to avoid a pregnancy. On the ship’s manifest Janez stated his last place of residence was Prosek, which is a very short distance from Trieste. So, maybe all were living together in Prosek (Prosecco). But where was this mine site at which he worked?

This is a follow up on the item 6 below regarding Janez’s work history. I have discovered where he worked as a “miner” for about a year and half just before he came to America in 1905. The Austrian company that he worked for was Madile & Comp., founded in 1880 and has always been a construction company. It still exists today and has a website, so I wrote an email to the address found on the website. Incredibly a few days later I got a response from a person named Maximillian Madile who wrote that the company has no information that goes back that far. With respect to the site being at “Reifenberg”, he said there is only a city in Germany by that name, nothing in Austria or Slovenia that he knew of. He speculated that as a “miner” Janez could be digging tunnels at that time. So I dug deeper into googling Madile & Comp. and tunnels and came up the answer.

Around 1900-1905 the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy was building railroads. A very major rail line was under construction from Austria through Slovenia down to Trieste. Madile had the contract to build two segment of this rail line. To build this line quite a number of tunnels were required through the mountains. I found that one of these tunnels was just below Reifenberg Castle( one of many ancient castles in Slovenia). So, Janez was a worker digging this particular tunnel, which is at a village called Branik, Slovenia. This village in the past was called Reifenberg. A straight line distance from this village to Slavina is 21 miles. However, the land is mountainous and perhaps 30 or more miles of travel would be required. Janez probably lived on-site and likely only returned to Slavina, where Johanna and baby John very likely were living, during times that there were leaves for the work gangs.

Josef Rupnik was a witness.