History: Slovenian Home Land
Preview of version: 5
Slovenian Home Land
for the Jordan, Kosak, Rogelj and Baznik families
On this page:
Work in progress. Please pardon the dust and inaccuracy.
General Area
These four families all hail from Eastern Slovenia nestled between Zagreb (capital of Croatia) and Liblijuana (capital of Slovenia). Near Zagreb, which is down river, and the Croatian border to the south and west. The towns of our ancestors in Eastern Slovenia are only 10 km from the border with what is now Croatia and less than 100 km from Trieste and the Adriatic Sea.
Sentjernej is the home of the Jordan and Baznik families and sits right in the middle between two capitals. The other towns of interest are within 20 to 30 km of this point. After the death of the parents, the kids were scattered to the grandmothers farm outside Sentjernej and to other relatives in Zagreb. Eventually, four of the six Jordan girls were sent to America over a 6 year period but Karel and Marija settled near Trebnje as their business grew.Krsko is the general area from where the Kosak clan came from; just a little North East of Sentjernej not more than 30 km away. Rogelj may also have been from there as well. Sentjernej, Trebnje, and Krsko are in the foothills of the southern Alps that comprise a majority of the Slovenian territory. The map shown can be right clicked to see it full screen.
Most reading this will not have had the opportunity to visit the homeland; either on their own or with the relatives born there. So I will try to bring in photos, maps and the like from visits to the area by relatives and myself. Some, like Karel Jordan and his family, visited almost every year once they were allowed back in. Betty Jordan Kosak went about once a decade with various groups — sisters, her kids and the like. I was a grand kid with her on one of those trips.
Sentjernej
We had always been told by Elizabeth "Betty Kosak" Jordan that they were from Sentjernej. The town is fairly definable and was visited in the 1980's on the two trips with her kids. It is here where the family graves of Franciska Baznik and her mother Anna Turk are; as well now her son Karel, his wife Mela, and his son Eddo. Shown is a series of topological map shots zooming further into the town. Although Antonia Jordan declares her home town as Brevica, this name appears often associated with many villages in the area, including one within a kilometer of Sentjernej. It is not clear what she was referring to. In the close-in topo map of Sentjernej, one can seeTrebnje
All remember Karel Jordan and Frank Rus (Marija Jordan) large house in Trebnje. It is clearly depicted in the background of the family photo from the 1940's as shown here. It is so large that it is clearly visible from the satellite photos as well as depicted in structure on the topological map of the area. Using the Geopedia.si site again, we show you the general topo map of the area depicting the edge of Trebnje the town and the house. We also then zoom in and show the satellite view with the various directions the photos below are shown.Sevni Name History
Some have asked how I came up with the name Sevni for my business venture of the '00s. The answer lies in this page as well.Around 2002, it was hard to find unique, unused, simple names. The web name space had been scraped by many prospectors who registered names they thought others would find useful in hopes of making big money on their sale. So I was playing around with variations of words about things that I was doing — consulting to the government, startups, and venture finance community on technology, ideas and ventures. The reverse spelling of Invest, after dropping the letter T, gave a pronounceable name that had not yet been grabbed: Sevni. Doing searches on the web found the name really had no hits. Deeper searches found just two hits: Sevnica, a city in Eastern Slovenia, and Sevani in Gujurat — the state my wife was from. This seemed a good omen and justification for the name and so it came to be. The Slovenia map depicting this is shown earlier in this page while the India map is given here now.
Most interestingly Sevnica is now seen as one point of a diamond with the other three cities of my forefathers as the other points. And the Sevani village in India is actually better known as Sevni and very central to the area of Surat and Navsari where my wife's ancestors are from. Maybe we should have stuck with Sevni for this site instead of creating the new name MyCuz !