April 10, 2018

SFO. Air France flight to Paris

We are on board for Paris waiting permission to take off. This airbus will be our home for the next ten hours so here’s to a comfortable flight. Norm and I each have two small bags, a rolling bag sized small for European standards and a daypack. I’m densely packed with the genealogy information so far collected by my family in the last 150 years. My great grandparents were from Croatia, Giovanni Cambio from the Castilla region of Dálmata and his wife Catterina Barbare Cambio from Orebic.

We are returning to the homeland with the ease of flight, a journey taken by our ancestors by ship in 1886. Catterina sailed with two children, my grandmother Erminia and her brother Roberto. My grandmother was 18 months at the time. Her husband, Giovanni was finally escorting his young wife to the New World.

Catterina left behind a sister, Ana Claric, married to Lujo Claric and parents, Giovanni Barbare and Maria Pekovic. Before leaving, Giovanni Cambio bailed out his father in law, who had gone bust with his venture in the shipping business. He purchased from the Barbare’s 21 parcels of land in and around Orebic. Following the land purchase they left the Dalmatian Coast to never return again.