Polic history

On our way to Split, Croatia today, we met up with our parents in Zlobin, Croatia. Our great grandparents Stephen Polic and Helena Kruzic were married in Zlobin in 1904 and moved to America in the early 1910's due to lack of work in the area.

In our visit to our ancestors tiny hometown, we got to visit the church in which they were married (with our Dad arriving earlier in the day, in time to visit with the priest and some villagers), as well as the home in which Helena lived (Stephen's home has since been destroyed). We stopped at the cemetery where we found many, many Polic and Kruzic headstones but none for my grandpa's siblings who had been born but died in the Old Country before his parents left Croatia. They'd apparently been destroyed years before (perhaps during one of the wars?).

In Croatia and other Slavic languages (such as Serbian), the "c" is pronounced as a "ch". When my great grandpa moved to northern Michigan, he changed his name from Polic to Polich so it would be pronounced correctly in America. In Croatia, our surname is still spelled without the "h" on the end.

There is some speculation on various ancestry sites that the Polic family may be related to the famous Marco Polo. While Marco is known as a Venetian explorer and by his Italian name, he was almost assuredly born on the Croatian island of Korcula (which was part of the Venetian Republic, under whose flag he sailed). His Croatian name would have been Pili or Poli (which later became Polic). I've decided random Internet postings and rumors are good enough for me, so I declare Marco Polo as my ancestor, many centuries ago. Why not, right?