CROATIAN HERALDRY

VIDOVICH-VIDOVIC

Vidovich can be found in all parts of Croatia because it is a fairly common name.

Vidovich has two coats of arms, one from Dalmatia and one from inland Croatia. King Ferdinand III of Austria granted Mathew Vidovich a coat of'arms at Prague on Aug. 24, 1638, while George Vidovich of Sibenik was made a count of Venice in 1753.

Stefano Vidovich served in the 4th Company, 6th Regiment, European Brigade, Italian Guards Regiment, Louisiana Militia as a private in 1861 for the Confederate Army of the United States. Stefano married an American woman in the 1850’s at St. Louis Catholic Cathedral in New Orleans. Another Vidovich was married at Biloxi, Miss., in the 1890's.

The Slavonic Illyric Society of San Francisco, the oldest Croatian Society in America, organized in 1857, buried Philip Vidovich at age 32 in their Croatian Catholic Cemetery in 1870 and buried Nicholas Vidovich who died of the terrible World War I flu epidemic in 1918.

Andrea Vidovich, a fisherman who became an American citizen in Los Angeles in 1892, was probably one of the first pioneer Croatian fishermen of San Pedro and San Diego harbors.

George Vidovich was a pioneer restaurateur in the Lida Valley, Esmeralda County, Nevada in 1880 and Peter Vidovich was a restaurant owner in San Francisco in the 1880's.

Courtesy of the Croatian Genealogical and Heraldic Society, 2527 San Carlos Ave., San Carlos, California, 94070. Phone: 650-592-1190; E-Mail croatians@aol.com; Web www.croatians.com. Adam S. Eterovich.