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The Machiedo Family from the Island of Hvar
Joško Kovačić
Abstract
This paper treats the genealogy of the Machiedo family, one of the most distinguished on the island of Hvar in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, based mostly on unpublished, archival sources, as well as those published in the old Dalmatian newspapers. The Machiedos evidently originated from the Greek island of Corfu, but when the first of them, the Venetian chancellor Antonio, married in Hvar in 1764, his bride was an heiress from a much older family of the island, Obradić-Vodopija /Bevilaqua, whose most outstanding member was Ivan (1619-1679?) from Jelsa, one of the chief organizers of the defence of Venetian Dalmatia during the Candian war (1645-1669) and the one who saved the city of Split from Turkish occupation in 1657; for all of his achievements he was awarded the highest Venetian military award, the title of Cavalier
of St Mark’s. Antonio’s son Giambattista /Tita / Ivan Krst. Sr (1775-1851) took a doctor’s degree in law at Padua before he was nineteen and became a successful and rich lawyer, but above all a man of letters and founder of the Theatrical Society in Hvar. His three sons were the forefathers of all the Machiedos from this island. Many of their descendants were outstanding members of the intelligentsia: lawyers, engineers, schoolteachers, poets, physicians, university professors etc., and, last but not least, politicians: a special emphasis is laid on the decisive role of the family in the Croatian National Revival in Hvar and Dalmatia from the 1860s to 1914; the leading figures were Dr. Ivan Krst. M. Jr (1825-1905) and his son Jule (1864-1926), both of them mayors of Hvar. Jerolim (1805-1874) left a mark as a local historian and owned an important numismatic and archaeological collection; his sons Josip (1847-1917) and Lauro (1851-1918) spared no effort to promote their native town as a spa, as leaders of the “Health Society”, probably the oldest tourist organization (founded in 1868) in modern Croatia. Lauro’s son Dr. Jerko (1877-1962) was a member of the Croatian Party and the Dalmatian parliament, and vice-premier of the provincial government; critical of Austrian rule, he suffered imprisonment and, during the Italian occupation, exile. Above all, as a doctor he left a lasting imprint for his humanity - and it is to him, on the 50th anniversary of his death, that this paper is dedicated.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
129874
URI
Publication date:
26.11.2014.
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