Documenting a Church and a Local Ethnic Community: the Archives of St. Anthony Croatian Catholic Church in Los Angeles

Abstract

Research projects concerning informational and heritage resources accumulated in the Croatian diaspora communities are becoming a growing interest in Croatian academia. This paper is a contribution to illuminate content and significance of resources which are necessary in the research of the history and the present Croatian emigration. In the introduction we bring a short history of St. Anthony Croatian Catholic Church and Croatian community that gathered there since the founding of the parish in 1910. The second part of the paper explains the role of the church archives on an example of St. Anthony Croatian Catholic Church in relation to the community, analysing its structure and significance and reviewing the methodology used and shown in the research. By analysing the content of the documents the emphasis is put on the importance of archival sources for the historical research of the Croatian community in Los Angeles. Until now the Parochial Archives of St. Anthony Croatian Catholic Church has been unknown to the professional and scientific public, therefore, this paper is also a contribution to the research of the Croatian cultural and archival heritage in diaspora.