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Author: Admin | 2025-04-27
Was in a Balkan province that was declared autonomous from the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th Century and later liberated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1878. After WWI, it became part of greater Yugoslavia. The hillsides where Marko grew up in were known for the growing of medicinal herbs and for meat smoking; both of these enterprises were the main vocations of the Stijepovic family. The local economy was poor, and like many young men, Marko wanted to find opportunity elsewhere. The Bay of Kotor, a winding bay of the Adriatic Sea and often called Europe’s southern-most fiord, offered to many a springboard to the world. Overseas freighters would take on water and goods there along with passengers bound for North America, including stowaways. Some of those stowaways were young Balkan men wanting to avoid conscription into the Austrian Army. Others just wanted to start a new life in the New World. In 1892, Marko Stijepovic, at the age of 18, became a stowaway on a ship bound for the United States. Bay of Kotor on the Adraiatic Sea in Montenegro, where Marko Stijepovic boarded a freighter bound for America as a stowaway in 1895 Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons. Shortly after he arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, Marko traveled by train to Fresno, California, the center of a Balkan agricultural community. Somewhere along the way, his surname was changed to Stepovich, a practice common to many immigrants from eastern Europe. Building on his experiences growing up in Montenegro, Marko, still
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