A little geography. Nerezine is one of the four towns on the island of Losinj. It's about a 45 minute ferry ride from the nearest mainland. I forget the name of one but the other two are Veli Losinj and Mali Losinj. But just to show how confusing it is, the larger town is Mali Losij and the next largest is Veli Losinj. But 'veli' means 'big' in Croation and 'mali' means 'little'. Now if Mali Losinj is larger in population and area, why is it called little?
Greatgrandpa and Greatgrandma Ghersan were born and I believe married in Nerezine, on the island of Losing in the Adriatic sea about 6 to 8 miles off the shore of present day Croatia. At the time of their birth and marriage, that island was under the control of Austria (Austro-Hungarian Empire) and they were Austrian by birth if not by heritage.
The island remained that way until after World War I. It was ruled by Italy from then until 1945, when it was returned to Croatia, and became part of Yugoslavia. It remained that way until the war in the early 1990s, when Croatia became an independant nation.
Anyway, the name of Ghersan is not typical for the area, and many of our relatives wondered how that name came about. Their question was answered, when about 40 or 50 years ago, a diary was reportedly found, which stated that the Ghersans were decended from a soldier in Napoleon Bonepart's army, who decided to settle there, while Napoleon was running amok throughout Europe. The implication is that he was a deserter. Now that was around the early part of the 1800s, so there weren't too many Ghersans before Greatgrandpa's father. Probably the guy from Napolean, was our great-greatgrandfather's father, making him our great-great etc.
I was also told that the name Ghersan was origanally pronounced as 'Ger San", with a bit of a French intonation. This is all hearsay, but it is a good story.
Robert Louis Lekich, 2001-02