Croatians

Neighborhoods They Settled In:  Goodrich, St. Clair

First Immigrants arrived early 1900's

The Croatians settled around E. 40th Street.  Another area was between E. 26th and E. 31st.  The heart of the old Croatian settlement remains around E. 40th where St. Paul Church and school, built in 1903, are located.  The other Croatian parish, St. Nicholas, was founded in 1902 at Superior and E. 36th.

1942 Report by the WPA:

The second Jugoslav group to come to Cleveland were the Croats or Croatians.  The first Croatian settlement in Cleveland was Old King Street from E. 33rd to E. 40th north of St. Clair.  Today the areas around Waterloo Road in the Nottingham section and St. Clair from E. 40th to E. 60th street as well as parts of W. 25th Street and Superior Avenue in the E. 30th vicinity are the Croatian neighborhoods.  The original Croatian parish centered around St. Nicholas Greek Catholic Church at St. Clair and E. 41st Street which was organized in 1902.  There is also St. Paul’s Croatian Roman Catholic Church at E. 40th near St. Clair which was built in 1903. 

SERBS, CROATIANS AND SLOVENIANS by Michael Norman

The three ethnic groups that make up the modern nation of Yugoslavia have a strong presence in Greater Cleveland. The first Serbs arrived here during the pre-World War I immigration boom, settling in neighborhoods around St. Clair and Superior avenues between East 20th and East 30th Streets. As these immigrants prospered, they moved to the suburbs, particularly Parma, where they built St. Sava’s Serbian Orthodox Cathedral. A second wave of Serbian immigration to Cleveland was sparked by political refugees fleeing post-World War II Europe. These new arrivals settled in the southern suburbs and built St. Sava Serbian Eastern Orthodox Cathedral in Broadview heights. With a population of about 15,000, Cleveland’s Croatian community is the fourth largest in the United States. Concentrated in the eastern suburbs and in Lake County, the community includes political refugees who fled Europe after World War II. Their churches include St. Nicholas Byzantine Catholic Church and St. Paul Croatian Church, both in Cleveland. The Slovenian Community – one of the largest ethnic groups in Greater Cleveland, with a population of 46,000 – also is centered in the eastern suburbs. They’ve built St. Vitus, St. Lawrence and St. Mary of Czestochowa, all in Cleveland, and St. Christine’s in Euclid. In the early 1900s, there were more Slovenians in Cleveland than in their capital city of Ljubjana. Today, the community in Cleveland remains the largest concentration of Slovenians outside of Yugoslavia.

See the Local Historical Societies, Museums, and Genealogy Societies page on the Cuyahoga County USGenWeb page for further resources:

https://usgenwebsites.org/OHCuyahoga/Repositories/index.html