Good morning! As part of our work on the Montenegrin America project, we are coming across many untold and astonishing stories about Montenegrins who, in different periods, came to America and in various ways took part in the lives of local communities in the West. From the Gold Rush and the building of the railroad toward the Pacific, Montenegrins were miners, railroad workers, hospitality workers, traders, politicians, journalists—but also outlaws and bandits. Today, we will tell you the incredible life story of Andrija Jovicevic, a Montenegrin diplomat and army officer who ended his mission on earth as an outlaw and bandit in the American West.
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Andrija Jovicevic – Montenegrin Officer and Gunslinger
It was 1884. In the home of businessman and journalist Matthew M. S. Martinovic, many distinguished citizens of Omaha gathered. Martinovic got a son, but that was not the reason for the gathering.
The reason was a visit from his brother-in-law from Montenegro—a hero named Andrija Jovicevic. A commander in the army of the Principality of Montenegro and a participant in every war and battle from the 1850s to 1878. For a time, he also served as Montenegro’s consul in Constantinople. He had been wounded seventeen times.
Local industrialists and the city elite were impressed by stories of war and the romantic struggle of the Montenegrins, about whom all American newspapers of the time had been writing for years.
These details come from an article in the Omaha Evening Times, which on 17 November 1884 reported on the visit of a “famous guest” from distant Montenegro.
- S. Martinovic (Mato Savov Martinovic) was the son of Montenegrin warrior and poet Savo Mato Martinovic, who, according to his own account, borrowed 300 thalers to send his two sons to America.
George and Matthew Martinovic were the founders of the Slavic-Greek-Russian Orthodox community in San Francisco and left a deep mark on America. Mato was a journalist and entrepreneur, mentioned in connection with the construction of a hydraulic machinery factory in Omaha, as well as the visionary behind a project to build a railway across the Bering Strait from Saint Petersburg to America—a story that deserves a separate text.
Just three years after the grand reception at his brother-in-law’s home in Nebraska, Andrija appeared in the press in a far less flattering context—as the leader of a gang that carried out a raid on the offices of the Keystone mine in Amador City, California, the administrative seat of Amador County, in an unsuccessful attempt to steal gold bars worth $20,000. During the incident, his accomplices were arrested— a person surnamed Gojevic, Bogdan Masanovic, and another individual.
Andrija fled toward Sacramento, and police found his clothing on a riverbank along with two cans of beef he had stolen from a nearby farm. Authorities searched for him unsuccessfully, while newspapers across the West buzzed about a gang of Slavic desperados led by the “Montenegrin killer” Jovicevic.
After that, nothing more was found about Andrija until a year later, when state authorities received information that Jovicevic had boarded the steamer San Jose and was travelling to Panama under the false name Drusic. The newly inaugurated governor of California, Robert Waterman, immediately issued a request to U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Bayard to urgently seek Jovicevic’s extradition from Panama as soon as he set foot on its soil. This was Waterman’s second official order—the first had been the appointment of California’s secretary of state. The U.S. consul in Panama was also informed.
We now plan to travel to Amador County and interview museum staff and historians in order to uncover Andrija’s later fate. According to family memory, he became a professional gunslinger and outlaw and, according to some stories, lost his life in a shootout in Tombstone, the famous site of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
I would like to thank Srdja Martinovic for his help in this ongoing research, as well as for the generous support he provides to the Montenegrin America project through his knowledge.
That is all for today. We wish you a pleasant rest of the day.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst and columnist
(Columnists’ opinions and views do not necessarily reflect those of the CdM editorial board)
