Latest discovery in the Eterovic family

I have been puzzled for some time about a member of my husband's extended family - namely his grand uncle Nicolas (brother of his grandfather Anton) and Nicolas' wife or wives.  My mother in law, who knew Nicolas for 15 years before he died in 1961, says Nicolas was married twice. 


As I previously noted in my post Ellis Island, Nicolas was first married on the island of Brac in 1904 to a woman named Karlin Kacic. They had two daughters and then a son who died in infancy. In 1907, Nicolas came to this country and his wife and daughters remained in Croatia.  Then, in February 1912, a woman named Dora Eterovic came to America and on the passenger manifest she listed herself as wife of Nicolas.  With her were two girls, Antica and Maria, who were the correct ages for Nicolas's daughters.  I was confused by the two names.  Did Karlin go by "Dora?"  Was my researcher wrong about the name "Karlin?"  Were these two different women?  If so, when did Karlin die and when might Nicolas have remarried? 

The records are scarce. There is no death record I can check in Croatia for the early 1900s and there is no new marriage record in Croatia or California.  In the 1920 census, which is the first census available after the mother and daughters arrive in 1912, Nicolas is listed as a widower with one daughter, Maria, and one son, Steven, born in December 1912. This must mean that Nicolas's wife and daughter Antica died sometime between 1912 and 1920.  So I began looking for Steven's birth record to see if I could find any more about him. 

It took me a while, but I finally found a birth record for a "Stefano Eterovich" and was both astonished and delighted to find the maiden name of Steven's mother.   It was recorded as "Casich," which is an anglicized version of Kacic.  Therefore, I have concluded that the woman who joined Nicolas in America in 1912 was his first wife, Karlin/Dora.  The name Dora (which could be short for Dorothy) makes sense as Nicolas's daughter Maria named one of her own daughters Dorothy.

I would still like to find a death record for Nicolas's wife, to verify her name, but have so far been unsuccessful. And I have also been unsuccessful in finding a second marriage record for Nicolas. 

This is the frustrating but exciting thing about genealogy - the search never ends.