Montenegro Letter from army
The letter is handwritten in cyrillic letters, and its translitteration in latinic letters reads as:
Montenegro Letter from army
The letter is handwritten in cyrillic letters, and its translitteration in latinic letters reads as:
Njeguoi 29/7 96.
in English translation it reads:
Mr. "Johu Buehevu"
Njeguoi, July 29, (18)96
As seen, the letter contains thanks of Bozo N. Vrbica from Njeguoi to a certain Mr. "Johu Buehevu" for the photographs sent by the latter one. The photographs were probably taken during travel of Mr. "Johu Buehevu" (very probably the author of all slides shown here) across the region of Njeguoi in Montenegro. Bozo N. Vrbica is probably one of the persons shown on the previous slide (no. 18), which would explain the title "Letter from the army". However, Vrbica is large and well-known family/tribe from Njeguoi - part of Montenegro which was never effectively ruled by the Turks. They originated from the village of Vrba, and their family name is a derivation from the village name. Ms. Krstinja Vrbica was a wife of Stanko Petrovic (1790-1851), one of the ancestors in the lineage of Petrovics, a ruling house of Montenegro till 1918. Mr. Stanko Vrbica was in 1910 the owner of the "Grand Hotel Njeguo", a modest one-storey building in Njeguoi which was probably the only inn on the road from Kotor to Cetinje. I believe that in 1895/6 this Hotel was also run by someone from the Vrbica family. This hotel might be another, a less-likely, however, location where the photographs mentioned in the letter were taken and sent. As regards Mr. "Johu Buehevu", the sender of the photographs, I would speculate along the following lines:
Very probably the name and the address of the sender were handwritten in latinic letters. In a handwriting it is usually hard to discern letters "u" and "n" - for the sender a distinction is self-evident, but for the recipient from another language and different written letters they might easily be confused. Thus, "Johu" in all probability shoud be "John". Further, in latinic handwriting a letters "c" and "e" frequently looks very similar. That might be a source for the first "e" in "Buehevu". Taking these two corrections together, I would read "Buehevu" as "Buchewn" (there is no letter for "w" in cyrillic) or "Buchanan" or something like that.
