A.B. Rilovich - Cement Contractor, San Mateo, early 1900s

This is a rubbing of a concrete stamp that is over 100 years old, found in the North Central neighborhood of San Mateo, California.

In addition to the date, these stamps include the following information:

A.B. RILOVICH

SAN MATEO. CAL.

This was enough for me to do some amateur internet research and learn about A.B. Rilovich.

He was an immigrant from the southern Dubrovnik region of modern day Croatia. According to the Dubrovnik Diaspora, Rilovich and Rilovick are variations of the original surname: Rilović (www.dubrovnikd.org).

A.B. Rilovich, 5th from the left.
Photo from the Internet Archive: archive.org/details/rilovich-ab

The only personal information I could find was from the Internet Archive/Dubrovnik Diaspora (link in the caption above). A.B. stands for Antone Božo. He was born in 1883 in Radovčići (in modern day Croatia) and died in 1956 in Marin County, California. His father was Božo Rilović and his mother was Lucija Borković.

Generally, people from the Eastern Adriatic region (including the Croatia of today) began finding work outside of their region in the mid 1800s. Some came to California for the goldrush in the 1880s, but they continued coming for other business opportunities as well.

In The Slav Community of Watsonville, California (www.croatia-in-english.com/slavbook/slavbook.pdf), Thomas Ninkovich documents the history of Slavic people in Watsonville, CA, including the Rilovich brothers, George and Martin, who ran a fruit business. But there is no indication that these Rilovich's were related to A.B. Rilovich, the cement contractor in San Mateo. The Rilovich brothers of Watsonville were operating their fruit business by 1890s, and their family seemed to stay in that business, while A.B. Rilovich was operating his cement business in San Mateo at least from ~1910 to the mid 20s.

While I didn't find much personal information, below are some advertisements for A.B. Rilovich's cement business from local newspapers and magazines.

Advertisements page from the magazine The Architect and engineer of California and the Pacific Coast (1916). Provided by Wikimedia Commons. 
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Architect_and_engineer_of_California_and_the_Pacific_Coast_(1916)_(14740909286).jpg

This and the following three images are from the San Mateo Leader newspaper, issues from 1911 and 1913. Newspaper images provided by UC Riverside's California Digital Newspaper Collection.
cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DNL19110706.2.37.4&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------
cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DNL19130619.2.59.1&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------