Bihor County, Romania - Archives Re-Opening

Just recently, I have received word from my photographer stating that the Bihor county archives in Romania will be reopening soon. They had been closed for quite a long time due to construction and renovations going on at the archive, thus restricting access to researchers and photographers. We're hoping that the archive will be reopening by March/April of 2014, about three months away. Bihor county, Romania was formerly Bihar county, Hungary.

There were many important towns and areas in the former Bihar county, Hungary, including Nagyvárad (today Oradea). The other important towns were Belényes (Beiuș), Margitta (Marghita) and Nagyszalonta (Salonta).

There was a large mix of religions in Bihar county, Hungary, including: Evangelical, Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Jewish, Reformed and Roman Catholic.

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Hungarian Church Records Now Digitized At FamilySearch.org

Much to the delight of my colleagues and Hungary Exchange Facebook group, many Hungarian church records have become digitized and freely viewable online at FamilySearch.org. You can now browse and enjoy these records at home, instead of needing to frequent your local FHC, and you will spend less money from having to order the microfilm. The Reformed and Roman Catholic baptism indexes, as well as the Jewish Vital Records indexes, don't appear to link up with their proper digitized image yet, so there certainly is still work to be done behind the scenes. Click to enlarge The best way to find your parish is to search the microfilm catalog, under the Place category, at FamilySearch.org/catalog/search . Most localities will come up this way, however not all villages or towns had a church or synagogue for each religion - hence requiring the citizens to travel to the nearest neighboring village. There are several gazetteers that help guide you to the correct parishes and many o...

Hungary Exchange Contest - Win 5 Hours of FREE Research!

I've been thinking about offering a contest over at Hungary Exchange for the past few months, and now is the time! Here are the details: What You Win: 5 FREE hours of professional research. This includes the research & translations, and you're provided with digitized copies of all documents found as well as pedigree and family group reports that display all information found. Rules: 1. You MUST have Hungarian ancestry to be eligible (family with origins within the former Kingdom of Hungary). 2. In order to enter this contest, you must post a comment to this blog post. Within your post please leave your email address (I need to be able to contact you, if you win), and some basic details about the family that you're wishing to know more about. This includes names, dates (estimated is fine), places, etc. The contest ends Sunday, April 14th, 2012, at 11:59pm CST. The winner will be chosen and announced here on this blog Monday, April 15th, 2012. T...

Urbárium Census of 1767

We had previously mentioned the 1767 Urbárium census in our latest Research Tip #12 , but we felt it needed much more attention. As previously mentioned, these "records were ordered by Empress Mária Terézia in 1767 to help grasp a better understanding of the peasantry of Hungary. The over 300,000 pages of material contains a wealth of information such as how much livestock a peasant had, who the serf owed his obligations to and the amount of land the serf cultivated. These records only provide the name of the 'head' of the household/land. Most images are available for this collection and the front page [of the website] is available in English. Navigation of the documents are easily organized by county and then town or village name, alphabetically. Archaic or older spelling variations for the town or village name may be used. These records are not indexed by name." Carl Kotlarchik and Martin Votruba have created and provided column header translations for the 1767 ...

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