The Official Blog Of Hungary Exchange

Many of our ethnic or national Hungarian ancestors immigrated to America in seek of the freedoms and liberties that our country offered. Hungarians have been finding their way to America for centuries and one of the earliest, if not the earliest, was a Hungarian cavalryman named  Mihály Kováts de Fabriczy . He provided faithful military service during the American Revolution, which ultimately took his life, along with Casimir Pulaski and are known for being the founding fathers of the United States Cavalry. Mihály came from a noble family, their name in Hungarian being 'fabriczi Kováts', and rose through the ranks during his military career to gain the title of Captain of the Huszárs. Mihály had offered his military service to the American ambassador in France, Benjamin Franklin, and one particular portion of his letter written on January 13, 1777 to the ambassador proclaimed his desire for independence and his knowledge of war: "Golden freedom cannot be purchased with ...

An often overlooked Hungarian collection on FamilySearch holds a treasure trove of genealogical information.  Hungary Funeral Notices, 1840-1990   are printed funeral or death notices, similar to obituaries in other counties, and the originals are currently held at the National Széchényi Library (Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, or OSZK) in Budapest, Hungary. Over a quarter of the collection covers Budapest and the remainder for the rest of Hungary, although I have seen notices for individuals in Austria, Germany and what is now Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia. The funeral notices were preserved on microfilm by the LDS between 2003-2006 and consists of 582 microfilm and can be reviewed in the microfilm catalog . These were later digitized (accessible through both links above), but 9 microfilm still remain to be digitized. It's unclear why Syatmárz, Syecsez, Syeibert, and Syékely are spelled with SY, when it should be SZ. Ebeczki-Blaskovich, Ernő-Edelényi Szabó, Józse...

The FamilySearch database entitled  Austria, Vienna Population Cards, 1850-1896 documented local residents and travelers living in Vienna for the time period of 1850 through 1896, with the original documents being housed in the Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv (Vienna City and Provincial Archives). These records have been preserved on microfilm through the LDS and consists of 3,173 microfilm, which can be reviewed here in the microfilm catalog . Although there lacks to be a complete index for this collection, a great deal has already been indexed and provided online. I personally found the search form for this database to be rather limiting, with it not providing an option to search for an individual's place of birth, so I figured out a work-around. Running a basic search for Hungary in the "Any Place" section on FamilySearch pulls back over 31 million results. We can restrict these results to specific Collections through the filter options on the bottom left of the ...

FamilySearch.org's database,  Brazil, São Paulo, Immigration Cards, 1902-1980 ,  has been updated today and many Hungarian immigrants can be found arriving in São Paulo throughout this database. Searching 'Hungria' as the place of birth, which is Hungary in Portuguese, will bring back over 1,400 results for São Paulo immigrants who were born in Hungary. The content is entirely in Portuguese, so you will need to ready your dictionaries and Google Translate. The best part? Most have pictures of the individuals! I particularly like  José Furst's  fun tie in his picture. There is the chance that you will run into spelling variations because of the language differences, such as with this example of the widowed Etelka Izsó's immigration card that was filed in 1920. Her name appears as Etelko Izso and her parent's names as Antol Izso and Lidia Tokoic. Anyone familiar with Hungarian genealogy would know that Antol is correctly spelled as Antal and that her mother...

Béla Lugosi is well known for his portrayal of Count Dracula in the classic 1931 film  Dracula, but many do not know that Lugosi wasn't his original surname. He was born as Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó on 20 Oct 1882 and baptized nine days later on 29 Oct 1882, in the Roman Catholic parish of Lugos, in the former county of Krassó-Szörény, Hungary. Lugos is today known as Lugoj in Timiș county, Romania. He was the legitimate son of István Blaskó, a bank director of Nyitra, and his wife Paulina Vojnits, who were residents of Lugos in house number 6. Béla's godparents appear to have been Ferenc Bayer, a municipal deputy judge, and Vilma Küszer. He was baptized by the assistant parish priest, Albin Teppé, and was delivered by the midwife Róza Perisutti. Information was later recorded in the 'Observationes' column which mentioned his marriage to Ilona Szmik on 25 Jun 1919 in the Roman Catholic parish of Szent-Anna in Budapest. Their civil registration marriage record was ent...