The Official Blog Of Hungary Exchange

     Many are familiar with the Reformed and Roman Catholic baptism index collections at FamilySearch.org, however not all are aware that there is further beneficial information on these indexes other than the genealogical content. The indexes include source material to aid in viewing the actual image. In this article, I will explain the process in locating the digitized images for these baptisms and I will be using my 2x-great-grandfather's baptism index as an example. [All images to the right can be clicked for further enlarging.]      On the right side of the index, you will see what is listed as the "GS Film number". "GS" stands for Genealogical Society, which is otherwise known as the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. Take the newly-found microfilm number and search for it in the microfilm catalog at FamilySearch.org. This search will result in the exact catalog title being found; click on that title and continue onward to review wh...

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...

The theme of today's tip is: Taxation Records Although Hungarian taxation records aren't immediately beneficial to the genealogical aspect of research, they do provide an insight into the lives of our ancestors that church records otherwise wouldn't. Many taxation records for Hungary have been digitized and made available online, but you have to know where to look. In this article, we're going to highlight several of these digitized and available taxation records. Urbéri tabellák, 1767-1773 These taxation 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 is avail...

Over 1,200 marriage records for the Evangelical and Roman Catholic parishes of Nagy-Várad, Bihar county, Hungary ( present-day Oradea, Bihor county, Romania ), have been added to the Hungarian Marriage Project  at Hungary Exchange . Nagy-Várad was the capital of Bihar county and in 1880 had a population of over 30,000 people. At that time, the population in Nagy-Várad was about 87% Hungarian and about 7% Romanian. You can find more about this history of Nagy-Várad/Oradea here . The Evangelical records date from 1827-1915 and are comprised of 491 marriage records. The Roman Catholic records date from 1889-1910 and are comprised of 748 marriage records. Work is currently in progress to index the Reformed marriage records from 1853-1908. Contributions and donations to Hungary Exchange will help make even more records available.

The theme of today's tip is:  'Notes' On A Record The one thing I will always emphasis on, is reviewing the actual parish records. A great deal of information can be uncovered about the family simply by just looking at their baptismal, marriage and death/burial records. One thing that is always a pleasant surprise, is later-written notes indicating a marriage, death and even possibly a name change. The remainder of this article will be the examination of the various 'notes' that can appear on church and civil records. I hope it makes you pay close attention to the entirety of your family's records. Alföldi Juliánnának törvényes férje Nácsa János él ugyan: de 2. év óta [olta] nem laknak együtt. Jegyzette Szalai István, lelkész This excerpt was taken from the 'comments' (észrevételek) column on a baptismal record from 1854 in the Reformed parish of Szentmihály in Szabolcs megye, Hungary. It states that mother of the child was the same...

944 new marriage records spanning 1788-1833 have been indexed and added to the Hungarian Marriage Project at Hungary Exchange . These marriage records are for the Roman Catholic parish of Jánoshida in Jász-Nagy-Kun-Szolnok county, Hungary. Thank you to Dániel Gerhát for taking the time to index and contribute these records to Hungary Exchange! If Hungary Exchange and the Hungarian Marriage Project in particular have helped your research in any way, consider volunteering your time to index and make more marriage records available! I will provide you with everything you need from the indexing templates and marriage records to index. Feel free to contact me if you're interested! nickmgombash@yahoo.com

510 new marriage records spanning 1857-1900 have been indexed and added to the Hungarian Marriage Project at Hungary Exchange . These marriage records are for the Roman Catholic parish of Öttevény (sometimes spelled Eöttevény) in Győr county, Hungary. If Hungary Exchange and the Hungarian Marriage Project in particular have helped your research in any way, consider volunteering your time to index and make more marriage records available! I will provide you with everything you need from the indexing templates and marriage records to index. Feel free to contact me if you're interested! nickmgombash@yahoo.com

711 new marriage records spanning 1852-1908 have been indexed and added to the Hungarian Marriage Project at Hungary Exchange . These marriage records are for the Roman Catholic parish of Vitnyéd (formerly Vittnyéd), in Sopron county, Hungary. If you haven't done so already, make sure to submit your surnames and villages to the Surname Database to aid in connecting with others researching the same surnames or villages as you.

1,020 new marriage records spanning from 1809-1895 have been indexed and added to the Hungarian Marriage Project at Hungary Exchange . They are for the Greek Catholic parish of Bács-Aranyos in Szabolcs county, Hungary. This was a rather large parish, as it presided over eleven  villages! The villages are as follows, and all are in Szabolcs county apart from the last two in Bereg county: Bács-Aranyos, Cserepes-Kenéz, Gyüre, Kis-Varsány, Kopócs-Apáti, Lövő, Lövő-Petri, Nagy-Varsány, Pap, Tisza-Kerecsény and Tisza-Vid . If you haven't done so already, make sure to submit your surnames and villages to the Surname Database  to aid in connecting with others researching the same surnames or villages as you. Happy Thanksgiving to those in America!

The theme of today's tip is: Conducting Research In Church Parish Registers A pattern has begun to emerge in the Hungary Exchange Facebook group, where members have only been using indexed data found on various websites such as FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com. As fantastic as this information is, you cannot use this raw indexed data as a definitive and primary source. You need to view and analyze the actual documents where the indexed data came from, as it'll hold very important information about your ancestors and it may hold crucial clues to moving your family tree backward. This post will be my way of urging my fellow researchers to view these important records now rather than later. Procrastinating will likely lead you to having a family tree chock full of errors. Spellings Errors: We are only human and we make spelling errors all the time, especially when it comes to a foreign language. Data indexed on FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com is no stranger to this. I com...

It's been a busy month for adding new marriage records to the Hungarian Marriage Project . Six new parishes have either been created or updated and over 1,500 marriages have been added. Here's a list of the new marriages that have been made available:

Ancestry announced two days ago a partnership with FamilySearch, that would add an additional 1 billion records to Ancestry's holdings via FamilySearch. Here is the press release: PROVO, Utah, Jan. 21, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ancestry.com announced today an extension of their collaborative efforts with FamilySearch International that will make more than 1 billion additional records from 67 countries available on Ancestry.com. These already digitized records, provided by FamilySearch, are in addition to the agreement the two largest providers of family history resources announced a few months ago that will help digitize, index and publish an expected 1 billion global historical records never before published online from the FamilySearch vault over the next five years.  These additional records, which are already digitized collections, represent a significant expansion to Ancestry.com, which hosts the largest collection of global records available online. The records also add t...

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.

The theme of today's tip is: Military Record References Through-out Hungarian research, it isn't uncommon to come across a notation on a baptism, marriage or death record that mention a soldier's military service. A very large majority of the notations mostly appear on the marriage record of the individual. Within this article, I'm going to show you examples and discuss how to interpret these notes. I'm going to begin with a notation from a marriage record that's very important to me. It's from the marriage record of my 3rd-great-grandparents, József Gombás & Zsuzsánna Gulyás. It was one of the first records I ever found, when I began my own genealogy research well over 13 years ago. "Férfi, Gr. Pállfy 14 huszár ezred 44 századábán káplár. Szül: 1845. Soroztarver 1866 14/3. Szabadság levele kelt Marburg 1869 29/10 (:Jelentetett:)" The above is an image and transcription of the notes from the marriage record of József Gombás ...

The theme of today's tip is: In-Depth Analysis of Hungarian Marriage Records Today, I'm going to teach you how to decipher every  part of a Hungarian marriage record, and share with you what each piece of information can tell you. I am going to put each piece of the marriage record we're analyzing, into red boxes for ease of use for you, the reader. We will work through this marriage record, step-by-step. For easier viewing, you can click on each image for larger views. Let's begin! For reference, this is an 1830's marriage record from the Reformed parish of Taktaszada, Zemplén county, Hungary. The beginning of the record (after the entry number [#6] and the date of marriage [December 17]), states the place of residence of the groom. It states "Dadáról helységünkbe". This states that the groom was a resident of the town of Dada (shortened form of Tiszadada). This tells you that his baptism record may be found in the Reformed parish records of Tisza...

The theme of today's tip is: Identifying Nobility & Using Their Resources Discovering a branch of noble ancestors in your Hungarian ancestry can be pretty exciting! When I began my research around 12 years ago, I was delighted to find that my 2nd-great-grandmother, Eszter Tóth, was a noblewoman; this helped to partially prove some family stories that had been passed around for a few decades. The most important word concerning Hungarian nobility, is "nemes". Nemes literally means 'noble', in Hungarian. It was very common for nobles to be cited as such in church parish registers, with the notation of either "Nemes" or its abbreviation of Ns. You can see an example of "Nemes", in the image to the right; the father is stated as "Tóth László Nemes". The child being baptized in this record, Károly, is my 3rd-great-grandfather. For most people, to be able to go anywhere or find anything of interest pertaining to your family's...

If you have ancestors from the (then) east portion of Hungary, that now belongs to Romania, you're in luck. Romania has given photographers access to church registers (baptisms, marriages, deaths), and we can now easily research our Hungarian/Romanian ancestry. Due to the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, after World War I, much of the south-east portion of Hungary was ceded to Romania (map above). With the allowance of photographing the church registers, it has opened up a wealth of information to genealogists that hadn't previously been available before. The LDS haven't been allowed into much of Romania, to microfilm and preserve records. Because of that, anyone with ancestors whose home village now lies within the border of Romania, has probably come to a stand-still. Thanks to a good friend of mine, I have made contact with a phenomenal photographer in Romania, that photographs church records professionally. I have already used him several times, and I would recommend him...

The theme of today's tip is: Reusing Children Names . This topic was brought up recently by a member of our Hungary Exchange Facebook group , so I thought I would discuss it a little bit. Make sure to check out the group and join us in the discussions! It's a very sad topic to discuss, but it's an extremely crucial part of genealogy. If you have ancestors that came from Europe, odds were that within their family they probably had an infant child pass away young, and they named a newborn child after them. It was the family's way of keeping that specific first name going on, whether it be of someone from their immediate family or not. Off hand, I knew of a great example. It was a family from the village of Tiszadob, where my 2nd-great-grandmother was born. I don't believe I am blood-kin to this specific family, but they do have a Szabó surname in their ancestry, which I also have from Tiszadob. Unfortunately, the records don't go back far enough for me to a...

It's the last day of the year, and I thought it'd be a good idea to highlight all the new information added to Hungary Exchange over the past year. Happy New Year! Boldog Új Évet Kivánok! Databases: Hungarian First Names With English And Latin Variations Digital Books: Census & Taxation: Germans & Hungarians: 1828 land census, Vols. 22-25 Family Histories: A history of the Bartay/Bartay von Bártfa-Bartfeld family Family Histories: Az inárcsi Farkas család története Family Histories: Genealogy of the Bathiany, Batthany, Batthyany, Battany etc. families Gazeteer & Geography: Magyarország helységnévtára tekintettel a közigazgatási, Vols. 1-2 History-General: A History of Hungary History-Hungarians in America: A St. Louis és vidéke jubileumi nagyszáma. The fifth anniversary issue of the "St. Louis és vidéke," a Hungarian weekly newspaper. Published in 1918. History-Hungarians in America: Hungarians in America History-Medieval: Az Árp...

The theme of today's tip is: Spelling Variations The Hungarian language is one of the most complex languages in all of Europe. This list/post is aimed at being a guide to help understand all the possible spelling variations you may come across in your Hungarian research. *The confusion between CZ and TZ: The Hungarian language is infamous for the use of CZ, and sometimes it's [technically] inaccurate use of TZ. As for the pronunciation of CZ/TZ, it's pronounced as the "C" in "dance" or the "TS" in "pots". Although CZ and TZ are used interchangeably, CZ should always be the correct spelling. The TZ variation is more commonly found in older documents; 1800's and prior. Here are a few examples: Bencze & Bentze Berecz & Beretz Czakó & Tzakó Ferencz & Ferentz Herczeg & Hertzeg Koncz & Kontz Kurucz & Kurutz Lőrincz & Lőrintz Rácz & Rátz Vincze & Vintze *The additional confusion ...