The Official Blog Of Hungary Exchange

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...

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...