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...

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...

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: 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 ...