The Official Blog Of Hungary Exchange

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!

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:

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: Hungarian Churches in America! As any genealogist with European ancestry knows, or should know, it's that church parish registers are the most important records in the aspect of family history. No matter when they arrived in America, whether it was the turn of this past century in the early 1900's through Ellis Island, the 1880's through Baltimore, Maryland or even the 1600's to the colonies, the most important records to continue further research are church records. These church records documented the baptisms, christenings, marriages and deaths of our early family, and if you're lucky the presiding clergyman was very anal-retentive about the details in the records. That very anal-retentiveness, or lack thereof, could be the reason you have absolutely no leads on the next generation of your family or it could very well give you clues and hints to the next generation. Today, I'm going to highlight the First Hungarian Reform...

The theme of today's tip is:  Neighboring Villages! Today's Hungarian genealogy research tip comes a day after I found a pretty significant discovery in my own family tree. Long have I been a promoter for Hungarian genealogists to check in nearby or neighboring villages for their families. And it continues to pay off. For the past eight years, I have been working on my Szük family from Taktaszada, Zemplén county, Hungary. Ever since, I have been stuck on my 6th-great-grandmother on that line, Zsuzsánna Fekete. I knew her name from the baptisms of her nine children with her husband, István Szük, but no where in the Taktaszada marriage records could a marriage be found. There was also the fact that the marriage records for Taktaszada didn't begin until 1773; their first child was baptized on 27 Dec 1771. Again, there was also the fact that there wasn't a single Fekete family in the Reformed church records at all. Zsuzsánna obviously wasn't originally from Taktasza...