MISSING CHURCH RECORDS ? WOOPS! DID YOU READ THAT RIGHT? OR IS IT AN INDEXING ERROR? : GENEALOGY PRO TIP #4

IS THE CHURCH RECORD MISSING or IS INDEXING THE PROBLEM?

Reading the records correctly may also help you turn up the missing ancestor, the ancestor you cannot find on the church records.  By records I mean the source material that was long ago filmed at an archive, put onto microfilm, and then digitalized and put into a database.

So here is where I'm going to complain about the indexing that appears on FamilySearch, which is the best database to use in the United States if you're doing Hungarian research. You really do have to go page by page looking for marriages and deaths. I can tell you that I rarely, if ever, can count on the indexing. If it brings something I was searching for up, easy, one - two - three, that's great. But I actually spend as much time as I used to spinning microfilm in viewing machines going page by page on the records on the computer. I think the microfilm spinning was easier on my eyes and my body.

For those of you who are beginning to research, you can use those church Baptismal records to build family groups, finding the children that were born of a couple until there seems to be no more. Then say the first child was born in 1820.  You can use that date and look for marriages 1820 and back. Since people died younger, there were often quick remarriages and half siblings and step-siblings.

The advantage to the microfilm having been digitalized is that the" viewer" gadget allows us to change the brightness and contrast to bring out the best of the page.  Also I can sit at home or even go to the beach area with a modem and work remotely without traveling. I can also print out at a library terminal remotely and go in and get my copies, though, I don't always get the quality of the printing I would like. Yes, that can make it easier for me since I'm now a bit of a commute from my best Family History Library run by the Latter Day Saints, who own FamilySearch.  An advantage is that I don't have to pay for a film and wait for it, nor hurry into the library to use it before it has to be returned. The fees were reasonable back in the day.  However, you can't order ANY films in anymore, and that's not good. My understanding is that the cabinets are still full of microfilms that were planted there at some Family History Libraries, but it seems that when I check for a location it always says the Salt Lake location, which is a massive library, but one I'd have to travel to.

All those advantages given, there are just so many errors. Dropping endings of surnames creates a database full of abbreviated names.  For instance there is a surname Hornyak.  I'm finding Horyanszke and Horanszke's who are listed as Hornyaks...

The indexers were not knowledgeable of Hungarian names, as if they were, then some of the bad handwriting could have been transcribed closer to the spelling of the Hungarian names. 

I know that surnames spelling through history was not as stable as it seems to be right now. I'm aware that some names have one t or two, and so on.  Even if your search the surnames within the National Archives of Hungary site, Hungaricana, you may find these variations. 

Sometimes you're going to see suffixes that vary as well, depending on how close to the Polish border or how Slovak the area.  You could say these are Slavic variations of Hungarian names and I know that in Slovakia they say some of these people were Slovaks from the start and not Hungarian. Or the priest who wrote the church record was.records of a marriage, baptism, or death was not Hungarian and wrote names his way. You might see some words in Latin, some in Hungarian. Still, there are hundreds of Hungarian surnames that there is reference for, but the indexers did not know it or research it.

Perhaps your ancestor was indexed and the problem was that the indexer did not get it that the person was a twin or triplet and thinks that the two or three names belong to one person when two or three babies were baptized. 

When I see two or more given names I look for the word gemelli, Latin for twins. Hungarian for twins is ikrek.  

I also look to see how many godparents are listed for a person. If there are two names and two sets of godparents, you're probably looking at twins. (The godparents will almost always be one male person and one female person, though not always a married couple. 

Marriages can have two to four men as witnesses, again these may or may not be relatives. In some places you might see the same men showing up as witnesses time and time again. There are three scenarios as to why. One is that they actually were asked or are related or know the people who married. The second is that there were some people who sort of hung out at the church who were always available to witness. This may sound ridiculous until you remember that people died young and children were left orphaned so it's possible that by the time they married they had no parents or siblings left to show up. The third is that the witnesses are important people, such as employers, often the landowner the groom works for, or the local nobility. The witnesses are there for more than religious reasons.  (With marriage and birth come possible inheritance rights.)

If the baby was given four or more names at baptism, it's likely they are of a high noble family.  Is it mentioned that they are noble or that their godparents are?

There may have been a custom of giving a baby a certain number of names at at baptism depending on their status.  (King Charles III was baptized with twelve, I believe, and when he married Diana Spencer, she was to say four of them at her wedding to Charles but flubbed the order of his names.)

So...

Two names, one set of godparents, no mention that this is twins, a lower noble.

Sometimes the only reason we can tell that there were two babies born and not one was the death record or notation on one of them.

(Though it is possible that some Hungarian people had started giving their babies more than one name, a more German custom, I'm not swayed.)

Then there are marriage records. Again, if the bride and/or groom was born to a Baronial family, they may have more than two testimonials otherwise thought of as witnesses or sponsors to their marriage, and the chances are good at least one if not all these people are also listed as nobles.

Remember that these records were just like legal records at the time. This is why illegitimacy was so remarked upon, because the child was born with no support, no rights to inheritance. Keeping a genealogy helped determine where titles and property were to go when someone died and our ancestors died way younger than us.  (I recently found a death notation of a woman who was 113 years old, which is truly the oldest I've encountered and put her birth into the 1600's! That said, here we are calling 60, an age most our ancestors never lived to be, "The New 40.")

Barons usually owned castles though the term castle is often applied to not a fortress with a moat or defense features but a house or estate bigger than most of the families around had.

Spuria is an archaic term for illegitimate.

But you may notice that not in every case where the word Spuria appears is the Father Unknown.  His name may be written right there and the word Spuria. So that means he came forward as the father for the baptism but the couple is not married.  (A good sign. Perhaps he intends to marry the mother or has pledged his financial support.)

In Hungarian Father Unknown is written apja ismeretlen.

If the mother died in childbirth, it might say mother died - anya meghalt.

What happened when a woman gave birth to a baby too young to have lived? A miscarriage?  If the child was baptized, often by a midwife, upon delivery, and named, it appears in the church record. You might see a notation of that, the midwife named.  Baptism by someone who is not clergy is still done today and valid.

Why would a woman have an illegitimate child in a culture and religion that is very much against it? After all, there is no Welfare.

Well, women were raped then too.  Women and men had affairs. Sometimes the couple loved each other and wanted to be together but there was no parental approval, because of class differences or because there was no money.  Any story that could happen today could've happen then. 

I ENCOURAGE YOU !

A way to check if a badly spelled name in an index can be coaxed forth into a Hungarian name that makes sense is to:

Keep reading the records until you find a more clearly written area and see if the name comes up again clearly written and spelled.  

(Blessings to those who cared so much to be neat and beautiful in their writing that it almost appears to be calligraphy! Let them inspire us to also be neat and beautiful in our writing and printing as we keep our records.)

Run the name through the database spelled that way and see if there are more coming up like that.  

Try running the spelling you think is right on the general internet which on Google has correction and suggestion features. Chances are some families alive today have the surname.  If none comes up, something is wrong with the spelling.

Some websites mention the surnames that appeared in phone books back in the day, so you might see if the name appeared in a Hungarian phone book.

Remember that the letter that looks like a small f substitutes in for a small s.

Also the letter V and the letter W are interchangeable. 

The letter that looks like a Capital Y, is probably a Capital T.

Andrassy may look like Andraffy.

Palffy, however is correct as Palffy.

Yovenko is likely Tovenko.

Ke may actually be Szke.

ai endings may eventually turn into ey: Szendrai - Szendray  Szendrey.

It is true that many a noble Hungarian has a surname that links to the family stead, a location. However the House or Family Clan may have a variety of surnames within in as well, that do not sound like the name of a location.  Over the decades the family probably fanned out.   As a man of Hungarian noble heritage told me last year, his family went long distances for marriages, even to Italy.

Remember that we are not all looking to link to nobility for reasons of our own status. Nobility was abolished mid 1800s in Hungary and upon American citizenship Hungarians of noble heritage gave it all up.  Hungarian-Americans seek noble status while researching their genealogy because we're genealogy fanatics who can't stop researching and the link to nobility sometimes leads to records that allow us go way back - even into the 12th century!

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Pro Genealogy Tip : Missing ? Church Records

ANGELIC

 

CHURCH RECORDS : USING CLASS AND STATUS ON CHURCH RECORDS TO GO BACK IN TIME : GENEALOGY PRO TIP #3

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To bring up all posts in this series click on the tag/label Pro Genealogy Tip : Missing ? Church Records

The following information appeared in a slightly different form in a previous post which appeared as an addition to my series on using the Urbarium of 1767.  The original post appeared in September 2022.  That series should come up if you click on the lable/tag Pro tips: 1767 Hungaricana Urbarium

This series on Church Records is intended to help you bridge the generations and make connections as the trail of church records seems to leave you not knowing how to proceed in your research, perhaps because the records you want are "missing."

I mentioned that sometimes you will find in birth, marriage, and other church records the profession or "status" of the person listed. On church records, particularly before 1849, you will see notations about the person's status, not just their profession, but their class status.

On the Marie Theresa census, first is listed is the owner of the estate, then the Colony, then Inquilis and then Subinqulis.  I want to expand upon that.

I mentioned that sometimes in Latin or Hungarian (and sometimes in Slovak or German) the mention of Free People or People Free To Go.  These people are usually mentioned in COLONY.  I said that people in the COLONY list are sometimes called "Perpetual People" and that meant that they came with the land, or they were "always there." 

Some of these people did indeed seem to "always" live there, but some of the Free To Go or COLONY people were what is called Castle Warriors or the nobility of the lowest nobility, or sometimes nobility of the highest but for whom there is no more land or money to go around after generations have inherited land. Theoretically a castle was established and the ancestors of these people lived within it or near it.

These great noble families may have split land, sold land, lost land, or been disenfranchised due to the slaughter by the Turks or in war with them over hundreds of years. Now on small plots of land sufficient to feed their family and sell some on the side, they may also be listed in the 1828 land census. However, they are still nobles and recognized and honored as such. 

Let's say you are dealing with COMMON surnames. However you see on church records that someone with a common surname is listed as COLONY. If you see people of the same surname on the census in the COLONY you probably have a match. Colony people owned their land, so the may be matched with the names on the 1828 Land Census. Now, if the person with the common surname is listed as a subinquilis, a person sub-renting the land to farm on, thus close to the serf-landlord relationship with that surname, we can't link them with the family with that same surname in the Colony.

WE CAN LOOK AT CHURCH RECORDS and DETERMINE WHICH PERSON or FAMILY with a COMMON SURNAME is the one that we should accept as an ancestor, when their status matches up, provided that it also works on a timeline. Developing family groups to see if the timeline also works is a good check as well. (For instance, will the couple's marriage date and the births of other children allow for the history you've proven with documents unfold?)

The profession of the man itself does not determine if they are or are not a noble.  I've seen records in which a person was listed as a noble and also that they work as a weaver or tailor. 

However in some cases professions can provide another match, such as when the father and son are listed as both being in the same profession, say one the Master Craftsman in the vineyard business and the other is in an Apprenticeship in the vineyard business. (The term Master Craftsman isn't always specific and can include someone who has a large business as well as someone who toils in it. Even some of those in agriculture - farmers - will be listed as such.)

It's not a guaranteed match, for things did happen back in the day that were not usual.  It's always possible that someone who was a servant for the landlord inherited land from him.  It's possible that the beautiful maiden of a subinquilis married the landlord. (Or that the unmarried pregnant woman, who became pregnant by the Lord of the Manner, married another man.)  However, class structure was what it was, arranged marriages between people of very different status was not usual.

Arranged marriages continued the idea that one should marry in their own class. In farming communities who married who might be a community decision. Additionally, some landlords did act as though they owned every lesser man's woman, and might want to be with a virgin before she could meet up with her new husband on his wedding night. Such conditions were akin to what happened in American slavery, not all the time, but sometimes. I wish I could say that religion prevented this but I doubt it did. Sexism, as we see it, prevailed. 

Back in that day people were born into the circumstances that would effect, if not dictate, their entire lives. To have Choice is what Freedom as all about. Declaring freedom is not the same as actually having it. 

Noting class and status on records is important and may be just the thing that helps you connect correctly to the right ancestors.

C 2022 - 2023  Magyar American BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved Including Internet and International Rights

Quick note November 2nd 2023:  It is possible for a person who is COLONY to rent land to their own child or relative. That person might be elevated to COLONY upon inheritance. The rent might have been needed or seen as a way of teaching a child responsibility.

ASCENT

 

CHURCH RECORDS : DID THEY WALK OR CARRIAGE RIDE TO A DIFFERENT CHURCH? DIOCESE RECORDS: PRO GENEALOGY TIP #2

MISSING CHURCH RECORDS ?  

In the previous post of this series I mentioned that perhaps the reason there are gaps in one church's records is that the church did not exist or was closed for a time and during that time the usual parishioners went to a church in a neighboring area, usually within the same diocese. 

As well, Great Grandma might have been remarking on the Diocese she was married in, rather than the exact place where she was born or where she lived, or where she left, and it turns out there are so many churches to consider.

Research the history of the church. When did it open?  Was it closed for a period?  Was the church destroyed? Is it a working parish today?  What Diocese is it in today?  Can that Diocese tell you about the history of the church?  Do they have duplicate records or other records that would help, records that no one got permission to film?

Pragmatically, the people might have erected a small chapel rather than walk or ride every Sunday.  If they were without a horse or carriage, they might not have gone at all.   But information on them may still appear in a church or diocese record even though they didn't make the trip for a service.

This is where finding MAPS of the area about the time these ancestors seem to have gone missing on existing records, preferably at a time when they lived there, may be helpful.  

Try to find a map that was used at the time your ancestors were living there, preferably one that shows rivers, mountains, roads and railroads.  Let's see if they could walk or take a horse and carriage ride to the next inhabited place (less than five miles away). Then go into a database such as FamilySearch and see if that place brings up any church records. Some places only have Protestant Records, some also have Jewish records, so we know there were enough Protestant or Jewish people living there to have their own church or temple. Jewish people going to another place to worship and bury their dead was not at all unusual in the Old World but being able to walk there was important because Saturday was truly meant to be a day of rest.

While searching the Internet may bring up some good maps to use, we should not forget about a major source of information, and that is the National Archives of Hungary!  We go to Hungarica and then to Databases, and then to Mapire. 

Here is the link! MAPS ARCANUM

If you're researching for Hungarians in what is now Slovakia, you may find that the records are kept under present day Slovak place names, or within Slovakia itself.

Same for Romania.  Those "Saxon" towns, where people kept Germanic customs, including recipes, clothing styles, and architecture Germanic.  Romania is also where a great number of Hungarian noble families originated or lived.

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GIRL IN RED SCARF

 

RELAXING BUT HAUNTING : THE ABBEY SCRIPTORIUM : SOUNDS FROM AN ABBEY

Thought this was unique among relaxation music videos...

CHURCH RECORDS : MISSING CHURCH RECORDS? ARE THEY REALLY? : PRO GENEALOGY TIP #1

WELCOME TO MAGYAR - AMERICAN BlogSpot and my offerings of Pro Genealogy Tips. You will find many topics on Hungarian and Hungarian-American genealogy here. Look in Pages for more information. In order to pull up an entire series on a Google Blogger such as this one, simply click on the label/tag for the series.

THIS SERIES IS INTENDED TO HELP YOU MAKE IT THROUGH CHURCH RECORDS, which are primarily held in the United States through the FamilySearch database, which is free to use via the Church of Jesus Christ -Latter Day Saints, also known as LDS.  However, no database has everything and using the National Archives of Hungary is also a good idea: Hungaricana is an ever expanding site. Plus there are regional archives. You may also want to write to the existing parish or church where you believe your ancestors lived for more information.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF HUNGARY START PAGE

Let's say you're looking in a large database that has Hungarian/Slovakian records. You found your immigrant ancestor's native village on a steamship record, or their naturalization papers, or maybe on a World War I draft document. Or maybe someone just told you the name of the town or village they left. You search for a the records for that place that you have reason to believe is where your ancestor was born or got married. And you find them right there on those records on the very date you know.  Success!

How I remember that day years ago when I found my first Hungarian ancestor's baptism, right where it should have been!

So, you start going back in time with those very church records. You make your family groups - children of the same parents, the parent's marriage.

However, you hit into what we call "the brick wall."  Can't get through it or see over it and you start thinking of your way around it.  After spending hours - days - months trying to figure out a way around it, you admit to yourself you're stuck and frustrated. You may go over the microfilmed/digital images book page by page hoping you missed something and even think that maybe the pages are out of order. Hey, It's happened!

Be sure that you check the film to be sure that the filming isn't the problem. Perhaps it was some space saving measure, but I've seen later dates mixed in with earlier dates on some microfilms and when digitalized that error remains. So be sure that what it says on in text description and what it says on the microfilm agree when it comes to what was on a "reel."

Some Church Records are truly missing books or pages. Who knows what happened? It could have been soldiers set the records on fire, or rodents chewed them, or someone spilled their wine on those very pages! We all know that some of those old, lovely books were entirely destroyed by time, by weather, by historical circumstances.

Perhaps some books or missing pages will show up again someday, somewhere. 

You're stalled out because you don't find the ancestors that "should' be there at some point. And then you notice that the records are not available for the period you need to see. They cut off just about the time that a couple you're focusing on likely got married. 

Maybe years ago some person was filming in an archive somewhere and missed those pages?

Oh it said so right on the information about the records, that there was a gap, but until now, you didn't quite pay attention to it. 

In general 1711 is about when churches were committed to write records in books.  (Prior to that records were kept in noble family archives, if at all, though in general the larger the city, the bigger the church - a cathedral - the better chance someone was keeping records earlier. Those records may still be with the Diocese.)

I want to share that with you that it may not be hopeless at all.

Sometimes a church did not exist in a small village, not yet, so you can't expect there to have been records.  Maybe only a chapel existed, or a grotto, and a traveling priest came there to hold services or do baptisms.

Or a church did exist in the village but it was Protestant rather than Catholic, requiring those who were Catholic to travel to a church. (You may have to realize your ancestors changed religions! More than once. I just found a record in which there were a couple marriages in which both parties were listed as Ref (Reform Protestant) so I wonder at the circumstances that they married in a Roman Catholic church.  Maybe they eloped!)

And you may see something that I have: a cholera or other epidemic hits, and people remarry quickly. They are pragmatic and they start intermarrying - Catholics and Protestants.  As has been the case traditionally, when it comes to marrying two people of different faiths in the Catholic church, a conversion is not usually needed, but marrying in the Catholic partner's church and raising the children Catholic is.

So far the only "Conversion" lists I found were in a Reform church book. Just consider that you should go ahead and look in the other religion's church records when you're stuck.

But another realization was the inspiration for this series.

Perhaps the church that existed got closed for a while it was refurbished or reconstructed.  So, during that period, the parishioners would have to use another church, usually in the Diocese, or a neighboring village that was not too far to travel to for services and therefore what you are looking for is simply in the records of that other church.  

I've seen that, if I go over to the next village's church, during the "missing records period" the people are over at the other church with notations that they come from the other place!  You will see how the priest writes in that they live elsewhere.

I see that the further back I go for a certain church, the more I see people from other villages using it, so they went to this church because they did not have a church where they lived.

I wish there were a database of church openings and closings ...  But you may have some luck by researching the HISTORY of the church or the Diocese, or contact the present Diocese archives for more information!

Also consider that Lutheran (Evangelical), Hungarian Reform (Calvinist), Greek Catholic (more common in Slovak and Carpatho-Rus/ Rusyn families), Jewish and other records were or are held in special archives for that religion. Also a Roman Catholic Diocese may have duplicate records that were hand copied from the originals.

To bring up the series on this subject click on the tag/label Pro Genealogy Tip : Missing ? Church Records

C 2023 Magyar-American BlogSpot

November 29, 2023  a slight edit for clarity.

October 24, 2024 a slight edit for clarity.

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