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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