Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tip # 3
Térkép is the Hungarian word for map. Térképek is the Hungarian word for maps. Vármegye is the Hungarian word for county. Some of the maps will use LATIN and some will use GERMAN.
A real find is when the register of a Cadastral Map that was made with the map still exists. The register equates the numbers on the map, the numbers on the map, with the names of the property owners!
This is especially helpful because basically the current day numbering system for buildings cannot be counted on to reflect the place a person lived or the land they owned back in the day. (I know you wanted to use Google maps to see where they lived using that information but...)
In villages and towns, even those with streets that were named and still have the same name today, the numbering system is not the same. For instance, today, if you want an address in a town in America, you will find that the even numbers are on one side of the street and the odd numbers on the other. Houses actually have house numbers on them and that's your official address for mail and packages and probably is the address on your driver's license or ID. Streets and roads are easy to identify with so much signage. That's not how house and buildings were numbered, if at all, in villages and small towns where everybody knew everybody and a stranger could easily get instructions on where to find someone. A local would show where to go by pointing, walking you there, or telling you to follow a curve in the road until you came to a big tree.
Houses in old Europe were often given numbers in the order they were built. I've heard it said that the lower the number the older the building. I've also heard it said that the numbers went up the further from the church. There are many churches that were built near an especially scenic or otherwise good location, such as near a running stream. Usually a settlement came first, and then, if there were enough people to attend a church, a church. (Find out when the church was built and if your ancestors lived in a village before it was build, their church records are likely at another village.)
House numbers on births, marriages, and death records can help you identify family members - even generational members. The house (or farm or estate) number is where the event happened. (That means that if the birth was at the house of the midwife rather than at home the number might not be the family home, but usually midwives came to the house of the birthing mother.) Most valuable are the numbers that appear on marriage records since they reflect where the bride and the groom were living at the time of the marriage, though the ritual happened in the church. You may be able to see if they started their married life in with parents and which household, and perhaps how long they lived there through the births of children, until they found a place of their own. Tradition in Hungarian culture was that the bride went to live with her husband's family.
One last thing. The "house number" may actually not be the number of a HOUSE but of a PROPERTY that has many dwellings on it, such as a communal farmstead. This may account for a number of surnames at that number, including the boy and girl "nextdoor" who marry. It may also represent the property being split among descendants.
So let's take a look at HUNGARICANA DATABASES LINK TO MAPS
HUNGARICANA MAPS LINKS There are many maps of the capital, Budapest, but an array of towns. Don't stop looking if the place you want is not on this list. Instead run a search for the name of the town (which will probably be included in the county.)
Here are cadastral maps of Livazeny - really terrific! See the names of the land owners and then the land they owned. HUNGARICANA - LIVAZENY
Some maps are not of the "town" but of the agricultural land and may include plans for moving water or what crops or trees are planted. Some of these maps include the names of the owners of that land.
Here is a map that is in LATIN and shows where the vineyards and orchards are:
MAPS HUNGARICANA MEGYE - GONC RUSKA
Delineatio praedii Klastrom I (nclito) Comit(tat) ui Abaujvari (Latin)
I ran a search for LIPTO County and all these came up! HUNGARICANA MAPS LIPTO notice that when you click on the map it brings up the modern map/location.
In the next post we'll look at another MAP RESOURCE!
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