UKRAINIAN GENEALOGY DATABASE PRA.IN.UA and THE STATE ARCHIVAL SERVICE OF UKRAINE

The top post was originally published on the MAGYAR-AMERICAN blog on July 22 2019

Special note November 2018. Some parts of Historic Hungary are now in Ukraine. Ukrainians also lived in Hungary.

Those of you who have been in the United States for a couple generations at least may be only partly Hungarian / Magyar.  Your family may also have origins in Slovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, or Ukraine as well. Yes, we intermarried with our "own" people : people who shared a religion or the experience of Central and Eastern Europe. Those of you who remember grandparents or great-grandparents who lived in ethnic ghettos of immigrants before the family started moving out to the suburbs may remember hearing so many languages spoken when you went to visit. You might also be part RUTHENIAN, of the mountain people who lived in the Carpathians in what became four different countries. Close to 4 MILLION people in the database born between 1650  and 1920  - rush to the site and see the possibilities.


A wealthy man who instigated his own genealogy research and believes the ancestors remain with us so long as we remember their names, Igor Howszowski, is responsible.


LINK TO THE DATABASE UKRAINIAN GENEALOGY DATABASE - PRA.IN.UA

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STATE ARCHIVAL SERVICE OF UKRAINE as of 2024

February 2024 : The United States State Department announced that it will provide aid to the Archival Service of Ukraine to ensure the protection and digitation of the documents of the National Archive Fond of Ukraine. International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas in cooperation.

March 2024 : A records searching on-line project to document the victims of repressions of the 1920s-1950's added to the Ukrainian Martyrology of the XX Century database.

Go to the site to see what's happening in this war-torn country with archival records and charity support of the effort to preserve them.

NOBLE ROT

 

THE AUSTRIAN-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE : GALICIA : CADASTRAL MAPS : HOUSE NUMBERS : GENEALOGY GEN-TIPS SERIES #7

PLACE NAME WORDS OF HUNGARIAN SETTLEMENTS - THE ROOTS WORDS  and OLD MAPS OF HUNGARY

My intention here is to help the English speaker and reader make sense of Hungarian place names so that they will feel more familiar. You will see some of these word "roots" all over the maps!

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OLD MAPS ONLINE - HUNGARY  (Yes, yet another map resource.)

This is a list of root words.

HAZA - Home

HAZ - House

HELY - Place

FALU - Village

FALUSKA - Hamlet  (Suggests very few inhabitants, maybe around a bend or in a valley, smaller than a village)

KISVAROS - Small town

NAGYVAROS - Big town

VAROS - City or Town

UTCA - Street

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PATAK - Creek (Smaller waterway than a stream)

FOLYAM - Stream

FOLYO - River

TO - Lake  (accent over o)

OCEAN - Ocean

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SATOR - Tent  (Used to describe the look of a hill or mountain.)

PUSZTA - Villa or Big House (at least compared to the average house in the neighborhood.)

KASTELY - Castle  (Applied also to large houses.  Does not mean there is a fortress or moat.)

ISTALLO - Barn

TEMPLOM - Church

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UJ - New

REJI - Old

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MEGYE - County 

Note about names of colors for settlements, rivers, and so on... Sometimes places were named, not because they looked white or black or red or yellow, but because the color indicated a direction.  I realize this could be map-centric.  White would be north, Black would be south.  So for instance The Black Sea is South of where?

FEHER - White or Light Color

FEKETE - Black or Dark Color

PIROS - Red

SARGA - Yellow

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All posts in this series have the tab Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tips

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CAVE DIVING UNDER BUDAPEST : MOLNAR JANOS CAVE SYSTEM : WONDERFUL PLACES IN HUNGARY #27

SCUBADIVING COM : CAVE DIVING UNDER BUDAPEST

by Tobias Friedrich

This is a beautifully written article about the extensive cave system under the city which has tropical heat.... Technical advice for scuba diving is given.

MJ CAVE HUNGARY : THE STORY OF THE CAVE

Excerpt: The cave is a good example of modern phreatic hypogenic caves, since it has been formed by mixing corrosion below the water table.  Mixing corrosion occurs where flow systems of different orders (with different chemistry and temperature) meet via tectonic lines or through diffusion. Besides the tectonic control, the network maze of cave passages follows the south-southwestward dip of the Upper Eocene limestone and marl.   

The scientists regularly analyze water samples and map the pattern of water flow inside the cave.  Research of the species is an exciting field as well.  They found 3 species of them in the the cave, and there are two Amphipoda one Isopioda and one Neotaenioglossa species.

The Molnar Janos cave is a protected area since 1982.

from Wikispecies - Wikimedia

Click on the label Wonderful-Hungary to bring up all posts on this theme.

THE AUSTRIAN-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE : GALICIA : CADASTRAL MAPS : HOUSE NUMBERS : GENEALOGY GEN-TIPS SERIES #6

Austrian-Hungarian Empire

Österreichisch-Ungarische Monarchie in GERMAN

Osztrák–Magyar Monarchia in HUNGARIAN (Austro-Hungarian Monarchy)

Maps for the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, which includes Galicia, now Southern Poland, as well as today's Slovakia, part of today's Ukraine including Cadastral maps (or in America Plat maps) will be in GERMAN, LATIN, Hungarian, or other languages...

Just as today there are SLOVAK names for previously HUNGARIAN NAMED settlements, some settlements were renamed in GERMAN.

Here are some links to what is sometimes called Village Finders.

JEWISH GEN START PAGE  Seek the GAZETTEER

But let's return to the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS LIBRARY OF CONGRESS : MAPS and GAZETTEER ADVISEMENT AUSTRIAN HUNGARIAN EMPIRE

Excerpt: We are equally fortunate in possessing a comprehensive gazetteer to search for place names in the former Austria-Hungary, and that is Josef and Karl Kendler's 1905 work title ORTS-UND VERKEHRS-LEXIKON VON OESTERREICH-UNGARN.   .... To our benefit the Kendler gazetteer has been digitalized in its entirety for research VIA THE LIBRARY's WEBSITE .... A major drawback of the gazetteer, however, is its absence of geographic coordinates, which can be remedied by using the online Jewishgen Gazetteer or some other published gazetteer.  

All posts in this series have the tab Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tips

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A PATHE AMSTERDAM FILM PRESERVED : SCENES FROM HUNGARY 1926 BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS : HONGARIJE

There are seven parts to this film...  Mezokovesd, dancing, marriage in Debrecen, horses in Hortobagy, Kosice, and scenes in the Carpathian Mountains.  Those are the mountains which include the recently mentioned Dukla Pass, so important to the wine trade - Galicia into Hungary.

THE AUSTRIAN-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE : GALICIA : CADASTRAL MAPS : HOUSE NUMBERS : GENEALOGY GEN-TIPS SERIES #5

Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tip # 5

While MAGYAR AMERICAN focuses on Hungarian culture and society, we can learn a lot from research in Poland, Slovakia, and other parts of what was the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.

Hungary and Poland have history together - both good and bad. Rakoczi's armys destroyed towns in southern Poland, for instance. 

I mentioned before, here at MAGYAR-AMERICAN BlogSpot about finding some Hungarian surnames in church records for Galicia - Poland, and a notation in a marriage record in a Roman Catholic church that the bride came from Hungary. That was a small town involved in the wine business. I suspect this would be more true in records for cities, such as Krakow.

I think you'll find that people with means would travel far for marriages. They were also more likely to marry in the more impressive churches and cathedrals. And if you "know" that a certain noble ancestor lived in a place but their marriages and other records seem to be missing consider the larger church or cathedral not too far away.

Although it was an extremely small sample, I recently ran the names of the known nobility who owned a particular area of Galicia just a few miles from the then-Hungarian border in the GENETEKA databases and none of their names came up. So what was happening? First, some of the churches, while incredibly beautiful and ornate inside, didn't seat too many people. So if you were having many guests to your religious ceremony, you needed more space. But then, you probably needed more space for the festivities as well, and somewhere for guests who traveled to stay for a few days. Also, you might have a private chapel or church on your own property and having services there would protect you and your guests from the villagers intent on witnessing the goings-on and invading your privacy. However, this also means that they kept private records of their births and marriages if those names are also not coming up as recorded in any of the dozens of church books now transcribed for the Geneteka databases. Today I would think that such records would make their way to the diocese archive but back in the day? Common people were keeping records of births and marriages and deaths handwritten in their Bible...

In January 2022 I did a series called  Pro Genealogy Tips - Galicia which you can reference.

GENETEKA English

You  might want to run some Hungarian surnames in the databases of other European countries as well.

Some of the noble families donated their private records to The National Archives in Hungary.

All posts in this series have the tab Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tips

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THE AUSTRIAN-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE : GALICIA : CADASTRAL MAPS : HOUSE NUMBERS : GENEALOGY GEN-TIPS SERIES #4

 MORE MAP RESOURCES     Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tip # 4

When AUSTRIA ruled Hungary and the southern part of now-Poland, called Galicia, the two countries were subject to modernization notions coming out of Vienna.  Because of Austrian rule, census took place, maps were made, educational standards were raised (though that was easier said than done), and military service as well as taxes were demanded.  

As previously mentioned, today's house numbers and the numbers on old maps from a hundred or more years ago - and mentioned on church records - are unlikely to coordinate. What's key is to find a map that shows properties on or about the time the ancestors lived in the town. We previously looked at an excellent resource called HUNGARICANA. 

But there are other resources for maps.

One of the best is ARCANUM which used to be called MAPIRE. These are historical maps of Europe. The site has four categories. Maps of Europe.  City maps. Country maps.  And Cadastral maps.

Under Cadastral we link to ARCANUM MAPS : HAPSBURG EMPIRE

As I mentioned in my first post, which was a bit of a history lesson,  Galicia - Southern Poland, parts of what is now Ukraine, and what is now Slovakia - as well as some other geographical possessions of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire (aka Hapsburg Empire) fall into one category.  So maps at this site include from the HUNGARIAN, CROATION, BUDAPEST, AUSTRIAN, and UKRAINIAN archives. (To find them we may research possible German names for the same settlement.)

But, you may be surprised to learn that our very own LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS A WONDERFUL ADVISEMENT AND COLLECTION.  You can go right there at this link:

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS : AUSTRIA HUNGARY CARTOGRAPHIC RESOURCES EASTERN EUROPE

Excerpt: As Empires go, that of Austria Hungary was among the briefest, having lasted only form 1867 to 1918, nevertheless, its constituent nations served as major sources of emigration to the Unite States in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

All posts in this series have the tab Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tips

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THE TAROGATO : A HUNGARIAN WIND INSTRUMENT

   

The film was made with the support of the 

Hungarikum Committee and the Ministry of Agriculture.