THE AUSTRIAN-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE : GALICIA : CADASTRAL MAPS : HOUSE NUMBERS : GENEALOGY GEN-TIPS SERIES : NEW GENEALOGY SERIES STARTING SEPTEMBER 17th!

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

I hope those readers who come to MAGYAR AMERICAN BLOGSPOT for some help with their genealogy will find this series helpful!

Maps were made to define land boundaries and property ownership, often for purposes of taxation, but also inheritance, and to understand where responsibilities began and ended. This can include "zoning" and the proper use of land. Some maps that were made on paper include colored representations of farm land and crops, building, streets and roads, rivers and streams and lakes, mountains and flatlands...

In the previous centuries in which people lived in an agriculturally driven world, and sometimes "off the land," villages sometimes conspired to keep land in the hands of local families where everyone understand who was who and who owned - or rented - what.  Sometimes, in order to do this, marriages were arranged....

Bookmark this site and come back next week to follow the series!

To bring up the posts click on the tag Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tips

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HUNGARIAN NATIONAL DIGITAL ARCHIVES - AN OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE HISTORY AND CULTURE OF HUNGARY

 https://mandadb.hu/ (HUNGARIAN NATIONAL DIGITAL ARCHIVES)

The start page is in Hungarian.  You'll have to use your Google Translator to get to some English.  Here is what the Hungarian National Digital Archives has to say"

Back in 2015, the Hungarian government decided that it was necessary to prepare a digitization strategy, which would encompass the entire Hungarian public collection institution system as a long-term plan. Experts from Forum Hungaricum  also took part  in the creation of the strategy, together with professional and interest representation organizations, with the involvement of actors from the market, civil and scientific spheres  . The strategy was completed in 2017 as part of the Digital Nation Development Program. The finalization was preceded by a dialogue and social consultation process.

VERA and DONALD BLINKEN OPEN SOCIETY LIBRARY at CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY : COLD WAR - COMMUNISM - HUMAN RIGHTS

Where have I been to not have known of this research library in Budapest?  Thanks to a YouTube video by a woman who did research there, I might not have heard of it. 

Excerpt from website:  The Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) at Central European University (CEU) is a complex archival institution.  OSA is both a repository of important collections, primarily related to the history of the Cold War and grave international human rights violations....

OSA ARCHIVE START PAGE - BUDAPEST

YOUTUBE OSA ARCHIVE - PLAYLISTS - VIDEO COLLECTION

Bettina Fabos briefly tells of her use of the OSA archive in order to tell her family story.  Hardly recovered from the losses they endured during World War II by 1949 Communism was the next to persecute farmers who were independent, meaning they owned their own land.  Ms. Fabos is a college professor in the United States. She worked with police archives, newspapers, cartoons, and much more.

GENEALOGY QUESTION : HOW DO YOU FIND OUT WHAT VILLAGE YOUR HUNGARIAN ANCESTORS CAME FROM WHEN EVERTHING JUST SAYS "HUNGARY" ?

This question was posed to me by someone, a third generation Hungarian American, who I met through a rare interaction that began through e-mail. The person started her genealogy but hit into the brick wall of not finding documents that might state the village.  She checked death certificates and census records.

What I find is that usually a brick wall is about not knowing what all resources there are and checking all of them.

Therefore I think a thorough search of ship manifests /immigration is usually a good step for anyone who came over on a ship, and since their destination was New Jersey, I suggest New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. If many people with the same names may come up - save them all.  Knowing when someone was married or for how long - say from Census or other information can help you narrow your search - since on the ship manifest it will say they are married or single.  You might also find recognizable family groups.

The ship manifests will often report the answer to Where Did You Leave?  and Where Are You Going?  Where did you leave is not always the place they were born or even lived for years.  It could be a relatives, a friends, or even a place near the docks where they went to work first to pay for the ticket. However, my experience is that most often it is a home village or not far from it. Think about what you would do if you were going to go to another country? Maybe you would give up your house and move in and visit with relatives before leaving. This is where the address of WHERE THEY ARE GOING and the Census might match up. Because you may recognize the address from prior knowledge or because of the census.  

So if you KNOW where they lived soon after immigration, and the ship record matches up - - and it says they left, say, Szeged there you go!

Another possibility is the World War I Draft Registration. Sometimes World War II Draft Registration or Enlistment or Military Records.  Addresses given can be cross checked with census.

Funeral Home Records /Cemetery Burial Records/ and Death Certificates usually lean on each other but sometimes one of these will have more information than another.  (I'm no longer surprised that so many children seemed to have never known their mother's maiden name!)

Church records - Catholic Archive records of marriages, baptismal, and other sacraments are sometimes helpful to the cause but are good to have in any case.  So don't just depend on Civil Records also called Vital records.  Say your immigrant got married soon after immigration here in America - names of parents could be on that record.

So once you have the names of parents, you can use FamilySearch to go into Hungarian church records looking for couples with those names.  Again, we are looking for a match up such as birth dates and with common names there are going to be many possibilities.  

Try this research first.

Some areas of Hungary are far more challenging or sometimes impossible than others because of records that are missing.  Also what would be county or city archives may have information that is special to their collection and not duplicated.

The HUNGARIAN NATIONAL ARCHIVES is adding more information all the time and I believe has more than FamilySearch or Ancestry at this point and intends to keep adding.  You may need to ask a relative to translate or hire someone to do that.

NATIONAL ARVCHIVES HUNGARY ENGLISH

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Genealogy Block #1

NEGLECTING THE HUNGARIAN LINEAGE ? CLAIMING TO BE GERMAN?

As someone who is actively interested in genealogy, I could not fail to research my Hungarian line.  But I've met some people who neglect their Hungarian lineage when they are researching because they are ashamed to admit to being even part Hungarian.  To be fair, this isn't limited to Hungarian-Americans. 

I've met people who dismiss their Polish line or their Slovak line.

One ex-friend of mine told me her children were "Germans," which is what she told her co-workers and employers, oh and all those people she met when she joined Young Republicans. But in fact, her children were mostly German from contributions from her side and her husband's side on their families.  She was actually from German, Hungarian, and French heritage.  Her husband was German and Swedish.

Now if you go back a ways, you are probably going to run into some Germans who went to other countries.  Germany LET PEOPLE OUT OF GERMANY without requiring that they give up being Germans.  Those who left did so because they were not in line to inherit the family farm, economic reasons, work.  They settled in other countries, such as Hungary, and over generations kept to German culture.  Some of them went back when Romania in recent history was not receptive to their stay.

The best reason I've ever heard for not doing your Hungarian line genealogy is that you fear it will be difficult because of the language.  I'm not going to say that it isn't challenging at times, but many documents are not in Hungarian but are in Latin, or German, or another language.  Avoiding genealogy because what you want isn't in English?  You can get research help from experts in the United States or in Hungary.  You can certainly use on-line translators...

I've met people who dismiss their Polish line or their Slovak line.

If you just want to monkey around before you commit to doing  your Hungarian-American research, check out the Hungarian National Archives on line!  Look through postcards, art, documents that were originally written hundreds of years ago!

HUNGARIAN URBARIUM 1767 : WOMEN - WIDOW PROPERTY OWNERS! : GENEALOGY PRO TIP #2

HUNGARIAN UBARIUM 1767 : WOMEN - WIDOW PROPERTY OWNERS! GENEALOGY PRO TIP #2

HUNGARICANA URBARIUM 1767

Besides the names of wealthy and noble COUNTS (GR. Graf or Grof) that you'll see on the Urbarium of 1767, you will see that YES, there ARE WOMEN WHO ARE OWNING PROPERTIES. Most of them listed are clearly widows.  Yet the term Grafne, Countess, is not used but implied if the GR is used for the husband. (Ne is the Hungarian suffix to a surname that indicates the woman is married and to whom.)

EXAMPLE:

TURANSZKY LASZLONE OZV.  (See (village) Imreg in Zemplen county)

This translates to the widow of Laszlo Turanszky (and she sure does have a lot of property in many named places!)  (OZV is the abbreviation for widow frequently seen in other historical records.)

EXAMPLE:

NAGY JANOSNE HARTVIK ROZALIA  (See village Toszeg in  County of Pest-Pilis-Solt)
This translates to Roszalia Hartvik widow of Janos Nagy, and I think her full birth name is included because the name JOHN BIG/GREAT is so EXTREMELY COMMON. Notice that she is likely Slovak and he is Hungarian, and neither are considered nobility.

How do you know if the named place is a town, village, or farmland? Well, you will want to read the details, but a clue that it's farmland only - A FIELD, is that it has no HAZATLAN on it owned by the property owner/administrator. HAZ means house, but the word HAZATLAN means buildings.  You can't even say dwelling, as it could be a tool shed or a barn. The workers may live elsewhere, in huts, sleep in fields, or the owner of the land might have a fine house not too far away in a cluster of houses - a village or town. (Wealthy property owners may also live in town but have overseers at their country properties.)

EXAMPLE:

LELESZI PREMONTREI PREPOSTAGE  (See village Lelesz in County Zemplen)
This translates purely to the PROVOST is the administrator for the property, like the landlord has hired a management company and is absentee. Although the word Provost in English is most associated with an educational institution or sometimes a religious one, in this case think administrator or property manager!

EXAMPLE : KIRALYI KAMARA. (Seen in many locations)

This sounds like the property is owned by a King, right? But in Hungarian a Kirayi Kamaras translates to Groom, or lord of the bedchamber, so likely the census taker talked to someone in the position of being a servant to the owner, rather than the administrator PREPOSTAGE above. (Think houseboy!)  In other words the person who answered the door. Ah well, neighbors reported on neighbors on the USA 1940 Federal Census too, so even Queen Marie Theresa's census takers didn't always find a home/palace owner home!

To get to all the posts/genealogy tips regarding the NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF HUNGARY/ Hungaricana's URBARIUM 1767 you can search this BLOG by looking through my archives, through searching for the word URBARIUM using the Google Search Feature embedded in the blog, or by clicking on the link at the bottom of the post.

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This post is part of a series. To print up all posts, click on the tag Gen Tips: 1767 Hungaricana Urbarium

Some ANCESTRY.COM DATABASES NEW and UPDATED FOR HUNGARIAN and GERMAN-ROMANIAN GENEALOGY

ANCESTRY.COM has SIBIU, ROMANIA MILITARY CONSCRIPTION 1689-1807 as well as SIBIU, TAX LISTS for periods beginning in 1701-1724  and 1787-1878  now, and has updated HUNGARIAN CIVIL REGISTRATION 1895-1978 as well as HAMBURG GERMANY PASSENGER LISTS.

I ran all the surnames in my own genealogy family, as well as some that I've researched for others into these databases to see what, if anything new would come up.

SIBIU is also known as SEBES.  There were at least a dozen German villages in what is now Romania (or Rumania) and in these villages people kept to their German customs, such as cooking, home building, clothing, and language.  Some of them came in the 1600's from German - in wagon trains (Yes, really!).  However, as there were also Hungarians and other ethnicities in the country, many of them were multilingual and eventually, as they identified themselves as Hungarians, there were marriages between ethnicities.  This is one of the ways that so many Hungarians married with Germans, before they ever came to the United States, but also the basis for the mythology that all Hungarians ARE Germans.   I noted that individuals  on the SIBIU DATABASES were coming up from Brasov, Muhlbach, Lebang, and Kerz (Cirta), so keep checking as I believe that the database intends to cover more than one settlement.

One of my ancestors had a Hungarianized German surname and is marked as coming from Sebes into Abauj on other documents.  However I did check the surnames and variations in the databases as is and nothing came up.  (Remember with Ancestry you can use the first three letters and an * to bring up names with various endings.)

For those of you who have an ancestor who came to the United States on a ship from the German Port of Hamburg, you may be aware that there is a passenger list upon docking (in New York, Castle Garden, or Ellis Island, but there were many other ports of entry.)  You may also be aware that lists were made before the ship left port.  Thus, if you have them on the passenger list when they got to the United States (or Canada, or wherever) and it says they left from Hamburg, you may want that document also.  Now you might think, What's the point?  Well, if the handwriting is much better on the German documents than the others you have tried to make out with magnifiers, you'll be rewarded.  

Also, for those of you who had ancestors leaving the German ports, be aware that some people got off the ship in Southhampton, England and decided to be tourists for a few days or weeks, and then boarded another ship to New York or other American ports.  It was about 2-3 days from the German port to the ports of Great Britain, and then about another week to the U.S.  If your ancestor felt they needed some time on land before they crossed the Atlantic, then it's possible they will ALSO APPEAR on manifests originating in that country.

As for the Hungarian Civil Registration, this database seems to me to be very minimal, as I've tried to find how many counties it includes and so far I'd say there are many missing.  But you never know until you try...


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HUNGARIAN WOMEN : SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS : THE ILLEGITIMATE and THE ORPHAN : GENEALOGY TIP #3

HUNGARIAN WOMEN : SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS : THE ILLEGITIMATE and THE ORPHAN : GENEALOGY TIP #3

Illegitimate births did happen in the Old World, though I'm sure that there was much more taboo associated with it and so there was much more pressure to marry first than there is today in the USA where a huge number of children are born "without fathers" which is to say "without husbands."  To be unmarried was to be unsupported financially for there were no social services, welfare money, Social Security, or other programs.  It was a terrible risk.

We can never know how many children of married women were the result of affairs from birth and baptismal records, though I do wonder about the role of DNA since people are using DNA now to meet relatives who they may not also be able to document if they are the offspring of an affair.

In 300 years of Catholic Church records for one small town I found one listing for a woman who had several illegitimate children. Her children were baptized.  Was that about tolerance, understanding, how devout she was, or a priest who really wanted to save souls?

I had to wonder about this woman.  I wondered if she worked for a seductive noble.  I wondered if she was a person of low intelligence.  How it was that she seemed to be stranded and alone in this town without family?  Maybe she was unusually independent.  Had she been an orphan?  As her children died one after another testifying to illness and poverty I knew that she had to be living on handouts or begging.  And then, when she was in her late 30's an older man married her.  Did he love her?  Was he the father of the children after all?  Or did he think of having a wife as having a necessary servant?

I also read the Jewish record for the closest temple and found many more listings of illegitimate births but that is only a sampling, not meaning that among Jewish women there was overall more illegitimacy.  In these cases it was noted that the women had come from somewhere else meaning that the way pregnant unmarried women were handling their situation was to go away somewhere else to have their baby.

What being born outside marriage means in looking at old Hungarian records is that if your ancestor is the descendent of a woman who gave birth unmarried as Maria Szabo, be they male or female, even if she marries, they will be listed as Szabos on records.  (So far I've found nothing close to a legal adoption recorded in a church record.  I have found children who were orphaned and living with a family with a different surname in which there are notations of the child's birth name and priests notations such as "also known as Huber" which might mean they were born a Huber or simply that the family has more than one name.)

As someone who has an ancestor who was orphaned, I may have some interesting information to share.

Today an orphan means a child LOST BOTH PARENTS.  In the 19th century in Europe and in the deeper past a CHILD WAS AN ORPHAN BECAUSE HE OR SHE LOST THEIR FATHER, the bread winner.  In the case of my orphan ancestor people said she had been "double orphaned."  It turned out that her first natural father died, her mother remarried and then died, leaving a step father who then died.  I think they meant she lost two FATHERS.  I found she and half and step siblings with three different surnames...  Their surnames were their own birth names from various couplings due to deaths and remarriages.

To bring up other posts from this series click on the label TipsPro Tips-Hungary Women

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HUNGARIAN WOMEN : SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS : RELIGION AND STATUS : GENEALOGY TIP #2

HUNGARIAN WOMEN : SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS: RELIGION AND STATUS : GENEALOGY TIP #2

In 1711 churches in the countries and counties ruled by the Austrians by law began taking notes like these below. The listings are often in LATIN the universal language of the Roman Catholic Church.  The notes may also be in German, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish - Russian, reflecting the education and ethnicity of the local priest. 

You may find some churches have listings for people who are not Roman Catholic included depending on how small a town or how far it was that people had to travel to go to their Jewish temple or Greek Catholic church.  This was the closest thing they had to a civil registration and be careful when reading their religious information to realize that they are listed not because they actually go to this church but because they live near it! But since Hungary declared itself to be a Christian country after overcoming the domination by Moslem Turks and aligned itself with Roman Catholicism, I'll start there.

CONSIDER THESE SAMPLE LISTINGS.

Maria, daughter of Janos Nagy.  1715  (no mother's name at all.  A fairly worthless listing because of the common names.  Maybe if the person is a noble and has a name like Maria Elizabeta Julietta Szalia (I'm making this up but I've noticed that the more names given the higher the rank of the noble with an average of four names for say the equivalent of a count/graf) the record becomes valuable.

better is:

Maria, daughter of Janos Nagy, Baptised August 1, 1715 (But it's as if the man gave birth!)

better is

Maria, daughter of Janos Nagy, Born July 28, 1715, Baptised August 1, 1715
priest's note : father is farmer.

better is

Maria, daughter of Janos Nagy, Born July 28th, 1715 Baptised August 1, 1725
priest's note : father is farmer.  Mother Maria Toth.  Mother is nobilis.

(You may be convinced that nobilis could only marry nobilis but I've found MANY marriages of mixed status and even mixed religions particularly in towns. As I understand it, the children's status was dictated by their father.  So a noble woman would keep her own status marrying a common person but the issue was that her children lost their noble heritage because of this unequal marriage.  On the other hand some noble women preferred to marry a wealthy commoner rather than a poor noble!  Also today we tend to think that a couple marries in the BRIDE'S church but I've come to believe by reading)

NOW YOU CAN LOOK THROUGH THE CHURCH REGISTER FOR OTHER CHILDREN BORN TO A JANOS NAGY AND A MARIA TOTH, assembling a family group.

NOW YOU CAN ALSO LOOK FOR A MARRIAGE OF THIS COUPLE, based on the oldest child born to them (give it a year or two.)  You may find something like this:

Marriage of the widow Janos Nagy, 45 and the virgin Maria Toth,  18, April 15, 1720.  Husband is a farmer - land owner.

Maria, daughter of Janos Nagy and Maria Nagyne, still born.  December 22, 1721. Baptised by midwife.

Maria, daughter of farmer - landowner Janos Nagy and the nobilis Maria Toth,  Born July 28th, 1715, Baptised August 1, 1725 by Priest Andras Szabo.  (It is common for a couple to name a newly born child the same as a deceased child!)

Janos, son of farmer - landowner from Zemplen, Janos Nagy and the nobilis Maria Toth who was born in Budapest,  Janos Born August 15, 1726, Baptised August 16, 1726 ...

I would like to say that all the records get more informative as they years go by but that hasn't been my experience. 

Priest's notations about status are common even after 1848 and there always seems to be great concern about the father's profession, after all most women didn't work for money.  They were either supported or inherited or became sisters or nuns supported in convents by the Church.

Posts from this series can be brought up by clicking on the label GenTips - Hungary Women

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OSTERHOUT LIBRARY GENEALOGY - WILKES BARR AND LUZERNE FOCUS

OSTERHOUT LIBRARY GENEALOGY

PENNSYLVANIA was the main focus of immigrating Hungarians, Slovaks, Poles, and others seeking work familiar to them from the mountainous regions of Central and Eastern Europe such as mining and working in steel mills.  Some families immigrated into Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut, others headed to Detroit Michigan area and places in Indiana to work in manufacturing.

This is an interesting resource for those of you researching the central Pennsylvania area!