My Genealogical Goals for 2014

With the new year quickly approaching, I decided to make a list of genealogy goals I am going to strive to achieve in the coming year. With having begun researching my family tree well over thirteen years ago, I still have a lot to research. I've intentionally left different branches of my family un-researched, so that I'd continue to have research to do as the years went on. With how much research I have completed on my Hungarian ancestry (the majority of my research), I am far from done. A vast majority of that consists of nobility resources; there's a wealth of information to be found, and I'll likely need to conduct that research on-site in Hungarian archives. With all that being said, here is my list of goals for the new year:


1. Write more. I need to write more. A lot more. I've sorely neglected my several blogs during the year due to medical issues within the family. Things have gotten much better, and I'm regaining the time I'll be able to devote to writing. Apart from my blogs, I'm going to be dedicating a very large majority of my time to writing two books. They're going to be related to Hungarian genealogy, my area of expertise, and completely unrelated to one another. I can't go into much detail about what the books will be about yet, but know that both will be extremely helpful to any research being conducted within the former Hungarian empire.

2. The most important family for me to research this year, is the family of my 3rd-great-grandmother, Martha Ann Miller. She was the wife of James Andrew J. Costilow and died fairly young; 45 years before her husband passed. I was fortunate enough to have found a record that was a crucial breakthrough in Martha's family, which then lead me to her parents and half of her grandparents. I plan to focus a lot of attention on researching these new families.

3. I plan on indexing far more records relating to Győr city and county. It's the sixth largest city in Hungary, and the largest and most important city in northwest Hungary. It's very close to the borders of both Austria and Slovakia and is situated on one of the most important roads in Central Europe. Because of this, it was a large hub for migrants and immigration. There were six Roman Catholic parishes in Győr, comprised of 27 microfilms of data. So indexing marriage records for this city would be extremely beneficial for those researching in this area.

4. There are a handful of military organizations I would like to join. The main ones including the SAR (Sons of the American Revolution), General Society of the War of 1812, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War and Sons of Confederate Veterans. My goal is to obtain all the documentation required to apply for membership within these organizations. I could easily piggy-back other applicants with their membership numbers and previous documentation, but I want to do it on my own.

5. My Polish roots are aching to be discovered. I'm more Polish than anything else, yet the majority of the records aren't readily available for research. My lines from Barycz and Osobnica will be extremely difficult, as I'll have to physically write to the church and request information. It's a hit or a miss and I won't make much progress. Hence why I haven't touched at all in all the years I've been researching. Two sides that I do need to focus on, are my Adas and Domagalski families. The Adas' came from the Putzig parish and I've been able to research the family back to the 1750's so far, but the records began in 1593.. so there's LOTS to be discovered! I also need to figure out the collateral line to the Adas family, the Pletzke's. They're from a neighboring parish and there's also lots to be found.

6. I need to research my Stümpges line. Previous researchers had traced the family line back to the 1540's, but I'm not content. I need to research the family in the church records myself, and verify that the direct Stümpges line is correct. Almost all of the maternal lines are completely blank, also. Those need to be researched and known. There's so much information to be found here!

FamilySearch Find Of The Day: The 1908 Marriage of József Majoros & Anna Tóth in Ó-Fehértó

While doing some work on my Gombash line today, I was looking at the spouses of my great-grandfather's siblings; one of them being Michael Mayors. I know he was married to my great-grandfather's sister, Julia, on 09 Sep 1939 in Guernsey county, Ohio. Thanks to their marriage record, I knew Michael's exact birth date and the name of his parents: 18 Jun 1912 and Joseph Mayors (Majoros) & Anna Toth. Using that information, I tracked down their passenger manifest records via Ellis Island and located where they originally came from in Hungary: Ó-Fehértó, Szabolcs, Hungary. Below is the marriage record for Michael's parents:

Entry Number: 22
Place of Marriage: Ó-Fehértó
Date of Marriage: 05 Dec 1908

Groom: Majoros József
Occupation: carter/teamster
Religion: Greek Catholic
Born: 03 Apr 1885
Residence: Ó-Fehértó
Father: Majoros János
Mother: Kocsán Anna

Bride: Tóth Anna
Religion: Greek Catholic
Born: 12 Dec 1890
Residence: Ó-Fehértó
Father: n/a
Mother: Tóth Mária

Witness: Gebri Mihály
Witness: Gerzten Dániel, Ó-Fehértó

Hungarian Marriage Project Update: 09 Jun 2010

I had taken a 2 1/2 month break from extracting marriage records, but I'm back at it again. Today I have added the Roman Catholic parish of Ibrány from Szabolcs county. This addition to the database adds 520 marriages from 1801 to 1894. This brings the Hungarian Marriage Project well over 12,600 marriages! You can search the Hungarian Marriage Project here:

Hungarian Marriage Project

If you have have records to contribute to Hungary Exchange, don't hesitate to contact me! Your contributions will helps others! :)

What's Been Going On Lately

I've been neglecting my blog really bad lately.. I want to say sorry to my faithful readers out there. You know who you are. :)

I've been busy and preoccupied with a few things going on lately. First is my cousin's Bat Mitzvah, which is tomorrow. There's been months of set up and preparation and I'll be happy when it's over. The other reason I've been busy is I've been doing a lot of research lately.

Last week today, I went to the Newberry Library in Chicago with my friend Cathy. That place is amazing! I didn't even get through half the list of books I wanted to look at, but I found so much information and great leads on my brick-wall Howell family. My Howell's are dead-ended with a Hiram Howell and wife Rachel. They were born in the 1780's-1790's and lived in Western TN and finally Tippah County, Mississippi in the last years of their lives. Hiram was actually murdered in 1853! Hiram and Rachel were married sometime before 1810 in Tennessee and I believe they had somewhere around ten children, eight boys and two girls. One of the girls was Temperance, my 4th-great-grandmother. She was married to George W. Vance about 1844 (place and date unknown) and they had seven children, before George suddenly died in 1859-1860. He was only about 33 when he died... another possible murder? Hopefully further research will yield those answers.

I've also been pretty busy researching my Hungarian nobility. Through my 9th-great-grandmother, Margit Berzeviczy who married István Horváth de Perlak, I descend from many large and old noble families of Hungary.. some with very powerful connections. Here are some of the families I descend from through Margit's ancestry. If you descend from any of these please contact me, we're cousins!

*Bánffy de Gara (garai Bánffy) - genus Drusma

*Bárczay de Bárcza (bárczai Bárczay)

*Berthóthy de Berthót (berthóti Berthóthy) - genus Aba

*Berzeviczy de Berzevicze (berzeviczei Berzeviczy)

*Bocskay de Bocskó (bocskói Bocskay) - genus Boksa

*Buchai de Bucha (buchai Buchai)

*Cseley de Csele (cselei Cseley) - genus Bogáth-Radván

*Csúzy de Csúz és Puszta-Szent-Mihály (csúzi és puszta-szent-mihályi Csúzy)

*Garay de Gara (garai Garay) - genus Drusma

*Gombos de Gombosfalva (gombosfalvai Gombos) - genus Tekele

*Haraszthy de Haraszt (haraszti Haraszthy)

*Istvánffy baranyavár és Kis-Asszonyfalva (kis-asszonyfalvai és baranyavári Istvánffy)

*Izdenczy de Izdencz és Komlós (izdenczi és komlósi Izdenczy)

*Kapy de Kapivár (kapivári Kapy)

*Lipcsey de Nagy-Lucse (nagy-lucsei Lipcsey)

*Macedóniai de Macedónia (macedóniai Macedóniai)

*Merse de Szinye (szinyei Merse)

*Nekcsey de Nekcse (nekcsei Nekcsey) - genus Aba

*Ostffy de Asszonyfalva (asszonyfalvai Ostffy) - genus Osl

*Soós de Sóvár (sóvári Soós) - genus Boksa

*Szilágyi de Horogszeg (horogszegi Szilágyi)

*Szini de Teresztény (teresztényi Szini)

*Zombory de Zombor (zombori Zombory)

I've also been working on something for my website Hungary Exchange that I hope a lot of people will find useful. It's guides on how to read and decipher church parish records. It explains how to read baptism, marriage and burial records and I'm doing three records of each of those events for each of the religions in Hungary. There's the Civil Registration, Evangelical, Greek Catholic, Jewish, Reformed and Roman Catholic. So there would be a total of nine (9) guides for each religion, totaling 54 pages of guides when I'm completely finished. At the moment I have 100% of Reformed complete, 2/3 of Greek Catholic complete and 2/3 of Jewish complete. I hope to have it up soon.

All you Hungarian genealogists, please visit my website and submit the surnames you're researching in Hungary. The Surname Database already has 125 Hungarian surnames posted, so check it out!

Hungarian Marriage Project Update: 28 Feb 2010

As of early this morning, the Hungarian Marriage Project has reached over 10,000 indexed marriages. The project currently contains 10 parishes from 7 counties. I've had one researcher contribute indexed marriages already as well, which total well over 1,000 marriages.

If you have digitized or scanned marriage records from Hungary, please consider contributing them to this cause. No actual images will ever appear online on my website, only the text indexes.

If you would like to help index marriage records that you have, please contact me. I use a specific Excel spreadsheet template to index the marriage records. I will set you up with the template and any other information you may need.

Visit my website to learn more about the Hungarian Marriage Project, my various databases and my forum.

www.hungaryexchange.com

Hungarian Marriage Project Update: 17 Feb 2010

I've finally finished indexing (or re-indexing) the Reformed parish of Tiszadob. I had previously indexed the town several years ago, but that index only contained minimal information.. the names of the bride and groom. The new index now contains page numbers, entry numbers, ages, parents and everything else that fit into the new format for my indexing.

The total count of marriages in Tiszadob from 1786 to 1895 is 2,202. With Tiszadob being added to the Hungarian Marriage Project, the total number of marriages currently in the database is over 7,500.

If you have digitized parish records for Hungary, please consider contributing them to the purpose of the Hungarian Marriage Project. Time and funds will allow me to only get so much done, but sharing your parish records will greatly increase the speed of marriages added to the database. If you have Hungarian parish records on loan at your local FHC, consider scanning 10 to 20 pages in a sitting and submitting them to help the Hungarian Marriage Project. The more help I receive, the more we can all help each other!

If you would like to help index marriages, please contact me. I will send you the Excel template and a view guidelines to follow while you index.

I hope everyone's researching is going well!

http://www.hungaryexchange.com/

nickmgombash@yahoo.com

My Blog Is 2 Years Old Today!

I made my first blog entry.. ever.. two years ago today, on February 13th, 2008. In that first blog, I talked about my current research and what I knew on my family. Over the past two years I've talked a lot about my family and my research, and I've also proved and disproved a lot of things with my ancestry. I just wanted to say thank you to my growing number of followers. I've been pretty busy with my new website Hungary Exchange and also indexing Hungarian marriages.. but I'll have some new posts really soon. Thanks!

Hungary Exchange

My new website is finally up! It's called Hungary Exchange. It has a bunch of databases already available, along with my project the Hungarian Marriage Project that I'm working on. I also have a large list of links, comprised primarily of county and national archives website but has other useful sites as well. Please visit the forum and write about your family, and submit your surnames to me so I can add them to the Surname Database.

Let's knock down all those brick-walls and find family!

http://www.hungaryexchange.com/

Hungary Exchange Forum

With my new website soon on it's way (tonight or tomorrow!), I've created a Hungarian genealogy forum. My hopes are that people will soon start flocking to the forum and post about their family and genealogy. Post as little or as much as you like.. ask questions, answer questions! Converse with others about your families, your research and share your links! Go start connecting with family!

Let's make this a top Hungarian genealogy resource!

http://hungaryexchange.forumup.it/